Philosophy, the Good Life, and Spirituality (2024)

The Humane Perspective: Philosophical Reflections on Human Nature, the Search for Meaning, and the Role of Religion

John Cottingham

Published:

2024

Online ISBN:

9780198918943

Print ISBN:

9780198918912

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The Humane Perspective: Philosophical Reflections on Human Nature, the Search for Meaning, and the Role of Religion

John Cottingham

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John Cottingham

John Cottingham

Professor Emeritus of Philosophy

Honorary Fellow

University of Reading

,

UK

St John’s College, Oxford

,

UK

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Oxford Academic

Pages

78–94

  • Published:

    June 2024

Cite

Cottingham, John, 'Philosophy, the Good Life, and Spirituality', The Humane Perspective: Philosophical Reflections on Human Nature, the Search for Meaning, and the Role of Religion (Oxford, 2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 10 June 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198918943.003.0005, accessed 14 June 2024.

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Abstract

This chapter, drawing on the work of the philosopher Pierre Hadot, distinguishes between philosophy as a specialized academic discipline, concerned with careful examination of our concepts, and philosophy as a way of life, concerned with an examination of the overall meaning and purpose of our lives and with the ‘care of the soul’. The latter conception is connected with the kinds of human need that tend to be labelled ‘spiritual’, and the chapter proceeds to examine various purely secular treatments of spiritual praxis and spiritual experience, contrasting these with the kinds of account found in religious writers. It is concluded that when we unpack exactly what is involved in the activities and experiences we call spiritual, it is not easy to make adequate sense of spirituality, and of its importance for human life, without something close to a theistic framework.

Keywords: Pierre Hadot, spirituality, care of soul, Sam Harris, George Eliot, Buddhism, Karl Rahner, musical knowledge

Subject

Moral Philosophy Metaphysics Philosophy of Religion Religion and Science

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

© John Cottingham 2024

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