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Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
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| Biography: Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach |
The German philosopher Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804-1872) is noted for his criticism of orthodox religion. It may be said that he humanized God while deifying man.
Ludwig Feuerbach was born on July 28, 1804, in Landshut, Bavaria. He studied at the University of Heidelberg and then switched from theology to philosophy and moved to the University of Berlin, where he became a diligent student of G. W. F. Hegel. In 1828 he received his doctorate at the University of Erlangen.
Feuerbach's first publication was an essay entitled Thoughts about Death and Immortality (1830). Because it was so controversial at that time to deny the immortality of the soul, he published his work anonymously. In the following years he tried unsuccessfully to obtain a professorship. Even his scholarly books were of no help: From Bacon to Spinoza (1833), Leibniz (1836), and Pierre Bayle (1838). In 1839 his criticism of Hegel became evident. Later he vigorously began his criticism of religion.
Feuerbach's primary work is The Essence of Christianity (1841), one of the first attempts at understanding religion from a strictly human point of view. He holds that the sources of religion are human wishes, imagination, feelings, emotions, and, above all, man's desire to elucidate his own essence. Accordingly, Feuerbach sees in God the purified essence of man himself and the unlimited ideal of man's capabilities. He insists that religion is necessary for man's search for himself and that it separates man from the animals. Furthermore, he concedes that among all religions Christianity has a special mandate, seen in the doctrine that God became man. However, for him it was not God who became man; in fact, it is man who intends to conceive his own real essence in Jesus Christ. Consequently, Feuerbach suggests that theology and Christology should be transmuted into anthropology, into a theory about the divine nature of man.
Besides shaking the foundation of theology, Feuerbach outlined the principles of new ways of philosophizing: Preparatory Theses on the Reform of Philosophy (1842) and Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843). In these he explained that the basis of philosophy is not reason and abstraction but human sensuality, sexuality, and emotions. He was one of the first in modern times to emphasize the problem of communication; hence, he understood the human ego as a relation to another human being, to a "thou."
In 1844 Feuerbach revised The Essence of Christianity. Further writings clarified his position, among them The Essence of Faith according to Luther (1844) and The Essence of Religion (1846). Because of his strong criticism of religion he was never given opportunity to join any faculty in Germany. He lived in an idyllic retreat at Bruckberg and in 1857 published his Theogony. He died at Rechenberg on Sept. 13, 1872.
Further Reading
Feuerbach's life and thought are examined in Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy (1895; trans. 1934); William B. Chamberlain, Heaven Wasn't His Destination (1941); and Martin Buber, Between Man and Man (1947). Recommended introductions to various aspects of Feuerbach's writings are Karl Barth's introductory essay to Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity (1957) and Manfred H. Vogel, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1965).
| Political Dictionary: Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach |
(1804-72) Born in Bavaria, the son of a distinguished jurist and administrator, Ludwig Feuerbach studied theology at Heidelberg and philosophy under Hegel in Berlin. His first post-doctoral published work, Thoughts on Death and Immortality, published in 1830, caught the attention of the police and censors and Feuerbach was barred from all future university posts. He married and moved to Bruckberg, where he lived in quiet isolation and material comfort for many years. He was most productive in the 1840s, publishing The Essence of Christianity in 1841, as well as, somewhat later, the Preliminary Theses for the Reform of Philosophy and the Foundations of the Philosophy of the Future. These works quickly established Feuerbach as the mentor of the left-Hegelian movement. He gave that movement a common conception of philosophy as nothing but the process of human self-understanding. He also provided a clear notion of human nature in terms of species-being. Finally, he made possible a radical materialist critique of all religion and religious belief, in particular, perhaps, Judaism. Marx's criticism of Feuerbach's philosophy in his 1845 Theses on Feuerbach constituted the first statement of historical materialism.
— John Halliday
| German Literature Companion: Ludwig Feuerbach |
Feuerbach, Ludwig (Landshut, 1804-72, Rechenberg nr. Nuremberg), the son of a criminologist who became a judge, studied theology at Heidelberg, and philosophy under Hegel at Berlin. In 1828 he became a lecturer at Erlangen University, but resigned in 1832 because of his unorthodox views on religion. His earliest work, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit, appeared anonymously in 1830. In his most influential work, Das Wesen des Christentums (1841), published under his own name in 1843, he maintained that the dogmas and beliefs of Christianity are figments of the human imagination, fulfilling a need inherent in human nature. He viewed theology as a branch of anthropology, and religion as ‘the dream of the human spirit’. In this sense he conceded their evolutionary function: ‘Das Bewußtsein Gottes ist das Selbst-bewußtsein des Menschen, die Erkenntnis Gottes die Selbsterkenntnis des Menschen.’ His conception of a trinity in man, a unity of reason, love, and will, underlies his phrase that Man ‘ist, was er ist nur durch sie’ which has been turned into a well-known pun, Man ‘ist, was er ißt (eats)’. Feuerbach was most influential in the 1840s, and G. Keller was foremost among the writers susceptible to his views.
