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The Essence of Christianity
Did God create man? Or did man create God? Famed German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach explores the answer in this, his most influential work, published in German in 1841 and translated by celebrated English novelist George Eliot. Using Biblical references, dialectics, and ideas from some of the world's greatest thinkers, he confronts believers with his cogent explanation.
Approaching religion from a humanistic perspective, Feuerbach explores the idea that divinity is an outward projection of our idealistic human nature. Asserting that nothing is higher than the perfection found in mankind, he proposes that a Supreme Being was created by man seeking comfort and relief from a hostile world, challenging tenets of Christianity from creation and the resurrection to faith and miracles. Feuerbach's critique of Hegelian idealism excited immediate international attention — influencing Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Engels in particular. Thought-provoking and utterly compelling, this historically significant polemic is must reading for lifelong students of religion and philosophy.
Reprint of the Trübner, London, 1881 edition.
Approaching religion from a humanistic perspective, Feuerbach explores the idea that divinity is an outward projection of our idealistic human nature. Asserting that nothing is higher than the perfection found in mankind, he proposes that a Supreme Being was created by man seeking comfort and relief from a hostile world, challenging tenets of Christianity from creation and the resurrection to faith and miracles. Feuerbach's critique of Hegelian idealism excited immediate international attention — influencing Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Engels in particular. Thought-provoking and utterly compelling, this historically significant polemic is must reading for lifelong students of religion and philosophy.
Reprint of the Trübner, London, 1881 edition.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1841
270 people are currently reading
4432 people want to read
About the author
Ludwig Feuerbach
392 books246 followersLudwig Andreas von Feuerbach (July 28, 1804 – September 13, 1872) was a German philosopher and anthropologist best known for his book The Essence of Christianity, which provided a critique of Christianity which strongly influenced generations of later thinkers, including both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Feuerbach was the fourth son of the eminent jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, brother of mathematician Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach and uncle of painter Anselm Feuerbach. An associate of Left Hegelian circles, Feuerbach advocated liberalism, atheism and materialism. Many of his philosophical writings offered a critical analysis of religion. His thought was influential in the development of dialectical materialism, where he is often recognized as a bridge between Hegel and Marx.
Feuerbach is best known for his criticism of Idealism and religion, especially Christianity, written in the early forties. He believed that any progress in human culture and civilization required the repudiation of both. His later writings were concerned with developing a materialistic humanism and an ethics of human solidarity. With the recent publication of a new critical edition of his works, a new generation of scholars have argued that his mature views are philosophically interesting in their own right.
His most important work, Das Wesen des Christentums (1841), was translated by George Eliot into English as The Essence of Christianity.
More: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lud...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
https://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/feu...
http://www.nndb.com/people/964/000094...
http://www.egs.edu/library/ludwig-feu...
http://www.amazon.com/Ludwig-Feuerbac...
Feuerbach was the fourth son of the eminent jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, brother of mathematician Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach and uncle of painter Anselm Feuerbach. An associate of Left Hegelian circles, Feuerbach advocated liberalism, atheism and materialism. Many of his philosophical writings offered a critical analysis of religion. His thought was influential in the development of dialectical materialism, where he is often recognized as a bridge between Hegel and Marx.
Feuerbach is best known for his criticism of Idealism and religion, especially Christianity, written in the early forties. He believed that any progress in human culture and civilization required the repudiation of both. His later writings were concerned with developing a materialistic humanism and an ethics of human solidarity. With the recent publication of a new critical edition of his works, a new generation of scholars have argued that his mature views are philosophically interesting in their own right.
His most important work, Das Wesen des Christentums (1841), was translated by George Eliot into English as The Essence of Christianity.
More: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lud...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
https://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/bce/feu...
http://www.nndb.com/people/964/000094...
http://www.egs.edu/library/ludwig-feu...
http://www.amazon.com/Ludwig-Feuerbac...
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January 21, 2012
Another in the surprisingly large group of books, 'things that, although incomprehensible to people who don't understand Hegel, are read with great relish by people who don't understand Hegel because they can be used to re-affirm preexisting prejudices' (see also Marx, Kojeve, all the 'end of history' types, various aesthetic theories, etc etc).
Feuerbach's argument is, roughly, that Christianity is exactly what Hegel said it is, except that 'Geist' is the human species (which is probably what Hegel meant, too). He's far more intelligent and well read than any contemporary atheistical controversialist, and his argument is far better, inasmuch as he doesn't want to destroy religion; he just wants everyone to understand it properly. If we understand it properly, he says, we'll recognize that all the attributes of God (goodness, creativity, intelligence etc) are actually attributes of the human species as a whole, even though individuals quite often lack those attributes. Christianity is the 'highest' religion, since Christ is a really good, backdoor way of admitting that divine attributes are really human: Christ = the human species. In short, for Feuerbach Christianity is pretty much right, provided that you focus on the predicates of religious statements ('God is good,' 'God is love,' etc...) and not their subject. The predicates are 'true,' the subject is imaginary.
That's a great argument. This book, though, is tiresome for a twenty-first century reader: you really only need the opening chapters (and a good knowledge of the Ph. of Geist and Science of Logic) to get the point. Much of the rest is elaboration. The whole second part is a tour de force, in which Ludwig shows how his view of religion can explain various theological controversies: can we prove the existence of God? What is the status of revelation vs reason? What kind of thing is God, if he is a thing? What is the status of philosophical theology? How can we put the Trinity into words? What happens during baptism/eucharist? Why do Christians, who profess the gospel of love, hate so many people? None of this is at all interesting, inasmuch as his explanations are pretty mediocre, and many of the issues are dead.
It does show, though, that he knows something about the religion he's writing about (cf: Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris etc...) Ludwig's also much better at being a person than those writers. He doesn't use his attack on religion to drag humanity down; he doesn't want to say we're just animals or we're just matter or any such thing. He wants to say we're a part of nature, but that that means we have to understand nature much more widely than we usually do. Human activities, social activities, etc., are all 'natural,' on the right definition of nature. On the definition of nature most people operate under, though, they're supernatural: they can't be explained by natural science. This is not, for Ludwig, a reason to declare them non-existent or aberrant. It's a reason to re-examine religion, *and* the limits of empiricist thought.
Feuerbach's argument is, roughly, that Christianity is exactly what Hegel said it is, except that 'Geist' is the human species (which is probably what Hegel meant, too). He's far more intelligent and well read than any contemporary atheistical controversialist, and his argument is far better, inasmuch as he doesn't want to destroy religion; he just wants everyone to understand it properly. If we understand it properly, he says, we'll recognize that all the attributes of God (goodness, creativity, intelligence etc) are actually attributes of the human species as a whole, even though individuals quite often lack those attributes. Christianity is the 'highest' religion, since Christ is a really good, backdoor way of admitting that divine attributes are really human: Christ = the human species. In short, for Feuerbach Christianity is pretty much right, provided that you focus on the predicates of religious statements ('God is good,' 'God is love,' etc...) and not their subject. The predicates are 'true,' the subject is imaginary.
That's a great argument. This book, though, is tiresome for a twenty-first century reader: you really only need the opening chapters (and a good knowledge of the Ph. of Geist and Science of Logic) to get the point. Much of the rest is elaboration. The whole second part is a tour de force, in which Ludwig shows how his view of religion can explain various theological controversies: can we prove the existence of God? What is the status of revelation vs reason? What kind of thing is God, if he is a thing? What is the status of philosophical theology? How can we put the Trinity into words? What happens during baptism/eucharist? Why do Christians, who profess the gospel of love, hate so many people? None of this is at all interesting, inasmuch as his explanations are pretty mediocre, and many of the issues are dead.
It does show, though, that he knows something about the religion he's writing about (cf: Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris etc...) Ludwig's also much better at being a person than those writers. He doesn't use his attack on religion to drag humanity down; he doesn't want to say we're just animals or we're just matter or any such thing. He wants to say we're a part of nature, but that that means we have to understand nature much more widely than we usually do. Human activities, social activities, etc., are all 'natural,' on the right definition of nature. On the definition of nature most people operate under, though, they're supernatural: they can't be explained by natural science. This is not, for Ludwig, a reason to declare them non-existent or aberrant. It's a reason to re-examine religion, *and* the limits of empiricist thought.
May 30, 2019
Hegel is easy to understand once you realize that he would agree with Peter O’Toole’s character from the 1972 movie The Ruling Class when his character is asked: ‘How do you know you're God?’, and he responds: ‘Simple. When I pray to Him, I find I am talking to myself’. Yes, there is a God but he is always and only within us and created by us and for us. That is how Hegel resolves his immanent critic between stoicism and skepticism with the aid of his dialectic of idealism and resolves it with the unhappy consciousness also known as Christianity while knowing that it is an illusion (not everyone thinks of Hegel in those terms, of course, see “Hegel’s Idea of Philosophy” by the Jesuit brother Lauer for someone who thinks Hegel believed in God, conversely listen to the Bernstein tapes on ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’ for how I knew about that quote from that movie). Feuerbach knows exactly what and where God is in this devastatingly effective critique while considering the anthropology of religion and its theology, and this book is just as relevant to today as it was in 1842. People create God for people, and our self-feelings for nature become God because of our essence in being human at least Feuerbach will assert persuasively in this book.
