Spirituality: the lack of a definition

The lack of a definition of spirituality in philosophy

In recent years, there have been a number of philosophical publications focusing on spirituality. These include monographs (Comte-Sponville, 2006; Gottlieb, 2012; Solomon, 2002), edited volumes (McPherson, 2017; Salazar and Nicholls, 2019) and journal articles (Carey, 2018; Carr, 2018; Huss, 2014), to name but a few. However, even in pertinent philosophical texts it is rare to find attempts at shaping a workable philosophical definition of spirituality that covers approximately all that is commonly referred to by the term and distinguishes what falls under the concept of spirituality reasonably well from other phenomena. This prompted the author of a fairly recent paper “on the nature of spirituality and its relation to religion” to declare that he would not compare his account with others since there were “so few serious philosophical attempts to give such accounts” (Carey, 2018, p. 263). While some philosophers writing on spirituality declare outright that they will not offer a definition of the concept (Piven, 2019), others make it clear by the way they approach the topic that shaping a definition or discussing the extension and limits of the concept is not what interests them with regard to spirituality (Comte-Sponville, 2006; Gottlieb, 2012; Solomon, 2002).

Why we need a clear definition

The lack of a workable definition of spirituality is a problem familiar not only to philosophy, but to the entire academic world, which has experienced an “exponential growth of spirituality scholarship” (Humphrey, 2015, p. 21). Statements from scholars across various disciplines document how they have been struggling with definitions and conceptual vagueness for decades. They decry “a certain fluidity, not to say vagueness, in the use of the term” (Principe, 1983, p. 129) and “the general confusion about its meaning” (Schneiders, 1989, p. 676); they describe spirituality as “an obscure construct in need of empirical grounding and operationalization” (Zinnbauer et al., 1997, p. 549) or as “an amorphous and elusive construct” (De Klerk, 2005, p. 66). It is claimed that the term “is so vague and fuzzy that even those who use it do not know what they mean by it” (Woodhead, 2010, p. 32). Generally, there is much complaint about the “widespread use of ambiguous constructs and inconsistent or implied definitions” in academic discussions (Cobb et al., 2012, p. 339). Recently, some scholars appear to have accepted the “contemporary usage of the term,” which is simply “inconsistent and amorphous” (Piven, 2019, p. 62).

While there is nothing to be said against accepting the vagueness and ambiguity of the concept in contexts of ordinary life and a broad range of academic discussions, there are some kinds of debates that could benefit from the use of a clear definition of spirituality. Does spirituality increase well-being? What is the relation between spirituality and religion? Is spirituality an anthropological constant? If we want to have discussions on questions like these that allow participants to agree or disagree with certain propositions about spirituality in a logically coherent and meaningful manner, we must have a sufficiently clear definition of spirituality. This may sound like a truism. There are reasons, however, why a definition of spirituality seems particularly difficult to many, if not impossible or even superfluous. In what follows, I will explore those reasons before proposing a solution, both to avoid the greatest difficulties in defining spirituality and to produce a convincing and workable definition.

Starting from some exemplary positions in the philosophical discussion about the definition of spirituality, I will (1) identify the major issues in shaping a satisfactory definition of spirituality, (2) suggest a rough clustering of common definitions and discuss their weaknesses, (3) and derive from the common difficulties and weaknesses three conditions that a convincing definition must fulfill. (4) Finally, I will propose a definition of spirituality that meets these conditions.

The difficulties of a definition

Why is it so hard to define spirituality? By touching on some exemplary and common viewpoints in the philosophical discussion on defining spirituality, I will argue that there are four main challenges that are closely interconnected.

Spirituality as transcendence of critical reasoning

There is a pervasive belief, both within and without academic discussion, that spirituality consists in transcending critical reasoning and therefore inherently defies a clear-cut definition. This assumption is commonly not discussed but treated as if it were self-evident.

