Protestant theologian and philosopher, born in Peine, C Germany. A professor at Göttingen and Wroc?aw, Poland (formerly Breslau, Prussia) before settling in Marburg in 1917, he studied non-Christian religions in order to define religion in a new way. In Das Heilige (1917, The Idea of the Holy) he describes religious experience as inspiring both awe and a promise of exaltation and bliss. His other books include India's Religion of Grace and Christianity (1930) and Mysticism East and West (1932).
Rudolf Otto (September 25, 1869–6 March 1937) was an eminent German protestant theologian and scholar of comparative religion.
Life
Born in Peine near Hanover, Otto attended the Gymnasium Andreanum in Hildesheim and studied at the universities of Erlangen and Göttingen, from where he received both his doctorate (with a dissertation on Luther) and habilitation on Kant. In 1915, he became ordinary professor at the University of Breslau, and in 1917, at the University of Marburg's Divinity School, then one of the most famous Protestant seminaries in the world.
The Holy
Otto's most famous work, The Idea of the Holy (published first in 1917 as Das Heilige), is one of the most successful German theological books of the 20th century.
Influence
It is more difficult to say who, in theology and philosophy of religion in the first half of the 20th century, was not influenced by Otto than who was. German-American theologian Paul Tillich acknowledged Otto's influence on him, as did Romanian-American anthropologist Mircea Eliade. Eliade used the concepts from The Idea of the Holy as the starting point for his own 1957 book, The Sacred and the Profane.
Books available in English
Naturalism and Religion (1907), London: Williams and Norgate, Full text online at Google Books The Life and Ministry of Jesus, According to the Critical Method (1908), Chicago: Open Court, ISBN 0837046483. Full text online at Google Books The Idea of the Holy (1923), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-500210-5 Christianity and the Indian Religion of Grace, Madras 1928 India's Religion of Grace and Christianity Compared and Contrasted, New York 1930 The philosophy of religion based on Kant and Fries, London 1931 Religious essays: A supplement to The Idea of the Holy, London 1931 Mysticism east and west: A comparative analysis of the nature of mysticism, New York 1932 The original Gita: The song of the Supreme Exalted One, London 1939 The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man: A Study in the History of Religion, Boston 1943 Autobiographical and Social Essays (1996), Berlin:Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 3110145189Books about Otto
Gooch, Todd A. The Numinous and Modernity: An Interpretation of Rudolf Otto's Philosophy of Religion.Other translations
The Idea of the Holy has been translated into Persian by Prof.
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