Feuerbach understands Freud better than Freud will 80 years later. We process our world with our senses and create our emotions and then project our feelings on to ourselves from what we believe is the essence of nature outside of us. We get this sense of the self, the ego, and relate that to how we see our own selves in relation to the other and nature as a whole and make our projections part of us. (There’s a lot of Schopenhauer within Feuerbach and though Freud claimed he didn’t read Schopenhauer until after he developed his psychoanalysis one can see there is a lot of overlap between Schopenhauer, Freud and Feuerbach).
Perhaps, as cited in this book, the difference between humans and the brute is that humans have created a religion and brutes have not. The author will further elaborate and say that we have a consciousness beyond the experience and we as individuals see beyond ourselves and understand ourselves as part of a species. The author quoted St. Aquinas frequently but never mentioned St. Bonaventure. I found that odd. Because, a big difference between Aquinas and Bonaventure is that Aquinas would think each angel is of a species and Bonaventure would think each angel is sui generis (one of a kind). This is relevant to when Feuerbach gives humans the desire to create beyond ourselves and create dogmatic religions based on faith contradictory to reason and absent of understanding, because we know that we are more than just individuals and we know that we are part of humanity (a species).
I think the prologue was one of the best I’ve ever read. I read it twice. Oddly, if one were to skip the prologue and omit about 10 or so other paragraphs from this book, one would conclude that this was one of the greatest pro-religious books ever written. Though, the prologue and the book as a whole with those 10 or so other paragraphs destroys religion and theology better than any modern book I’ve seen by the way he presents his arguments. Of the standard arguments for God and Christianity (or any theistic religion) such as ontological, objective morality, life having no meaning, all the standard incoherent proofs are systematically picked apart with the only one not considered being the ‘argument by design’ after all this book was written before ‘Origin of Species’, and design by itself only shows a designer, a designer that might be no more interesting than Bob the super computer of All who has no feelings and no interest beyond computing for the sake of computing and is not deserving of worship or my consideration.
Christianity alienates the individual from themselves by outsourcing our true nature to the infinite, Feuerbach will say that in this book and 50 years later Nietzsche will say it too (I can’t help but think Nietzsche was influenced by this book. Clearly, Marx was too). The historical development from the Pagan (heathen), to the Jew and then to the Christian is laid out with the framework Feuerbach wants to show. The author gives the reason for the Devil, who only cares about his self, and for a more traditional God who cares about his creatures and is a reflection of ourselves and gets perverted by the lens of Luther (and Augustine), all of that is in this book and more. The Trinity and why it makes sense from a subjective perspective (that’s why I mentioned St. Bonaventure above. The author really seemed to be following Bonaventure line of reasoning regarding the Trinity, because the author didn’t want an easy misleading straw man to demolish. He wanted the best that was available).
The principles of Kant and Hegel are bantered about in this book. But, by no means would I say that this book is a difficult read. I would say it is an important book and somewhat easily digestible. It influenced others for sure. But, even with that aside, this book is an important and powerful book in its own right. It’s freely available online and I would suggest the prologue as mandatory because a careful reading of that would make any one a tiny bit wiser. I only wish modern day writers would assume that their readers really want to know and want to be awoken from their dogmatic slumber!
Feuerbach understands Freud better than Freud will 80 years later. We process our world with our senses and create our emotions and then project our feelings on to ourselves from what we believe is the essence of nature outside of us. We get this sense of the self, the ego, and relate that to how we see our own selves in relation to the other and nature as a whole and make our projections part of us. (There’s a lot of Schopenhauer within Feuerbach and though Freud claimed he didn’t read Schopenhauer until after he developed his psychoanalysis one can see there is a lot of overlap between Schopenhauer, Freud and Feuerbach).
Perhaps, as cited in this book, the difference between humans and the brute is that humans have created a religion and brutes have not. The author will further elaborate and say that we have a consciousness beyond the experience and we as individuals see beyond ourselves and understand ourselves as part of a species. The author quoted St. Aquinas frequently but never mentioned St. Bonaventure. I found that odd. Because, a big difference between Aquinas and Bonaventure is that Aquinas would think each angel is of a species and Bonaventure would think each angel is sui generis (one of a kind). This is relevant to when Feuerbach gives humans the desire to create beyond ourselves and create dogmatic religions based on faith contradictory to reason and absent of understanding, because we know that we are more than just individuals and we know that we are part of humanity (a species).
I think the prologue was one of the best I’ve ever read. I read it twice. Oddly, if one were to skip the prologue and omit about 10 or so other paragraphs from this book, one would conclude that this was one of the greatest pro-religious books ever written. Though, the prologue and the book as a whole with those 10 or so other paragraphs destroys religion and theology better than any modern book I’ve seen by the way he presents his arguments. Of the standard arguments for God and Christianity (or any theistic religion) such as ontological, objective morality, life having no meaning, all the standard incoherent proofs are systematically picked apart with the only one not considered being the ‘argument by design’ after all this book was written before ‘Origin of Species’, and design by itself only shows a designer, a designer that might be no more interesting than Bob the super computer of All who has no feelings and no interest beyond computing for the sake of computing and is not deserving of worship or my consideration.
Christianity alienates the individual from themselves by outsourcing our true nature to the infinite, Feuerbach will say that in this book and 50 years later Nietzsche will say it too (I can’t help but think Nietzsche was influenced by this book. Clearly, Marx was too). The historical development from the Pagan (heathen), to the Jew and then to the Christian is laid out with the framework Feuerbach wants to show. The author gives the reason for the Devil, who only cares about his self, and for a more traditional God who cares about his creatures and is a reflection of ourselves and gets perverted by the lens of Luther (and Augustine), all of that is in this book and more. The Trinity and why it makes sense from a subjective perspective (that’s why I mentioned St. Bonaventure above. The author really seemed to be following Bonaventure line of reasoning regarding the Trinity, because the author didn’t want an easy misleading straw man to demolish. He wanted the best that was available).
The principles of Kant and Hegel are bantered about in this book. But, by no means would I say that this book is a difficult read. I would say it is an important book and somewhat easily digestible. It influenced others for sure. But, even with that aside, this book is an important and powerful book in its own right. It’s freely available online and I would suggest the prologue as mandatory because a careful reading of that would make any one a tiny bit wiser. I only wish modern day writers would assume that their readers really want to know and want to be awoken from their dogmatic slumber!
June 9, 2007
this book practically changed my life. utter genius. i think feuerbach is one of the most overlooked philosophers ever. his writing is lucid and easy to follow, it's logical and convincing, and he doesn't pander to his audience. he also doesn't say that people who believe in christianity are stupid - rather, he points out why it would be logical to believe in a god, but also why it is more logical that christianity is a falsity.
i try to make everyone i know who i interested in religion read it, which means i should read it again. interestingly, i went to use it for a paper while at columbia, and i had to inter-library loan it - this from the 6th largest collection in the country. (so thank you, brown, for keeping religious dissedents around!)
i try to make everyone i know who i interested in religion read it, which means i should read it again. interestingly, i went to use it for a paper while at columbia, and i had to inter-library loan it - this from the 6th largest collection in the country. (so thank you, brown, for keeping religious dissedents around!)
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November 3, 2023Wusste damals zu wenig für eine Bewertung, war reine Hintergrundlektüre für Kellers Grünen Heinrich.
December 2, 2013
This book is the foundation of modern atheism. There is scarcely any argument used today by atheists against the existence of God that Feuerbach had not already discussed in this masterpiece, first published in 1841. God is an illusion; God is a delusion; God is a projection of mankind's best qualities unto a creator; God is a father-figure meant to protect us from an uncertain and dangerous world. God, in short, does not exist in a material sense. Why is it, then, that most atheists have never heard of Feuerbach, who has an audience of admirers restricted largely to philosophers and theologians?
Two reasons come to mind. Feuerbach was a follower of Georg Hegel, considered one of the greatest philosophers of his time, but whose prose was deemed by many to be incomprehensible. Feuerbach dutifully relies on Hegelian logic, and uses the dialectical method of analysis, which obliges the reader to understand that which is a subject against the predicate, which can be both a negation and completion of the subject. In Part I of the book, you therefore get such sentences as: "Thinking is existence in self; life, as differenced from thought, existence out of self: life is to give from oneself; thought is to take into oneself. Existence out of self is the world; existence in self is God. To think is to be God."
Fortunately, it is not essential to understand exactly what he is saying in Part I to benefit from the book. In Part II, Feuerbach moves away from dialectical analysis and, for the most part, speaks straight-forwardly. It is here you find so much wisdom and insight regarding religion, Christianity, and the concept of God as a projection of mankind's expression of what is best in "the species", i.e. man in general. You have to set down what you read every so often and think about it, but it is worth it, because the more of Feuerbach you read, the less likely it is you will continue to believe in a God at all.
