The determination of Meister Eckhart who was active in the late 13th. and early 14th. century, merely as a mystical thinker or spiritualist free from the context of the scholastic philosophy would often result in diminishing the philosophy historical significance of his thought. To understand his thought in the proper way it should be, therefore, exactly grasped what philosophical traditions had contributed to its formation. This article tries to verify the validity of this demand in terms of the concept of ens in anima or ens cognitivum developed by Eckhart. In his Parisian Questions, Eckhart employed this concept to demonstrate the priority of intellect or intellectual knowing over being. Considered from the viewpoint of Thomas Aquinas, Eckhart’s concept of ens in anima seems to make considerable mistakes, for example, in its essential determination or its division, but first of all, in prioritizing ens in anima over ens extra. But this approach is not fair to Eckhart’s ens in anima. It should be approached against the background of the theory of intellect in the tradition of the German Dominican Order in 13th. century as well as the Neoplatonic thinking. Considered in this way, it become understandable how Eckhart’s concept of ens in anima or ens cognitivum contributes to demonstrating his original and innovative idea of intellect as fundament of being.