Rudolf Otto: The Idea of the Holy Chapter 3 The Elements in the Numinous

Summary: Otto asks the reader to direct himself towards a moment of what he would believe to be a quintessentially religious moment. If this cannot be done, Otto requests the reader to go no further. While not blameworthy, the ignorant often view aesthetics in terms of sensuous pleasure and religion as a funtion of gregarious instinct, but an artist will decline such a theory, and the religious uncompromisingly dismiss it. Otto takes one moment of numinous experience, that of solemn worship, and tries to isolate what is unique about it. Solemn worship no doubt shares common features with being morally uplifted, with feelings of "gratitude, trust, love, reliance, humble submission, and dedication." But solemn worship is not exhausted by these terms; there is something in the being "rapt" that is more. Schleiermacher focused on the "feeling of dependence," and while important, Otto believes this feeling is not unique to numinous experience: such as when one recognizes one is determined by societal circumstances and the environment (think of people's judgments about their power to change during economic depressions). Schleiermacher recognized that the religious dependence was different from the other forms, and suggested the difference was between absolute and relative dependence. Otto thinks Schleiermacher made a mistake in having the distinction being a matter of degree; it is a matter of intrinsic quality. While it provides a close analogy, mental analysis shows that the religious feeling is so primary a datum that it can only be defined via itself. Otto sees this numinous feeling in the biblical text, where Abraham asserts that he will speak to the Lord, recognizing that he himself is "but dust and ashes" (Genesis 18:27). There is dependence, but something more/other than just dependence, and so Otto labels this experience "creature-consciousness" (or "creature-feeling"). The creature is overwhelmed by its nothingness in contrast to the supreme. Otto argues that the term is not a conceptual explanation of the experience, since everything revolves around the character of the supreme, which is ineffable, only suggested via the tone and content of man's feeling-response to it. Otto further faults Schleiermacher by reducing the religious emotion to self-depreciation, and having God appear through inference to a cause beyond the self for this sense of dependence. Otto believes this is opposed to the psychological facts. Creature-consciousness is derived from another feeling-element that has immediate (not inferred) reference to a sensed numinous object outside the self. With an unjustifiably poor understanding of William James' philosophic position, Otto yet correctly observes that James concluded that accounts of religious experience suggest that in consciousness there is a "sense of reality" (in Varieties, this is the "consciousness of a presence") that is deeper in perceiving the real than the five senses. Otto sees creature-consciousness again as deriving from and presupposed by this feeling of a numinous object objectively given. The depreciation comes in recognition of that object, and is carried out by the subject.

Rudolf Otto: The Idea of the Holy Chapter 2 Numen and the Numinous

Summary: Holiness is a valuation peculiar to religion, even though it has been applied in spheres such as ethics by transplant. Kantian thought had tied holiness with complete goodness, so that the will acting on the moral law alone was the holy will. But this transformation obscures the original significance of the holy. Like the beautiful, the holy contains an element or feeling-response "moment" that eludes apprehension in terms of concepts. This "overplus of meaning" is what the term holiness denoted foremostly in ancient languages; it was neutral in terms of moral significance. We need to disregard the moral and rational factors in investigating the term, and to help in that regard, Otto adopts the term "Numen" (and corresponding "numinous") for this focus on the holy. Otto believes the numinous state of mind is irreducible to another mental state, and as a primary one, cannot be strictly defined. Understanding is brought by consideration and discussion of the matter through one's own mind until the numinous in one may stir and be brought to life. The process can be advanced via comparing and contrasting it with other mental states/experiences.

Rudolf Otto: The Idea of the Holy Chapter 1 The Rational and the Non-Rational

Summary: Theists, by analogy, project and perfect their human rationality and personality on to their idea of God. The attributes that they apply to God can be understood and analyzed by the mind, and are thus what Otto calls "rational." Religions, such as Christianity, applying such attributes to God are rational religions and summon a belief and faith-based knowledge in their doctrines in contrast to vague, propositionless feelings. Yet it is wrong to suppose that God's essence can fully be understood through rational attributions, even though the rational occupies the foreground of discourse. Otto urges that the rational attributions imply a non-rational subject of which they are predicates. The rational elements are essential, but also "synthetic." Otto's explanation is dense: we have to attribute these rational elements to the God-subject, but this subject "in its deeper sense" is not comprehended by these elements. Comprehending it requires a different mode of understanding. Otto believes this mode must be utilized by mankind or we would not be able to assert anything of the God-subject, and we do this. Mysticism, in its assertions of experiential ineffability, does not mean nothing can be asserted of the object of religious consciousness, but their copious writings suggest there is something beyond the effable. Otto takes this as the first distinction between religious "rationalism" and "profounder religion." It is not the rejection of the miraculous that distinguishes them, but a difference regarding the "quality in the mental attitude and emotional content of the religious life itself." Orthodoxy constructed dogma/doctrine, and in the meantime failed to value the non-rational element in religion and so gave God an unbalanced intellectualistic spin. Eyes have been shut to the uniqueness of religious experience, but Otto believes it is one of the most unique of phenomena. In what follows, Otto will try to unpack the category of the holy or sacred.