Roots of Otto's
Philosophy of Religion
Rudolf
Otto (1869-1937) in his classic Idea of the Holy (Das Heilige -1917) argues
that notion of “the sacred” or “the numinous” is an unique category of
understanding and is required for understanding religion. Otto coined the term “Numinous" now in
common usage. His ideas, I believe along
with others, can be seen as a logical extension of the thoughts of three previous
thinkers:
Kant:
According
to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), we do not and cannot have access to the world “as
it exists in-itself” (noumena), but we can and do have precise knowledge of the
world as organized and interpreted by human cognition (phenomena). When we properly understand the active role
that mind plays in shaping human experience, we see that human experience can
be separated into form and content. The content of human experience is given
its form by the activity of mind. So it is the nature of human cognition to
render experience of a world of three dimensions that endures through
unidirectional time. But these are the pure forms of human experience which are
themselves imposed by categories of mind. We live in a world of 3 dimensional
objects such as laptop computers, coffee cups, cats and dogs etc. But the world
we live in (of laptop computers, coffee cups, cats and dogs etc.) is a world (in
large part) of our own mental creations.
I
often use the metaphor of my old maillist program. This was a computer program
that could only sort data according to a preset template. Every record in the
program adhered to the same template: First name, last name, telephone number,
street address. So, record number one might be my mom and it would read first
name, last name, telephone number, street address. The 5th number record might be my best friend
from high school and it would read first name, last name, telephone number,
street address. And without even looking,
I can know something about the 100th record. That is that it reads first name,
last name, telephone number, street address. While I cannot have a priori
knowledge of the content of my 100th record, I can have a
priori knowledge of the form of my 100th record. This is because when I
talk of the “records” of the program, I am merely talking about the product of
data being given form by an unvarying organizing program.
Similarly,
while I do not know the content of tomorrow’s experience, I know the basic form
it will have. It will be 3 dimensional
objects enduring through unidirectional time. This is how human beings experience the world,
indeed MUST experience the world because when I talk of “human experience,” I
am merely talking about the product of data being given form by an unvarying organizing
program. Human experience is a direct product of the pure forms that human
cognition imposes on human experience. This was part of Kant’s critical
response to David Hume's criticism of induction and causality.
But
note then, that this view of human cognition and active mind requires we
abandon the correspondence theory of truth and representational realism as an
epistemological model. For Kant, “truth”
was never about corresponding to “the way the world really is.” Truth was merely about accurate descriptions
of how the world is experienced by humans. Truth is subjective. Each of us is
making up truth for ourselves. I'm putting the world together for me and you're
putting the world together for you. Nevertheless, for us conscious agents, truth
is still universal. This is because I'm putting together the world in exactly
the same way that you're putting together the world. Think of it this way. If I
wrote up a document on MS WORD and I gave it to you and you opened it on your
computer and you're using MS WORD, you would construct the same document as I
construct. The reason we have the same document is because we are constructing
it using the same program. So despite the fact that truth is subjective there
is a universality to truth and we're all in that sense living in the same
world. But it is nevertheless the world of human experience, shaped filtered and
constructed by human cognition, not the world as it is in and of itself.
To
conceive of reality (much less talk or speculate about reality) outside of space
and time or "transcendent reality" was impossible Kant claimed. Of necessity, any such conception would use
human concepts and thus be mediated by human mind. These mediating concepts are perfectly
serviceable for the constitution and organization of human experience, but
incapable of and inappropriate for gaining immediate knowledge of
things-in-themselves. Hence, according
to Kant, we cannot have theoretical knowledge of the way things "really
exist" apart from human experience or consciousness of them.
Nevertheless,
this really should not concern us much.
After all, we will only “see” the world or have practical exchanges with
the world as it appears to us. Why worry
about this “things in themselves” business?
The human desire to know what that world is like, independent of the
concepts of human understanding is, strictly speaking, perverse; what one seems
to be asking for is understanding without understanding, or a conception
without concepts. It’s not clear that
even God could have that. In any event
we certainly can’t (Kant? 😊) nor do we need it.
However,
Kant pointed out a curious inconsistency of reason. While pure theoretical reason (science) sees
reality as a seamless series of causes and effects (determinism), moral reason
does not. On the contrary, any
judgements of praiseworthiness or blameworthiness require the concepts of moral
responsibility for personal choices and of free agency. But free agency, the ability to initiate a
series of effects irrespective of one’s causal history, in turn, contradicts
causal determinism. In short, moral
experience (and corresponding moral judgements of moral worth) requires
precisely the sort of personal free agency that causal determinism denies.