Arguably, this perception stems from a certain perspective that equates spirituality with individual religiosity and places it on a supernatural level that lies beyond the grasp of human rational analysis. Some trace this perception back to Schleiermacher and his “apologetics of individual religiosity in times of religious critique and secularization” through the “strategy of defining individually experienced religiosity as the core of religion” (Westerink, 2012, p. 9; Viertbauer, 2018). The theist origin of this perception has not prevented naturalist philosophers from adopting it. While they reject the idea that spirituality is essentially religious, some still retain the notion that spirituality transcends critical reasoning that allegedly reduces the world “to mere puzzles and paradoxes” and instead embraces “the big questions”, those “that have no ultimate answers” (Solomon, 2002, pp. 5–6). What appears to make spirituality interesting and valuable for many philosophers who engage with it, whether they are theists or naturalists, is regarding it as a higher or an alternative access to reality. Spirituality promises a deeper knowledge of and connection to ourselves and the world, on the condition that one renounce the supposed security of mere rational judgment, which deludes humans into knowing who they are and what the world around them is. “You are not who you think you are, and you do not have to live the way you think you do” (Gottlieb, 2012, p. 9) are typical sentences that promise access to a world beyond dry rationality.

This view is so pervasive and so fundamental to understanding spirituality that it cannot and indeed should not be excluded lightly from a careful discussion and explication. At the same time, it poses a serious challenge for defining the concept. The very idea of creating a clear-cut definition of something that surpasses critical examination, appears to be self-contradictory. Therefore, those who adopt this view find the idea of shaping a precise definition of spirituality beside the point. In their view, spirituality is something to be practiced; at best, it is something that can be described in a tentative way, but it will not lend itself to neat categorization and analysis. Often, analytical philosophy is singled out as particularly unfit to the task (Solomon, 2002; Wendel, 2017).

For others, the presumed inherent inexplicability of spirituality is precisely what makes the concept treacherous. It is the reason why they do not consider an intellectual engagement with it worthwhile. If they engage with the topic at all, they do it in order to make this point by complaining that “spirituality literature has been granted a kind of special dispensation, one that licences unevidenced hyperbole, immune to cross-examination and attack” (Paley, 2007, p. 8). Therefore, whether one considers spirituality’s presumed transcendence of critical reasoning a basis for embracing the concept or for avoiding it, either way it seems to turn any attempt at a precise definition of spirituality into a futile undertaking.

The broadness of the concept

Ever since a significant part of western societies began to describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR), the concept of spirituality seems to have become as popular as it is unspecific. The line between the religious and the non-religious has grown blurred, disrupting a whole range of reasonably well-established, if contested, theses and definitions (Huss, 2014). Spirituality no longer presupposes any form of religious belief at all, nor does it consist in any kind of specific experience or practice. Instead, it covers a wide array of experiences, beliefs, and practices within all religious denominations and beyond. Spirituality may or may not be seen as consisting of or implying attitudes, narratives, beliefs, or traditions; it may or may not include faith in or veneration of supernatural entities, prayer, or meditation, or teacher-disciple-relationships, fasting, sharing of meals, breathing exercises, physical exercises, sacred texts, singing, gatherings, charitable work, vigils, pilgrimages, or any other specific element. The lowest common denominator seems to be the assumption that spirituality is a good thing that helps people lead better, ethical lives. But even this point is controversial (Piven, 2019; Vonk & Visser, 2021).

It is obvious, then, why a comprehensive and convincing definition of spirituality that covers even approximately all that is commonly referred to by the term and distinguishes what falls under the concept of spirituality reasonably well from other phenomena seems nothing less than impossible. In consequence, definitions aiming at inclusivity tend to be so vague that no valid conclusions can be drawn on their basis. A classic example of this is Raimon Panikkar, who proposed to define spirituality as “one typical way of handling the human condition” to which Sandra M. Schneiders replied: “One is tempted to say, ‘So is alcoholism’” (Schneiders, 1989, p. 683). Scholars who for this reason aim at definitions that are more concise often end up being too exclusive and fail to do justice to the breadth of the phenomenon, for example, by equating (Wendel, 2017) or opposing (Metzinger, 2014) spirituality and religion.

