SOURCE: "The Context of Otto's Thought," in Rudolf Otto: An Introduction to His Philosophical Theology, The University of North Carolina Press, No. 1984, pp. 26-54.

In the following essay, Almond explains major influences on Otto's thought.

The Rational and the Nonrational

In Otto's mature philosophy, religions are viewed as consisting of both rational and nonrational elements. While religions have to do with theoretical and moral ideas, they are not finally dependent on these. Rather, these rational components are ultimately referrable to an object or "subject" that can only be apprehended in a nonrational "unique original feeling-response"¹ that is the core of all religions. Otto, standing squarely within the nineteenth-century tradition of the quest for the essence of religion, finds it partly in a nonrational core, and this is constituted by a specific and unique kind of experience: the numinous experience. We shall return to what Otto means by "nonrational...