Momentary gods: religious sensitivity

Usener famously theorized that the idea of a new god could, in ancient times, appear spontaneously anywhere in human dealings with their surroundings. All that was needed was that a person suddenly felt the touch of the divine, and religious sensitivity invested the moment with the notion of a newly created deity.

In Usener’s picture, these momentarily generated deifications merely formed a proto-concept of what in later times would develop into the more generalized ideas of gods. His notion of an Augenblicksgott was thought to be the most simple and originary formation of a concept (“die einfachste und ursprünglichste begriffsbildung”; Götternamen, 280). And he looked for them expressly because he supposed that the whole complex system of religious ideas had grown out of such rudimentary forms. He also had a very peculiar ordering of concepts in mind: the more abstract, the higher up they would be found (and consequently, the later the stage in which they developed). The particular comes into being first, from that develops the specific, and finally the more generic. Thus from momentary gods, specific gods (or Sondergötter) were abstracted, and from there personified gods and finally the unitary monotheistic notions of a single all-embracing deity arose. Neither of these transitions appear plausible, and on top of it all Usener was not well-oriented about the distinction between general concepts (whether generic or specific) and particulars. But we don’t have to subscribe to his developmentalist view in order to get something interesting out of the principal idea of a momentary god.

1. That idea is eloquently summarized by Cassirer, who took up the idea in order to build upon it. Cassirer emphasizes that the trigger

[…] is something purely instantaneous, a fleeting emerging and vanishing mental content, whose objectification and outward discharge produces the image of a “momentary deity”. Every impression that man receives, every wish that stirs in him, every hope that lures him, every danger that threatens him can affect him thus religiously. Just let spontaneous feeling invest the object before him, or his own personal condition, or some display of power that surprises him, with an air of holiness, and the momentary god has been experienced and created. (Language & Myth, 18)

Such episodes of a spontaneous special feeling, according to Usener, lead the person to posit a “momentary god” — and give it a name: typically one derived from the qualities of the situation. Only subsequently, with progressing development (so the historical speculation goes) will these names be combined into more generalized ideas of gods which then reflect recurring or enduring characteristics of human surroundings. But the “momentary gods” are nothing yet like that:

These beings do not personify any force of nature, nor do they represent some special aspect of human life; no recurrent trait or value is retained in them and transformed into a mythico-religious image […] In stark uniqueness and singleness it confronts us; not as a part of some force which may manifest itself here, there and everywhere, in various places and times, and for different persons, but as something that exists only here and now, in one indivisible moment of experience, and for only one subject whom it overwhelms and holds in thrall. (Language & Myth, 17-18)

Perhaps not by accident this emphatic insistence on subjective particularity parallels that of many early 20th-century philosophies which tried to posit the “most simple and original” units from which experience and knowledge were built. It is reminiscent of phenomenalism and sense datum theories which hypothesized rudimentary and minimal basic “given” items, necessarily instantaneous and restricted to an individual subject — in order to then build up a theory of how these “givens” would be taken up and combined into more complex states of experience and knowledge.

Yet the passage from Cassirer is crucially different from these in one respect: the important element in those particular episodes is not the sensory input (sense impressions, sense data, etc.), but rather the “spontaneous feeling”: an emotional quality which “invests” the experiential content with “an air of holiness”. This quality plays a somewhat similar role to that of the sense impressions in sense data theories; but it’s not the material for perceptions that are formed of sensible objects, but for ideas of gods which, although (through affect) manifest in that particular situation, are not something we perceive with our senses.

The distinction was already made explicit by Usener at the outset:

Nur so weit können die dinge zunächst in das menschliche bewusstsein treten, als die eindrücke der sinne reichen […] Und die götter? […] Irgendwann einmal sind auch ihre benennungen geschaffen worden. Aber wie dies geschah, in welcher weise eindrücke des übersinnlichen und unendlichen in die seele fallen konnten, dass vorstellungen und benennungen sich erzeugten, das ist die frage […] (Götternamen, 4, 5)

Thus Usener was interested in how concepts of gods were formed, in analogy with the formation of empirical concepts (concepts under which objects of sensible experience would fall), but from a different source (religious feelings instead of sense impressions) and of non-sensible entities (i.e., gods, momentary or otherwise).