Now as to the second reason of Feuerbach's obscurity, he was an intellectual acquaintance with other Hegelians of his time, and they included Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. Both of these men incorporated Feuerbach's thinking and analysis into their work, and adopted an atheistic outlook. In the context of the Cold War, Feuerbach's name is tainted with Godless Communism, as spawned by Marx and Engels. By the 1950's in the U.S., atheism was tantamount with Communism and therefore utterly un-American.
This political legacy is fortunately fading away, but the denseness of Feuerbach's prose and analysis remains a significant impediment to his being widely read, much less popular. That should not deter you. As others have said here, Feuerbach is one of the great unrecognized philosophers. As more and more people embrace atheism or some form of disbelief in God, Feuerbach's day will come. His brilliant insights and impeccable logic are the basis from which atheism now progresses.
Two reasons come to mind. Feuerbach was a follower of Georg Hegel, considered one of the greatest philosophers of his time, but whose prose was deemed by many to be incomprehensible. Feuerbach dutifully relies on Hegelian logic, and uses the dialectical method of analysis, which obliges the reader to understand that which is a subject against the predicate, which can be both a negation and completion of the subject. In Part I of the book, you therefore get such sentences as: "Thinking is existence in self; life, as differenced from thought, existence out of self: life is to give from oneself; thought is to take into oneself. Existence out of self is the world; existence in self is God. To think is to be God."
Fortunately, it is not essential to understand exactly what he is saying in Part I to benefit from the book. In Part II, Feuerbach moves away from dialectical analysis and, for the most part, speaks straight-forwardly. It is here you find so much wisdom and insight regarding religion, Christianity, and the concept of God as a projection of mankind's expression of what is best in "the species", i.e. man in general. You have to set down what you read every so often and think about it, but it is worth it, because the more of Feuerbach you read, the less likely it is you will continue to believe in a God at all.
Now as to the second reason of Feuerbach's obscurity, he was an intellectual acquaintance with other Hegelians of his time, and they included Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. Both of these men incorporated Feuerbach's thinking and analysis into their work, and adopted an atheistic outlook. In the context of the Cold War, Feuerbach's name is tainted with Godless Communism, as spawned by Marx and Engels. By the 1950's in the U.S., atheism was tantamount with Communism and therefore utterly un-American.
This political legacy is fortunately fading away, but the denseness of Feuerbach's prose and analysis remains a significant impediment to his being widely read, much less popular. That should not deter you. As others have said here, Feuerbach is one of the great unrecognized philosophers. As more and more people embrace atheism or some form of disbelief in God, Feuerbach's day will come. His brilliant insights and impeccable logic are the basis from which atheism now progresses.
November 4, 2024
Marx and Feuerbach were bros. Marx wrote that passing through the fiery brook (a pun on LF's name) was necessary if we want to escape arbitrary limitation and become more free. Unfortunately, he was right. They had different politics, and Marx eventually outran him when he wrote the 11th thesis. We'll get to that eventually.
Feuerbach clearly feels very guilty about his critique of the sacraments. He doesn't need to apologize, he was a bit forceful but it was necessary to clean the Augean stables.
The main significance of Feuerbach's text is its anthropological reduction of theological imagery and symbolism to human social relations. He's notoriously efficient at it. He enables theory to become an object for the world. It's a harsh and painful reality check, but it's extremely important that theory not float free and be brought down to earth. His reductions are occasionally sketchy, but even the sketches are pretty compelling. Pardon the pun.
Feuerbach is what we in the biz call a "contemplative materialist." This is in contradistinction to practical materialism, which is another name for Marxism. What does that mean? Theoretically, he's a materialist. He wants to break all illusions, and it's appropriate. Practically, he's an idealist. This means that he refuses to accept any restriction to his freedom, like any healthy man should.
He's a bit too attached to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. It gets in his way and retards his progress. He is skeptical of Judaism and pantheism; I want to suggest that his approach is compatible with Spinozism, understood correctly. Judaism isn't a denial of divine love and mercy, it's a systematic attempt to host the Alien. It would be cool if Feuerbach wrote a sequel, The Essence of Judaism but then again that's essentially what The Star of Redemption is about.
Feuerbach projects a tough guy persona. I know him better than that. "I can fix him." He's a sensitive, gentle, thoughtful man. It's the best of both worlds: we can be brash and honest when attacking the religious spectacle and tender in our actual social relations.
Feuerbach has noticed that religion makes people stupid and irrational. It causes people to behave suboptimally. We can't resist it alone. We can resist it if as free agents we coordinate together. Feuerbach's anthropological radicalism amounts to the claim that pro-sociality grounds reason.
Feuerbach is scathing about apophatic mysticism. Why is it bad? It produces two catastrophically disastrous tendencies: regressive love of arbitrary authority on the Oedipal model of mommydaddyme and misosomatism. The radical gesture is surprisingly modest: we need not obey any externally posited authority, all legitimate authority is internal to reason. By extension: we need not deify contingent kinship structures; we need not hate our bodies.
Feuerbach makes an important distinction between two kinds of imperatives: despots command through fear; love commands by virtue of being right. This is a core argument that underpins his other claims: we submit too easily to despotism and are too resistant to love.
Feuerbach thinks that culture went off the rails when the luminosity of the Greek ideal was snuffed out by Christianity. It's a bit unfair to call the Middle Ages 'dark,' there was a lot of cool stuff in that period, but Feuerbach is entirely correct that something important was lost. We can approximate the loss by reading the poetry of Hölderlin. The short version is that in the Greek world we weren't forced to hate life. Feuerbach figured out life affirmation before Nietzsche, and his version has a pleasant consequence: we need not sacrifice our minds and thoughts in the furnace of free play. You can play and have thoughts, turns out!
Feuerbach ruthlessly mocks the Christian ideal of chastity. He's pretty funny. There's nothing virtuous about sexlessness. He would not be out of place in a contemporary queer milieu.
Feuerbach demolishes the belief in miracles. It was necessary to burn it down. Miracles trick us into believing that synchronicities are profound. In fact, they are shallow. The power we attribute to miracles is "nothing else than the power of imagination." Imagination is great, and if that is what we are referring to we don't need to call it miraculous. This criticism is novel: miracles had been rejected by Hume and Spinoza since they violated laws of nature but never rejected on the basis of being trivial. Miracles are trivial sublimations of imagination, and are left as an exercise for the reader.
I promised we would return to the eleven theses. That's going to happen now. It's a nice story. Marx was writing The German Ideology and wrote some notes in the margins. They had a Latin title: Ad Feuerbach. Althusser compared this punchy text to flashes of lightning. The bit that is germane for our analysis is thesis X. Let's quote it in full: "The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity." Why does this matter? Sittlichkeit is still limited by contingent and arbitrary customs. Making the jump to social humanity requires realizing that many of these rules can be bent and broken. I would be remiss if I didn't say something about thesis 11, since that's the one everyone's heard of. Feel free to interpret the world as much as you want - if you want anything to improve, you need to get off your ass, stop being passive and change it. The even better news is that Marx already had this insight in '44, but that's a story for another occasion.
Feuerbach clearly feels very guilty about his critique of the sacraments. He doesn't need to apologize, he was a bit forceful but it was necessary to clean the Augean stables.
The main significance of Feuerbach's text is its anthropological reduction of theological imagery and symbolism to human social relations. He's notoriously efficient at it. He enables theory to become an object for the world. It's a harsh and painful reality check, but it's extremely important that theory not float free and be brought down to earth. His reductions are occasionally sketchy, but even the sketches are pretty compelling. Pardon the pun.
Feuerbach is what we in the biz call a "contemplative materialist." This is in contradistinction to practical materialism, which is another name for Marxism. What does that mean? Theoretically, he's a materialist. He wants to break all illusions, and it's appropriate. Practically, he's an idealist. This means that he refuses to accept any restriction to his freedom, like any healthy man should.
He's a bit too attached to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. It gets in his way and retards his progress. He is skeptical of Judaism and pantheism; I want to suggest that his approach is compatible with Spinozism, understood correctly. Judaism isn't a denial of divine love and mercy, it's a systematic attempt to host the Alien. It would be cool if Feuerbach wrote a sequel, The Essence of Judaism but then again that's essentially what The Star of Redemption is about.
Feuerbach projects a tough guy persona. I know him better than that. "I can fix him." He's a sensitive, gentle, thoughtful man. It's the best of both worlds: we can be brash and honest when attacking the religious spectacle and tender in our actual social relations.
Feuerbach has noticed that religion makes people stupid and irrational. It causes people to behave suboptimally. We can't resist it alone. We can resist it if as free agents we coordinate together. Feuerbach's anthropological radicalism amounts to the claim that pro-sociality grounds reason.
Feuerbach is scathing about apophatic mysticism. Why is it bad? It produces two catastrophically disastrous tendencies: regressive love of arbitrary authority on the Oedipal model of mommydaddyme and misosomatism. The radical gesture is surprisingly modest: we need not obey any externally posited authority, all legitimate authority is internal to reason. By extension: we need not deify contingent kinship structures; we need not hate our bodies.
