Spirituality and Human Nature

Donald Evans is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria College, University of Toronto, Canada. His previous publications include Struggle and Fulfillment: The Inner Dynamics of Religion and Morality, and Faith, Authenticity, and Morality.

"This book has been written by a proven author and senior philosopher who knows western thought inside out, yet he sees the need for a larger conception of human nature that is open to the spiritual dimension and treats that dimension as the fundamental reality. In presenting such a view of human nature and spirituality, Evans draws deeply and insightfully from western depth psychology, Eastern meditation psychology, Christian thought, and his own experience. The book is very accessible to both general readers and scholars." — Harold Coward, University of Calgary"I have recommended this book to a number of people as the best really up-to-date work of spirituality. It integrates insights from ethics, theology, depth psychology, and continental philosophy in a way that is especially the author's own, but which is to me totally convincing. It also throws a flood of light on phenomena associated with the 'new age' movement." — Hugo a. Meynell, University of Calgary"What distinguishes his writings is a remarkable attempt to integrate those various segments of human existence which our culture has, over the centuries, separated: our mental life and our bodily awareness, our contemplative needs and the moral demands of our time, our secular endeavors and our sense of transcendence, our 'natural' sense of selfhood, and the 'supernatural' systems in which we have expressed its intrinsic dependence, our religious/cultural identity and our openness to other religions and different cultures. This book creatively deals with all of these oppositions." — Louis Dupre, Yale University

• Preface Introduction Section 1. Spirituality and Depth Psychology I. On Being Open and ClosedII. On Loving Oneself WellIII. Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Art of Therapy Section 2. Spirituality and Skepticism IV. Two Dogmas of Skepticism Concerning Spiritual RealityV. Positivism and the ParanormalVI. Positivism and the Genuinely Spiritual Section 3. Spirituality and Ethics VII. Mystical Humanism and MoralityVIII. On the Nature and Origin of Good and Evil in Human Beings Section 4. Spirituality and Religion IX. Spirituality and Social ActionX. Spirituality and Christian Openness to Other FaithsXI. Spiritual Reality, Academic Skepticism, and Transfiguration Postscript Notes Index