Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872)
German philosopher and moralist remembered for his influence on Karl Marx and
for his humanistic theologizing.
Ludwig Feuerbach abandoned theological studies to become a student of philosophy
under G.W.F. Hegel for two years at Berlin. In 1828 he went to Erlangen to study
natural science, and two years later his first book, "Thoughts on Death and
Immortality", was published anonymously. In this work Feuerbach attacked the
concept of personal immortality and proposed a type of immortality by which
human qualities are reabsorbed into nature. His "On Philosophy and Christianity",
in which he claimed "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." Continuing this view in his most important work, "The Essence of
Christianity", Feuerbach posited the notion that man is to himself his own
object of thought and religion nothing more than a consciousness of the
infinite. The result of this view is the notion that God is merely the outward
projection of man's inward nature.
Although Feuerbach denied that he was an atheist, he nevertheless contended that
the God of Christianity is an illusion. As he expanded his discussion to other
disciplines, including philosophy, he came to see Hegel's principles as
quasi-religious and embraced instead a form of materialism that Marx
subsequently criticized in his Thesen über Feuerbach (written 1845). Attacking
religious orthodoxy during the politically turbulent years of 1848–49, Feuerbach
was seen as a hero by many of the revolutionaries. His influence was greatest on
such anti-Christian publicists as David Friedrich Strauss, author of the
skeptical "The Life of Jesus Critically Examined", and Bruno Bauer, who, like
Feuerbach, had abandoned Hegelianism for naturalism.
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