Rudolf Otto
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Lutheran
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
theologian
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
and scholar of comparative religion
Comparative religion
Comparative religion is a field of religious studies that analyzes the similarities and differences of themes, myths, rituals and concepts among the world's religions...
.
Life
Born in PeinePeine
Peine is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, capital of the district Peine. It is situated on the river Fuhse and the Mittellandkanal, approx. 25 km west of Braunschweig, and 40 km east of Hanover.- History :...
near Hanover
Hanover
Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...
, Otto attended the Gymnasium Andreanum in Hildesheim
Hildesheim
Hildesheim is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located in the district of Hildesheim, about 30 km southeast of Hanover on the banks of the Innerste river, which is a small tributary of the Leine river...
and studied at the universities of Erlangen and Göttingen, where he wrote his dissertation on Martin Luther
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
's understanding of the Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, but understood differently in the main Abrahamic religions.While the general concept of a "Spirit" that permeates the cosmos has been used in various religions Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of...
, and his habilitation
Habilitation
Habilitation is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in several European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires the candidate to write a professorial thesis based on independent...
on Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
. By 1906, he held a position as extraordinary professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
, and in 1910 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Giessen
University of Giessen
The University of Giessen is officially called the Justus Liebig University Giessen after its most famous faculty member, Justus von Liebig, the founder of modern agricultural chemistry and inventor of artificial fertiliser.-History:The University of Gießen is among the oldest institutions of...
. In 1915, he became ordinary professor at the University of Breslau, and in 1917, at the University of Marburg's Divinity School, then one of the most famous Protestant seminaries
Seminary
A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...
in the world. Although he received several other calls, he remained in Marburg for the rest of his life. He retired in 1929 and died of pneumonia eight years later, after he had suffered serious injuries falling some 20 m from a tower. Persistent but unconfirmed rumors identified this as a suicide attempt. He is buried in Marburg
Marburg
Marburg is a city in the state of Hesse, Germany, on the River Lahn. It is the main town of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district and its population, as of March 2010, was 79,911.- Founding and early history :...
cemetery.
The Idea of the Holy
Otto's most famous work is The Idea of the Holy, published first in 1917 as Das Heilige - Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen (The Holy - On the Irrational in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational). It is one of the most successful German theological books of the 20th century, has never gone out of print, and is now available in about 20 languages. The book defines the concept of the holy as that which is numinousNuminous
Numinous is an English adjective describing the power or presence of a divinity. The word was popularised in the early twentieth century by the German theologian Rudolf Otto in his influential book Das Heilige...
. Otto explained the numinous as a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self". He coined this new term based on the Latin numen
Numen
Numen is a Latin term for a potential, guiding the course of events in a particular place or in the whole world, used in Roman philosophical and religious thought...
(deity). This expression is etymologically
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
unrelated to Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
's noumenon
Noumenon
The noumenon is a posited object or event that is known without the use of the senses.The term is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to "phenomenon", which refers to anything that appears to, or is an object of, the senses...
, a Greek term referring to an unknowable reality underlying all things. The numinous is a mystery that is both terrifying (tremendum) and fascinating (fascinans) at the same time. It also sets a paradigm for the study of religion that focuses on the need to realize the religious as a non-reducible, original category in its own right. This paradigm was under much attack between approximately 1950 and 1990 but has made a strong comeback since then, after its phenomenological aspects have become more apparent, and written about by Karl Rahner's
Karl Rahner
Karl Rahner, SJ was a German Jesuit and theologian who, alongside Bernard Lonergan and Hans Urs von Balthasar, is considered one of the most influential Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century...
presentation of man as a being of transcendence.
Influence
Otto left a broad influence on theology and philosophy of religion in the first half of the 20th century. German-American theologian Paul TillichPaul Tillich
Paul Johannes Tillich was a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher. Tillich was one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the 20th century...
acknowledged Otto's influence on him, as did Romanian-American philosopher Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day...
and Otto's most famous German pupil Gustav Mensching (1901–1978) from Bonn University. Eliade used the concepts from The Idea of the Holy as the starting point for his own 1957 book, The Sacred and the Profane. Otto was one of the very few modern theologians to whom C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
indicates a debt, particularly the idea of the numinous in The Problem of Pain
The Problem of Pain
The Problem of Pain is a 1940 book by C. S. Lewis, in which he seeks to provide an intellectual Christian response to questions about suffering...
. Others to acknowledge Otto were, for instance, Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
, Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss was a political philosopher and classicist who specialized in classical political philosophy. He was born in Germany to Jewish parents and later emigrated to the United States...
, John A. Sanford
John A. Sanford
John A. "Jack" Sanford was a Jungian psychoanalyst and Episcopal priest.Sanford was the son of Edgar L. Sanford, also an Episcopal priest, as was his own father and grandfather, the author of God's Healing Power and of Agnes Sanford , the founder of the Inner Healing Movement.Sanford was born in...
, Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method .-Life:...
(critical in his youth, respectful in his old age), Max Scheler
Max Scheler
Max Scheler was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology...
, Ernst Jünger
Ernst Jünger
Ernst Jünger was a German writer. In addition to his novels and diaries, he is well known for Storm of Steel, an account of his experience during World War I. Some say he was one of Germany's greatest modern writers and a hero of the conservative revolutionary movement following World War I...
, Joseph Needham and Hans Jonas
Hans Jonas
Hans Jonas was a German-born philosopher who was, from 1955 to 1976, Alvin Johnson Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City.Jonas's writings were very influential in different spheres...
. Ideas of Otto have been discussed also by non-Christian theologians, like Eliezer Berkovits
Eliezer Berkovits
Eliezer Berkovits , was a rabbi, theologian, and educator in the tradition of Orthodox Judaism.- Life:...
.
Partial bibliography
- Naturalism and Religion (1907), London: Williams and Norgate, Full text online at Google Books
- The Life and Ministry of Jesus, According to the Critical Method (1908), Chicago: Open Court, ISBN 0-8370-4648-3. Full text online at Google Books
- The Idea of the Holy (1923), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-500210-5 Full text online at Google Books
- Christianity and the Indian Religion of Grace, Madras 1928
- India's Religion of Grace and Christianity Compared and Contrasted, New York 1930
- The philosophy of religion based on Kant and Fries, London 1931
- Religious essays: A supplement to The Idea of the Holy, London 1931
- Mysticism east and west: A comparative analysis of the nature of mysticism, New York 1932
- The original Gita: The song of the Supreme Exalted One, London 1939
- The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man: A Study in the History of Religion, Boston 1943
- Autobiographical and Social Essays (1996), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 3-11-014518-9