Concept
Spirituality
Overview
The meaning of spirituality has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape of man", oriented at "the image of God" as exemplified by the founders and sacred texts of the religions of the world. The term was used within early Christianity to refer to a life oriented toward the Holy Spirit and broadened during the Late Middle Ages to include mental aspects of life.
In modern times, the term has spread to other religious traditions. It broadened to refer to a wider range of experiences, including a range of esoteric and religious traditions. Modern usages tend to refer to a subjective experience of a sacred dimension, and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live", often in a context separate from organized religious institutions. This may involve belief in a supernatural realm beyond the ordinarily observable world, personal growth, a quest for an ultimate or sacred meaning, religious experience, or an encounter with one's own "inner dimension" or spirit.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Although the word _spirit_ is so very ancient among men, the sense attached to it by the moderns is quite new: the idea of spirituality, as admitted at this day, is a recent production of the imagination. Neither PYTHAGORAS nor PLATO, however heated their brain, however decided their taste for the marvellous, appear to have understood by spirit an immaterial substance, or one without extent, devoid of parts; such as…
Paul Henri Thiry Holbach, The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1
States what Spirituality is; opens on Spirituality.
proceeding from God's Holy Spirit, who imparts unity and harmony, determination and courage." As Paul expresses it elsewhere (Eph 4, 3), "Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." They, then, who continue in one faith, one mind and disposition, give testimony by the reality and saintliness of their spiritual life and by the presence of the Holy Spirit that they are servants of God. For…
Martin Luther, Epistle Sermons, Vol. 2
Names Spirituality several times.
This mood, of course, did not continue permanently. World religion was of inner necessity forced to adapt itself to the earthly life in proportion as State and society again acquired a more fixed organization. But, just as the strata of the earth's crust retain the effects of a geological catastrophe long after it has passed, so spiritual life continues to exhibit the influence of upheavals that have occurred in the…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
The author is tied to Spirituality in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Spirituality
- Mircea Eliade
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
- Eric Voegelin
- Maimonides
- Meister Eckhart
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
- Sam Harris
- Renaissance
- Henry Corbin
- Julius Evola
- Wilhelm Wundt
- Carl Jung
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Jacques Maritain
- Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
- The End of Faith
- Bracha L. Ettinger
- Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar
- Rudolf Christoph Eucken
- Loren Eiseley
- Uriel da Costa
Related ideas
- Tirthankara
- Eastern Orthodox Church
- Jesus
- Faith
- The Varieties of Religious Experience
- Gospel
- Ahimsa in Jainism
- Hinduism
- Philosophy
- Contemplation
- Hasidic Judaism
- Indian religions
- Self-help
- Samadhi
- Judaism
- Correlation
- Jainism
- Satya
- Jihad
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Rumi
- Transcendentalism
- Kabbalah
- Happiness
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.