THIS part in my series will deal with the principle of “the Holy” as it either becomes manifest or is prophesied by way of human agency. Whilst Otto is aware that advancing ideas and concepts on the nature of the divine is one thing, actually encountering it first-hand is quite another and yet to entertain the possibility remains a crucial part of spiritual life:

Religion is convinced not only that the holy and sacred reality is attested by the inward voice of conscience and the religious consciousness, the ‘still, small voice’ of the Spirit in the heart, by feeling, presentiment, and longing, but also that it may be directly encountered in particular occurrences and events, self- revealed in persons and displayed in actions, in a word, that beside the inner revelation from the Spirit there is an outward revelation of the divine nature. (p.143)

This series has already dealt with the actual character of such experience, particularly in relation to the feelings and emotions that it arouses in those who come face to face with it, but recognising that one is in the midst of such an event means being able to appreciate the presence of beauty. This happens when the a priori effectively shapes our perception of aesthetics:

While the taste is still crude, a feeling or fore-feeling of the beautiful begins to stir, which must come from an obscure a priori conception of beauty already present, else it could not occur at all. The man of crude taste, not being capable of a clear ‘recognition’ of authentic beauty, falls into confusion and misapplies this obscure, dim conception of the beautiful, judging things to be beautiful which are in fact not beautiful at all. (p.144)

Put simply, without being able to recognise that one is truly experiencing the numinous it is impossible to make such an assumption. Naturally, Otto was keen to get to the root of whether we possess a special faculty of divination that allows us to do so:

To the ‘supernaturalistic’ theory the matter is simple enough. Divination consists in the fact that a man encounters an occurrence that is not ‘natural’, in the sense of being inexplicable by the laws of nature. Since it has actually occurred, it must have had a cause; and, since it has no ‘natural’ cause, it must (so it is said) have a supernatural one. This theory of divination is a genuine, solidly rationalist theory, put together with rigid concepts in a strict demonstrative form and intended as such. And it claims that the capacity or faculty of divination is the understanding, the faculty of reflection in concept and demonstration. The transcendent is here proved as strictly as anything can be proved, logically from given premisses. (pp.144-5)

It is here, of course, that the a posteriori method becomes completely superfluous. One “instinctively” knows whether a particular incident conforms to the dictates of natural law or not and no amount of scientific investigation will account for it. For Otto, this is a form of liberty that frees us from all notions of conceptuality and relies entirely upon that arising from the very depths of the soul:

The faculty or capacity of divination appears in the language of dogma hidden beneath the fine name ‘testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum‘, the inner witness of the Holy Spirit —limited, in the case of dogma, to the recognition of Scripture as ‘Holy’. And this name is the only right one, and right in a more than figurative sense, when the capacity of divination is itself grasped and appraised by divination. This is not our task here. We therefore employ a psychological rather than a religious expression as being more appropriate to the nature of our discussion. (p.145)

As Otto explains, this idea was already evident in both Schleiermacher’s Discourses Upon Religion (1799) and Fries’ Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung (1805). Writing in his own 1909 work, The Philosophy of Religion Based on Kant and Fries, Otto had discussed the “contemplation” of the former and the “inkling” of the latter, each of which communicate the finer points of the divination process. When he came to write The Idea of the Holy some fourteen years later, he reminds a new generation of readers that Schleiermacher was seeking

the faculty or capacity of deeply absorbed contemplation, when confronted by the vast, living totality and reality of things as it is in nature and history. Wherever a mind is exposed in a spirit of absorbed submission to impressions of ‘the universe’, it becomes capable—so he lays it down—of experiencing ‘intuitions’ and ‘feelings’ (Anschauungen and Gefuhle) of something that is, as it were, a sheer overplus, in addition to empirical reality. This overplus, while it cannot be apprehended by mere theoretic cognition of the world and the cosmic system in the form it assumes for science, can nevertheless be really and truly grasped and experienced in intuition, and is given form in single ‘intuitions’. (p.146)

It is clear to see why Otto – by way of Schleiermacher – inspired the likes of Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), who later went on to explore the role of intuition in more depth, but he himself did not believe that such a phenomenon could be encapsulated or contained within any theoretical system.

Similarly, this divinatory experience is epitomised by the concept of the “inkling” that one find in Fries. It is the sudden perception that one has encountered a reality of unparalleled mystery, a sign that contact has been established between the numinous and oneself.

Both Fries and Schleiermacher agree that divination involves a “cosmic purposiveness” that, in the case of the former, amounts to a teleological objectivity. Schleiermacher is perhaps less inclined to accept that we possess the ability to perceive an overarching plan of any kind and is thus keen to retain the element of mystery. Even if there is an ultimate goal to the manifestation of the numinous, it lies beyond the lowly parameters of our comprehension:

This is shown in the groping, hesitant, tentative manner in which the meaning of the experience always reveals itself. And it is emphasized especially forcibly when Schleiermacher shows where in his own case this experience is to be found in the world he confronts; that it is not so much in its universal conformity to law—a rational quality, interpretable by the intellect in terms of purpose—but rather by means of what appears to us as a baffling ‘exception’ to law, thereby hinting at a meaning that eludes our understanding. (p.147)

Once again, Otto tells us, the solution lies in aesthetics. Influenced by Kant’s Critique of Judgement (1790), Schleiermacher had discussed the notion of non-logical discernment and this he derived from his counterpart’s insistence that aesthetic judgment should not emulate that of one’s analysis of beauty. As Otto suggests, Kant’s

primary intention is simply and in general terms to separate the faculty of judgement based upon feeling of whatever sort from that of the understanding, from discursive, conceptual thought and inference; and his term ‘aesthetic’ is simply meant to mark as the peculiarity of the former that, in contrast to logical judgement, it is not worked out in accordance with a clear intellectual scheme, but in conformity to obscure, dim principles which must be felt and cannot be stated explicitly as premisses. (p.148)

A judgement of this kind therefore remains undivulged or, to use Kant’s expression, “not-unfolded”.

