Longing for Transcendence: Spiritual Yearning in Religious and Secular Life
Project leader: Kaitlyn Creasy (California State University, San Bernardino)
Consultants: Joshua DiPaolo (California State University, Fullerton)
Joshua Hicks (Texas A&M University)
Paul Katsafanas (Boston University)
Patty Van Cappellen (Duke University)
Award: $99,237.60
Start Date: October 1, 2026
End Date: September 20, 2028
Focus: This project develops a philosophical account of spiritual yearning that can speak to religious and secular lives alike. Its central proposal is that spiritual yearning arises from a universal human need for self-transcendence: the need to connect one's life to people, purposes, communities, experiences, or realities that reach beyond the isolated self. Drawing on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Beauvoir, and contemporary moral psychology, the project will explain why this need can be felt as longing, loneliness, alienation, or despair when it remains unmet.
Approach: The research will map several strategies of self-transcendence, including intimate relationships and belonging, religious and civic institutions, political causes, creative work, and experiences of awe or wonder. For each strategy, it will identify the characteristic goods it can make available, its limitations, and the ways it can go wrong. It will also examine how contemporary individualism, loneliness, social fragmentation, and the weakening of traditional institutions shape both spiritual need and the efforts people make to answer it.
Contribution: The resulting framework will show how spiritual yearning can support meaning, belonging, creativity, and humane engagement while also helping to explain the appeal of tribalism, fanaticism, bigotry, and closed-minded devotion. By locating these dangers in a widely shared human need, the project aims to offer a more compassionate account of spiritual vulnerability without excusing harmful conduct. Two interdisciplinary workshops, a special journal issue, a public-facing book and essays, and media engagement will extend the work to both scholarly and general audiences.
