An Ontology for Spirituality

Abstract

Chapter 1 explained why similar activities described by psychologists are not of ultimate value but spirituality is. The first part of that explanation was that spirituality is “self-sufficient” in Aristotle’s sense. Given spirituality, nothing else is needed to make life desirable or worth living. Nor was that all, because spirituality also meets a second requirement of ultimate value: that it is never chosen as a means but always as an end. However, even self-sufficient activities that are never chosen as a means can function as such if they lead to objective consequences. While no one chooses happiness as a means, the actions underlying it have objective effects. An unconditionally valuable activity, in addition to being self-sufficient and never chosen as a means, must be one that has no consequences. Now that we have a working definition of an unconditionally valuable activity, it is reasonable to ask how such activities are possible. To answer that, we need a way of distinguishing those activities that engage some portion of the real world in space and time, leading to consequences, from those that cannot have consequences because they terminate in eternal objects. Only a precise ontology can account for these and other relevant differences. I therefore turn to an examination of Santayana’s ontology.