Feuerbach makes an important distinction between two kinds of imperatives: despots command through fear; love commands by virtue of being right. This is a core argument that underpins his other claims: we submit too easily to despotism and are too resistant to love.
Feuerbach thinks that culture went off the rails when the luminosity of the Greek ideal was snuffed out by Christianity. It's a bit unfair to call the Middle Ages 'dark,' there was a lot of cool stuff in that period, but Feuerbach is entirely correct that something important was lost. We can approximate the loss by reading the poetry of Hölderlin. The short version is that in the Greek world we weren't forced to hate life. Feuerbach figured out life affirmation before Nietzsche, and his version has a pleasant consequence: we need not sacrifice our minds and thoughts in the furnace of free play. You can play and have thoughts, turns out!
Feuerbach ruthlessly mocks the Christian ideal of chastity. He's pretty funny. There's nothing virtuous about sexlessness. He would not be out of place in a contemporary queer milieu.
Feuerbach demolishes the belief in miracles. It was necessary to burn it down. Miracles trick us into believing that synchronicities are profound. In fact, they are shallow. The power we attribute to miracles is "nothing else than the power of imagination." Imagination is great, and if that is what we are referring to we don't need to call it miraculous. This criticism is novel: miracles had been rejected by Hume and Spinoza since they violated laws of nature but never rejected on the basis of being trivial. Miracles are trivial sublimations of imagination, and are left as an exercise for the reader.
I promised we would return to the eleven theses. That's going to happen now. It's a nice story. Marx was writing The German Ideology and wrote some notes in the margins. They had a Latin title: Ad Feuerbach. Althusser compared this punchy text to flashes of lightning. The bit that is germane for our analysis is thesis X. Let's quote it in full: "The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity." Why does this matter? Sittlichkeit is still limited by contingent and arbitrary customs. Making the jump to social humanity requires realizing that many of these rules can be bent and broken. I would be remiss if I didn't say something about thesis 11, since that's the one everyone's heard of. Feel free to interpret the world as much as you want - if you want anything to improve, you need to get off your ass, stop being passive and change it. The even better news is that Marx already had this insight in '44, but that's a story for another occasion.
February 10, 2017
I read this because I'm trying to get a better grasp of Hegelian thought in general, and also on the historical lineage of Marxism. I don't know how much this is going to help me in that mission so far. I think I need to read Marx's writings on Feuerbach, and the Stirner-Feuerbach exchanges to get a better grasp of how this fits into that whole story. Although there are some obvious points of contact. Religion as an attempted but primitive grasping at some ideal. The human race as "spirit." Etc.
But anyway what I didn't expect was to read a mildly fedora-ey secular humanist sort of rant. This is like the epitome of "atheist Christianity," or "post-Protestantism" or whatever you want to call it. An enshrining of Christian values and principles while rejecting all the core Christian theological dogmas. Stirner points out how silly this is in one of his responses, and I hope Marx does the same.
Pretty much all modern "liberal" critiques of Christianity, and religion are found in here. Christianity is seen as something which is empirically wrong, but which is probing at true facts about human psychology and morality. It isn't seen as backwards or fundamentally wrong as a Nietzsche or Rand or even Hitchens would say. It just sees it as an imperfect expression of the truth.
As much as I disagree with that stance, this is a really eloquent expression of it. It also represents a good way of examining any given religion as an atheist, at least initially. I.e. to adopt a charitable stance towards it and try to figure out what real reference points the fantastical theological concepts refer to or derive from. In large part I think that Feuerbach's speculations on this point are close to the truth. For instance with reference to the trinity as a division of the 3 essential components of man's consciousness. But sometimes he makes more questionable speculations, like that baptism is mainly derivative of a reverence for water. This sort of speculative approach is common in anthropology now, but maybe it was novel at the time.
Anyway one can see why Christians would dislike this and review it poorly.
But anyway what I didn't expect was to read a mildly fedora-ey secular humanist sort of rant. This is like the epitome of "atheist Christianity," or "post-Protestantism" or whatever you want to call it. An enshrining of Christian values and principles while rejecting all the core Christian theological dogmas. Stirner points out how silly this is in one of his responses, and I hope Marx does the same.
Pretty much all modern "liberal" critiques of Christianity, and religion are found in here. Christianity is seen as something which is empirically wrong, but which is probing at true facts about human psychology and morality. It isn't seen as backwards or fundamentally wrong as a Nietzsche or Rand or even Hitchens would say. It just sees it as an imperfect expression of the truth.
As much as I disagree with that stance, this is a really eloquent expression of it. It also represents a good way of examining any given religion as an atheist, at least initially. I.e. to adopt a charitable stance towards it and try to figure out what real reference points the fantastical theological concepts refer to or derive from. In large part I think that Feuerbach's speculations on this point are close to the truth. For instance with reference to the trinity as a division of the 3 essential components of man's consciousness. But sometimes he makes more questionable speculations, like that baptism is mainly derivative of a reverence for water. This sort of speculative approach is common in anthropology now, but maybe it was novel at the time.
Anyway one can see why Christians would dislike this and review it poorly.
August 7, 2022
Man created God: here's what the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach affirms, in this classic, first published in 1841!
God? A product of our imagination; an 'Ideal', made up from everything we value as being admirable, besides being devoid of our own weaknesses.
This view is striking, not least because it's about making mankind the heart of religion: Man, aware of himself and of his own shortcomings, projecting himself into an abstract image, as if in a mirror but a mirror that reflects back only perfection. We are mortals? God is immortal! We depend upon nature? God controls it, even, better, created it! We have limited knowledge and abilities? God knows all and can everything! In other words, God's features are not divine because God possesses them, but, on the contrary, it's because such features are, first and foremost, 'divine' (akin to perfection) that *we* attributed them to God.
The interpretation is remarkable. First, because it helps explaining the attributes of other Gods, in other myths and religions. Feuerbach, in fact, also applies it to Norse and Greek mythologies. Then, because it gives a new meaning to Creation and faith, and from the place and importance of Jesus to the relevance of the sacraments; all new meanings that the philosopher explores in short chapters, as punchy as they are polemical.
Here's a powerful insight, then, that every atheist, of course, ought to read. But not only... As it will influence from Marx and Engels to, even, Freud, here's a key train of thought that everyone interested in philosophy in general might want to discover. Very, very interesting.
God? A product of our imagination; an 'Ideal', made up from everything we value as being admirable, besides being devoid of our own weaknesses.
This view is striking, not least because it's about making mankind the heart of religion: Man, aware of himself and of his own shortcomings, projecting himself into an abstract image, as if in a mirror but a mirror that reflects back only perfection. We are mortals? God is immortal! We depend upon nature? God controls it, even, better, created it! We have limited knowledge and abilities? God knows all and can everything! In other words, God's features are not divine because God possesses them, but, on the contrary, it's because such features are, first and foremost, 'divine' (akin to perfection) that *we* attributed them to God.
The interpretation is remarkable. First, because it helps explaining the attributes of other Gods, in other myths and religions. Feuerbach, in fact, also applies it to Norse and Greek mythologies. Then, because it gives a new meaning to Creation and faith, and from the place and importance of Jesus to the relevance of the sacraments; all new meanings that the philosopher explores in short chapters, as punchy as they are polemical.
Here's a powerful insight, then, that every atheist, of course, ought to read. But not only... As it will influence from Marx and Engels to, even, Freud, here's a key train of thought that everyone interested in philosophy in general might want to discover. Very, very interesting.
November 17, 2013
Nineteenth century philosopher hero who came out against hierarchies, and particularly religious hierarchies, and laid the ground for later radical thinkers such as Marx. He saw religion in distinctly anthropological terms with God and religion being our anthropomorphic projections rather than having an existence outside our imagination. He can be excoriating at points, but you also sense an understanding and sympathy for the human condition, however misguided.
It’s translated by Mary Anne Evans, but it couldn’t be described as an easy read. However it could be very usefully read in conjunction with M.R. James (brother of Henry) The Varieties of Religious Experience which adopts an observational/psychological view. Both these books offer a rather different approach to belief and disbelief, compared to the new atheists of our own time.
It’s translated by Mary Anne Evans, but it couldn’t be described as an easy read. However it could be very usefully read in conjunction with M.R. James (brother of Henry) The Varieties of Religious Experience which adopts an observational/psychological view. Both these books offer a rather different approach to belief and disbelief, compared to the new atheists of our own time.
March 13, 2013
One of the transition points between Hegel and Marx. Feuerbach's anti-religious strategy is to propose an "anthropological" account of religion as representing a community's idealised notion of individual human nature, whilst repudiating the theoretical excresences of christian theology. It's an argument for atheism that doesn't deny any positive aspects for religion, but rather tries to separate those from its doctrines.
