The John Templeton Foundation has awarded a $1,149,239 grant to philosopher L.A. Paul (Yale) and psychologist Molly Crockett (Princeton) in support of their “Revelation Project: finding meaning in nonreligious transformative contexts.”
What’s the project about? Here’s an excerpt from a description of the project at the Templeton website:
Moving overseas, having children, changing jobs: viewed impersonally, these events are just demographic categories, unexciting transitions represented by the checkboxes of a tax return. Yet, when experienced, they can create internal revolutions of perspective. Such events can be revelatory, opening up possibilities for momentous self-change. This element of the extraordinary buried in what seems, from the outside, to be perfectly ordinary, maps a path to non-religious spiritual revelation. In the context of modern secular life, such revelation is a source of meaning, authenticity, and wisdom.
We propose to develop an empirically informed philosophical account of non-religious revelation, spiritual transformation and meaningfulness in the context of transformative life events. Transformation creates new abilities to value, giving one new appreciation of the nature of reality and one’s place within it, teaching one humility, and leading to a reconstruction of self. Such self-rebuilding is foundational to meaning-making and spiritual awakening,
The funding will provide three years of support to the project, which will include the production of academic articles, a book, and a collaborative workshop, and “significant public engagement.”
You can learn more about the project here.