| Philosophy Dictionary: Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach |
Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas (1804-72) German philosopher and anthropologist. Born in Landshut, Bavaria, Feuerbach studied theology and philosophy at Heidelberg and Berlin. He enjoyed only a sporadic teaching career, and lived mainly on income derived from his wife's interest in a pottery factory. His philosophical writings were fired by a perception that Hegel's system had failed to shake itself free from crippling rationalistic and religious elements. It is therefore itself but a stage in the true emergence of selfconsciousness, in a humanistic, scientific, ‘philosophy of the future’. Feuerbach's chequered career was the outcome of his conviction that religion is a ‘dream of the human mind’, or an understandable but distorting projection of our emotional needs: ‘Christ is the love of mankind for itself embodied in an image.’ This sceptical and anthropological approach to religion is indeed similar in spirit to that of Hume and Voltaire, but proved more explosive in the religious and absolutist atmosphere of the mid-19th century. Feuerbach stands for opposition to any philosophical system-building in favour of an empirical study of the way persons respond to the world and to each other. His aphorism, ‘man is what he eats’, became a useful political slogan for subsequent radicals. Ethically Feuerbach believed that human relations vindicate a close, communitarian spirit in which divisions between ‘I’ and ‘thou’ become dissolved. His early writings include many contributions to the Hallesche Jahrbücher of which he was joint editor, and which had a decisive influence on the development of secular and political, or left-wing, Hegelianism. His most important work was Das Wesen des Christentums (1846), which was translated by the scholar and novelist George Eliot as The Essence of Christianity, 1854. Eliot was paid two shillings a page. She herself was more taken with Feuerbach's impassioned descriptions of self-sacrificing, sacred, self-sufficing and spontaneous love than with his humanism. Marx's Theses on Feuerbach combines an appreciation of Feuerbach's dialectical upstaging of Hegel with recognition that Feuerbach himself falls short of properly resolving self-consciousness, and its religious projections, into fundamental social and economic forces. Engels said of Feuerbach that the lower half of him was materialistic, but the upper half an idealist.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach |
Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas (lūt'vĭkh ändrā'äs foi'ərbäkh), 1804-72, German philosopher, educated at Heidelberg and Berlin; son of Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach. At first a Hegelian, he abandoned absolute idealism for naturalistic materialism. He asserted that religious feeling is simply a product of man's yearnings and maintained that the proper study of philosophy is not what transcends experience but man himself and nature, on which humanity rests. Although Feuerbach approaches materialism in his later works, man for him is not to be regarded as simply a product of matter. Feuerbach's most important works were Das Wesen des Christentums (1841, tr. by George Eliot, The Essence of Christianity, 1957 ed.); Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (2 vol., 1833-37); and Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit (1866).
Bibliography
See E. Kamenka, The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach (1970); M. Wartofsky, Feuerbach (1982); C. A. Wilson, Feuerbach and the Search for Otherness (1989).
| Quotes By: Ludwig Feuerbach |
Quotes:
"I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one."
"If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism -- at least in the sense of this work -- is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature."
"Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity."
"The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane."
| Wikipedia: Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach |
| Western Philosophy 19th-century philosophy |
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| Full name | Ludwig Feuerbach |
| Born | July 28, 1804 Landshut, Germany |
| Died | September 13, 1872 Rechenberg near Nuremberg, Germany |
| School/tradition | Young Hegelians |
| Main interests | Religion |
| Notable ideas | Religion as the outward projection of man's inner nature |
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Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (July 28, 1804 – September 13, 1872) was a German philosopher and anthropologist. He was the fourth son of the eminent jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach. His thought was influential in the development of Marxist dialectic.[1]
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Biography
Education
Feuerbach matriculated in the University of Heidelberg with the intention of pursuing a career in the Church. Through the influence of Prof. Karl Daub he was led to an interest in the then predominant philosophy of Hegel and, in spite of his father's opposition, enrolled in the University of Berlin, in order to study under the master himself. After twenty two years, the Hegelian influence began to slacken. Feuerbach became associated with a group known as the Young Hegelians, alternately known as the Left Hegelians, who synthesized a radical offshoot of Hegelian philosophy, interpreting Hegel’s dialectic march of spirit through history to mean that existing Western culture and institutional forms—and, in particular, Christianity—would be superseded. "Theology," he wrote to a friend, "I can bring myself to study no more. I long to take nature to my heart, that nature before whose depth the faint-hearted theologian shrinks back; and with nature man, man in his entire quality." These words are a key to Feuerbach's development. He completed his education at Erlangen, at the Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg with the study of natural science.