The Problem of
Free Will and Determinism
This
is the well appreciated tension that arises from seeing the world as causally
determined and subjecting human action to moral evaluation. Kant’s solution is to claim that our world
always appears to be causally determined (us along with it), but that does not
mean that it is (nor that we are).
Kant’s
resolution to this problem is truly inspired and unique. According to Kant, it is true that uncaused
causes (free agency), necessary for moral judgement, never occur nor can they
occur in phenomenal reality (reality as experienced by human
minds). But this is only because human cognition always organizes human
experience of the world according to the concept of causality. Now, if phenomenal reality were all there
were to Kant's epistemological/metaphysical picture, Kant would be unable to
explain moral judgements except to say that they are always absurd. However, there is another, albeit mysterious,
part to Kant’s epistemological/metaphysical story, the unknowable
things-in-themselves (Noumena).
Determinism is only known to be true of the world as we experience
it. We have no theoretical evidence (nor
could we) for or against the claim that causal determinism is true of
things-in-themselves. In other words,
for all we know, causal determinism is not true of things-in-themselves.
Further,
according to Kant, we have moral reason to believe determinism
is not
true of things in themselves. Given
moral experience and the needs of Practical Reason, and a proper awareness of
the limitations of Pure (theoretical) Reason, we have moral reason to accept a
metaphysical claim, a claim about things-in-themselves (i.e., that we have free
will). There is no theoretical evidence
against free will and it is the only rational alternative to absurd moral
judgements.
This
follows from Kant’s notion that “ought” implies “can.” By this Kant has in mind the strict logical relation
of implication. If A implies B, then if
A is true, it must be the case that B is also true. So consider the sentence, “She ought not to
lie.” This sentence, if true, implies
that she can avoid lying. Again, this is
a logical implication. So if I am certain
that she ought not to lie, I can be equally certain that she can
avoid lying. Any ascriptions of “ought”s
or “ought not”s (e.g. ought not to lie,
ought not to murder, ought not to steal, etc.) imply corresponding “can”
statements, which themselves imply free agency and free will.
To
demand that she ought to do something which she cannot in fact avoid is an
absurd demand. So, from the point of view of causal determinism, all moral
oughts are absurd. The only alternative to absurd moral demands is to acquiesce
to the reality of free will. Do we have
an alternative to absurd moral demands? Yes,
it is to embrace free will. But some
might counter that we have no theoretical reason to believe that free will is
true. The counter-counter argument provided by Kant is we have no theoretical
reason to believe that it's false either, and practical reason to
believe that it's true.
But
to be clear, for Kant moral/practical reason is the only vehicle we have to
speculate and draw conclusions about transcendent reality
(things-in-themselves). He believed that
the existence of things like freedom, God and an immortal soul could be neither
proved or disproved by theoretical (pure) reason. Despite this, it was rational to believe in such things because they are the
necessary postulates of practical reason (systematic moral experience). From a practical (moral law) point of view,
it makes much more sense to accent to the existence of God, freedom and
immortality then to deny them or to remain agnostic.
For
reasons we need not dwell on here, Kant’s similarly offered moral arguments for
the existence of God and the Immortality of the soul. These too turn largely on
the idea that “ought statements” imply corresponding “can” statements. “One ought to perfect one’s
will.” can only be true if it is also true that one can perfect
one’s will. Thus, I can be as (morally)
certain that my will/ soul will live on after the death of my body as I can be
(morally) certain that I ought to be perfectly moral.
This,
however, is a certainty granted us by practical and not theoretical reason.
God,
like freedom, was a necessary presumption for moral reason. God is the Divine arbiter of Perfect Justice
satisfying the moral imperative that happiness ought be proportional to
moral worth. So then, for Kant, the
concept of God is strictly rational (intelligible). Religion too is justified
and reasonable so long and only as far as it makes rational/moral claims. This should not surprise us mind you, as Kant
is something of a poster-boy for the Enlightenment. We should remember at this point that, in
his third critique, The Critique of
Judgement, Kant suggests that
Aesthetic Experience gives us no justification for believing anything about
phenomena or noumena. Aesthetic
Experience results merely from internal mental relations, and gives us no
access to extra-mental reality either as it is or as it appears.
