Espiritualidade: Contributos para uma clarificação do conceito

Abstract

Studies on spirituality have increased in recent years in the scientific field. Researchers try to understand to what extent spirituality affects human behavior, individually or collectively. The controversy lies, however, around the construct of spirituality and whether, or not, this is (in)separable of two other ones dating back to its conceptual origins: the constructs of religion and religiosity. This paper aims pointing out the possible paths of generating consensus that can encompass different sensibilities and overcome the dispersion of definitions that studies suffer, in order to bring more consistency to the constructs, on behalf of the scientificity of the studies in this area.