Ludwig Feuerbach
Ludwig Feuerbach | |
|---|---|
| Born | Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach 28 July 1804 Landshut, Electorate of Bavaria |
| Died | 13 September 1872 (aged 68) Rechenberg near Nuremberg, German Empire |
| Education | |
| Education | University of Heidelberg University of Berlin University of Erlangen (Ph.D./Dr. phil. habil., 1828) |
| Theses |
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| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 19th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Anthropological materialism[1] Secular humanism[2] Young Hegelians (1820s) |
| Main interests | Philosophy of religion |
| Notable ideas | All theological concepts as the reifications of anthropological concepts[3] |
| Signature | |
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (/ˈfɔɪərbɑːx/;[4] German: [ˈluːtvɪç ˈfɔʏɐbax];[5][6] 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German philosopher and anthropologist who was a leading figure among the Young Hegelians. He is best known for his 1841 book, The Essence of Christianity, which argued that God is a projection of the essential attributes of humanity. His critique of religion formed the basis for his advocacy of atheism, materialism, and sensualism. In his later work, Feuerbach developed a more complex theory of religion arising from the human confrontation with nature. His thought served as a critical bridge between the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and that of Karl Marx.
The son of a distinguished jurist, Feuerbach studied theology at Heidelberg before moving to Berlin to study directly under Hegel. His academic career was cut short in 1830 when his anonymously published first book, Thoughts on Death and Immortality, was condemned as scandalous for its attack on the concept of personal immortality. Barred from university posts, Feuerbach lived in rural isolation for much of his life, supported by his wife's share in a porcelain factory, where he produced most of his significant writings.
Feuerbach's philosophy developed as a critique of Hegel's speculative idealism, which he viewed as the last, most abstract form of theology. He argued that idealism inverted the true relationship between thought and being, and that philosophy's proper subject was not the abstract Absolute, but the concrete, sensuous human being. In The Essence of Christianity, he contended that religion is a form of self-alienation in which humanity projects its own "species-essence"—its unlimited capacity for reason, love, and will—onto a divine being, which it then worships. In his later works, including the Lectures on the Essence of Religion, he developed a "bipolar" theory of religion in which religious belief arises from the human confrontation with nature, driven by the "drive to happiness" and the fear of death.
Feuerbach's thought was a major influence on his contemporaries, particularly Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx adopted Feuerbach's materialist inversion of Hegel and his theory of alienation, but later criticized him in his Theses on Feuerbach for having a materialism that was too contemplative and for understanding humanity in terms of a static "essence" rather than in terms of concrete social and historical practice (praxis). Feuerbach's work also exerted an influence on the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.
- ^ Axel Honneth, Hans Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 18.
- ^ Robert M. Price, Religious and Secular Humanism – What's the difference?
- ^ Feuerbach, Ludwig (1957). Eliot, George (ed.). The Essence of Christianity. New York: Harper & Brothers. pp. 29–30.
Man—this is the mystery of religion—projects his being into objectivity, and then again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself thus converted into a subject; he thinks of himself as an object to himself, but as the object of an object, of another being than himself. Thus here. Man is an object to God.
- ^ "Feuerbach". Dictionary.com Unabridged (Online). n.d.
- ^ Dudenredaktion; Kleiner, Stefan; Knöbl, Ralf (2015) [First published 1962]. Das Aussprachewörterbuch [The Pronunciation Dictionary] (in German) (7th ed.). Berlin: Dudenverlag. pp. 367, 566. ISBN 978-3-411-04067-4.
- ^ Krech, Eva-Maria; Stock, Eberhard; Hirschfeld, Ursula; Anders, Lutz Christian (2009). Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch [German Pronunciation Dictionary] (in German). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 507, 711. ISBN 978-3-11-018202-6.