The Idea of the Sacred in Twentieth-century Thought: Four Views (Otto, Scheler, Nygren, Tymieniecka)

Abstract

Most of the contemporary notions of the Sacred developed by positive philosophers of religion have their origins in the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement. Especially foundational for this development was the Kantian philosophy, with its concern about the sublime and the possibility of a purely rational religion — concerns which were to set the ground rules for philosophical discourse about the idea of the Sacred for centuries to come. Parts of Kant’s larger philosophical project — the notions of the a priori and the categorical constitution of reality, in particular — have left indelible marks on subsequent philosophical definitions of the Sacred. Indeed, if one wishes to understand why broadly phenomenological philosophies of religion have dealt with the Sacred in the way they have, then one must begin with the philosophy of Kant.