The Philosophy of Spirituality: Analytic, Continental and Multicultural Approaches to a New Field of Philosophy

357 Pages·2018·3.5 MB·English

by  Heather Salazar

The Philosophy of Spirituality
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Value Inquiry Book Series
Founding Editor
Robert Ginsberg
Executive Editor
Leonidas Donskis†
Managing Editor
J.D. Mininger
volume 322
Philosophy and Religion
Edited by
Roderick Nicholls (Cape Breton University)
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vibs and brill.com/par
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The Philosophy of Spirituality
Analytic, Continental and Multicultural Approaches
to a New Field of Philosophy
Edited by
Heather Salazar
Roderick Nicholls
leiden | boston
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Cover illustration: Peacock Meditation (2015), Heather Salazar. Watercolor on Paper (6×9 inch).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Salazar, Heather, editor | Nicholls, Roderick, editor.
Title: The philosophy of spirituality : analytic, continental, and
multicultural approaches to a new field of philosophy / edited by Heather
Salazar, Roderick Nicholls.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill-Rodopi, 2019. | Series: Value inquiry
book series, ISSN 0929-8436 ; volume 322. Philosophy and religion |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018047720 (print) | LCCN 2018048637 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004376311 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004376298 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Spirituality. | Religion--Philosophy. | Philosophy and
religion.
Classification: LCC BL624 (ebook) | LCC BL624 .P53 2018 (print) | DDC
204.01--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2018047720
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 0929-8436
ISBN 978-90-04-37629-8 (paperback)
ISBN 978-90-04-37631-1 (e-book)
Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
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Contents
Notes on Contributors  vii
Introduction  1
Roderick Nicholls and Heather Salazar
Part 1
Understanding Spirituality
1 Understanding Spirituality  15
Heather Salazar and Roderick Nicholls
2 Renewing the Senses: Conversion Experience and the Phenomenology
of the Spiritual Life  18
Mark Wynn
3 Spiritual Experience and Imagination  38
Eric Yang
4 Sinister and Sublime Aspects of Spirituality  59
Jerry Piven
Part 2
Spirituality across Traditions
5 Spirituality across Traditions  93
Heather Salazar and Roderick Nicholls
6 Is Yogic Enlightenment Dependent upon God?  97
Heather Salazar
7 Spirituality from the Margins: West African Spirituality and
Aesthetics  122
Moses Biney
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vi Contents
8 Non-religious Spirituality in the Greek Age of Anxiety  143
Mariapaola Bergomi
9 Becoming a Hollow Bone: Lakota Respect for the Sacred  164
Drew Chastain
10 Silence will Change the World: Kierkegaard, Derrida and Islamic
Sufism  189
Christopher Braddock
Part 3
Critical Perspectives and Re-inventions of Spirituality
11 Critical Perspectives and Re-Inventions of Spirituality  211
Roderick Nicholls and Heather Salazar
12 Care of Self and Amor Fati as a Spiritual Ideal  214
Roderick Nicholls
13 Bertrand Russell’s Religion without God  250
Nikolay Milkov
14 Truth in Practice: Foucault’s Procedural Approach
to Spirituality  273
Kerem Eksen
15 Spirit, Soul and Self-overcoming: a Post-Jungian View  293
Richard White
16 Spiritual Naturalism  312
Eric Steinhart
Index  339
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Notes on Contributors
Mariapaola Bergomi
is a Research Associate at the University of Milan, after spending a year as
a Postdoctoral Research Affiliate at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Her area of
expertise is the history of ancient philosophy. She has published on Plato’s
Timaeus, on Plato’s Cratylus, on Plotinus and late antique philosophy. She is
currently working on a monograph on the topic of Neoplatonism in the Byz-
antine Empire, and a study on the topic of etymologies in ancient philosophy.
Moses O. Biney
is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Society, Research Director for the
Center for the Study and Practice of Urban Religion at New York Theological
Seminary, and an ordained Presbyterian Minister currently serving as Pastor
for Bethel Presbyterian Reformed Church, Brooklyn, N.Y. Biney’s research and
teaching interests include the religions of Africa and the African Diaspora,
religion and transnationalism, religion and culture, urban Ministry and con-
gregational studies. He is the author of From Africa to America: Religion and
Adaptation among Ghanaian Immigrants in New York.
Christopher Braddock
is an artist, writer and Professor of Visual Arts at Auckland University of Tech-
nology New Zealand. He co-leads the Ph.D. and M.Phil. programs and the Art
& Performance Research Group. He is author of Performing Contagious Bod-
ies: Ritual Participation in Contemporary Art and editor of Animism in Art and
Performance. His performance and sculpture was included in Material Traces:
Time and the Gesture in Contemporary Art curated by Amelia Jones in Montréal.
