Rudolf Otto (1869 - 1937) greatly contributed to the discussion of religious feeling and knowledge in attempting to characterize the “numinous” as an underlying core of all religious experiences. In his The Idea of the Holy (1917), Otto sought to explore the category of the Holy through what he referred to as the "numinous consciousness." This essay will first analyze his fundamental theory of the “numinous” experience, and then examine the notion of the “numen,” the object and source of the numinous experience, which he claims to be universal. I shall then apply this examination to Buddhism in order to see if Otto’s conception of the numinous experience is capable of universal generalization. This article will be an inquiry into whether the
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They are a priori, for though they are found in experience they do not come from experience. Otto was especially influenced by the notion of the a priori category. According to Otto, it was a mistake to characterize genuinely religious feeling--an encounter with something that altogether transcends nature--as if it belonged to the same continuum of mundane experiences accessible to the religiously insensitive, Otto said: the ‘holy’ in the fullest sense of the word is a combined, complex category, the combining elements being its rational and non-rational components. But in both— and the assertion must be strictly maintained against all sensationalism and naturalism--it is a purely a priori category.5 Otto argued against rationalism in religion: The Ideal of the Holy begins with the argument …show more content…
Words, concepts, reasoning, and rational thought are incapable of producing true experience of the wholly other, which can only be "firmly grasped, thoroughly understood, and profoundly appreciated, purely in, with, and from the feeling itself." (15) Thus, Against all those who would see the rise of religion emanating from any number of "natural" factors, Otto holds the numinous to be “the basic factor and basic impulse underlying the entire process of religious evolution." (18) Although Otto discounts reason as having any relation to the numinous whatsoever, he discovers a close relationship between the feeling of the numinous and aesthetic experience. In Oriental art there may be no more evocative portrayal of what Rudolf Otto calls the mysterium tremendum than the wrathful deities of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. Fearful in form, wreathed in flames, adorned with garlands of human heads, and brandishing dagger and skull-cup, their painted images conjure the feelings of dread and fascination, which Otto describes in The Idea of the Holy. In this seminal work, he sets out to describe the central element of religious experience such that there is "no religion in which it does not live as the real innermost core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the name."
They are a priori, for though they are found in experience they do not come from experience. Otto was especially influenced by the notion of the a priori category. According to Otto, it was a mistake to characterize genuinely religious feeling--an encounter with something that altogether transcends nature--as if it belonged to the same continuum of mundane experiences accessible to the religiously insensitive, Otto said: the ‘holy’ in the fullest sense of the word is a combined, complex category, the combining elements being its rational and non-rational components. But in both— and the assertion must be strictly maintained against all sensationalism and naturalism--it is a purely a priori category.5 Otto argued against rationalism in religion: The Ideal of the Holy begins with the argument …show more content…
Words, concepts, reasoning, and rational thought are incapable of producing true experience of the wholly other, which can only be "firmly grasped, thoroughly understood, and profoundly appreciated, purely in, with, and from the feeling itself." (15) Thus, Against all those who would see the rise of religion emanating from any number of "natural" factors, Otto holds the numinous to be “the basic factor and basic impulse underlying the entire process of religious evolution." (18) Although Otto discounts reason as having any relation to the numinous whatsoever, he discovers a close relationship between the feeling of the numinous and aesthetic experience. In Oriental art there may be no more evocative portrayal of what Rudolf Otto calls the mysterium tremendum than the wrathful deities of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. Fearful in form, wreathed in flames, adorned with garlands of human heads, and brandishing dagger and skull-cup, their painted images conjure the feelings of dread and fascination, which Otto describes in The Idea of the Holy. In this seminal work, he sets out to describe the central element of religious experience such that there is "no religion in which it does not live as the real innermost core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the name."