Implications of various scholarly backgrounds

Another challenge concerns the broad range of various backgrounds of scholars engaging with the term. I will limit myself here to illustrating how the backgrounds of theist and naturalist philosophers determine their respective accounts.Footnote 1

Theist approaches tend to assume that the distinction between religion/religiosity and spirituality is artificial (Wendel, 2017, p. 849). For them, spirituality is either an equivalent for religion or at least necessarily connected to it. Sometimes theists’ discussions of spirituality have “apologetic traits” (Westerink, 2012, p. 12). In a scholarly context where the concept of spirituality is considered “an interesting one, in so far as it does not seem to provoke, straight off, the kind of immediately polarised reaction one finds in the case of religion” (Cottingham, 2005, p. 3), spirituality functions partly as a substitute for the supposedly more difficult notion of religion, for quite pragmatic reasons. Some even use the emergence of non-religious spirituality as an opportunity for proving the existence of God. One example is Wiertz, who argues that spirituality is essentially a hopeful spiritual attitude toward life, and as such presupposes for its rationality the existence of a transcendent being with certain attributes, which in his opinion can be shown to be the theist God (Wiertz, 2017). Bishop, too, argues along these lines (Bishop, 2010).

Secular naturalists, on the other hand, tend to take the opposite approach. To Metzinger, for example, spirituality is literally “the opposite of religion” (Metzinger, 2014, p. 5), mainly because he regards “intellectual honesty” as a premise of spirituality and argues that this is “exactly what representatives of organized religions and theologians of any type simply cannot have, even if they would like to make claims to the contrary” (Metzinger, 2014, p. 10). Others who do not view spirituality and religion as mutually exclusive, still regard them as “at least sometimes at odds”, because in their view spirituality “is not primarily a matter of beliefs” but “rather a way (or a great many ways) of experiencing the world, of living, of interacting with other people and with the world” (Solomon, 2002, p. 12).

Depending on their background and the definition of spirituality that they prefer, various scholars also give various accounts of the history of spirituality. Some see the origin of spirituality in Christianity, precisely in the Christian monastic traditions (Schneiders, 1989; Sheldrake, 2007). Some refer to a variety of spiritual teachers and traditions from all world religions and beyond (Gottlieb, 2012). Others draw a line back to ancient philosophy, stressing the continuity between ancient spirituality and Christian spirituality (Hadot, 1953; Hadot, Carlier and Davidson, 2001). Secular naturalists, by contrast, claim that spirituality “has been hijacked by organized religion” (Solomon, 2002, p. xiii) and link their account to thinkers like Hegel and Nietzsche (Solomon, 2002), or to Spinoza, Sam Harris, Sharon Welch, and others (Stone, 2012).

Avoiding a circular definition

In light of these three briefly sketched challenges, it may seem plausible that spirituality is an equivocal term. For example, a religious and a non-religious spirituality appear to be two entirely different things, depending on definitions brought forward by various philosophers. Or one may conclude that a philosophical spirituality along the lines of Hadot, a secular spirituality along the lines of Metzinger and an atheist spirituality along the lines of Comte-Sponville are three quite different things. However, there is a final challenge that makes it difficult even to determine if and to what extent spirituality is—or is not—an equivocal term, or what it is at all.

The challenge is a methodological one and a classic, namely avoiding a circular definition. As Jeremiah Carey points out, “a satisfactory account of spirituality will be one that fits well with the paradigm cases”, however there is a “lack of clarity about what exactly the paradigm cases are” precisely because there is no clear definition of spirituality (Carey, 2018). Therefore, any definition based on paradigm cases risks having variables on both sides of the equation, roughly in the sense of: Spirituality is best defined in a way that fits paradigmatic spiritualities. This explains why definitions of spirituality turn out to be different to the point of being directly contradictory: they tend to be based on whatever occurrences happen to be paradigmatic in the view of the respective scholars, while there is no philosophical consensus on occurrences that are clearly paradigmatic, nor on what grounds a given occurrence is to be considered paradigmatic. In that sense, defining spirituality is more challenging than defining religion because when it comes to religion there is at least a broad agreement on uniquely paradigmatic cases, such as the largest world religions.

