The last chapter was concerned with one of the great issues of Eckhart's speculative metaphysics and theology. The purpose of this chapter is to approach Eckhart's theology from the ascetical end of the spectrum of his interests and to take up the subject of detachment, that is to say, the practice of apophatic anthropology. At any rate, the topics of these chapters are distinguished in so far as it is possible to distinguish between an ascetical topic and a speculatively theological one, for in Eckhart there is reason to doubt the value of this distinction. For my part I am disinclined to view Eckhart's writings, whether in the Latin or in the vernacular, either as those of one of the great practical spiritual teachers of the Western Christian tradition, or, alternatively, as those of a great speculative philosopher-theologian; or finally as writings which severally fall some in one category, some in the other. Rather, he belongs within a tradition which has wholly disappeared since the Middle Ages – indeed, perhaps since Eckhart himself – in which one could talk about all these things at once within a single, unified discourse and so could talk intelligibly about a ‘mystical theology’. It is not, however, appropriate yet to comment upon the disappearance of this tradition further than to recall how, in our meanings of the terms, the words ‘mystical’ and ‘theology’ pull apart from one another in opposed directions; and to guess that, as often as not, those directions appear to be as opposed as the ‘experiential’ and ‘speculative’ are: and that opposition increasingly concerns us in the rest of this book.