Andrew Taggart

Predicaments we currently face range from questions concerning the legitimacy of nation-states and the viability of liberal democracy to the intensification of social alienation and atomism to the loss of plant and animal species to–in the words of the cognitive scientist John Vervaeke–the experience of our “meaning crisis.” It is ordinarily believed that these predicaments arise from political and economic causes alone. In this talk, I’ll be arguing that their chief source is spiritual in nature, provided, in this case, that the word “spiritual” be understood in a very wide sense.

After tracing back the spiritual crisis back to its source in humanism, I’ll suggest that the human species, at its current stage of cultural development, is simply not up to the task and, what’s more, that our educational institutions are only equipped to train our powers of intellection and competency. For these reasons, if the human species is to flourish, we’ll need to engage in “psychotechnologies of self-transformation”: that is, in practices intending, at a more than cognitive level, to profoundly alter our felt understanding as well as the ways we conduct ourselves. At the center of this transformation should be the cultivation of what I’ll be calling “living wisdom.”