December 24, 2020
One of the more difficult books I've ever read, but filled with great ideas. Basically Feuerbach says that Christianity (love of Christ) should really be about love of man, and this is simply because Christ sacrificed himself becasue of this love for man. Consequently, if we don't love and care for our fellow men, we are letting Jesus' sacrifice go to waste. More basically, he says that our version of God is really the divine virtues in ourselves, so religion is nothing more than self-worship (but not in a bad way).
@pointblaek
@pointblaek
April 4, 2019
From theology graduate to atheist, I'm seeing this model a lot even these days, the spark might be caused by the impossibility of finding internal answers or peace in dogma, then Feuerbach starts describing the world from finite to infinite, turning his back to Hegel's ideology. For me at least, materialism scenario tends to be really close to nihilism, anyway you all should give it a read and build your own conclusions.
November 22, 2021
I doubt if any other atheist has written such an appreciative, almost approving, book about Christianity. He finds the Christian religion an entirely human-made creation, a satisfying imaginative effort. Appreciative or not, he departs from conventional Christianity in denying any ultimate reality, independent of humanity, that Christians would call “God.”
As for the “essence” of Christianity: “To live in images or symbols is the essence of religion. Religion sacrifices the thing itself to the image. The future life is present in the mirror of the imagination: the enrapturing image is in the sense of religion the true type of earthly life – real life only a glimmer of that ideal, imaginary life. . .”
This sounds like a Platonic notion, that our waking daily life only takes on meaning when it is seen as a reflection of human imagination. It differs from Plato, though, and from Christian orthodoxy, in that this other reality is created by humans, however much Christianity insists on transcendence.
Fuerbach works through the various tenets of Christianity, explaining in often dense detail, his notion of each as it relates to the imagination. Self-conscious knowledge of God, as an example of ultimate reality, is at the heart self-knowledge. God is a person’s inward nature, “the solemn unveiling of a man’s hidden treasures, the revelation of his intimate thoughts, the open confession of his love-secrets,”
Essential to the notion of “God” is the bond of love, the joining of the perfect and the imperfect. It is nature idealized, what he calls “esprit”, and when applied to humans, it unites individuals. Without the bond of love, humans are separated and divided as they are not using their imaginative powers.
What about Christ, without whom there would be no Christianity? For Fuerbach an incarnate God-man is again a creation of the imaginative mind. God becoming a man was preceded by man becoming a god. Man was already a god, even before God showed himself as a human being. He uses the analogy of a good king who doesn’t really have the welfare of his people at heart if he sits on a distant throne. He has to descend from his throne to get to know his people, and to make them happy by his presence.
The crucifixion is a mystery of feeling and sensibility. If God is a truly feeling being, then he has to FEEL, and the ultimate feeling is to suffer, as all humans do during their lifetimes.
A good portion of the book concentrates on what Fuerbach calls the “false” essence of religion. Christianity in particular is concerned with practical consequences of religion and the author thinks it has added a kind of an appendix of salvation, of rewards and punishments, leading to the notions of heaven and hell.
Whatever Fuerbach discusses returns to his key notion that the Christian religion is an imaginative enterprise, and whether you agree with him or not, it’s an interesting, even imaginative, enterprise to follow his thinking.
As for the “essence” of Christianity: “To live in images or symbols is the essence of religion. Religion sacrifices the thing itself to the image. The future life is present in the mirror of the imagination: the enrapturing image is in the sense of religion the true type of earthly life – real life only a glimmer of that ideal, imaginary life. . .”
This sounds like a Platonic notion, that our waking daily life only takes on meaning when it is seen as a reflection of human imagination. It differs from Plato, though, and from Christian orthodoxy, in that this other reality is created by humans, however much Christianity insists on transcendence.
Fuerbach works through the various tenets of Christianity, explaining in often dense detail, his notion of each as it relates to the imagination. Self-conscious knowledge of God, as an example of ultimate reality, is at the heart self-knowledge. God is a person’s inward nature, “the solemn unveiling of a man’s hidden treasures, the revelation of his intimate thoughts, the open confession of his love-secrets,”
Essential to the notion of “God” is the bond of love, the joining of the perfect and the imperfect. It is nature idealized, what he calls “esprit”, and when applied to humans, it unites individuals. Without the bond of love, humans are separated and divided as they are not using their imaginative powers.
What about Christ, without whom there would be no Christianity? For Fuerbach an incarnate God-man is again a creation of the imaginative mind. God becoming a man was preceded by man becoming a god. Man was already a god, even before God showed himself as a human being. He uses the analogy of a good king who doesn’t really have the welfare of his people at heart if he sits on a distant throne. He has to descend from his throne to get to know his people, and to make them happy by his presence.
The crucifixion is a mystery of feeling and sensibility. If God is a truly feeling being, then he has to FEEL, and the ultimate feeling is to suffer, as all humans do during their lifetimes.
A good portion of the book concentrates on what Fuerbach calls the “false” essence of religion. Christianity in particular is concerned with practical consequences of religion and the author thinks it has added a kind of an appendix of salvation, of rewards and punishments, leading to the notions of heaven and hell.
Whatever Fuerbach discusses returns to his key notion that the Christian religion is an imaginative enterprise, and whether you agree with him or not, it’s an interesting, even imaginative, enterprise to follow his thinking.
August 12, 2018
A sharp criticism of both Christianity (could be extended to the concept of religion in general) and philosophical idealism. I found some claims contradictory with this squib addressed to how Christian’s rationale (hosted by the Bible in both Old and New Testament) of God is not accurate. For Feuerbach, God is conceiving the pure reason. He makes clear how ‘of God as God no image can be made’, the same claim he defends while regarding God as a pure reason, as pure understanding. Pure understanding, and pure reason as an act of thinking of separating oneself from the essence of God (pure reason) is itself prone to dimensions of time and space. I think God as a concept is not prone to these dimensions. He created tie and space. God is all beyond that, there’s none like God, nothing comparable to God, and nothing as image can be shaped to the concept of God.
The morale of the story in this book, as previous readings of Feuerbach show, is the focus or descending with it from God towards humans. ‘Men instead of God’. Christianity’s teachings had been heading the wrong way, and still even today, especially how ‘consciousness’ is represented in the religion. The starting point for him is ‘man’ not ‘God’, towards an existential version of religion.
The morale of the story in this book, as previous readings of Feuerbach show, is the focus or descending with it from God towards humans. ‘Men instead of God’. Christianity’s teachings had been heading the wrong way, and still even today, especially how ‘consciousness’ is represented in the religion. The starting point for him is ‘man’ not ‘God’, towards an existential version of religion.
February 9, 2019
A tour de force of humanist thinking.
"Not the predicate of the divinity but the divinity of the predicate"
Basically, Feuerach insists that we reduce theology to anthropology (bringing the transcendent down to earth) because that's what it essentially is anyway without itself being aware of it.
Feuerbach's critique that Christianity immediately and in a vulgar manner enacts an immediate unity between the individual and the species without making a distinction between the two is hardhitting and really worth pondering over.
His application of man's essential self alienation to various theological dogmas is quite provocative and convincing even.
I also really liked the bits where he goes after the mystical speculative philosophers like Schelling, perhaps justifiably or unjustifiably, for reinscribing darkness (nature) within Godhead itself, so that the latter becomes inherently split into a duality. For Feuerbach, this is a botched reinscription, since God is already Personality from whose grace and arbitrary will springs forth the impersonal nature.
My only qualm is that he cites Luther an awful lot.
"Not the predicate of the divinity but the divinity of the predicate"
Basically, Feuerach insists that we reduce theology to anthropology (bringing the transcendent down to earth) because that's what it essentially is anyway without itself being aware of it.
Feuerbach's critique that Christianity immediately and in a vulgar manner enacts an immediate unity between the individual and the species without making a distinction between the two is hardhitting and really worth pondering over.
His application of man's essential self alienation to various theological dogmas is quite provocative and convincing even.
I also really liked the bits where he goes after the mystical speculative philosophers like Schelling, perhaps justifiably or unjustifiably, for reinscribing darkness (nature) within Godhead itself, so that the latter becomes inherently split into a duality. For Feuerbach, this is a botched reinscription, since God is already Personality from whose grace and arbitrary will springs forth the impersonal nature.
My only qualm is that he cites Luther an awful lot.
October 14, 2023
"Man cannot get beyond his true nature. He may indeed by means of the imagination conceive individuals of another so-called higher kind, but he can never get loose from his species, his nature; the conditions of being, the positive final predicates which he gives to these other individuals, are always determinations or qualities drawn from his own nature – qualities in which he in truth only images and projects himself."
Life changing. Probably the best work of philosophy I've read. Despite being an argument against religion, it deeply respects the religious man. Main premise is that we can ascribe the qualities of God to ourselves if we will it.
Life changing. Probably the best work of philosophy I've read. Despite being an argument against religion, it deeply respects the religious man. Main premise is that we can ascribe the qualities of God to ourselves if we will it.