Clustering existing definitions

Despite the difficulties encountered in the philosophical discussion on spirituality, there is a variety of widely held implicit and explicit definitions of spirituality in philosophical writing. They can be roughly divided into three groups.

Ontological definitions of spirituality

I regard as ontological an understanding that perceives spirituality as a person's relationship to an ultimate being. This may be God, an ultimate being, “the Real” (Hick, 1993), an ultimate reality as proposed by Schellenberg’s Ultimism (Schellenberg, 2016), or simply nature or the universe. Ontological understandings of spirituality are largely, though not entirely, coextensive with religious understandings of spirituality. And they often assume like Robert C. Fuller “that the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’ are really synonyms. Both connote belief in a Higher Power of some kind. Both also imply a desire to connect, or enter into a more intense relationship, with this Higher Power. And, finally, both connote interest in rituals, practices, and daily moral behaviors that foster such a connection or relationship.” (Fuller, 2001, p. 6). Whether a given understanding of spirituality is ontological in this sense, of course, depends on the ontological status of the ultimate being in question. In that sense one could argue whether Dawkins’ religion without God or Schellenberg's ultimism are akin to an ontological concept of spirituality or not (Bishop, 2010; Colledge, 2013; Schellenberg, 2016).

Ontological concepts of spirituality are problematic in as far as they tend to categorically exclude or apologetically appropriate secular, atheist, and non-religious spiritualities that are not centered around any kind of belief in an ultimate reality but more around experience or practice. For example, immersion in music or nature, experiences of ecstasy or rapture. People who practice these kinds of spiritualities make up an increasing portion of those who describe themselves as spiritual. Therefore, ontological definitions of spirituality are too narrow. The consequences of too narrow definitions of spirituality and why exactly they are problematic will be discussed in greater detail below. Presumably, to avoid this exclusivity of ontological definitions, many Western scholars have shifted to a different understanding of spirituality.

Ethical definitions of spirituality

I regard as ethical an understanding that perceives spirituality primarily as an endeavor to live a morally good life. Currently, most philosophical definitions of spirituality—theist or naturalist—are ethical. Often, ethical conceptions imply a kind of chronological pattern of spiritual life: The realization of one's own need for change is the starting point. Self-transformation through intense and patient ascetic, meditative, and sometimes charitable practices over a long period of time are the method. The achievement of a good life is the goal. Ethical conceptions of spirituality are often heavily influenced by religious practices, but not necessarily. They may draw from an eclectic selection of religious and non-religious sources (Gottlieb, 2012; Tacey, 2009), or be entirely non-religious (Metzinger, 2014; Solomon, 2002). Some philosophers have suggested viewing philosophy itself as a spiritual practice (Hadot, Carlier and Davidson, 2001). While there is nothing to be said against spirituality being an integral part of striving for a good life, the link between spirituality and a good life is probably much less necessary than these approaches make it seem. Nor does one need spirituality to build or describe an ethically good life, and besides, spirituality is not necessarily good. In other words: These approaches simply fail the task: they do not actually define or describe spirituality. They describe the effect that some spiritualities can have in the lives of those who practice them.

The major problem of ethical conceptions of spirituality is that there is no good reason why spirituality should be a kind of ethic or why a necessary link between spirituality and a good life should be assumed. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that spirituality is by no means inherently harmless or morally good (Koenig, 2008; Magyar-Russell & Griffith, 2016; Piven, 2019; Purcell, 1998; Vonk & Visser, 2021). I cannot see how someone who wanted to defend an ethical definition of spirituality could possibly exclude counterexamples of bad and dangerous spiritualities in a conclusive manner without committing a “no true Scotsman” fallacy.

