Rudolf Otto

One of the most persistent and poignant human experiences is the sensation of longing—a restlessness perhaps best described as the unspoken conviction that something is missing from our lives. In this study, Drew M. Dalton attempts to illuminate this experience by examining the philosophical thought of Emmanuel Levinas on longing, or what Levinas terms “metaphysical desire.”

Metaphysical desire, according to Levinas, does not stem from any determinate lack within us, nor does it aim at a particular object beyond us, much less promise any eventual satisfaction. Rather, it functions in the realm of the infinite where such distinctions as inside and outside or one and the other are indistinguishable, perhaps even eliminated. As Levinas conceives such longing, it becomes a mediator in our relation to the other—both the human other and the divine Other.

Dalton follows the meandering trail of Levinas’s thought along a series of dialogues with some of the philosophers within the history of the Western tradition who have most influenced his corpus. By tracing the genealogy of Levinas’s notion of metaphysical desire—namely in the works of Plato, Heidegger, Fichte, Schelling, and Otto—the nature of this Levinasian theme is elucidated to reveal that it is not simply an idealism, a “hagiography of desire” detached from actual experience and resulting in a disconnect between his phenomenological account and our own lives. Rather, Levinas’s account of metaphysical desire points to a phenomenology of human longing that is both an ethical and religious phenomenon. In the end, human longing is revealed to be one of the most profound ways in which a subject becomes a subject, arising to its “true self,” and hearing the call to responsibility placed upon it by the Other.

Throughout, Dalton explicates the nuance of a number of key Levinasian terms, many of which have been taken from the Western philosophical tradition and reinscribed with a new meaning. Eros, the “Good beyond being,” shame, responsibility, creation, the trace, the il y a, and the holy are discovered to be deeply tied to Levinas’s account of metaphysical desire, resulting in a conclusion regarding longing’s role in the relationship between the finite and the Infinite.

The exegesis of Otto and Blumenberg elucidates how Blumenberg sees in affectivity - particularly anxiety - how the subject’s instinctual failure and its accidental mythical rationalization are modes of coping with the 'absolutism of reality'. Parallel to Otto's understanding of the ‘Mysterium Tremendum’ as an extreme affective response to the world, namely another kind yet similar form of coping seen in the religious self-affirmation.

In this article I argue that the epiphanies in J.M. Coetzee’s fiction can be read
as literary enactments of the ‘creature-feeling’, a feeling of absolute dependence
on one’s creatureliness that was first described by the theologian Rudolf Otto. I
begin with a discussion of the creature-feeling with reference to William James’
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) andRudolfOtto’s The Idea of the Holy
(1917). Critics have observed that Coetzee’s fictions suggest shared embodiment
as the basis for humans’ ethical responsibility towards other humans and
towards animals, and have focussed on Emmanuel Le´vinas when addressing
theological influences on Coetzee’s non-rational ethics. Bringing James and
Otto into the discussion allows me to account for those epiphanic moments
in Coetzee that do not overlap with the ethical or the aesthetic, moments in
which characters experience what I call secular grace. Coetzee is not the first to
enact the creature-feeling: he reworks earlier enactments by James Joyce.

Niniejsza praca poświęcona jest analizie dramatu Eurypidesa Bachantki pod kątem doświadczenia religijnego epifanii boga Dionizosa przez postaci dramatu. W analizie wykorzystana zostaje kategoria Numinosum Rudolfa Otto określająca doświadczenie bóstwa jako tajemnicę grozy i fascynacji (Mysterium tremendum et fascinans). Dionizos jako postać boska streszczająca w sobie przeciwieństwa objawia się jako bóstwo irracjonalne i gwałtowne w dramacie. Tym samym jego epifania przybiera charakter numinotyczny wywierając głęboki i niszczący wpływ na postaci dramatu i ich psychikę.

An interrogation of Rudolfian "death" in the movies "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Arrivals" and "Tree of Life". This paper delineates a theological approach to the concept of death and rebirth to interrogate the Nietzschean "Übermensch" in the three movies mentioned above. To do so, Rudolfian concepts such as "numinous", "mysterium tremendum", and "creaturehood" are traced in the themes, motifs, and symbolism in the director's choice.

Сборникът „Святото във философия на религията. Рудолф Ото“ е първи том от поредицата „Библиотека Философия на религията“. Идеята за тази поредица се роди в резултат на желанието ни да представим пред българския читател едни от най-важните теми и автори в тази област. Освен това тя е и резултат от усилията ни при преподаването на дисциплината „философия на религията“ у нас да следваме две основни насоки: да представим в историко-философски план най-значимите автори в историята на философията и теологията, имащи принос към тази област, и от друга страна, в систематичен план да разгърнем най-актуалните теми и тенденции в областта на философия на религията. По-голямата част от докладите, съдържащи се в настоящия сборник, са изнесени на организираната през 2013 г. конференция „Около „Идеята за святото“, проведена в Софийския университет „Св. Климент Охридски“.