October 27, 2024
Feuerbach my G I would have gone to ALL of your lectures :(
September 19, 2020
On the view that you can evaluate ideas by the strength of their critics Feuerbach is something of a service to Christianity. You could say he’s the kind of critic Christianity deserves. Not perfect. But quite interesting. This is a far cry from a kind of soundbite, “Religion LOL” kind of stone-casting. Feuerbach gives Christianity a serious analysis and, I think, even contributes some interesting theological interpretations of it. Reminds me of Rapoport’s rules, one of which is that “You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, ‘Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.'” And as I Christian I did say that while reading Feuerbach. I definitely had some disagreements, especially with the general atheistic conclusion. But some of his interpretations of Christianity I thought were quite insightful and things I want to appropriate into my own theology.
The cliff notes version of Feuerbach is man projects his own attributes into an external being called God. In the Hegelian terms, which Feuerbach is still swimming in of course, this is an alienation of man from himself. In his end critique Feuerbach thinks we should recover our alienated attributes to ourselves, which he believes would constitute atheism and the elimination of religion. Well, maybe, maybe not.
Feuerbach is a lead in to what Paul Ricœur would later call a hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricœur called Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud the “masters of suspicion”. The basic idea of the hermeneutics of suspicion is that the reasons you think that you believe what you do are not the real reasons. Feuerbach is quite different in his writing on Christianity than Marx, Nietzsche, or Freud. In my opinion Feuerbach is superior and more interesting theologically. One reason for that has to be that half of Feuerbach’s book aspires to be constructive. The book is divided into two parts. The first part he calls “The True or Anthropological Essence of Religion”. The second part he calls “The False or Theological Essence of Religion”. Both are interesting but I especially enjoyed the first part.
Feuerbach maintains that his work is not all negative or destructive. Again, something that makes his critique more interesting I think. He says:
“But so far from giving a trivial or even a subordinate significance to anthropology,— a significance which is assigned to it only just so long as a theology stands above it and in opposition to it,— I, on the contrary, while reducing theology to anthropology, exalt anthropology into theology, very much as Christianity, while lowering God into man, made man into God.”
This is somewhat similar to the topic I referred to as sacred imminence. For Feuerbach religion is not just useless dross. It has important anthropological function and is instrumental in the realization of truth, something he sees as a process.
Whatever the ultimate nature of his intentions – and they were rather complex – I’m grateful to have Feuerbach’s writings, for him both as a worthy and productive adversary to Christian thought and even as a contributor to Christian theology.
You can read (or listen to) my full review and analysis here: https://tcdecker.com/2020/09/17/feuer...
The cliff notes version of Feuerbach is man projects his own attributes into an external being called God. In the Hegelian terms, which Feuerbach is still swimming in of course, this is an alienation of man from himself. In his end critique Feuerbach thinks we should recover our alienated attributes to ourselves, which he believes would constitute atheism and the elimination of religion. Well, maybe, maybe not.
Feuerbach is a lead in to what Paul Ricœur would later call a hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricœur called Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud the “masters of suspicion”. The basic idea of the hermeneutics of suspicion is that the reasons you think that you believe what you do are not the real reasons. Feuerbach is quite different in his writing on Christianity than Marx, Nietzsche, or Freud. In my opinion Feuerbach is superior and more interesting theologically. One reason for that has to be that half of Feuerbach’s book aspires to be constructive. The book is divided into two parts. The first part he calls “The True or Anthropological Essence of Religion”. The second part he calls “The False or Theological Essence of Religion”. Both are interesting but I especially enjoyed the first part.
Feuerbach maintains that his work is not all negative or destructive. Again, something that makes his critique more interesting I think. He says:
“But so far from giving a trivial or even a subordinate significance to anthropology,— a significance which is assigned to it only just so long as a theology stands above it and in opposition to it,— I, on the contrary, while reducing theology to anthropology, exalt anthropology into theology, very much as Christianity, while lowering God into man, made man into God.”
This is somewhat similar to the topic I referred to as sacred imminence. For Feuerbach religion is not just useless dross. It has important anthropological function and is instrumental in the realization of truth, something he sees as a process.
Whatever the ultimate nature of his intentions – and they were rather complex – I’m grateful to have Feuerbach’s writings, for him both as a worthy and productive adversary to Christian thought and even as a contributor to Christian theology.
You can read (or listen to) my full review and analysis here: https://tcdecker.com/2020/09/17/feuer...
December 20, 2009
This took me about a year to finish since I stopped in the middle. It was not quite what I'd expected it to be based on sections I'd see quoted elsewhere. This is a strictly anthropological/theological work though, with long attacks on Luther, Hegel, and others. It is a fascinating read, and if it had been packed into some kind of Anthropology of Religion course, I probably would have had more appreciation of it in it's own context.
In short. I don't regret reading it, but I wouldn't recommend it to many people. As an added bonus, while I was reading it last year, I went out for coffee with this one girl. She asked what I was reading and I told her. She said that she had a crazy neighbor who had it as well and ranted loudly to anyone who would hear that it was the greatest book ever. She never called me back after that.
In short. I don't regret reading it, but I wouldn't recommend it to many people. As an added bonus, while I was reading it last year, I went out for coffee with this one girl. She asked what I was reading and I told her. She said that she had a crazy neighbor who had it as well and ranted loudly to anyone who would hear that it was the greatest book ever. She never called me back after that.
January 22, 2025
The classic humanist explanation of Christianity: God didn’t make man, but man made God; therefore, it’s ok to use some of the Christian stuff, like love, but gotta drop some things, like God. Convenient, but for it to be viable, Christianity needs to be explained away—enter Feuerbach. In the move to reduce all theology to anthropology, he gives alternative ideological origins for all the major cogs in Christian doctrine, none of which are very convincing in their own right, but count for something if you make the a priori assumption that transcendent religion is an unprovable relic of the past, which Feuerbach does—bedeviled empirical observation! At times insightful, but more often it’s predictable; for something more convincing (maybe), but absolutely less predictable, try Nietzsche…
January 1, 2009
In the same way as men resemble their dogs, so too they resemble their gods. Gods, like animals, are good to think with.
This book provided the basis for all the best anti-religious thought of the nineteenth century, including Marx, Durkheim and Freud. It is only with Otto's Idea of the Holy that Feuerbach meets his match.
Feuerbach's basic idea is that people make God in their own image, and they do so in order to become aware of themselves.
This book provided the basis for all the best anti-religious thought of the nineteenth century, including Marx, Durkheim and Freud. It is only with Otto's Idea of the Holy that Feuerbach meets his match.
Feuerbach's basic idea is that people make God in their own image, and they do so in order to become aware of themselves.
November 12, 2015
I've never read a book about Christianity where it was completely and totally obvious that the author had no idea what Christianity actually was. I've met four year olds leaving Sunday school who understood Christianity better than this author.
November 29, 2017
The version I read is the Harper Torchbook edition, containing the nineteenth century translation by the novelist George Eliot, a forward by H. Richard Niebuhr and an introduction by Karl Barth.
Feuerbach has the misfortune to be usually considered simply as a transitional figure, as the (merely biographical) link between Hegel and Marx. In large part, this is true -- seen prospectively from the philosophy of Hegel, Feuerbach is (as he considered himself; see his own preface) a radical materialist, replacing the abstractions of theology with the real nature of man; seen retrospectively from Marx, he is still very much an idealist, dealing with "essences" rather than concrete individuals in a concrete historical milieu. I might also add that compared to Hegel, he is a model of clarity; compared to Marx (or almost anyone else) he is a monument of obscurity. There are basically two groups of people who read him today; a small group of theologians who take him seriously as a challenge (note that the forward and introduction to this edition are by theologians, as are two of the three blurbs on the back cover, by Barth and Martin Buber), and those who are interested in the origins of Marx's views (the third blurb is a quotation from Sidney Hook's From Hegel to Marx).
The thesis of the book is that religion consists in an "anthropology"; that psychologically speaking it takes the "essence of man", or human nature, and objectifies it in a separate being, God. He develops this idea at length (with much repetition and a good deal of self-contradiction), showing that the predicates of God are actually predicates of human nature and that the error of religion is in confusing the predicate with the subject -- that while pagan religion takes the idea that for example "love is divine" (love being part of the "essence of man") and makes love a particular god or goddess, Christianity takes the idea that love is a god and reverses it to say that God is love; and likewise with understanding, mercy, etc., making the predicates of human nature into predicates of a single particular being, who in fact does not exist except as the sum of those predicates -- that if you take away the predicates of God there is no subject left. He also argues that religion abolishes the limitations of the finite human by considering them as unlimited in God, as the limited understanding of a particular man becomes omniscience in God, the limited power of the individual becomes His omnipotence, etc.; and that creation from nothing and miracles are the unlimited form of will, or personality, as pure arbitrariness, and thus linked to the idea of God as a personal being. Much of this is not wrong but just obvious; my reaction was basically why spend 339 pages telling us what everyone (including Christian theologians, even if they disguise it by talking about "analogy") already knows, that God's predicates are just human predicates without limitation -- even if sometimes he has striking formulations, such as that the real god of Christianity is Adam Kadmon. He does have some good insights along the way, however; some things that I had already realized but never seen in print -- that the real god of every religion is its mediator figure, for instance -- and other things that made me say, why hadn't I seen that before, e.g. that Calvinist "predestination" is just the religious equivalent of everything happening by chance. He ends up by proposing a kind of religion of human nature.