Drew Chastain
is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola University, New Orleans. His research
interests include philosophy of religion and spirituality, and Anglo-American
philosophy of meaning in life. Forthcoming publications include “Gifts With-
out Givers: Secular Spirituality and Metaphorical Cognition.”
Kerem Eksen
is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Humanities and
Social Sciences at Istanbul Technical University. His recent work focuses on
the later, ethical phase of Michel Foucault’s thought and on the works of the
French historian of philosophy Pierre Hadot. He is the translator (into Turkish)
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viii Notes on Contributors
of Foucault’s Lectures on the Will to Know, and the editor of the Turkish transla-
tion of his History of Sexuality
Nikolay Milkov
teaches philosophy at the University of Paderborn, Germany. He is the author
of the books Kaleidoscopic Mind: An Essay in Post-Wittgensteinian Philoso-
phy; Varieties of Understanding: English Philosophy After 1898; and A Hundred
Years of English Philosophy. He also edited (with Volker Peckhaus) Hans
Reichenbach’s Ziele und Wege der heutigen Naturphilosophie; The Berlin Group
and the Philosophy of Logical Empiricism; Die Berliner Gruppe; and Hermann
Lotze’s “Microcosm.”
Roderick Nicholls
is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia,
Canada. He has published articles and book chapters that explore issues
emerging from the Enlightenment critique of religion, focusing on philoso-
phers such as Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Camus. Experiences as a
life-long gardener and practitioner of the theater – he has directed numerous
plays and published in theater aesthetics – have helped shape his understand-
ing of non-religious spiritual practices.
Jerry S. Piven
has taught at NYU, New School University, and Case Western Reserve Univer-
sity, where his courses have focused on the philosophy of religion, existen-
tialism, psychoanalysis, and metaphysics. The central focus of his research is
on the psychology and philosophy of religion, belief systems, the dynamics
of dogma, faith, violence, and apocalyptic eschatologies. He is the editor of
The Psychology of Death in Fantasy and History, and Terrorism, Jihad, and Sa-
cred Vengeance; author of Death and Delusion, The Madness and Perversion of
Yukio Mishima, and Nihon No Kyouki; and has recently completed Slaughtering
Death: On the Psychoanalysis of Terror, Religion and Violence.
Heather Salazar
is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western New England University
where she teaches East-West philosophy, ethics, and philosophy of mind. She
not only publishes academic papers on yoga, ethics and philosophy of mind,
she has been a practicing yogi for nearly 20 years and has been teaching yoga
and meditation for since 2007. Her yoga journey began in 1998 with Sivana-
nda and Iyengar’s methods. She then practiced a variety of eclectic styles in
Santa Barbara, California and studied Patañjali and Ashtanga yoga as her
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Notes on Contributors ix
practice deepened. Salazar received her Yoga Alliance RYT-200 certification in
Bali, Indonesia in 2012, by which time she was already teaching yoga postures,
meditation, and yogic philosophy in university communities for five years. She
founded Sweet Flow Yoga in Northampton, Massachusetts, which focuses on
vinysasa yoga, community involvement and yogic philosophy.
Eric Steinhart
grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. He earned a PhD in Philosophy from SUNY
at Stony Brook and BSc in Computer Science from the Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity. Many of his algorithms have been patented. He teaches at William
Paterson University and is a regular visitor at Dartmouth College. He uses new
digital ideas to solve old philosophical problems. He is especially interested in
new and emerging religions and spiritualities. He loves New England and the
American West, and enjoys hiking, biking, chess and photography.
Richard White
is a Professor of Philosophy at Creighton University in Omaha. He specializes
in the history of philosophy and literature, and the continental philosophical
tradition. His books include: Nietzsche and the Problem of Sovereignty; Love’s
Philosophy, Radical Virtues: Moral Wisdom and the Ethics of Contemporary Life;
and The Heart of Wisdom: a Philosophy of Spiritual Life. Most recently, he pub-
lished a spiritual-philosophical “self-help” book: The Spiritual Guide: Four Steps
on the Path of Enlightenment.
Mark Wynn
is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Leeds. His publica-
tions include Renewing the Senses: A Study of the Philosophy and Theology of
the Spiritual Life; Faith and Place: An Essay in Embodied Religious Epistemology;
and Emotional Experience and Religious Understanding: Integrating Perception,
Conception and Feeling.
Eric Yang
is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University. He has pub-
lished articles and book chapters in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, episte-
mology and philosophy of religion.
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