2. Who or what is behind that “feeling” which produces a momentary god?

Wenn die augenblickliche empfindung dem dinge vor uns, das uns die unmittelbare nähe einer gottheit zu bewusstsein bringt, dem zustand in dem wir uns befinden, der kraftwirkung die uns überrascht, den werth und das vermögen einer gottheit zumisst, dann ist der augenblicksgott empfunden und geschaffen. In voller unmittelbarkeit wird die einzelne erscheinung vergöttlicht, ohne dass ein auch noch so begrenzter gattungsbegriff irgendwie hereinspielte: das eine ding, das du vor dir siehst, das selbst und nichts weiter ist der gott. (Götternamen, 280)

The subject of the first sentence here is “die augenblickliche empfindung” (momentary sensation), which assigns (“misst zu”) the value and power of a divinity (“den werth und das vermögen einer gottheit”) to the object of that sensation. This would be an object in a broad sense: it could be a thing (“ding”), one’s own state (“zustand, in dem wir uns befinden”), or even just being on the receiving end of a force working upon us (“kraftwirkung, die uns überrascht”). The corresponding statement by Cassirer, as we have seen, lists the same three flavors: “the object before him, or his own personal condition, or some display of power that surprises him” each of which is “invest[ed] with an air of holiness” by “spontaneous feeling” (which corresponds to the “augenblickliche empfindung”).

Unfortunately, the following sentence of Usener’s then uses the passive voice, which allows him to skip telling us what process is going on — the thing simply “gets deified” (“wird vergöttlicht”), and we’re none the wiser by whom or what. So we really only have the subject of the first sentence: the “augenblickliche empfindung” (or Cassirer’s “spontaneous feeling”).

Now, as we have already seen, if it is an “empfindung” which is operative here, we should likely take this to be something in addition to the basic episode of perception that is going on. It seems to be a feeling, perhaps an emotion, which accompanies seeing that thing, being in that psychological state, being subjected to a force transmission. (It is not, in other words, to be understood as the sense impression itself, if we were to put it in somewhat Kantian terms.) This seems to be confirmed later, when Usener discusses examples from Greek antiquity, and assigns similar activity to a religious sensitivity (“religiöse empfindung”), which again appears to be responsible for the process of creating a momentary god:

Bei den tragikern und späteren schriftstellern begegnet man zuweilen wendungen, welche eine fähigkeit und beweglichkeit der religiösen empfindung, unter dem eindruck des augenblicks neue götter zu schaffen, verrathen, welche mit den festen körperlichen gebilden der griechischen mythologie in unvereinbarem widerspruch zu stehn scheint. (290) […]

 

In folge dieser beweglichkeit und reizbarkeit der religiösen empfindung kann ein beliebiger begriff, ein beliebiger gegenstand, der für den augenblick alle gedanken beherrscht, ohne weiteres zu göttlichem rang erhoben werden: verstand und vernunft, reichthum, der zufall, der entscheidende augenblick, der wein, die freuden des mahls, der körper eines geliebten wesens. (291)

Once more, unfortunately, the text conveniently drifts into the passive voice and doesn’t clarify who elevates an arbitrary thing (“beliebiger gegenstand”) to divine status (“zu göttlichem rang erhoben werden”). But it seems at least strongly implied that it is “religiöse empfindung” again, whose versatility and sensitivity (“beweglichkeit und reizbarkeit”) enables that broad arbitrariness.

We may tentatively note, then, that for Usener there is a special religious sensibility, presumably a characteristic of the human psychological makeup, which spontaneously strikes in the middle of ordinary episodes of action or perception, and supplies a strong emotional quality to them, which situation triggers in the person who undergoes it the positing of a new deity — a deity which governs just that particular situation.