Writing at the time he was, and with a background in Hegelian philosophy and theology, he obviously knows very little about other religions, and what he says about them tends to be very superficial; this is definitely the essence of Christianity, even if he sometimes talks about the essence of religion in general -- in fact, it might better be called the essence of Lutheranism, because most of his quoted examples are from Luther or the patristic writers most favored by Luther. He also shows very little knowledge of the actual history even of Christianity; this is a psychology of the existing doctrine rather than a serious account of its origins. It also ignores totally the social functions of religions as they actually exist as institutions. I won't bother to repeat the Marxist criticisms of Feuerbach; anyone who reads this should follow it up, if they haven't already read it, with the wonderfully humorous early book of Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, where they settle accounts with Feuerbach and his "Young Hegelian" followers, that is with their own early origins.
The real question is why did this rather boring and obvious work have such an influence, and even caused such excitement among people like the young Marx and Engels, at the time it was written? I think the answer is that in Germany at the time, which was relatively backward compared to France or England, there was a desire, not for a real empiricist or materialist atheism such as had long existed in those countries, but for a kind of religious atheism, a doctrine that would let people reject religion while still considering themselves religious. Feuerbach faded into insignificance a few years later, with the revolution of 1848. Nevertheless, I think the book is still worth reading to understand why people are so attracted to the ideas of religion.
Feuerbach has the misfortune to be usually considered simply as a transitional figure, as the (merely biographical) link between Hegel and Marx. In large part, this is true -- seen prospectively from the philosophy of Hegel, Feuerbach is (as he considered himself; see his own preface) a radical materialist, replacing the abstractions of theology with the real nature of man; seen retrospectively from Marx, he is still very much an idealist, dealing with "essences" rather than concrete individuals in a concrete historical milieu. I might also add that compared to Hegel, he is a model of clarity; compared to Marx (or almost anyone else) he is a monument of obscurity. There are basically two groups of people who read him today; a small group of theologians who take him seriously as a challenge (note that the forward and introduction to this edition are by theologians, as are two of the three blurbs on the back cover, by Barth and Martin Buber), and those who are interested in the origins of Marx's views (the third blurb is a quotation from Sidney Hook's From Hegel to Marx).
The thesis of the book is that religion consists in an "anthropology"; that psychologically speaking it takes the "essence of man", or human nature, and objectifies it in a separate being, God. He develops this idea at length (with much repetition and a good deal of self-contradiction), showing that the predicates of God are actually predicates of human nature and that the error of religion is in confusing the predicate with the subject -- that while pagan religion takes the idea that for example "love is divine" (love being part of the "essence of man") and makes love a particular god or goddess, Christianity takes the idea that love is a god and reverses it to say that God is love; and likewise with understanding, mercy, etc., making the predicates of human nature into predicates of a single particular being, who in fact does not exist except as the sum of those predicates -- that if you take away the predicates of God there is no subject left. He also argues that religion abolishes the limitations of the finite human by considering them as unlimited in God, as the limited understanding of a particular man becomes omniscience in God, the limited power of the individual becomes His omnipotence, etc.; and that creation from nothing and miracles are the unlimited form of will, or personality, as pure arbitrariness, and thus linked to the idea of God as a personal being. Much of this is not wrong but just obvious; my reaction was basically why spend 339 pages telling us what everyone (including Christian theologians, even if they disguise it by talking about "analogy") already knows, that God's predicates are just human predicates without limitation -- even if sometimes he has striking formulations, such as that the real god of Christianity is Adam Kadmon. He does have some good insights along the way, however; some things that I had already realized but never seen in print -- that the real god of every religion is its mediator figure, for instance -- and other things that made me say, why hadn't I seen that before, e.g. that Calvinist "predestination" is just the religious equivalent of everything happening by chance. He ends up by proposing a kind of religion of human nature.
Writing at the time he was, and with a background in Hegelian philosophy and theology, he obviously knows very little about other religions, and what he says about them tends to be very superficial; this is definitely the essence of Christianity, even if he sometimes talks about the essence of religion in general -- in fact, it might better be called the essence of Lutheranism, because most of his quoted examples are from Luther or the patristic writers most favored by Luther. He also shows very little knowledge of the actual history even of Christianity; this is a psychology of the existing doctrine rather than a serious account of its origins. It also ignores totally the social functions of religions as they actually exist as institutions. I won't bother to repeat the Marxist criticisms of Feuerbach; anyone who reads this should follow it up, if they haven't already read it, with the wonderfully humorous early book of Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, where they settle accounts with Feuerbach and his "Young Hegelian" followers, that is with their own early origins.
The real question is why did this rather boring and obvious work have such an influence, and even caused such excitement among people like the young Marx and Engels, at the time it was written? I think the answer is that in Germany at the time, which was relatively backward compared to France or England, there was a desire, not for a real empiricist or materialist atheism such as had long existed in those countries, but for a kind of religious atheism, a doctrine that would let people reject religion while still considering themselves religious. Feuerbach faded into insignificance a few years later, with the revolution of 1848. Nevertheless, I think the book is still worth reading to understand why people are so attracted to the ideas of religion.
April 1, 2007
The best philosophical dismantling of Christianity. Powerful and flawlessly logical. This book changed my outlook on the religion.
June 14, 2019
I read this book to gain a deeper understanding of Marx’s critique of religion and the foundation of his idea of alienation, and I certainly got that from this book. Feurbach is a clear writer, although I will say that some passages and chapters seemed superfluous and unnecessary. Without a doubt I did not understand the full scope of the book, nor the philosophical underpinnings in entirety either, as I still lack understanding of earlier German philosophers like Kant and Hegel. However, I still feel that I gained a lot from this book, and that Feurbach’s critique of religion is sharp, and cuts to the bone. His atheism and materialism is, as Marx notes, a little misguided, however, I think Feurbach is not an Atheist in the same way as the “new atheists” we see today. For one he is respectful for the most part, and his criticism comes from a place of genuine understanding, and does not bash religion in a low way like some do today. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Marx, or even any religious person, as I think it offers any interesting point of view. Although I will say it is not necessary to read the entire book, only some parts of it.
(P.S Most of the New Atheists are islamophobes who treat science as a religion so pay them no mind.)
(P.S Most of the New Atheists are islamophobes who treat science as a religion so pay them no mind.)
December 13, 2023
Feuerbach’s attack on Christianity is not wholly without merit. His ‘anthropotheism’ posits that religion is an indirect form of self knowledge and that the anthropomorphic predicates of the Trinity are merely reflections of human nature in its infinite sense.
Atheism of the highest order, he asserts that theology is anthropology and applies this hermeneutic to the major doctrines of Christianity in the fist part, “the true or anthropological essence of religion.” In the second part, feuerbach attempts to show contradictions in the same.
There are some valuable analyses but the book is repetitive.
The most valuable finding: “ Protestantism has set aside the Mother of God; but this deposition of woman has been severely avenged. The arms with which it is used against the Mother of God, have turned against itself, against the Son of God, against the whole Trinity. He who has once offered up the Mother of God to the understanding, is not far from sacrificing the mystery of the Son of God as anthropomorphism” 73
Indeed, the logical consequence of Schleiermacher’s conception of religion and the experience of God as personal sense of the infinite is atheism and Feuerbach proves it.
Atheism of the highest order, he asserts that theology is anthropology and applies this hermeneutic to the major doctrines of Christianity in the fist part, “the true or anthropological essence of religion.” In the second part, feuerbach attempts to show contradictions in the same.
There are some valuable analyses but the book is repetitive.
The most valuable finding: “ Protestantism has set aside the Mother of God; but this deposition of woman has been severely avenged. The arms with which it is used against the Mother of God, have turned against itself, against the Son of God, against the whole Trinity. He who has once offered up the Mother of God to the understanding, is not far from sacrificing the mystery of the Son of God as anthropomorphism” 73
Indeed, the logical consequence of Schleiermacher’s conception of religion and the experience of God as personal sense of the infinite is atheism and Feuerbach proves it.
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May 9, 2013This is a book well worth reading if anyone is interested in arguments against faith and Christianity. Feuerbach is very well read and, I think, put many new polemicists against religion to shame in terms of theological knowledge, and to a degree, understanding. Having said that, I think that some of those critics of religion that really should read this book, will be a little bit surprised. Firstly, it is very theological and in a way it is not completely clear how critical he is towards religion in itself. He is certainly critical against Christianity in certain forms. He argues for example that faith in the God of the Bible limits Love, which should be the guiding rule in ethics and so on. (However, he does not clarify where we should get this knowledge of Love from - is it simply an instinct - does Love come to humanity unguided. Is it even feasible to talk about Love with no limits?)