Leo Strauss saw post-Enlightenment "liberal" Judaism as "internalizing" the traditional Jewish insistence on the objective reality of God, creation, revelation and miracles. Unfortunately, Strauss’ limited knowledge of traditional Jewish thought led him to propose as "Orthodoxie" a cold realism that completely denies any role to human experience and subjectivity. He left no room for the Oral Law, in which the Sages' individual subjectivity is essential to the Talmud, to the community and, eventually, to God himself in the “Yeshiva Above.” Strauss himself thus abandoned the traditional view that Torah study opens an intellectual dimension, as much subjective as objective, in the relation of man and God.

In this article I will discuss the relationship between the Italian ethnologist Ernesto De Martino (1908-1965) and Rudolf Otto (1869-1937). In particular, my aim is to consider the main Demartinian criticisms of Otto’s Das Heilige. First of all, in De Martino’s opinion the « Holy » is neither an a priori category nor a reality which exists per se, but it is a human product which is useful in order to face and overcome existential and psychological crisis. Secondly, De Martino claims that Das Heilige’s thesis is not valid since Otto’s approach is a Christian theological one, namely it is biased and, therefore, not scientific.

How do we reconcile between rationality and religious experience? The former is typically understood to be within the confines of reason through a process of logic, while the latter is believed to be associated with an irrational phenomenon. Multiple theorists from Sigmund Freud to Karl Marx have undertaken the task to rationalize religious experience as either psychological or sociopolitical manifestations to help individuals cope with their existing material conditions. Theorists like the ones mentioned attempt to rationalize religious experiences by simplifying them to irrational modes of being clouded by faith—a baseless feeling with no material truth to it. However, such theorists fail to take the following into account: (1) Reason has its limitations, and (2) The inability to fathom or conceive of an experience for its lack of materiality, does not necessarily make it irrational.  Rudolf Otto delves into the rationalist argument of God and religion and dismisses its simplicity. By employing a term of his own construction, Otto argues that religion cannot be confined to a series of rational assertions,  but instead, to a numinous  sphere—an unknown, ominous and holy space that is not subject to the limitations of rationality, that can be found in experiences like those of mystics. However, if we take one of the oldest “mystical” practices, Sufism, as an example to explore Otto’s concept of the numinous, then we see a different circumstance that render’s Otto’s argument as rudimentary.  Although Otto provides a starting point to refute the limitations of rationalist theorists like Freud and Marx, I will argue that Sufism, through its experience with the numinous, can unlock a deeper religious experience completely within the confines of rationality and outside of it.

This article analyses the 1936 ‘‘Wotan’’ essay by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung in light of one of its reigning motifs, Ergriffenheit. First, this term is examined within the works of Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto and Indologist Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, who used it to describe what they claimed to be the original religious experience, a state of being deeply stirred or even seized by the ‘‘the holy’’ or by ‘‘the ultimate reality.’’ The article then examines antecedents in Jung’s theory of states of psychic seizure, in which two halves of the psyche come into conflict, the resolution of which leads to an increased capacity
to create the arts of culture. The analysis then moves to the ‘‘Wotan’’ essay itself, where Jung brings together his own theory of psychic seizure with the theory of the original religious experience as proposed by the above-named scholars of religion in order to suggest that, under National Socialism, the Germans were in the midst of a collective confrontation with their own inner divinity, which should lead to a national spiritual rebirth. The article then investigates the works of several of themen Jung mentions in the essay, as well as his use of ancient Germanic mythology, to support his claim. Through his portrait
of the Germanic archetype Wotan, Jung psychologizes and thereby essentializes the Romantic image of the Germans as ‘‘a people of poets and philosophers’’ as well as that of a Nietzschean ‘‘master-race.’’ In conclusion, the article argues that, at least in 1936, Jung’s attitude towards Hitler and National Socialism was much more favorable than has previously been recognized.
PLEASE NOTE: This article has been exapnded and revised as chapter 6 of my book, "Jung's Wandering Archetype: Race and Religion in Analytical Psychology".