(We may think of something along the lines of Otto’s feeling of the numinous; although that was conceived as attaching to situations substantially more rarified than the everyday sort Usener and Cassirer talk about. Still, Otto’s discussion of “Earliest Manifestations”, ch. XV of The Idea of the Holy at 121ff. has at least a few points of contact.)

Usener doesn’t provide any further explanation of such a psychological faculty, but it re-appears frequently throughout his exposition of the many examples he gives for the formation of “momentary god” concepts. He does stick more or less consistently to his terminology, however: it is generally “empfindung” (typically determined as “religiös”, only occasionally differently). So does Cassirer in his summary: he also consistently uses “Empfindung”. If it appears otherwise, that’s because of a bad translation. The English text (the Langer translation) renders that same word in various, seemingly arbitrarily ways — even on a single page (18); thus:

    • “augenblickliche Empfindung” becomes “spontaneous feeling”
    • “religiöse Empfindung” becomes “religious sentiment”
    • “gesteigerte Empfindung”, becomes “religious consciousness”
    • “subjektive Empfindung” becomes “subjective emotions” (sic plur.!)

And worse: the sloppiness of the translation does not merely obscure a consistent use of terminology (“Empfindung”) behind much vaguer synonyms (“feeling”, “sentiment”, “emotion”), it even introduces a positively misleading conflation between “Empfindung” and “Bewußtsein” (“consciousness”), which Cassirer definitely wanted to keep apart. Compare this later passage:

If the “momentary god” is the first actual form originated by the creative, mythico-religious consciousness [orig. “Bewußtsein”], this actuality is grounded, none the less, in the general potency of mythico-religious feeling [orig. “Empfindung”]. (Language & Myth, 71-72)

Consciousness, here, is a term that comprises much more than just a particular person’s being affected by a religious feeling — that would be the “Empfindung” —: it’s something more complex, itself responsible for the creation of the form (that is, the name that is given the “momentary god” and, at the same time, the deity itself). It is said to be grounded in the “potency” of the “Empfindung”; but it’s clearly not designating the same thing.

All occurrences of “Empfindung” in Cassirer’s essay come either from direct quotes or from summarizing Usener’s work; it’s unlikely that he wanted to embrace that terminology himself. Instead, Cassirer constantly refers to mythical or religious “consciousness”, which was of course very much his own term.

3. In summary, then, there seem to be three main ingredients that lead to the creation of a momentary god — that is, to the positing of an entity (deity) and the invention of a name for it. These are, first, a particular experiential episode, that is, any old garden-variety scenario of a subject in the world (but with emphasis on its particularity); second, an affective quality; and third, the operation of religious imagination (or, as Cassirer calls it, mythico-religious fantasy).

“momentary gods” […] are born from the need or the specific feeling of a critical moment [aus der Not des Augenblicks oder aus einem ganz bestimmten momentanen Affekt geboren], sprung from the excitation of mythico-religious fantasy, and still bearing the mark of all its pristine volatility and freedom. (Cassirer, Language & Myth, 62)

It seems necessary that the second and third element work together; it’s not entirely clear whether a momentary god is only produced if they do so. (That is, it’s not entirely clear if there can be situations where i) there is a specific momentary affect of the requisite kind, but ii) the religious imagination remains inert or fails to produce an idea of a deity — in which case, no momentary god appears and consequently no new name for it is generated. But it’s possible that the requisite affect is so conceived that the religious sensitivity reliably brings about an idea, that they, so to speak, are necessarily connected at the hip — in which case there would always be a new momentary god when the requisite affective state arises.)

By Leif Frenzel

Leif Frenzel is a writer and independent researcher. He has a background in philosophy, literature, music, and information technology. His recent interest is Jungian psychology, especially synchronicities and the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious.

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