  What Nicholas gave voice to is not simply the divide between medieval and modern thought, as well as that between orthodoxy and unconventionality, that he himself most remarkably straddled. In fact, it remains a challenge even today to properly understand the Eckhartian thought that man is free only if he (not merely possesses but instead) is freedom. This is so, in part, because even scholarly language runs up against its limits in Eckhart. For we still cannot give adequate expression to the real meaning of the statement: “The free man is, if he is really free, freedom itself, yet only insofar as he is free.” For this very reason, however, it is all the more necessary to engage ourselves in Eckhart’s thinking instead of banning his writings from the public sphere. For if our thought counsels it, our language must change, indeed, not only the language of scholars, but that of the people as well.