Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
(born July 28, 1804, Landshut, Bavaria — died Sept. 13, 1872, Rechenberg, Ger.) German philosopher. The son of an eminent jurist, he studied under
G.W.F. Hegel in Berlin but later abandoned Hegelian idealism for a naturalistic materialism. In
Thoughts on Death and Immortality (1830), he attacked the concept of personal immortality. His
Abelard and Heloise (1834) and
Pierre Bayle (1838) were followed by
On Philosophy and Christianity (1839), in which he claimed that "Christianity has in fact long vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind." In
The Essence of Christianity (1841), he proposed that God is merely the outward projection of mankind's inward nature. Some of his views were later endorsed by
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels.
For more information on Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, visit Britannica.com.
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.