The Logic of ‘Being Nothing’ and ‘Willing Nothing’ in Marguerite Porete - Tatiana Barkovskiy

In her Mirror of Simple Souls, Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) defines the free soul as a being ‘saved by faith without works, who is only in love, does nothing for God, can be taught nothing, from whom nothing can be taken nor given, and who possesses no will’. In my talk, I examine Porete’s notion of the soul’s ontological ‘nothingness’ and ‘less-than-nothingness’, and show how they translate into the nothingness of the soul’s will. As Porete argues, true freedom comes from freeing oneself of one’s self in order to be and will together with the divine.