Our First Big Question

Is there a general theoretical framework for understanding our spiritual condition as human beings? More specifically, is there a fundamental problem, challenge, or predicament to which the spiritual life, in its different forms, seeks to respond? If so, what is the relationship of this to the spiritual yearnings of human beings?

The hypothesis put forward in this project is that spiritual alienation is the fundamental problem to which the spiritual life seeks to respond, and it is integrally connected with our spiritual yearnings in giving rise to them.

This project posits three main perennial forms of spiritual alienation:

  • Self-alienation: our lack of integration with (or wholeheartedness in relation to) the good.

  • Alienation from others (including from God, on a theistic view): it often results from wrongdoing, but it can also take the form of the loneliness that is endemic to human self-consciousness.

  • Alienation from the world: it arises from our distinctive nature as philosophical, meaning-seeking animals, where, unlike non-rational animals who are at home in their environment, we are tasked with finding our place in the world, that is, with discovering a meaningful life-orientation toward some conception of the good and addressing the problem of “cosmodicy.”

Our Second Big Question

Given that there is a perennial human spiritual predicament that can be characterized in terms of spiritual alienation, how has this been shaped by secularization in the modern world? More specifically, what challenges and opportunities do the growing number of religiously unaffiliated people encounter in their efforts to overcome spiritual alienation?

This project will pursue answers to these questions by building on Charles Taylor’s account (in A Secular Age [Harvard, 2007]) of the condition of secularity, understood as a condition where a traditional religious way of life is seen as one option among a number of other existential/spiritual possibilities. On this account, spiritual seeking is a characteristic feature of a secular age, marking the lives of both the religious and the nonreligious.

Focusing on those who are “spiritual but not religious,” this project will consider the challenges and opportunities they face through exploring two experiences that often accompany religious disaffiliation:

1) Existential disorientation: one loses one’s spiritual bearings and feels the need to discover a meaningful life-orientation.

2) Existential liberation: one feels unencumbered of a religious tradition that was experienced as restrictive or harmful in some way, and this opens up a field of existential/spiritual possibilities.

This project will explore this field of possibilities for the spiritual-but-not-religious and consider how they might find their spiritual bearings and take up a life of spiritual practice (including sometimes engaging in traditional religious practices) in seeking to overcome spiritual alienation.

Some Other (Still Big) Questions

  1. What is spirituality? What is religion? What do people mean when they say they are spiritual but not religious?

  2. Do spiritual yearnings require a vehicle in the form of spiritual practices to be fulfilled, perhaps even communal spiritual practices that can be passed down? And if so, does this start to look like religion? And if so, does that call into question any strong distinction between spirituality and religion? Is there also good reason to inhabit a tradition of spiritual practice because it is time-tested?

  3. In addition to people having negative reactions to religion, to what extent, in what ways, and for what reasons do people also have negative reactions to the language of spirituality, even if they might be thought to have spiritual concerns that can be framed in terms of the search for meaning or transcendence?

  4. Is it possible to be completely spiritually indifferent or, in the words of Max Weber, “religiously unmusical”?

  5. Are there certain characteristic experiences that accompany losing one’s religion? How do these compare with experiences of converting to a religion? What are the sources (or motivating causes) of each experience?

  6. How do “dones” differ from “cradle nones” in terms of spiritual alienation and spiritual yearning?

  7. How should the search for meaning be understood? Meaning in life? A meaningful life? The meaning of life?