1. In The Idea of the Holy (1917), Rudolf Otto identifies the numen as the non-rational core of every religious phenomenon. According to him, there is a universal human yearning for transcendence/radical alterity, which is at least partially filled by the experience of the nu- minous – this experience can be found in every historical religion, from the ancient ones to the perfect Christian Revelation. Otto’s ‘Hegelian’ system could be taken as a theoretical response to religious diversity, alternative for instance to John Hick’s one. 2. Otto does not mention the process of secularization. Today, his main point is inadmissible in itself, if not transformed. Given the secularisation, one of the two: either it is not true that there is a universal human yearning for radical transcendence/otherness, or this yearning can be found not only in the pos- itive historical religions, but also in extra-‘religious’ phenomena. 3. Our proposal aims to prove the second hypothesis. Numenology is the philosophical research of sacred/numinous features within various social, political, economic, anthropological, cultural phenomena. This approach moves from a recalibration of Otto’s and Max Scheler’s stances, through the critique of the per se existence of the objective pole of the experience of the Holy. 4. In this sense, the problem of religious diversity itself is reformulated: the yarning for transcendence is universal and therefore potentially pluralistic, and ‘religion’ is the name of a historical/social way to rationalize it. Final- ly, the open epistemological question is whether there can be any criterion for determining the truth (or even the reasonableness) of a specific numinous phenomenon, or not.

Title (Article) ヒレル・ツァイトリンとポーランドにおけるユダヤ神秘主義の再生
Author ヨナタン メイール. 向井 直己 訳.
Series etc. 2015年度文化講座より
Parallel Title Hillel Zeitlin and the Renaissance of Jewish Mysticism in Poland
Call No. Z71-D380
Title (Journal) ナマール = נמל = Port : 港 / 日本・ユダヤ文化研究会 編.
Publisher etc. 神戸 : 日本・ユダヤ文化研究会, 1996-
Vol. / Date (20):2015
Vol. / Date (20):2015
Pages 28-38
ISSN 2188-5621

In diesem Aufsatz wird den Enfluss der steigenden kulturellen Autorität des naturwissenschaften Erkenntnisses auf die Entwicklung der deutschen evangelishen Theologie im Laufe des. Jahrunderts untersucht mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Albrecht Ritschl und seine theologische Nachfolger, Wilhelm Herrmann, Ernst Troeltsch, und Rudolf Otto. Dieser Einfluss besteht nicht in erster Linie in den direkten Antworten dieser Theologen auf die Behauptungen der Vertreter verschiedener nicht-theistischen Weltanschuungen, sondern vielmehr in der Übernahme philosophischer Begri e und Argumentationsmittel, die ihre eigenen theologischen Programme unterschiedlich geformt haben.

Experiência religiosa é um dos temas centrais na ciência da religião. O pensamento de Rudolf Otto possui particular importância para este tema, pois este teólogo alemão buscou alcançar a essência do fenômeno religioso ao propor suas ideias sobre o numinoso e a categoria do sagrado, e ao afirmar a precedência da experiência sobre o conceito. A filosofia de Søren Kierkegaard, por sua vez, é também importante para a ciência da religião devido, entre outros aspectos, à sua perspicaz análise comparativa entre o pensamento filosófico grego e o cristianismo, especialmente nas suas obras publicadas sob o pseudônimo Johannes Climacus. A presente pesquisa pretende propor uma leitura das ideias kierkegaardianas de Instante e Paradoxo Absoluto, desenvolvidas no livro Migalhas Filosóficas, como expressões de uma experiência religiosa, interpretando-as a partir do instrumental teórico encontrado nas obras de Otto, particularmente em O Sagrado.

https://repositorio.ufjf.br/jspui/handle/ufjf/1465

Religious experience is one of the main themes in Religious Studies. Rudolf Otto’s thought has particular importance to this theme, for this German theologian sought to reach the essence of the religious phenomenon when he proposed his ideas about the numinous and the category of the holy, and when he stated the precedence of experience over concepts. The philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, on the other hand, is also important to Religious Studies because, among other reasons, it proposes a discerning comparative analysis between Greek philosophical thought and Christianity, especially in its works published under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. The present research intends to propose a reading of the Kierkegaardian ideas of Moment and Absolute Paradox, in the way they are developed in the book Philosophical Fragments, as expressions of a religious experience, interpreting them using the theoretical tools found in Otto’s works, particularly in The Idea of the Holy.

By focusing on Eliade’s early life and writings (1921–1936), and specifically on his work on Yoga, I address in this paper a question that is frequently asked about the problematic relation between personal belief and scholarship in fields such as the history of religions. Eliade’s interest in Yoga showcases his own personal spiritual quest, of course. But it is also informed by his earlier readings of, and reflections on, two polar aspects of the religious experience: the magical and the mystical. For Eliade, these two categories provide not only a key to unlocking the conceptual and pragmatic dimensions of Yoga, but also the impetus for charting a systematic theory of religion. The last major expression of these early ideas can be seen in Yoga: Essai sur les origines de la mystique indienne (1936). Eliade’s thoughts on Yoga and religion then took different paths, reaching their full expression in works published in Paris after 1945. In his later books on Yoga – Techniques du Yoga (1948), Le Yoga: Immortalité et liberté (1954) – the twofold schema of the magical and the mystical no longer plays a key hermeneutical role. Nonetheless, understanding this early phase of his work is crucial if we are to provide a comprehensive account of the development of his thought on Yoga. This early phase in his scholarly career and experiential transformation, marked by his trip to India, is also very important in terms of understanding the further developments of his ideas on history of religions, as well as to evince the ground on which Eliade built his own – never confessed – private religious belief.

