Many people describe themselves as secular rather than religious, but they often qualify this statement by claiming an interest in spirituality. But what kind of spirituality is possible in the absence of religion? In this book, Michael McGhee shows how religious traditions and secular humanism function as 'schools of wisdom' whose aim is to expose and overcome the forces that obstruct justice. He examines the ancient conception of philosophy as a form of ethical self-inquiry and spiritual practice conducted by a community, showing how it helps us to reconceive the philosophy of religion in terms of philosophy as a way of life. McGhee discusses the idea of a dialogue between religion and atheism in terms of Buddhist practice and demonstrates how a non-theistic Buddhism can address itself to theistic traditions as well as to secular humanism. His book also explores how to shift the centre of gravity from religious belief towards states of mind and conduct.
Acknowledgements; A Shakespearean Prologue: The Voice of Cordelian Ethics; 1. Introduction; 2. 'A Spiritually Enlightened Individual; 3. The Resources of a Much Earlier Phase of the Tradition'; 4. The Distractions of Baruch Spinoza; 5. Immanuel Kant: 'To Regard as Petty what we are Otherwise Anxious About'; 6. Wittgenstein's Cool Temple; 7. Rilke, Shakespeare… and a Little Freud; 8. Concealment and Revelation; 9. Mindfulness and the Form of a Philosophical Life; 10. Epictetus: 'The Beginning of Philosophy' …; 11. Ted Hughes: Evaporation, Translation, Translocation; 12. Philosophy as an Inventive Convergence of Methods; 13. Richard Norman: 'The Truths it Contains are Human Truths'; 14. Perspectives: Marmalade Stains on the Breakfast Table; 15. David Hume: Wanting the Natural Sentiments of Humanity; 16. 'What is the Difference between Love and God's Love?'; 17. 'Peace, Wild Wooddove, Shy Wings Shut'; 18. 'Only a Little Snivelling Half-Wit Can Maintain That'; 19. 'The World is Too Much With Us'; 20. Of Self and Self, of Atman and Anatman; 21. 'I am Myself Alone'; 22. The Five Heaps or Skandhas; 23.'We Claim that There is a Person, but we do not say that he is an Entity'; 24. Birds, Frogs and Tintern Abbey; 25. Human Resources and Hubris; References; Index.
Michael McGhee is Honorary Senior Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. A British philosopher who was educated at a Roman Catholic seminary, he later became a practising Buddhist. He is the author of Transformations of Mind: Philosophy as Spiritual Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2000), editor and co-editor of various collections on philosophy and spirituality, and a founding editor of Contemporary Buddhism.
