Midwife of the Intellect

How could a Rhineland mystic of the 13th century help us better navigate the 21st? In a provocative reading of the work of Meister Eckhart, Peter Sloterdijk offers a compelling answer: What medieval mysticism teaches us is that all there is doesn’t exist per se—everything only exists in relation.

For Eckhart, living on Earth is the same as the Holy Trinity: in a symbiosis, a form of co-relationship forgotten for too long. The triumph of individualism led to the shared illusion that humans, like everything else on the planet, had an essence, an identity, a being. But nothing could be more false. What everything is, is the others. What everything is, is a shared relationality. We are not alone—we are also all others; we depend on them. In the Anthropocene, when planetary symbiosis has never been more jeopardized, shifting our metaphysics and recalling lessons such as those of Meister Eckhart has become vital.

Peter Sloterdijk is a philosopher and writer. His work, celebrated the world over, has earned him some of the most important literary and philosophical prizes, including the Ludwig Börne Prize, the European Prize for Political Culture and the European Essay Prize. His last book in English is: If You Have Never Thought Gray: A Theory of Color (Polity, 2025).

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Published
November 20, 2025

Publishing coordinator
Laurent de Sutter

Editors
Lorenzo Marsili, You Mi, Niccolò Milanese

Design
StudioKrimm

Illustration
Tarrant Tabor

Copy editor
Marieke Krijnen

Printed in Venice
by Grafiche Veneziane

ISBN
9791282216005