It
is worth mentioning that, throughout his writings, Kant seems to be struggling
with a peculiar dilemma, that is an attempt to navigate between a naive and
unjustified anthropomorphism with respect
to God, one strictly outlawed by his mature epistemology, and sheer mysticism. Kant appreciates the dilemma as acutely as
Hume did, but sought to solve it rather than merely highlight it. Kant was himself a theist of a Lutheran Pietist tradition. Nevertheless, he seems to take Hume’s
objections against theism as devastating.
But while Hume’s arguments may in fact undermine arguments for theistic belief,
they do not undermine the very notion of theistic belief itself. Kant’s own
arguments against theistic proofs are said to have destroyed evidence to make
room for faith.[1]
Remember
that the concepts of the understanding cannot be known to apply to anything
that transcends all possible experience.
We can therefore see that it will be a challenge for Kant to evade
Hume’s dilemma. Kant’s resolution is to
distinguish between a naive and unjustified “dogmatic anthropomorphism,” which
tries literally to attribute to God natural qualities, such as those
attributable to humans, and a more self-aware enlightened “symbolic
anthropomorphism,” which merely draws an analogy between God’s relation to our
world and relations among things in our world, while avoiding thinking of them
as identical. This, in my view at least,
is not unlike Aquinas’s analogical predication.
( a mere 500s year later)
For
the philosopher Kant then, the concept of God is strictly rational
(intelligible). In 1793 Kant wrote Religion
within the Limits of Reason Alone. There, Kant reduces religion to a phenomenon
of reason and morality. The function of
actual religions is to give adequate symbolic expression to rational truths,
specifically the truths of practical reason.
Here he strongly criticizes ritual, superstition and a church hierarchy (very
German/Lutheran/ Protestant).
Actual
world religions serve as “vehicles” for the pure rational system of religion,
providing their own “mystical cover” (6:83) and “vivid mode of representing”
(6:83) what is essential to our moral perfection. [2] Religion is justified and reasonable only so
long and only as far as it makes rational/moral claims. This puts him squarely
within the “Enlightenment” tradition. But
note, as such it provides us little to no ground for such notions as atonement,
salvation, sanctification or the sacred.
What
Otto explores is a facet to religion completely neglected or rejected by such rational
reconstructions of religion (i.e. Kant’s et alia); namely he explores
the non-rational understanding of God.
The bridge between the two was a philosopher by the name of Jakob
Fries.
Jakob
Fries
Jakob
Fries (1773-1843) a post-Kantian philosopher is the second major influence on
Otto's theory of Numinous Experience.
Fries (in contrast to Kant) believed that aesthetic and religious
feelings were real cognitions of their objects.
Fries believed that certain metaphysical concepts (God, freedom, and
immortality) did have corresponding experience (again in contrast to Kant) though
not perceptual
experience, per se. Fries claimed
that the sensations corresponding to these metaphysical concepts are aesthetic
and religious feelings. These feelings suggest
the transcendent more then they reveal it.
Since, according to Fries, synthesis, experience, and understanding do
not actually occur between these sensations and definitive concepts, he calls
these feelings "intimations." They are intimations of the
transcendent. From this perspective, religion and aesthetic feeling are bound
together much differently than in the Kantian perspective.
Otto
accepted much of the Kantian/Friesian construct of religion and religious
experience. Otto points out in his The Idea of the Holy, that while we can
be acquainted with a transcendent God rationally (conceptually) through
morality (Practical Reason) we also have direct acquaintance with God non-rationally
through special feelings[3]. For Otto, this direct awareness of
transcendent reality comes most fully through a sense of the "holy and the
sacred."[4] These concepts are acquired only through
direct perception of the Holy/Numen and cannot be broken down into simpler
parts[5].
Otto
claimed that the idea of the Holy refers to a category of experience unique to
religion. However, it is a mistake to
think that numinous experience is rare[6]
and visited only on a religious few.
Part of Otto's project is to make clearer what numinous experience is so
that we can more readily recognize it when we have it. The suggestion is that we have all had, do
have and will have these types of experiences, but we may lack the proper
terminology to point to it (as those who have not yet mastered the concept
"red").