The report examines in comparative aspect the functions and usage of a priori in the works of I. Kant and R. Oto. Rudolf Otto is representative of modern phenomenology of religion and became popular through his work " The idea of the Holy " , published in 1917. Thesis of the report is that the use of a priori from R. Oto in the context of the idea of the sacred is direct continuation of the use of a priori in Kant. With a view to that thesis, the purpose of this report is to show how the idea of a priori is represented and reconstructed by R.Oto and to trace the similarities and differences in its use in Kant and Otto by comparative analysis. To achieve this purpose we will represents a different aspects of a priori of Kant's works: pure rational concepts, transcendental ideas and developments in the philosophy of religion. The second step is to follow the basic content of priori category of " sacred " , described by R.Oto and its direct relation to the Kantian categories.

תקציר: המאמר דן בדיאלוג הרעיוני שהתקיים בין הגותם של מרטין בובר ורודולף
אוטו בסוגיית היחס ההדדי בין האדם לאל: משנתו של אוטו פרושה בעיקר בחיבור
"הקדושה", שבו הוא מצביע על הריחוק האינסופי ביניהם. משנתו של בובר, לעומת זאת, דווקא מבליטה את הקרבה בחיבור "אני ואתה". בחיבור זה בובר מבקר את אוטו על החד-צדדיות של תפיסת האלוהות שלו. אראה כי אפשר לפרש דיאלוג זה גם כדיאלוג בין דתי, אשר מוצא את ביטויו בחיבור "שתי דרכי אמונה" של מרטין בובר.

Im 20. Jahrhundert wurden mindestens vier distinkte Modi
der Diskussion über die Kategorie »das Heilige« entwickelt. Der erste Modus der Kategorie des Heiligen findet sich in der klassischen und modernen Religionsphänomenologie.
Bei seinem Besuch der Synagoge in Marokko 1911 entdeckt
Rudolf Otto das Heilige als ein Noema der religiösen Intentionalität des Bewusstseins. Der zweite Modus der Diskussion um die Kategorie »das Heilige«
(wir können ihn den philosophischen nennen) ist neben der Religionsphänomenologie eine eigenständige Richtung in der phänomenologischen Philosophie: die philosophische Phänomenologie des Heiligen. Dazu gehören B. Welte und
die Philosophen seiner Schule (K. Hemmerle, B. Casper, P. Hünermann und andere). Die philosophische Phänomenologie des Heiligen kümmert sich um die
Klärung des ontologischen Status und der epistemologischen Möglichkeiten der Hierophanie. Der dritte Modus der Diskussion über die Kategorie »das Heilige«
kann als theologisch oder philosophisch-theologisch bezeichnet werden. Außer M. Scheler könnten wir zu den Vertretern der theologischen Religionsphänomenologie
P. Tillich und P. Florenskij hinzuzählen. Ein eigener Modus der Behandlung der Kategorie »das Heilige« findet sich in der russischen Philosophie Ende des 19. und Anfang des 20. Jhs. Dem Anschein nach ist die Hinwendung zu diesen Begriff, die sich in den Werken von W. Rosanow, A. Lossew, P. Florenskij und anderen Denkern zeigt, der  hänomenologischen Philosophie und philosophischen Hermeneutik sehr nah.

Juntando-se às comemorações dos 500 anos de Reforma protestante, 100 anos de O Sagrado e 30 anos de Sobre deuses e caquis, esta pesquisa visa apresentar Rubem Alves como leitor de Rudolf Otto entendendo de que forma a ideia de irracional dele contribui para a elaboração da religiosidade estética que se encontra em Rubem. Inicia-se esta jornada mapeando as possíveis influências de Otto em Alves; segue-se apresentando a forma como este entende a religião em face à estética e a aproximação entre Deus e a beleza; por fim, percebe-se os desdobramentos da passagem de uma religiosidade ética a uma religiosidade estética. Com estes desdobramentos, pode-se justificar a relevância desta pesquisa: seguindo a tradição de Otto, Alves parece reconhecer os elementos racionais e irracionais da religião, os aspectos éticos e estéticos sem, contudo, negar a realidade de uma destas faces em afirmação à outra. Nesta percepção, afirma-se a irredutibilidade do fenômeno religioso a um só âmbito