Functional definitions of spirituality

I regard as functional an understanding that limits itself to the result spirituality has in a person’s life, for example, enhancing well-being, improving performance, or coping with particular stressful situations. Functional, or reductionist, definitions are mostly favored by philosophers and other scholars who are skeptical of ontological and ethical views of spirituality. An example of this is Paley, in whose view spirituality is a form of “positive illusion” that can have “a welcome immunological effect”. So that when “certain positive illusions – the patient’s life has a purpose, she has a relationship with God, and she can anticipate an existence after death – will promote (…) a reduction in existential distress (…) they can be subtly encouraged” (Paley, 2007, p. 11).

As with ethical concepts of spirituality, functional concepts do not actually define or describe spirituality, but only the effect that some spiritualities can have in the lives of those who practice them. The major problem with functional definitions of spirituality is that, by limiting themselves to the observable outcome of spirituality, they leave out large and, for spiritually active persons, often central parts: the content and the personal experience of spirituality. It is a bit like someone defining “sexuality” as a “means of procreation.” Not wrong but leaving out too much to be a good definition.

Conditions of a satisfactory definition of spirituality

From the difficulties I have outlined and the weaknesses in the three basic definitions, the conditions for a convincing definition of spirituality can be derived.

Inclusive

A good definition of spirituality will have to be inclusive. It ought not to exclude spiritualities just because they happen to be non-religious, do not imply belief in an ultimate reality, or are morally questionable.

As we have seen, spirituality has long been seen as necessarily religious. Often it is still seen as intrinsically good. Yet both assumptions lack inner necessity, and at the same time stand in the way of shaping of a coherent definition. One could also call these assumptions a double-bias that is at the core of many definitions of spirituality: A religious bias and an axiological bias. Such definitions make the boundaries of the term too narrow and obscure what spirituality is by suggesting that it is primarily about a relation to the ultimate and about a good life when, evidently, neither of these is the case nor are these assumptions necessarily linked to each other. Not only the boundaries, but also the core of the concept probably lie elsewhere.

Although the number of scholars who still argue in favor of a necessary link between religious belief and spirituality are few, a religious bias remains even among scholars who embrace definitions that explicitly include non-religious beliefs and practices. Woodhead blames “the enduring presence of a submerged norm of ‘real religion’ (…) for overemphasizing the fuzziness of spirituality” while what people practiced had actually “enough common characteristics to make characterization and research relatively unproblematic” (Woodhead, 2010, p. 31). Paley complains that “even though the spiritual elastic is now stretched so far that it includes aromatherapy, existentialism, and ‘mountain biking at dusk’, it still has one end looped around its Christian anchorage, and we still find the cloud of associations derived from its origins in organized religion adhering to it.” (Paley, 2007, p. 6) Therefore Nicholls and Salazar have suggested establishing philosophy of spirituality as a new field of philosophy “that examines spirituality independently of religion” (Salazar and Nicholls, 2019, p. 4).

While the number of philosophers who directly oppose a religious bias in definitions of spirituality is considerable, the number who oppose an axiological bias is small. Most philosophers who write on spirituality, still tend to assume an inherent goodness of spirituality or a close link between spirituality and a good life. A rare exception is Piven, who explicitly argues that we “need to rethink our fantasy of what spirituality is, and recognize our conceptual fallacies” because “there can be grossly ego-satiating, masochistic, manic, sadistic, and sexual cravings that provoke religious, euphoric, transcendental states” (Piven, 2019, pp. 69–70).

Metaphysically parsimonious

A good definition of spirituality will have to be metaphysically parsimonious. It will not make metaphysical commitments by assuming or excluding the existence of things that are not necessary for the shaping of a good definition of spirituality.

