Book contents
- Spirituality for the Godless
- Cambridge Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and Society
- Spirituality for the Godless
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A Shakespearean Prologue
- Introduction
- 1 ‘A Spiritually Enlightened Individual’
- 2 ‘The Resources of a Much Earlier Phase of the Tradition’
- 3 The Distractions of Baruch Spinoza
- 4 Immanuel Kant: ‘To Regard as Petty What We Are Otherwise Anxious About’
- 5 Wittgenstein’s Cool Temple
- 6 Rilke, Shakespeare … and a Little Freud
- 7 Concealment and Revelation
- 8 Mindfulness and the Form of a Philosophical Life
- 9 Epictetus: ‘The Beginning of Philosophy …’
- 10 Ted Hughes: Evaporation, Translation, Translocation
- 11 Philosophy as an Inventive Convergence of Methods
- 12 Richard Norman: ‘The Truths It Contains Are Human Truths’
- 13 Perspectives: Marmalade Stains on the Breakfast Table
- 14 David Hume: Wanting the Natural Sentiments of Humanity
- 15 ‘What is the Difference between Love and God’s Love?’
- 16 ‘Peace, Wild Wooddove, Shy Wings Shut’
- 17 ‘Only a Little Snivelling Half-Wit Can Maintain That’
- 18 ‘The World Is Too Much with Us’
- 19 Of Self and SELF, of Ātman and Anātman
- 20 ‘I Am Myself Alone’
- 21 The Five Heaps or Skandhas
- 22 ‘We Claim That There Is a Person, but We Do Not Say That He Is an Entity’
- 23 Birds, Frogs, and Tintern Abbey
- 24 Human Resources and Hubris
- References
- Index
20 - ‘I Am Myself Alone’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2021
- Spirituality for the Godless
- Cambridge Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and Society
- Spirituality for the Godless
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A Shakespearean Prologue
- Introduction
- 1 ‘A Spiritually Enlightened Individual’
- 2 ‘The Resources of a Much Earlier Phase of the Tradition’
- 3 The Distractions of Baruch Spinoza
- 4 Immanuel Kant: ‘To Regard as Petty What We Are Otherwise Anxious About’
- 5 Wittgenstein’s Cool Temple
- 6 Rilke, Shakespeare … and a Little Freud
- 7 Concealment and Revelation
- 8 Mindfulness and the Form of a Philosophical Life
- 9 Epictetus: ‘The Beginning of Philosophy …’
- 10 Ted Hughes: Evaporation, Translation, Translocation
- 11 Philosophy as an Inventive Convergence of Methods
- 12 Richard Norman: ‘The Truths It Contains Are Human Truths’
- 13 Perspectives: Marmalade Stains on the Breakfast Table
- 14 David Hume: Wanting the Natural Sentiments of Humanity
- 15 ‘What is the Difference between Love and God’s Love?’
- 16 ‘Peace, Wild Wooddove, Shy Wings Shut’
- 17 ‘Only a Little Snivelling Half-Wit Can Maintain That’
- 18 ‘The World Is Too Much with Us’
- 19 Of Self and SELF, of Ātman and Anātman
- 20 ‘I Am Myself Alone’
- 21 The Five Heaps or Skandhas
- 22 ‘We Claim That There Is a Person, but We Do Not Say That He Is an Entity’
- 23 Birds, Frogs, and Tintern Abbey
- 24 Human Resources and Hubris
- References
- Index
Summary
So, then, is the pursuit of ‘the SELF’ or ‘the soul’ or, indeed, Atman, misconceived, a will o’ the wisp (leaving aside the question how would you know that it is this), permanent, unchanging – of which one is allegedly conscious? Does the failure to be continuously conscious of it show that there is no such thing? Must we dismiss the idea of a ‘substantival self’, to use a term that comes from that Welsh philosopher of an earlier generation, Hywel David Lewis? I discuss Lewis in the first place because he attempted to by-pass Hume’s scepticism, and, in the second, because the way he talked of the soul and ‘the elusive self’ attracted the attention of an important recent proponent of Advaita Vedanta, Ramchandra Gandhi.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Spirituality for the GodlessBuddhism, Humanism, and Religion, pp. 148 - 160Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021