A Reflection on Walter Otto and Greek Religion

A short reflection following a talk I have in a local study group of the Phaedo.

In one of my discussions about Phaedo, I chose to bring in a German classicist named Walter Otto. To understand who this figure is, we need to rewind a bit of historical background. Otto was part of a group that included, among others, Werner Jaeger, the classicist who, in a way, destroyed our study of Aristotle forever (though he, too, is brilliant—go read him). Jaeger and his cohort were the first generation of German classicists to take Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously. Just for context, Nietzsche himself wasn’t exactly mainstream at the time—young classicist Wilhelm von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf publicly condemned Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and essentially accused him of charlatanism. Later in his life (as I discovered for this post), Wilamowitz-Moellendorf softened his critique somewhat, realizing that Nietzsche’s work had more aims than just classical philological research, but the tone was set. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf would go on to become a professor who would shape the tone of German classicism, which of course became more dry and historical—this is the "historicism" Nietzsche critiques in On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life.

Time passed, Nietzsche went mad, and his influence waned for a while. But his writing started gaining a new audience in post-World War I Germany. The new generation of classicists wanted to speak like Nietzsche, to revive the spirit of Greece, even though they had learned the lesson that scientific methodology should weigh heavily in historical study. Jaeger wrote the manifesto for these new historians in opposition to Wilamowitz-Moellendorf’s dry method. Walter Otto, our hero, focused mainly on studying Greek religion. For instance, he was almost the only classicist cited by Heidegger in his later lectures—a true "credit hogger" if there ever was one. Later, Otto would have a major impact on religious scholar Burkert and historian of Greek religion Hamilton (though there’s no space to elaborate on him here).

During the evening seminar, we focused on Otto’s book The Gods of the Greeks. Let me tell you, this is not a research book in the modern sense. Its explicit ambition is to revive Greek religion, its fundamental concepts, and even show their superiority over monotheistic moral concepts. In this, the book undoubtedly succeeds: it is first and foremost a genuine religious challenge to adherents of Abrahamic faiths, and much of the implicit criticism of contemporary Western religiosity still resonates.

Since we were discussing Phaedo that evening, it was natural that I would bring Otto’s thesis on the development of Greek religion. One of the interesting aspects of his argument is that he was the first to conceptually distinguish the old "Titanic" layer of Greek religion from the newer "Olympian" layer. The key to this distinction, Otto argues, lies in the contrasting concepts of death in these two religious forms. Titanic religions, Otto asserts, were characterized by a conception of death that is very similar—he draws an analogy to the way we understand ghosts: the dead don't really go anywhere. They remain here with us, influencing the course of events. They intervene, they get angry, they take revenge. Humans live in constant anxiety about the dead and their power. Titanic religions, according to Otto, are also characterized by a crucial emphasis on blood and the earth (an insight that predates the modern academic recognition of "earth religions" in early Greek thought) because the place of the dead is just as important. For Otto, these are religions where death is "present" in a decisive way. The Olympian religions, on the other hand, present a different vision. Death for them is always in the realm of "the past"—a distant, ongoing past. The dead go to a shadowy world that has no "active" influence on our world, making our world less grim and more "alive."

Now, if you’ll permit me, I’ll share my slight frustration. I wrote a text in a very similar vein, and later realized Otto had already used the same example I thought was paradigmatic when it comes to the Greek conception of death: Odysseus’ visit to the underworld and Achilles’ speech there. The spirits in the underworld are presented as shadows of what they once were on earth. They are pale, and for those who know Dante, they strongly resemble the ghosts in the Inferno. Achilles himself tells Odysseus that he would prefer "one day on earth as a slave to a thousand in the underworld as a king" (paraphrased). Death is presented as the shadow of life in its perfect form. The Greeks don’t "suppress" death, but it remains passive. In fact, it is the source of passivity, the historical. Otto’s brilliant move is to show that in a way, this is exactly what the Olympian religion did to the Titanic one: it didn’t "destroy" it, as monotheistic religions tend to do (in his view) when they encounter such forms. It absorbed it as part of itself, kept it, and even gave it a place within its own world.

Moreover, Otto sketches a portrait of how Greek religion worked in practice. For example, Hermes "shines" on every case of good fortune on the road. If you found money on the street, it was Hermes who blessed you. For Otto, Greek religion is not Titanic in the sense that it needs to "break" reality in order to express the will of the gods; rather, it moves with the natural reality. If you had a tactical flash of brilliance in battle, then surely Athena helped you. In general, the Greeks would oscillate between referring to "a god" generically and identifying the specific god involved. "God" works almost everywhere—but this doesn’t absolve the person of responsibility.

Otto shows that for early Greeks, guilt didn’t necessarily play a central role in establishing human responsibility (an argument that will be repeated in the Anglophone tradition by Bernard Williams). On the contrary, guilt seems to be a very marginal concept, almost absent. The human in Homeric times certainly works alongside divine figures who lead reality, but the responsibility for his successes and failures is entirely his. There’s a sort of "give and take" here: the Greek won’t feel guilty for his actions because they are not entirely free, but the responsibility for their outcomes remains solely his. Otto, like Williams after him, argues that Greek tragedy is essentially an attempt to grapple with this gap. The greatness of Greek religion, Otto claims, is that it allows humans to maintain their greatness even if they fail. Oedipus remains a great man even after his downfall—he doesn’t become a lesser, wretched person. The role of the gods here is not to forgive humans for their sins or weaknesses, but to allow the human to present his full greatness and form. The gods help the human achieve his greatness, but they can also turn against him—the human remains who he is.

There’s much more to expand on from this book, but I must issue a travel warning: it’s absolutely filled to the brim with quotes from early Greek texts. Otto really goes out of his way to make an interesting point, only to back it up with pages and pages of quotes. If you love Greek mythology, this book is practically the Hamilton for adults. Personally, I found the reading excruciatingly boring most of the time, but at times, brilliant and even sublime. Of course, it’s pure German craftsmanship.