Rudolf Otto | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1869-09-25)25 September 1869 |
| Died | 6 March 1937(1937-03-06) (aged 67) Marburg, Germany |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | |
| Influences | Friedrich Schleiermacher,Immanuel Kant,Jakob Fries |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Theology andcomparative religion |
| School or tradition | History of religions school |
| Notable works | The Idea of the Holy |
| Notable ideas | Thenuminous |
| Influenced | Eliade,Jung,Campbell,C. S. Lewis,Tillich,Barth,Rahner,Heidegger,Wach,Horkheimer,Gadamer,Strauss |
Rudolf Otto (25 September 1869 – 7 March 1937) was a GermanLutheran theologian, philosopher, andcomparative religionist. He is regarded as one of the most influentialscholars of religion in the early twentieth century and is best known for his concept of thenuminous, a profound emotional experience he argued was at the heart of the world's religions.[1] While his work started in the domain ofliberal Christian theology, its main thrust was alwaysapologetical, seeking to defend religion againstnaturalist critiques, making him a more conservative figure.[2] Otto eventually came to conceive of his work as part of a science of religion, which was divided into thephilosophy of religion, thehistory of religion, and thepsychology of religion.[2]
Born inPeine nearHanover, Otto was raised in a pious Christian family.[3] He attended the Gymnasium Andreanum inHildesheim and studied at the universities ofErlangen andGöttingen, where he wrote hisdissertation onMartin Luther's understanding of theHoly Spirit (Die Anschauung von heiligen Geiste bei Luther: Eine historisch-dogmatische Untersuchung), and hishabilitation onKant (Naturalistische und religiöse Weltansicht). By 1906, he held a position asextraordinary professor, and in 1910 he received an honorary doctorate from theUniversity of Giessen.
Otto's fascination with non-Christian religions was awakened during an extended trip from 1911 to 1912 through North Africa,Palestine,British India, China, Japan, and the United States.[4] He cited a 1911 visit to aMoroccan synagogue as a key inspiration for the theme of the Holy he would later develop.[3] Otto became a member of thePrussian parliament in 1913 and retained this position through theFirst World War.[4] In 1917, he spearheaded an effort to simplify the system of weighting votes inPrussian elections.[2] He then served in the post-war constituent assembly in 1918, and remained involved in the politics of theWeimar Republic.[4]
Meanwhile, in 1915, he became ordinary professor at theUniversity of Breslau, and in 1917, at theUniversity of Marburg's Divinity School, then one of the most famousProtestantseminaries in the world. Although he received several other calls, he remained inMarburg for the rest of his life. He retired in 1929 but continued writing afterward. On 6 March 1937, he died ofpneumonia, after suffering serious injuries falling about twenty meters from a tower in October 1936. There were lasting rumors that the fall was asuicide attempt but this has never been confirmed.[2] He is buried in the Marburg cemetery.
In his early years Otto was most influenced by theGerman idealist theologian and philosopherFriedrich Schleiermacher and his conceptualization of the category of the religious as a type of emotion or consciousness irreducible to ethical or rationalepistemologies.[4] In this, Otto saw Schleiermacher as having recaptured a sense of holiness lost in theAge of Enlightenment. Schleiermacher described this religious feeling as one of absolute dependence; Otto eventually rejected this characterization as too closely analogous to earthly dependence and emphasized the complete otherness of the religious feeling from the mundane world (see below).[4] In 1904, while a student at theUniversity of Göttingen, Otto became a proponent of the philosophy ofJakob Fries along with two fellow students.[2]
Otto's first book,Naturalism and Religion (1904) divides the worldontologically into the mental and the physical, a position reflectingCartesian dualism. Otto arguesconsciousness cannot be explained in terms of physical or neural processes, and also accords it epistemological primacy by arguing all knowledge of the physical world is mediated by personal experience. On the other hand, he disagrees withDescartes' characterization of the mental as a rational realm, positing instead that rationality is built upon a nonrational intuitive realm.[2]
In 1909, he published his next book,The Philosophy of Religion Based on Kant and Fries, in which he examines the thought ofKant and Fries and from there attempts to build a philosophical framework within whichreligious experience can take place. While Kant's philosophy said thought occurred in a rational domain, Fries diverged and said it also occurred in practical and aesthetic domains; Otto pursued Fries' line of thinking further and suggested another nonrational domain of the thought, the religious. He felt intuition was valuable in rational domains like mathematics, but subject to the corrective of reason, whereas religious intuitions might not be subject to that corrective.[2]
These two early works were influenced by therationalist approaches ofImmanuel Kant and Jakob Fries. Otto stated that they focused on the rational aspects of the divine (the "Ratio aeterna") whereas his next (and most influential) book focused on the nonrational aspects of the divine.[5]