Since there are spiritualities that do not imply belief in or any other kind of relation to some kind of ultimate being, there is no good reason to treat the concept of “ultimate being”, “ultimate reality”, “God” or anything similar as a necessary part of a definition of spirituality. Nor is there any need to include a discussion of the nature of an ultimate being in a discussion of spirituality. At the same time, a good definition of spirituality will acknowledge that concepts like these often do play a major part in many spiritualities, so it will take care not to exclude spiritualities that typically refer to an ultimate being. The same applies to concepts of “self”, the “good life”, or commitments regarding the nature or ontological status of values or any other thing that may play a role in some spiritualities, but not in all, and not necessarily.

Stipulative

There seems to be no way to escape circular definitions as long as one starts from whatever happens to be paradigmatic in one’s own or any other’s view and proceeds to shaping a definition that is based on that use of the term.

A good way to deal with this difficulty seems to be a stipulative definition: rather than shaping a definition according to what is commonly called spirituality, and inevitably making an arbitrary choice in what one sees as necessary or sufficient elements of spirituality, one might try to create a definition that does not necessarily derive from common forms of spirituality and prove that it still covers everything, or close to everything, that according to common understanding of spirituality, falls under that concept.

Towards a new definition

Naturally, many inclusive, metaphysically parsimonious and stipulative definitions of spirituality are thinkable. A promising approach may be using a term that often appears in the discussion of spirituality and is part of many definitions but does not necessarily imply metaphysical commitments or axiological assumptions. “Meaning” is such a term. Often meaning is regarded as the mere outcome of spirituality, and definitions based on it could be regarded as functional. But the rich concept of meaning has much more to offer., if we describe meaning not as an outcome, but meaning-making as the very act of spirituality.

Spirituality and meaning

“Meaning” appears in a broad range of papers on spirituality (Besecke, 2001; Carr, 2018; Chastain, 2018; Cobb et al., 2012; Cottingham, 2003, 2005; Gotsis & Kortezi, 2008; Huss, 2014; McPherson, 2017; Tacey, 2009; Wynn, 2012) to cite but a few. Rather than an abstract and supposedly objective “meaningfulness” that might bring us too close to a double-biased definition of spirituality and create a “really hard problem”(Flanagan, 2007), it seems more useful to understand meaning in this context close to the ordinary sense of the word. “In fact, it is the same general sense of the word we use in attributing meaning to language and related phenomena” (Repp, 2018, p. 5).

If we assume that spirituality and the kind of meaning it implies are comparable to language and meaning in language, we can think of a given spirituality or spiritual system as a set of complex signs (including religious or non-religious concepts, narratives, rituals etc.) that have distinct meanings. A person is usually introduced to them in their parental home and social environment. They will perceive the world accordingly and will learn to give certain meanings to certain events in their life by way of interpreting their own experiences in the light of the spiritual systems they grew up with. Depending on the spiritual system they are familiar with, a person may think a certain event in their life means a blessing, another event a challenge, another a punishment, another a temptation, another again a task. Some events may be considered more significant than others, depending on the value of the meaning given to them. A person’s spirituality may lead them in certain circumstances to interpret their life along the lines of a mythological or fictional narrative and act accordingly. At other times their spirituality might inspire them to follow a ritual through which their situation at the time (death of a relative, marriage, birth of a child, beginning of old age) is interpreted in a certain way. Rather than one big meaning of life, spirituality is about the many possible meanings that can be given to a particular event in a particular life, or rather: that a particular person can give to a particular event, because those meanings happen to be available to this person. It is the intricate interplay of meanings that a person gives to the bigger and smaller events of their life and the consonance of these meanings that shape a person’s spirituality or spiritual system.

Like language, spirituality is at the same time social and personal. Humans have a natural ability for spirituality and learn it from others. They share their spirituality, at least in part, with their family, their neighborhood, and their social environment. Therefore, it can never be entirely private, but at the same time it is always unique and intimately personal. Spirituality understood in this way is closely connected to religion, culture, art, and even social dynamics. As language, spirituality develops over time and various persons or one and the same person at various stages in their life may be spiritually more or less articulate, depending on their respective capabilities and resources, as sociological case studies on people's lived spirituality have shown (Rötting, 2019).

