Abstract
Recent years have seen a rise in those who describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious”. At a popular level, there has been a lot of debate about this label and what it represents. But philosophers have in general paid little attention to the conceptual issues it raises. What is spirituality, exactly, and how does it relate to religion? Could there be a non-religious spirituality? In this paper, I try to give an outline account of the nature of spirituality and of religion, and then close with some thoughts on the prospects for a non-religious spirituality.
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Notes
http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise-religion/. For a relatively early treatment of the history of this phrase and the outlook it represents, see (Fuller 2001).
Gottlieb, himself a defender of what he calls “eclectic” and “secular” spirituality, quotes those who have called “the very idea of spirituality…an ‘inconsequential dabbling that is doomed to disappear almost as quickly as it appeared’, ‘a new cultural addiction and a claimed panacea for the angst of modern living’…a form of ‘junk capitalism’…[and] a kind of lazy egotism avoiding the demands of God and serious religion” (Gottlieb 2013, p. 21).
For some of the story of its evolution, see (Bregman Bregman 2014, Introduction and Chapter 1).
Thus, I think the ethical thought of all developed spiritual traditions is virtue-theoretical; that is, agent-centered rather than act-centered.
Different traditions, however, differ on how to understand the problem of the self. On the Buddhist view, for example, it may seem as if the basic problem depends on the false belief that there is a substantial self, whereas on the Christian view the problem is rather one of egotism, of being overly pre-occupied with the self to the exclusion of real love for others.
I talk about some these similarities, with a focus on Stoic, Christian, and Buddhist sources in my “Dispassion as an Ethical Ideal”.
Some doubt may be felt that Epicureanism could count as a spiritual tradition, since (a) they were materialists of a rather strong sort, thinking reality was ultimately nothing but atoms in a void, and (b) they thought that the ultimate good was pleasure (Thanks to David McNaughton for this worry). However, for the Epicureans, atoms in the void were sufficient to ground a spirituality insofar as they believed that rightly understanding and living in the light of this fundamental truth required a sort of inner transformation which would in turn lead to more ethical behavior and a more worthwhile life. Likewise, their pursuit of pleasure was conditioned by their understanding of the cosmos and human nature. It required, among other things, support for just social institutions, pursuit of friendship, and moderating one's appetites (far from the modern misconception of the Epicurean as an insatiable gourmand, it was originally a quasi-ascetical community and Epicurus himself was a vegetarian!).
The quote is from Murdoch (1994), whose ethical thought to my mind is an almost perfect expression in contemporary philosophical terms of a basic insight of many spiritual traditions.
My account here does not play up the importance of spiritual or mystical experiences, which may seem like a flaw. On the one hand, I don’t think such experiences, as such, are important to all spiritualities. On the other, however, I do think the idea of an inner transformation is important and such experiences may often be the catalysts for such transformations, or the experience of the transformations themselves. Thanks to Harriet Baber for forcing me to think about this.
For a recent dialogue on the definition of religion, see (Devine 1986) and (Kapitan 1989). Devine focuses mostly on deity and dogma (with ritual being a “less central” criteria), whereas Kapitan focuses mostly on ethics, broadly speaking (for him, religion is primarily about solving a sort of “uneasiness” in our existential condition). Tellingly, the word “spirituality” doesn’t show up at all in either treatment.
One potential worry here is that this is too broad an understanding, for we can imagine an alien explorer to our planet thinking similar things about our own relationship to, say, professional sports. On the one hand, I’ll admit that as it stands perhaps what I say is too broad—there may be additional requirements for such communal rituals to be considered religious, for example some sort of self-conscious understanding of what is happening as in some way sacred or necessary. On the other, I don’t want to entirely rule out the claim that our entertainment culture is at least something very close to a surrogate religion.
(Woods and Ironson 1999).
Cf. (Zinnbauer and Pargament 2003, pp. 27–29), who is responding inter alia to the studies just mentioned.
And of course in the developed religions, the rites have both a communal character, as in communal prayer and worship or veneration, and a more individually-directed spiritual character. In the Eucharist, for example, Christians both share a communal meal in remembrance of Christ, and are said to be individually transformed by a real encounter with him.
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Carey, J. Spiritual, but not religious?: On the nature of spirituality and its relation to religion. Int J Philos Relig 83, 261–269 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-017-9648-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-017-9648-8