It should also be known that Feuerbach has a particular theology and understanding of Christianity that seems to be the starting point, at least if we agree with Niebuhr's and Barth's introductory remarks, namely the faith from the subjective religious feeling. Feuerbach appears to promote this starting point and place that against dogmatic faith (not unlike Schleiermacher (and Kant?) (and Hegel?) in my opinion, but I don't know if that is true). The religious feeling leads to Man reaching God by inflating whatever noble sentiments one can find in Man. God is man's own projections about himself for Feuerbach, his/her wishes fulfilled. This has been taken on board by many atheists, but, as Barth points out, is it really the real, genuine human being Feuerbach is talking about here? It appears that Feuerbach has a idealistically high view of humanity and can humanity bear the burden?
Furthermore, isn't it fully possible to use the exact same argument against atheism? Namely that atheists wish there not to be a God, not to be a higher judgement, someone else setting down the morals, and hey presto, God is dead. It appears to me that Feuerbach's argument would be a double edged sword.
Over all Feuerbach is writing with great clarity and conviction and many times it also is convincing. However, it seems to me to be something of a question of rhetorics rather than argumentation. Before reading this book I was expecting something of a sociological careful study or cultural analysis. What I got was instead a new hermeneutical framework that Feuerbach wishes the reader to apply to theology and Christian faith. He turns the Christian claim on its head and argues that Man created God, who then is seen to be the creator of all. It is a case of what Milbank would call out-narration. Feuerbach is trying to out-narrate rather than through "evidence" construct an argument (although there are good arguments based on examples in the book too).
The question I would like to put to Feuerbach would be, how would God be different, or how would the theology look like, if it really is the case that God is the ontological prior to humanity? To my mind I cannot see what Feuerbach would say to such a question. It seems to me that he would argue that God would pretty much be what he writes out God to be (with an anthropological starting point) even if God would not be created by humankind. If God was ontological prior, is it not feasible to argue, as traditional Christianity do, that faith in God is of vital importance? If God was ontological prior, would it not be understandable that human beings have great value if they are created in the image of God? Feuerbach argues that it is folly to think that humanity is the image of God and that doctrine is an evidence for the fact that Man creates a God in the image of Man. But if it is not so, if it is that God has created human beings in his image, in what way would it be different for Feuerbach? If there would be no difference in theology, then I cannot see why it would not be just a feasible to argue for a God that creates human beings in his image, just as it would be to argue for that man makes god in their image? It is all about your starting point.
Furthermore, I wonder if there is not an internal inconsistency, or at least a tension, between Feuerbach's two parts, and aims in this books. In the first part he argues strongly that Gud is a manmade projection. What we know of god is solely anthropologically based and grounded. In the second part he points out the follies of religion and particuarly Christianity. He shows in what ways he perceive Christianity to go against reason (and love and morals). However, if religion and and God is manmade, what hopes has he got for making something different in the future? Is not religion, for Feuerbach, an image, or mirror, of what humanity really is like? Or has humankind become wiser, more based in reason of late? Is there any, and I mean any, evidence for that considering our current history? Science is fantastic. We know much more. Yet, the knowledge and scientific progress is used in good ways and bad. And considering, for example, the unbelievable increase in consumption in the Western world. Does that point towards a humanity who is more interested in the existential perspectives of life? To me people are no doubt better described by the dictum, I shop therefore I am and not "cogito ergo sum". It seems inevitable, in my mind, for Feuerbach to be consistent, the inconsistencies that he find in dogmatic Christianity, or faith over all, are inconsistencies in Man. In what should he then base his anthropology? Everywhere he look, he find find the same imperfect human.
I suppose I have many more things to write and say about this book. But one thing is for certain, it makes you think. And I think it would challange people of all persuasions, even though I would not necessarily recommend people with no theological background to read it.
It should also be known that Feuerbach has a particular theology and understanding of Christianity that seems to be the starting point, at least if we agree with Niebuhr's and Barth's introductory remarks, namely the faith from the subjective religious feeling. Feuerbach appears to promote this starting point and place that against dogmatic faith (not unlike Schleiermacher (and Kant?) (and Hegel?) in my opinion, but I don't know if that is true). The religious feeling leads to Man reaching God by inflating whatever noble sentiments one can find in Man. God is man's own projections about himself for Feuerbach, his/her wishes fulfilled. This has been taken on board by many atheists, but, as Barth points out, is it really the real, genuine human being Feuerbach is talking about here? It appears that Feuerbach has a idealistically high view of humanity and can humanity bear the burden?
Furthermore, isn't it fully possible to use the exact same argument against atheism? Namely that atheists wish there not to be a God, not to be a higher judgement, someone else setting down the morals, and hey presto, God is dead. It appears to me that Feuerbach's argument would be a double edged sword.
Over all Feuerbach is writing with great clarity and conviction and many times it also is convincing. However, it seems to me to be something of a question of rhetorics rather than argumentation. Before reading this book I was expecting something of a sociological careful study or cultural analysis. What I got was instead a new hermeneutical framework that Feuerbach wishes the reader to apply to theology and Christian faith. He turns the Christian claim on its head and argues that Man created God, who then is seen to be the creator of all. It is a case of what Milbank would call out-narration. Feuerbach is trying to out-narrate rather than through "evidence" construct an argument (although there are good arguments based on examples in the book too).
The question I would like to put to Feuerbach would be, how would God be different, or how would the theology look like, if it really is the case that God is the ontological prior to humanity? To my mind I cannot see what Feuerbach would say to such a question. It seems to me that he would argue that God would pretty much be what he writes out God to be (with an anthropological starting point) even if God would not be created by humankind. If God was ontological prior, is it not feasible to argue, as traditional Christianity do, that faith in God is of vital importance? If God was ontological prior, would it not be understandable that human beings have great value if they are created in the image of God? Feuerbach argues that it is folly to think that humanity is the image of God and that doctrine is an evidence for the fact that Man creates a God in the image of Man. But if it is not so, if it is that God has created human beings in his image, in what way would it be different for Feuerbach? If there would be no difference in theology, then I cannot see why it would not be just a feasible to argue for a God that creates human beings in his image, just as it would be to argue for that man makes god in their image? It is all about your starting point.
Furthermore, I wonder if there is not an internal inconsistency, or at least a tension, between Feuerbach's two parts, and aims in this books. In the first part he argues strongly that Gud is a manmade projection. What we know of god is solely anthropologically based and grounded. In the second part he points out the follies of religion and particuarly Christianity. He shows in what ways he perceive Christianity to go against reason (and love and morals). However, if religion and and God is manmade, what hopes has he got for making something different in the future? Is not religion, for Feuerbach, an image, or mirror, of what humanity really is like? Or has humankind become wiser, more based in reason of late? Is there any, and I mean any, evidence for that considering our current history? Science is fantastic. We know much more. Yet, the knowledge and scientific progress is used in good ways and bad. And considering, for example, the unbelievable increase in consumption in the Western world. Does that point towards a humanity who is more interested in the existential perspectives of life? To me people are no doubt better described by the dictum, I shop therefore I am and not "cogito ergo sum". It seems inevitable, in my mind, for Feuerbach to be consistent, the inconsistencies that he find in dogmatic Christianity, or faith over all, are inconsistencies in Man. In what should he then base his anthropology? Everywhere he look, he find find the same imperfect human.
I suppose I have many more things to write and say about this book. But one thing is for certain, it makes you think. And I think it would challange people of all persuasions, even though I would not necessarily recommend people with no theological background to read it.
April 4, 2025
Criminally underrated. I used to think that Nietzsche is the greatest philosopher of atheism but I changed my mind. Feuerbach's idea is simple - man created God in man's image but it is so influential that virtually every philosopher from Marx onwards took his idea. His exposition on the contradictions of Christianity is in many ways spot on and difficult to answer. Feuerbach's main message is that God is a reflection of human thought, and the way forward is to merge the human and the divine instead of separating them as it is assumed if you believe in atheism/secularism. Definitely need to study his philosophy further.
August 28, 2020
A surprisingly lucid and direct argument in the Hegelian tradition – not generally known for its lucidity or clarity of argument – that God is essentially the projection of human desires and knowledge. It's not an atheistic argument, per se, although it certainly has been used that way, but it's also not a pro-Christian argument, by any stretch. Feuerbach clearly had little interest in the trappings Christianity had erected around belief in God, perhaps to the extent that he was unable to accurately characterize them when it came to rebutting them.
Setting aside the question of whether Feuerbach was correct in his description of God, his arguments about the incarnation, sin and humanity are still relevant and well worth attending to.
Setting aside the question of whether Feuerbach was correct in his description of God, his arguments about the incarnation, sin and humanity are still relevant and well worth attending to.
January 11, 2022
I have difficulty in grasping German metaphysical/philosophical work. Nonetheless a classic work on humanism and critic of religion. Key message is the anthropological basis of religion. God is nothing else than man: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of man's inward nature. God is like species level super ego, a product collective intentionality. By turning our internal moral precepts in to God's commandments leads to instrumentalists use of morality and tribalism/bigotry. Interesting book, but a difficult read.
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