Comparing Empirical and Theological Perspectives on the Relationship Between Hope and Aesthetic Experience: An Approach to the Nature of Spiritual Well-Being

While hope and the experience of beauty both have a claim to be key constituents of the spiritual life, it is not obvious that there is any deep-seated connection between them. In this chapter, the author examines three ways of developing the idea that there is some such association. He draws on empirically informed as well as theological perspectives, and, on this basis, he addresses a further question concerning the respective contributions of different kinds of enquiry to our understanding of spiritual well-being. The discussion is concerned with the relationship between two dimensions of spiritual well-being: openness to aesthetic experience, and hope understood as a trait of character. For the most part, the experience of beauty in particular will provide the focus, although on occasion the interest will be in aesthetic experience more generally.