Otto's most famous work,The Idea of the Holy was one of the most successful German theological books of the 20th century, has never gone out of print, and is available in about 20 languages. The central argument of the book concerns the termnuminous, which Otto coined. He explains the numinous as a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self". This mental state "presents itself asganz Andere,[6][7][8] wholly other, a condition absolutelysui generis and incomparable whereby the human being finds himself utterly abashed."[9] According toMark Wynn in theStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Idea of the Holy falls within a paradigm in the philosophy of emotion in which emotions are seen as including an element ofperception with intrinsic epistemic value that is neither mediated by thoughts nor simply a response tophysiological factors. Otto therefore understands religious experience as having mind-independentphenomenological content rather than being an internal response to belief in a divine reality. Otto applied this model specifically to religious experiences, which he felt were qualitatively different from other emotions.[10] Otto felt people should first do serious rational study of God, before turning to the non-rational element of God as he did in this book.[5][11]
InMysticism East and West, published in German in 1926 and English in 1932, Otto compares and contrasts the views of the medieval GermanChristian mysticMeister Eckhart with those of the influentialHindu philosopherAdi Shankara, the key figure of theAdvaita Vedanta school.[2]
Otto left a broad influence on theology,religious studies, andphilosophy of religion, which continues into the 21st century.[12]
Karl Barth, an influential Protestant theologian contemporary to Otto, acknowledged Otto's influence and approved a similar conception of God asganz Andere ortotaliter aliter,[13] thus falling within the tradition ofapophatic theology.[14][15] Otto was also one of the very few modern theologians to whomC. S. Lewis indicates a debt, particularly to the idea of thenuminous inThe Problem of Pain. In that book Lewis offers his own description of the numinous:[16]
Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told "There is a ghost in the next room," and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is "uncanny" rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply "There is a mighty spirit in the room," and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare's words "Under it my genius is rebuked." This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as theNuminous.
German-American theologianPaul Tillich acknowledged Otto's influence on him,[2] as did Otto's most famous German pupil,Gustav Mensching (1901–1978) fromBonn University.[17] Otto's views can be seen[clarification needed] in the notedCatholic theologianKarl Rahner'spresentation of man as a being oftranscendence.[citation needed] More recently, Otto has also influenced the AmericanFranciscanfriar and inspirational speakerRichard Rohr.[18]: 139
Otto's ideas have also exerted an influence on non-Christian theology and spirituality. They have been discussed byOrthodox Jewish theologians includingJoseph Soloveitchik[19] andEliezer Berkovits.[20] The Iranian-AmericanSufi religious studies scholar and public intellectualReza Aslan understands religion as "an institutionalized system of symbols and metaphors [...] with which a community of faith can share with each other their numinous encounter with the Divine Presence."[21] Further afield, Otto's work received words of appreciation from Indian independence leaderMohandas Gandhi.[17]Aldous Huxley, a major proponent ofperennialism, was influenced by Otto; inThe Doors of Perception he writes:[22]
The literature ofreligious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of themysterium tremendum. In theological language, this fear is due to the in-compatibility between man's egotism and the divine purity, between man's self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God.
InThe Idea of the Holy and other works, Otto set out a paradigm for thestudy of religion that focused on the need to realize the religious as a non-reducible, original category in its own right.[citation needed] The eminent Romanian-Americanhistorian of religion and philosopherMircea Eliade used the concepts fromThe Idea of the Holy as the starting point for his own 1954 book,The Sacred and the Profane.[12][23] The paradigm represented by Otto and Eliade was then heavily criticized for viewing religion as asui generis category,[12] until around 1990, when it began to see a resurgence as a result of its phenomenological aspects becoming more apparent.[citation needed]Ninian Smart, who was a formative influence on religious studies as a secular discipline, was influenced by Otto in his understanding of religious experience and his approach to understanding religion cross-culturally.[12]
Carl Gustav Jung, the founder ofanalytic psychology, applied the concept of thenuminous topsychology andpsychotherapy, arguing it was therapeutic and brought greater self-understanding, and stating that to him religion was about a "careful and scrupulous observation… of thenuminosum".[24] The AmericanEpiscopal priestJohn A. Sanford applied the ideas of both Otto and Jung in his writings on religious psychotherapy.[citation needed]
The philosopher and sociologistMax Horkheimer, a member of theFrankfurt School, has taken the concept of "wholly other" in his 1970 bookDie Sehnsucht nach dem ganz Anderen ("longing for the entirely Other").[25][26]Walter Terence Stace wrote in his bookTime and Eternity that "After Kant, I owe more to Rudolph Otto'sThe Idea of the Holy than to any other book."[27] Other philosophers influenced by Otto includedMartin Heidegger,[17]Leo Strauss,[17]Hans-Georg Gadamer (who was critical when younger but respectful in his old age),[citation needed]Max Scheler,[17]Edmund Husserl,[17]Joachim Wach,[3][17] andHans Jonas.[citation needed]
The war veteran and writerErnst Jünger and the historian and scientistJoseph Needham also cited Otto's influence.[citation needed]
Otto was heavily involved inecumenical activities betweenChristian denominations and between Christianity and other religions.[4] He experimented with adding a time similar to aQuakermoment of silence to the Lutheranliturgy as an opportunity for worshipers to experience the numinous.[4]
A full bibliography of Otto's works is given in Robert F. Davidson,Rudolf Otto's Interpretation of Religion (Princeton, 1947), pp. 207–9
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