“Becoming a cross to thyself”

In this chapter, Maria Exall argues that despite the centuries, style, and context that divide them, there are many convergences between the contemplative Book of Privy Counselling and its doctrine of union with God in loving humility and perfect charity on the one hand, and the objectivist epistemology and ethics of the contemporary rationalist philosopher Thomas Nagel on the other. On the basis of constructive and mutually illuminating similarities between Nagel’s understanding of detachment as an “impersonal standpoint” and a “view from nowhere,” and the conception of detachment in the apophatic tradition based on the works of Pseudo-Dionysius, Exall suggests there is potential for further dialogue between Nagel’s moral and political objectivism and the tradition of spiritual poverty in the Christian mystical tradition.