Friedrich
Schleiermacher
A
third key thinker forming the background of Otto's theology is Friedrich
Schleiermacher (1768 – 1834). Initially
Otto credits Schleiermacher with having uncovered the uniquely religious
experience, that of the feeling of absolute dependency. But Otto criticizes Schleiermacher[7] for
getting the phenomenology wrong. Among
the mistakes he attributes to Schleiermacher is that of claiming that the
feeling of relative dependence and the feeling of absolute dependence (only the
latter being a religious experience) are one of degree rather than one of kind[8]. He also criticizes Schleiermacher for
claiming that we infer the Numen from the evidence of our emotional
response. According to Otto, it is our
perception of the Numen, which causes our emotional response.[9]
Still,
one may wonder whether phenomenological accuracy is Otto's sole motivation for
the criticism. If "Creature-consciousness,"
as Otto names it, is but a heightened instance of relative dependence, then it
certainly performs no epistemological role intimating the metaphysical
existence of a transcendent Being. While
Otto is merely claiming the phenomenal quality of the experience is one of
perceiving an object and then responding (as opposed to inferring the object
from the emotional response), it is clear that making numinous experience
continuous with non-numinous experience will not fit with his Kantian/Freisian
theological/epistemological framework.
The Holy will cease to be a category of thought unique to religion. Both of Schleiermacher's "mistakes"
run the risk of failing to keep religious experience set apart, truly sacred
and holy, but instead make it merely part of a continuum of the mundane and
profane.[10] Central to Otto's characterization of Numinous
experiences is the fact that in it one seems to be aware of something, a
presence, and importance, a power, radically different from ordinary, that may
not be apparent to other observers (it is non-sensory), yet is as undeniable as
it indescribable.
Otto
explains experience of the Numinous as caused by the Numen. Fries claims that our aesthetic and religious
experience is caused by direct acquaintance with the transcendental
things-in-themselves. Kant explains the
experience of the sublime (the most closely related aesthetic concept) merely
as the interactions of various subjective mental faculties. Whatever the reason, it seems clear that all
have in mind phenomenologically similar if not identical experiences which
humans have had, do have and, in all likelihood will continue to have.
Further,
each ascribes to these experiences important, phenomenologically undeniable,
meaning and value. For each of the above
mentioned theorists, not only does the experience itself have undeniable value
for the recipient, but the experience assures the recipient that the universe
is a place where valued (undeniable value at that) can be had. As such, the experiences stave off the
horrible possibility that reality is arbitrary and indifferent (profane in the
fullest sense of the word). Instead,
they assure the recipient that reality, at least at certain times, is and can
be sacred, holy.
Such
experiences bring the recipient to an awareness of how spiritual his or her
life can be; they at once make him or her aware of the presence or the absence
of the truly meaningful (Divine) in their lives. Once raised to the level of sublime/numinous
one attains a spiritual insight, and a desire for the spiritual. Once discovered, one is now motivated to fill
this spiritual void, to satisfy this previously unacknowledged hunger.
Epilogue:
Mircea Eliade (1907 - 1986)
Mircea
Eliade claimed that sacred realities represent real existence while profane or
mundane realities are in some ultimate sense merely non-being. In terms of space, this means that the
cosmos, which one might reasonably suppose to be the creation, emanation, or
expression of numinous being(s) is set off from chaos. This "chaos"
is ultimate meaninglessness, the empty, the absurd, the irredeemably
horrible. Here the horror is that the
world is devoid of the sacred, and merely profane. This explains the global need for humans to
find, maintain and preserve sacred spaces.
[1] “I have therefore
… found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.“ — Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
p 29 BVVIV-XXX (1781; 1787)
[2] In Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793), Kant
reduces religion to a phenomenon of reason and morality. Kant believed that
morality was the main (only worthwhile) focus of religion. While Morality furnished reason with the concepts
of God, freedom, and immorality, it provided no ground for any other aspect of
traditional religious practice, belief, or experience (atonement, salvation,
sanctification). Fries adds what he takes to be an important corrective, that
the central aspect of religion was not so much reason as feeling.
[3] For Otto this is very similar
to same way that we have direct acquaintance with "red," that is non-rationally
(unmediated by concepts).
[4] Holy and sacred
are both translation of the German word for “holy.” So this is a but redundant.
[5] Otto considers it an elemental datum that can be discussed but not
defined. This is what he means by
claiming that it is non-rational. page 7