Early writings
His first book, published anonymously, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit (1830), contains an attack on personal immortality and an advocacy of the Spinozistic immortality of reabsorption in nature. These principles, combined with his embarrassed manner of public speaking, debarred him from academic advancement. After some years of struggling, during which he published his Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (2 vols., 1833-1837, 2nd ed. 1844), and Abelard und Heloise (1834, 3rd ed. 1877), he married in 1837 and lived a rural existence at Bruckberg near Nuremberg, supported by his wife's share in a small porcelain factory.
In two works of this period, Pierre Bayle (1838) and Philosophie und Christentum (1839), which deal largely with theology, he held that he had proven "that Christianity has in fact long vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed idea."
Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity)
This attack is followed up in his most important work, Das Wesen des Christentums (1841), which was translated by George Eliot into English as The Essence of Christianity. "In the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature."
Feuerbach's theme was a derivation of Hegel's speculative theology in which the Creation remains a part of the Creator, while the Creator remains greater than the Creation. When the student Feuerbach presented his own theory to professor Hegel, Hegel refused to reply positively to it.
In part I of his book Feuerbach developed what he calls the "true or anthropological essence of religion." Treating of God in his various aspects "as a being of the understanding," "as a moral being or law," "as love" and so on. Feuerbach talks of how man is equally a conscious being, more so than God because man has placed upon God the ability of understanding. Man contemplates many things and in doing so he becomes acquainted with himself. Feuerbach shows that in every aspect God corresponds to some feature or need of human nature. "If man is to find contentment in God," he claims, "he must find himself in God."
Thus God is nothing else than man: he is, so to speak, the outward projection of man's inward nature. This projection is dubbed as a chimaera by Feuerbach, that God and the idea of a higher being is dependent upon the aspect of benevolence. Feuerbach states that, “a God who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God,” and continues to say that qualities are not suddenly denoted as divine because of their godly association. The qualities themselves are divine therefore making God divine, indicating that man is capable of understanding and applying meanings of divinity to religion and not that religion makes a man divine.
The force of this attraction to religion though, giving divinity to a figure like God, is explained by Feuerbach as God is a being that acts throughout man in all forms. God, “is the principle of [man's] salvation, of [man's] good dispositions and actions, consequently [man's] own good principle and nature.” It appeals to man to give qualities to the idol of their religion because without these qualities a figure such as God would become merely an object, its importance would become obsolete, there would no longer be a feeling of an existence for God. Therefore, Feuerbach says, when man removes all qualities from God, “God is no longer anything more to him than a negative being.” Additionally, because man is imaginative, God is given traits and there holds the appeal. God is a part of man through the invention of a God. Equally though, man is repulsed by God because, “God alone is the being who acts of himself.”
In part 2 he discusses the "false or theological essence of religion," i.e. the view which regards God as having a separate existence over against man. Hence arise various mistaken beliefs, such as the belief in revelation which he believes not only injures the moral sense, but also "poisons, nay destroys, the divinest feeling in man, the sense of truth," and the belief in sacraments such as the Lord's Supper, which is to him a piece of religious materialism of which "the necessary consequences are superstition and immorality."
Part 2 comes to a crux though by seemingly retracting previous statements. Feuerbach claims that God's only action is, “the moral and eternal salvation of man: thus man has in fact no other aim than himself,” because man's actions are placed upon God. Feuerbach also contradicts himself by claiming that man gives up his personality and places it upon God who in turn is a selfish being. This selfishness turns onto man and projects man to be wicked and corrupt, that they are, “incapable of good,” and it is only God that is good, “the Good Being.” In this way Feuerbach detracts from many of his earlier assertions while showing the alienation that takes place in man by worshipping God. Feuerbach affirms that goodness is, “personified as God,” turning God into an object because if God was anything but an object nothing would need to be personified on him. The aspect of objects having previously been discussed; in that man contemplates objects and that objects themselves give conception of what externalizes man. Therefore if God is good so then should be man because God is merely an externalization of man because God is an object. However religion would show that man is inherently corrupt. Feuerbach tries to lessen his inconsistency by asking if it were possible if, “I could perceive the beauty of a fine picture if my mind were aesthetically an absolute piece of perversion?” Through Feuerbach’s reasoning it would not be possible, but it is possible, and he later states that man is capable of finding beauty.
