Rudolf Otto in the Estonian Intellectual History

Abstract This article presents a historical overview and analysis of the role Rudolf Otto has had in the Estonian intellectual history. Its focus will be on the influence, reception and interpretation of Otto as it occurs in the context of the debates and discussions in the Estonian language context. It shows how one can distinguish between three different eras in Estonian intellectual history: 1920s–1930s, the Soviet period and the contemporary period that begins in the late 1980s. As the discussion will show, Otto was a strictly theological interest in the first time period and was then rarely discussed in the Soviet era. However, in recent decades he has become an author whose ideas and distinctive vocabulary about the holy can be found in the texts of all kinds of authors in the past few decades.