Dying to Self and Detachment

Exploring the religious category of dying to self this book aims to resolve contemporary issues that relate to detachment. Beginning with an examination of humility in its general notion and as a religious virtue that detachment presupposes Kellenberger draws on a range of ancient medieval modern and contemporary sources that address the main characteristics of detachment including the work of Meister Eckhart St. Teresa and Simone Weil as well as writers as varied as Gregory of Nyssa Rabi'a al-Adawiyya Søren Kierkegaard Andrew Newberg John Hick and Keiji Nishitani. Kellenberger explores the key issues that arise for detachment including the place of the individual's will in detachment the relationship of detachment to desire to attachment to persons and to self-love and self-respect and issues of contemporary secular detachment such as inducement via chemicals. This book heeds the relevance of the religious virtue of detachment for those living in the twenty-first century.