A questão da autonomia da religião na teologia filosófica de Rudolf Otto (1904-1917)

Abstract

This thesis intends to make a deeper investigation of the question of religion's autonomy and validity in the Rudolf Otto's interpretation of religion, more specifically in his works Naturalism and Religion, The Philosophy of Religion Based on Kant and Fries and his opus magnum The Idea of the Holy. Through the Leitmotiv of religion's autonomy and validity is possible to find a unity in the author's argumentation; a unity that starting as an identification of an attempt of negation of religious outlook by the naturalistic conceptions which appeared in late 19th and early 20th centuries and that undergoes by a search for grounding in Jakob Friedrich Fries's transcendental idealism, found a final formulation in his proposition of a complex-idea of the Holy, formed by rational and non-rational elements strictly aprioristics. An attempt at a unitary approach to there works can still offer solutions for problems in Otto's argumentation always pointed out by his critics, such as his erroneous interpretation of Kant's thought, the alleged conflicts between the author’s several interests; and the famous accusation of being a defender of an irrationalism.