Spirituality without God - A Global History of Thought and Practice

Spirituality without God is the first global survey of "godless" spirituality. Long before "spiritual but not religious" became the catchphrase of the day, there were religious and spiritual traditions in India, China, and the West that denied the existence of God. Peter Heehs begins by looking at godless traditions in the ancient world. Indian religions such as Jainism and Buddhism showed the way to liberation through individual effort. In China, Confucians and Daoists taught how to live in harmony with nature and society. Philosophies of the Greco-Roman world, such as Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism, focused on enhancing the quality of life rather than buying the favor of the gods through sacrifice or worship. Heehs shows how these traditions, rediscovered during the Renaissance, helped jump-start the European Enlightenment and opened the way to the atheism and agnosticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The personal, inner, approach to religion became known as "spirituality." Spirituality without God is a counterbalance to theistic narratives that have dominated the field, as well as an introduction to modes of spiritual thought and practice that may appeal to people who have no interest in God.>

About the author

Peter Heehs is an independent scholar based in India. He has written or edited eleven books and published more than fifty articles. His publications include The Lives of Sri Aurobindo (Columbia University Press, 2008), Indian Religions: A Historical Reader of Spiritual Expression and Experience (New York University Press, 2002), Nationalism, Terrorism, Communalism (Oxford University Press, 1998, reprinted 2000, 2005, 2006) and The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India 1900-1910 (Oxford University Press, 1993). His books have been translated into
Russian, Dutch, French and Japanese.

Product details

• Authors: Peter Heehs, Peter (Independent Scholar Heehs
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.11.2018
• EAN: 9781350056206
• ISBN: 978-1-350-05620-6
• No. of pages: 296
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: antiquity to present day; Spiritualität und religiöse Erfahrung, Geschichte der Religion, RELIGION / Spirituality, RELIGION / History, RELIGION / Philosophy, RELIGION / Atheism, Agnostizismus und Atheismus, RELIGION / Agnosticism, Spirituality & religious experience, History of Religion, Nature & existence of God, Spirituality and religious experience, Agnosticism and atheism, Agnosticism & Atheism, Nature and existence of God and of the Divine