Affective attunement and the experience of the numinous: reflections on Rudolf Otto’s Das Heilige

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, Rudolf Otto’s seminal work, Das Heilige, is explored in the German original and in relation to his other writings, his debts to Lutheranism, German romanticism and neo-Kantianism, and the rich context of Marburg in the interwar period. The article stresses Otto’s own attested religious experiences and his profound influence among leading ‘religionists’ of the later twentieth century such as Jung, Tillich, Eliade, and Corbin.