Holy, Idea of The

Holy, Idea of The

HOLY, IDEA OF THE. [This entry attempts an assessment of the role of the German theologian Rudolf Otto and his book The Idea of the Holy in setting forth a distinctively phenomenological interpretation of the nature of religion.]

Rudolf Otto's work during the first half of his career culminated with his publication, at the age of forty-eight, of Das Heilige (1917), translated as The Idea of the Holy (1923). Published in an age of high hopes for science, it has as a central concern the assertion of the autonomy of religion. Otto's position is diametrically opposed to what has come to be called reductionism, that is, the explanation of religion as a creation of human culture, a response to psychological or social needs that is in some sense the product of those needs. Otto, by contrast, asserts the autonomy of religion in the sphere of its own activity and its status as a response to a power transcending the human.

A landmark among theories of religion, Otto's book appeared only five years after the major work by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. To situate Otto in European intellectual history, it will be useful to discuss Durkheim briefly.