Otto reminds us that such judgment nonetheless relies on universal application. In other words, just as we form a general rule of aesthetic beauty, so too can the mystical experience involve a tendency to create a comprehensive validity:

The apparently subjective and personal character of the judgement of taste, expressed in the maxim de gustibus non disputandum, simply amounts to this, that tastes of different degrees of culture and maturity are first compared, then so opposed one to the other that agreement is impossible. But unanimity, even in judgements of taste, grows and strengthens in the measure in which the taste matures with exercise; so that even here, despite the proverb, there is the possibility of taste being expounded and taught, the possibility of a continually improving appreciation, of convincement and conviction. (p.149)

This means, inevitably, that applying judgement beyond the limitations of mere aesthetic beauty involves developing a form of “contemplation” that begins in the individual and then spreads by example.

Otto, given his predilection for post-Kantianism, has no real issue with Kant himself but again finds fault with the manner in which aspects of the Critique of Judgement were repackaged within Schleiermacher’s own philosophy. He disagrees, in particular, with his inference that divination is a universal phenomenon:

In point of fact it is not universal if this means that it could be presupposed necessarily in every man of religious conviction as an actual fact, though of course Schleiermacher is quite right in counting it among the general capacities of mind and spirit, and regarding it indeed as the deepest and most peculiar element in mind, and in that sense—man being defined by his intelligent mind—calling it a ‘universal human’ element. But what is a universal potentiality of man as such is by no means to be found in actuality the universal possession of every single man; very frequently it is only disclosed as a special endowment and equipment of particular gifted individuals. (pp.149-150)

Schleiermacher’s belief that “contemplation” can lead to the transference of the divinatory experience by way of its perceived universality relies on one gifted individual being able to communicate the principle to his associates, but the knowledge imparted by the numinous at the time of the actual occurrence is of a special type and is felt rather than simply learnt or inherited. At the same time, one gets the distinct impression that Otto is discounting untold millennia of initiatic practice – much of which is still practised to a very high standard.

Schleiermacher’s ideas are even questioned on the basis of whether he had enough of a “divinatory nature” to be able to discuss it in the first place, although this seems grossly unfair. On the other hand, Schleiermacher did make the claim himself. One individual whom Otto considers to possess the appropriate character to elaborate upon such matters is Goethe, whose posthumous conversations with Johann Peter Eckermann (1792-1854) in the 1836 work, Gespräche mit Goethe, are considered to be of particular interest.

It is here that Goethe expounds on the rare quality of the “daemonic” and the fact that it had little chance of appearing in nineteenth-century Berlin. Music, he opines, provides a much better platform for the manifestation of religious worship and is capable of producing an “effect of marvel” upon man. Nature is also said by Goethe to be full of the “daemonic” and it is especially prevalent among animals. Commenting on Goethe’s remarks to Eckermann, Otto says that one notices

how the elements of the numinous we discovered plainly recur: the wholly non-rational, incomprehensible by concepts, the elements of mystery, fascination, awefulness, and energy. The note of the daemonic in the animal kingdom reminds us of Job and the leviathan. But in another respect Goethe’s intuition falls far short of Job’s intuition of the mysterium. By his ignoring of the warning of the book of Job and by applying to the mysterium the standards of the rational understanding and reason and conceptions of human purpose, the non-rational comes to involve for Goethe a contradiction between meaning and meaninglessness, sense and nonsense, that which promotes and that which frustrates human ends. (p.151)

Elsewhere, Otto praises Goethe for his suggestion that having met fellow poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) at a fortuitous moment in their lives was due to a “daemonic governing”. Goethe also compared himself to Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), realising that both men possessed similar qualities. Although Otto neglects to mention it, the same “daemonic” trend – presented in a more tragic context – appears in Goethe’s Faust (1790).

Otto was also an admirer of Goethe’s equally posthumous Poetry and Truth (1846), in which the latter writes of the “dreadful” man in whom this trait appears and thus echoes the former’s own thoughts on the tremendum. Goethe even alludes to this component as it appears within a particular individual as moving one to “amazement rather than admiration,” remaining entirely incomprehensible and non-rational. However, Otto insists that Goethe’s attempts to explain the numinous cannot be compared to that gleaned by the prophet:

It does not rise to the elevation of the experience of Job, where the non-rational mystery is at the same time experienced and extolled as supra-rational, as of profoundest value, and as holiness in its own right. It is rather the fruit of a mind which, for all its depth, was not equal to such profundities as these, and to which, therefore, the non-rational counterpoint to the melody of life could only sound in confused consonance, not in its authentic harmony, indefinable but palpable. Therefore, though it is genuine divination, it is the divination of Goethe ‘the pagan’, as he sometimes used to call himself. (p.153)

Goethe therefore precedes Otto’s own expectations of religion in that his numinosity remains as undefined as those explored in Part XVII.

The more basic feelings and emotions of which Goethe spoke, manifested amongst a tiny minority of superhuman individuals, are said to approach Schleiermacher’s philosophy in terms of a gifted individual passing on his or her knowledge to others.