A caustic criticism of Feuerbach was delivered in 1844 by Max Stirner. In his book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Ego and His Own) he attacked Feuerbach as inconsistent in his atheism. The pertinent portions of the books, Feuerbach's reply, and Stirner's counter-reply form an instructive polemics. (see External Links)
After "1848"
During the troubles of 1848-1849 Feuerbach's attack upon orthodoxy made him something of a hero with the revolutionary party; but he never threw himself into the political movement, and indeed had not the qualities of a popular leader. During the period of the Frankfurt Congress he had given public lectures on religion at Heidelberg. When the diet closed he withdrew to Bruckberg and occupied himself partly with scientific study, partly with the composition of his Theogonie (1857).
In 1860 he was compelled by the failure of the porcelain factory to leave Bruckberg, and he would have suffered the extremity of want but for the assistance of friends supplemented by a public subscription. His last book, Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit, appeared in 1866 (2nd ed., 1890). After a long period of decline, he died on September 13, 1872. He is buried in Johannis-Friedhof Cemetery in Nuremberg, which is also where the artist Albrecht Dürer is interred.
Philosophy
Essentially the thought of Feuerbach consisted in a new interpretation of religion's phenomena, giving an anthropological explanation. Following Schleiermacher’s theses, Feuerbach thought religion was principally a matter of feeling in its unrestricted subjectivity. So the feeling breaks through all the limits of understanding and manifests itself in several religious beliefs. But, beyond the feeling, is the fancy, the true maker of projections of "gods" and of the sacred in general.
Influence
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were strongly influenced by Feuerbach's atheism, though they criticised him for his inconsistent espousal of materialism. [1]
Works
- De ratione una, universali, infinita (1828). Ghent.
- Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit (1830).
- Geschichte der Neuern Philosophie; von Bacon von Verulam bis Benedict Spinoza (1833). University of Michigan.
- Abälard Und Heloise, Oder Der Schriftsteller Und Der Mensch (1834).
- Kritik des Anti-hegels (1835). 2nd edition, 1844. University of Michigan; University of Wisconsin.
- Geschichte der Neuern Philosophie; Darstellung, Entwicklung und Kritik der Leibniz'schen Philosophie (1837). University of Wisconsin.
- Pierre Bayle (1838). University of California.
- Über Philosophie und Christenthum (1839).
- Das Wesen des Christenthums (1841). 2nd edition, 1848. NYPL.
- (English) The Essence of Christianity (1854). Tr. Marian Evans. St. Mary's. 2nd edition, 1881. Oxford.
- Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft (1843). Gallica.
- Vorläufige Thesen Zur Reform Der Philosophie (1843).
- Das Wesen des Glaubens im Sinne Luther's (1844). Harvard.
- Das Wesen der Religion (1846). 2nd edition, 1849. Stanford.
- Erläuterungen Und Ergänzungen Zum Wesen Des Christenthums (1846).
- Ludwig Feuerbach's sämmtliche Werke (1846-1866).
- Volume 1, 1846. Gallica; NYPL.
- Volume 2, 1846. Gallica.
- Volume 3, 1847. Gallica; NYPL. 1876, Oxford.
- Volume 4, 1847. Gallica; Oxford.
- Volume 5, 1848. Gallica; NYPL.
- Volume 6, 1848. Gallica; NYPL.
- Volume 7, 1849. Gallica; Oxford.
- Volume 8, 1851. Gallica; NYPL.
- Volume 9, 1857. Gallica; NYPL.
- Volume 10, 1866. Gallica; NYPL.
- Ludwig Feuerbach in seinem Briefwechsel und Nachlass (1874). 2 volumes. Oxford. Vol. 1. NYPL. Vol. 2. NYPL.
- Briefwechsel zwischen Ludwig Feuerbach und Christian Kapp (1876). Harvard; Oxford.
See also
- Theses on Feuerbach by Karl Marx (1845). MIA.
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References
- ^ a b Feuerbach, Ludwig at marxists.org Glossary. Accessed October 2007.
- See also Van A. Harvey, et al. Feuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion (Studies in Religion and Critical Thought), 1997.
- Marxism explained: materialism John Minns at Socialist Alternative. looks at Feuerbach's influence on Marx and Engels. Accessed October 2007
- Ludwig Feuerbach, “The Essence of Christianity” in Religion and Liberal Culture, ed. Keith Michael Baker, vol. 8 of University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, ed. John W. Boyer and Julius Kirshner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 323-336.
External links
 |
Wikisource has original works written by or about: Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach |
- "Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach" article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Ludwig Feuerbach Internet Archive at Marxists Internet Archive.
- Ludwig Feuerbach: "The Essence Of Christianity" in Relation to (Max Stirner's) "The Ego And Its Own"
- Max Stirner: Stirner's Critics Reply to Feuerbach
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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