https://padlet.com/ccross12/mmt0xj78bm4r Year 12 Philosophy A Level en-us 2018-03-04 13:09:18 UTC 2023-01-20 19:21:15 UTC hello@padlet.com ccross12 https://padlet.com/ccross12/mmt0xj78bm4r/wish/237789686 Many of the experiences reported by James are clearly personal, intense and fully mystical.  The writer who has arguably most fully explored these is Rudolf Otto  in his book 'The Idea of the Holy', (Das Heilige) published in German in 1917 and then in English in 1923.]]> 2018-03-04 13:12:24 UTC https://padlet.com/ccross12/mmt0xj78bm4r/wish/237789686 ccross12 https://padlet.com/ccross12/mmt0xj78bm4r/wish/237790107 Otto explores the idea of the 'numinous' to describe an encounter with God, an encounter with the wholly other. The term wholly other signifies that God is not a being among beings but rather of a completely different order form anything in ordinary experience.  He describes the meeting of seduction, using the phrases mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans. ]]> 2018-03-04 13:14:53 UTC https://padlet.com/ccross12/mmt0xj78bm4r/wish/237790107 ccross12 https://padlet.com/ccross12/mmt0xj78bm4r/wish/237791850 By this, Otto means that 'fascinating' is to draw someone in, compel by attraction. The experience he suggests is immensely powerful, an experience which, at its centre has the fascination which comes form loving something.  There are no adequate words with which to describe this event. Otto described the numinous as...

“Sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship… Thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its profane, non-religious mood of everyday experience… From the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsion and leading to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy” ]]> 2018-03-04 13:31:34 UTC https://padlet.com/ccross12/mmt0xj78bm4r/wish/237791850 ccross12 https://padlet.com/ccross12/mmt0xj78bm4r/wish/237792250 The holy cannot be described in language taken from our everyday ordinary lives. After all, our language is based on the experience of our earthly lives. The wholly other is unlike anything in our everyday lives; not simply a different sort of thing, but rather as of a different order form anything we have experienced. Otto points us to a special kind of experience which is simply religious. ]]> 2018-03-04 13:35:33 UTC https://padlet.com/ccross12/mmt0xj78bm4r/wish/237792250 ccross12 https://padlet.com/ccross12/mmt0xj78bm4r/wish/237792486 Ninian Smart (1927 - 2001) was a lecturer in Religious Studies and commented on the work of Otto by saying...

"We discover... That religious experience has its own kind of logic.  The holy Being, for instance, is the source of grace in virtue of its being both terrifying and fascinating.  For me cannot without blasphemy presume to become God; but at the same time they feel drawn toward that which is holy... In such ways one can observe patterns of thought and practice rising out of the numinous experiences.  We might out this another way by saying that the pattern of religious language has its own peculiar and special structure, just as other areas of language... possess their own charecteristic forms of inference.  So, we have good reason to accept Otto's thesis that religious language cannot simply be reduced to other forms of discourse.  It follows that an important task for the philosopher is the analysis of this area of discourse"

(Ninian Samrt: Philosophers and Religious Truth, 1969)]]> 2018-03-04 13:38:05 UTC https://padlet.com/ccross12/mmt0xj78bm4r/wish/237792486