Spirituality as a complex relation

It is clear that a definition of spirituality based on the ordinary sense of meaning needs other elements to be precise. After all, not every form of meaning-making is an expression of spirituality. Starting from the observation that “meaning in this sense is always a three-term relation: something means something else to someone”(Goldman, 2018, p. 5), we could formulate our equation as follows: Spirituality is the relationship between someone (x), who gives meaning (F) to things (y). What exactly, then are these things? Above I spoke mainly about events in life or experiences. I would propose to define y in this sense as things that affect someone personally. It does not matter if these things are big or small. What matters is to exclude trivial and remote things.

Spirituality as conscious act

We also have to take into account that meaning in life is a basic human need, and seeking it a kind of reflex. People continually create meanings, even if inadvertently. They do this by permanently and involuntarily relating and reading the contingent and chaotic events that affect them in terms of meaning. In doing so, they rely on the spiritual systems and resources that happen to be available to them. Out of habit, if for no other reason, they tend to nurture and develop a meaning once established (like “when bad things happen to me, this means God punishes me”), even if it is a harmful or distressing one. However, spirituality is usually understood not as a preconscious and accidental process, but as a conscious process with a consciously set goal. Therefore, spirituality is better understood not as a need, but as an art. Hence I would like to define spirituality as the art of creating meaning in life.

Spirituality as the art of creating meaning in life

To say that meaning in life is a basic human need and spirituality is the art of creating meaning in life does not imply that everyone excels in this art. Rather it means that every human being would benefit from developing this art and that probably most have tried it. Spirituality is an art in the sense that cooking or sports, or music are. In theory, anyone can do it, and many practice it in a simple and intuitive way that makes them happy (and that is quite enough for them). But only a few manage to master life's greatest spiritual challenges. How to give meaning to the most terrible experiences a person can have in their life, like civil wars and torture, the sudden death of a child, or the loss of livelihood? How to find a meaning for experiences like these that do not break a person, but make them feel their value and give them courage to carry on with their lives? People who master challenges like these are often met with great admiration. The tragedy, of course, is that—unlike in cooking, sports, or music—the greatest spiritual challenges do not necessarily hit those who are best prepared for them. And many only realize where their spiritual development abilities stand when they are confronted with challenges.

Spirituality, of course, can go wrong. When meanings do not add up. When events cannot be interpreted through the spiritual system available to a person. When a person ends up with contradictory meanings, this is likely experienced as confusing and stressful. When a person gets the impression that a crucial aspect of their life, say work or parenthood, makes no sense, this can even be a threat to themselves or to others. In this sense, the art of spirituality is not an option for some, it is itself a basic human need. A well-developed spirituality that carries a person through all kinds of challenges of life and helps them to deal with these situations, in a way that they do no harm to either themselves or others, is a true art that few have mastered, but from which all would benefit.

Conclusion

To sum up, spirituality is the art of shaping a system of meanings that fits a person’s individual fate and character and makes them thrive without alienating them from their historical, cultural, and social context. Spirituality is furthermore a system of meanings that add up to a coherent whole, and that can be adapted and developed so that it can deal with even the most unexpected changes in life. Finally, spirituality is a system of meaning that is resilient and allows a person to thrive and to give meaning to even the most shattering of life experiences.

My aim was to create a definition of spirituality that includes religious spiritualities as well as non-religious ones; ethically sound as well as unsound spiritualities. Additionally, my definition does not assume as necessary the existence of anything outside the human mind, but it also does not exclude that possibility. Instead of focusing on contents of spiritual beliefs, this definition focuses on the role spirituality plays in life. In that sense, it may be considered reductionist, yet it does not reduce spirituality to a kind of “illusion” or mere technique, but holds enough room for a broad variety of beliefs or practices that are part of many different spiritualities. Even though my definition deliberately differs from many other definitions of spirituality in order to be as inclusive as necessary and as precise as possible, it also builds on what is widely shared by common definitions, namely the central role of meaning.