The Idea of the Holy (Rudolf Otto)
Difficult, Dry, and Deficient
[My 2-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational” by Rudolf Otto.]
Rudolf Otto (1869-1937), a German professor of theology, is considered by many to be one of the foremost writers on the theory of mysticism. I’m not one of the many. Although Otto putatively coined the term “numinous,” and considers the “Wholly Other” and the “mysterium tremendum in his discourse,” this exegesis of mysticism, colored by a neo-Kantian and liberal Protestant bent, is difficult, dry, and deficient, which is pretty much what one would expect from an early twentieth-century German philosopher.
I have a disaffinity for German philosophers, particularly Heidegger, Hegel (of whom Ayn Rand famously said, “no one understands), and Marcuse (whom I studied under), but if you enjoy turbid mystical theology, then Otto could be your “Autobahn to the Infinite.”
Just as I have a disaffinity for German writer-philosophers, I have an affinity for English spiritual authors, such as W.Y. Evans-Wentz (see my four-star review of “The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation”), Alan Watts (see my four-star review of “The Way of Zen”), Aldous Huxley (see my four-star review of “The Perennial Philosophy),” and Evelyn Underhill (see my five-star review of “Mysticism”). For example, if one compares the Swiss-German Frithjof Schuon’s “The Transcendent Unity of Religions” (see my one-star review) or “The Essential Frithjof Schuon” (see my two-star review) to Aldous Huxley’s “The Perennial Philosophy,” the latter is easily superior. Likewise, if one compares Otto’s “The Idea of the Holy” to Underhill’s “Mysticism,” there is no real comparison: Underhill is head and shoulders above Otto as an exegete of mysticism, both in style and substance.
Here’s an example of the kind of writing you will be confronted with in Otto’s book:
“The rational ideas of absoluteness, completion, necessity, substantiality, and no less so those of the good as an objective value, objectively binding and valid, are not to be ‘evolved’ from any sense-perception. And the notions of ‘epigenesis,’ ‘heterogony,’ or whatever other expression we may choose to denote our compromise and perplexity, only serve to conceal the problem, the tendency to take refuge in a Greek terminology being here, as so often, nothing but an avowal of one’s own insuffiency. Rather, seeking to account for the ideas in question, we are referred away from all sense-experience back to an original and underivable capacity of the mind implanted in the ‘pure reason’ independently of all perception.”
In addition to his unwieldy prose, Otto’s definition (meaning understanding of) mysticism doesn’t cut the cheese. He writes:
“As a provisional definition of mysticism I would suggest that, while sharing the nature of religion, it shows a preponderance of its non-rational elements and an over-stressing of them in respect to the ‘over-abounding’ aspect of ‘numem.”
Excuse me while I put down my copy of “The Idea of the Holy” and get myself a Schneider Aventinus from the fridge... I much prefer German beer to German philosophy.
[My 2-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational” by Rudolf Otto.]
Rudolf Otto (1869-1937), a German professor of theology, is considered by many to be one of the foremost writers on the theory of mysticism. I’m not one of the many. Although Otto putatively coined the term “numinous,” and considers the “Wholly Other” and the “mysterium tremendum in his discourse,” this exegesis of mysticism, colored by a neo-Kantian and liberal Protestant bent, is difficult, dry, and deficient, which is pretty much what one would expect from an early twentieth-century German philosopher.
I have a disaffinity for German philosophers, particularly Heidegger, Hegel (of whom Ayn Rand famously said, “no one understands), and Marcuse (whom I studied under), but if you enjoy turbid mystical theology, then Otto could be your “Autobahn to the Infinite.”
Just as I have a disaffinity for German writer-philosophers, I have an affinity for English spiritual authors, such as W.Y. Evans-Wentz (see my four-star review of “The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation”), Alan Watts (see my four-star review of “The Way of Zen”), Aldous Huxley (see my four-star review of “The Perennial Philosophy),” and Evelyn Underhill (see my five-star review of “Mysticism”). For example, if one compares the Swiss-German Frithjof Schuon’s “The Transcendent Unity of Religions” (see my one-star review) or “The Essential Frithjof Schuon” (see my two-star review) to Aldous Huxley’s “The Perennial Philosophy,” the latter is easily superior. Likewise, if one compares Otto’s “The Idea of the Holy” to Underhill’s “Mysticism,” there is no real comparison: Underhill is head and shoulders above Otto as an exegete of mysticism, both in style and substance.
Here’s an example of the kind of writing you will be confronted with in Otto’s book:
“The rational ideas of absoluteness, completion, necessity, substantiality, and no less so those of the good as an objective value, objectively binding and valid, are not to be ‘evolved’ from any sense-perception. And the notions of ‘epigenesis,’ ‘heterogony,’ or whatever other expression we may choose to denote our compromise and perplexity, only serve to conceal the problem, the tendency to take refuge in a Greek terminology being here, as so often, nothing but an avowal of one’s own insuffiency. Rather, seeking to account for the ideas in question, we are referred away from all sense-experience back to an original and underivable capacity of the mind implanted in the ‘pure reason’ independently of all perception.”
In addition to his unwieldy prose, Otto’s definition (meaning understanding of) mysticism doesn’t cut the cheese. He writes:
“As a provisional definition of mysticism I would suggest that, while sharing the nature of religion, it shows a preponderance of its non-rational elements and an over-stressing of them in respect to the ‘over-abounding’ aspect of ‘numem.”
Excuse me while I put down my copy of “The Idea of the Holy” and get myself a Schneider Aventinus from the fridge... I much prefer German beer to German philosophy.
