ABSTRACT
A template for the atheist's anti-religious stance, the familiar line being that a spirituality infected by religion involves an antipathy and even hatred for all things pertaining to this world, this life, and our humanity. The chapter discusses the nature and limits of desire, desire being the thing which, for Schopenhauer, provides the surest obstacle to a properly spiritual life. It argues that the position towards which Schopenhauer is gesturing—not always consistently or successfully—is to be applauded, and that it grants us the right to allow that desire is central to the spiritual life. Schopenhauer makes it abundantly clear that there is more to the self than egoism, the main point of his work being to discourage the reader from such distractions and towards the very things which, it has been agreed, are central to a properly spiritual life.
