Ludwig Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach 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 and worked in rural isolation for much of his life, in which he produced most of his significant writings supported by his wife's share in a porcelain factory.
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. Feuerbach's work also exerted an influence on the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.
Life
Early life and education
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach was born on 28 July 1804 in Landshut, Bavaria, to Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, a noted jurist, and Eva Wilhelmine von Feuerbach. The family environment was enlightened and liberal; Ludwig was one of five sons who each achieved a measure of distinction. His brothers included the archaeologist Joseph Anselm Feuerbach, the mathematician Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach, and the philologist Friedrich Feuerbach.Feuerbach began his studies in Protestant theology at the University of Heidelberg in 1823, where he attended lectures by the rationalist theologian H.E.G. Paulus and the speculative theologian Karl Daub. Feuerbach was quickly repelled by the lectures of Paulus, finding them empty, but appreciated the speculative treatment of religion offered by Daub, which interested him in philosophy. He became increasingly drawn to the Hegelian-influenced theology of Daub. The appeal of Berlin grew, and in 1825, after overcoming his father's objections, he matriculated in the faculty of philosophy at the University of Berlin to study directly under Hegel. He also attended the lectures of the theologians Friedrich Schleiermacher and Philip Marheineke. After two years studying under Hegel, Feuerbach gave up theology completely for philosophy.
After a year, financial difficulties forced him to leave Berlin for the University of Erlangen. At Erlangen, he continued his studies in philosophy and planned to study the natural sciences, attending lectures in physiology and anatomy. In 1828, he earned his doctoral degree with a dissertation titled De ratione una, universali, infinita.
Academic career and writing
From 1829 to 1835, Feuerbach worked as a docent at the University of Erlangen, where he lectured on the history of modern philosophy. His academic career, however, was doomed after the anonymous publication of his first book, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit in 1830. The work was an irreverent and incisive attack on the concept of personal immortality and on theology in the service of the state. It was considered a dangerous and revolutionary document in the reactionary political climate of the time. His authorship was soon discovered, barring him permanently from university posts and any hopes of a literary career. He thereafter turned to philosophical work.During these difficult years, Feuerbach met and married Bertha Löw in 1837; she was part-owner of a family porcelain factory in Bruckberg. He moved there with her and lived in rustic isolation for many years, supported by her share in the factory. He produced most of his important work during this period, including a series of major works on the history of philosophy such as Geschichte der neuern Philosophie von Bacon von Verulam bis Benedict Spinoza, a volume on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and another on Pierre Bayle.
In 1839, he published Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Philosophie, marking his open break with Hegelian idealism. This was followed in 1841 by his most famous and fundamental work, The Essence of Christianity. During this period of the early 1840s, Feuerbach became the theoretical leader of the Young Hegelians, exercising a profound influence on Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was of this time that Engels would later write, "We were all Feuerbachians." Marx, however, soon developed his own critique of Feuerbach's limitations, sketching his Theses on Feuerbach in 1845, which marked his break with Feuerbachian materialism and anthropologism.
Feuerbach maintained a skeptical and passive attitude toward the Revolution of 1848, though he was lionized by the students and radical intellectuals of the time. At their invitation, he gave a series of public lectures at the City Hall in Heidelberg from December 1848 to March 1849. These were published in 1851 as the Lectures on the Essence of Religion.
Later years and death
After the failure of the 1848 revolution and the subsequent reactionary period, Feuerbach was in despair over the state of political and intellectual freedom in Germany. He considered migrating to the United States, where he had a circle of admirers in St. Louis and New York City. His next major work was the Theogonie, in which he extended the program of The Essence of Christianity to Greek and Roman mythology.In 1860, his wife's porcelain factory went bankrupt, and at the age of fifty-six, Feuerbach found himself again without a source of income. He moved to Rechenberg, near Nuremberg, where he lived until his death. His final major work was "Spiritualism and Materialism". In 1868, he read Marx's Capital with enthusiasm, and in 1870, he joined the German Social Democratic Party. Two years later, on 13 September 1872, Feuerbach died and was buried at the Johannisfriedhof in Nuremberg.
Philosophy
Feuerbach's philosophy represents a transition between Hegel and Marx and is a critique of speculative idealism. He did not reject the dialectical method of Hegel but inverted its idealist foundations, substituting the anthropological and materialist for the idealist. According to Feuerbach, traditional philosophy, especially the speculative idealism of Hegel, is a form of esoteric theology that abstracts human characteristics and projects them onto a divine or metaphysical being. His project was to "rehumanize" philosophy by revealing that its true subject is not God or the Absolute, but living, concrete human beings. His critique of religion was not merely destructive; rather, he viewed himself as a "friend and not an enemy of religion" who sought to uncover the "liberating truth" hidden within its "mystified form". For Feuerbach, the task was to transform theology into anthropology, thereby preserving the human values that he believed were at the core of Christianity.Early Hegelianism
Feuerbach's 1828 doctoral dissertation, De ratione una, universali, infinita, was a work of orthodox Hegelianism that exalted the self-sufficiency of reason. In it, he explored the Hegelian dialectic of consciousness, particularly the relationship between the individual self and the other. He argued that the essence of humanity is Reason, understood as a universal and infinite "species-essence". The individual, through the act of thinking, transcends their finite individuality and achieves a species-identity with others. This recognition of the self in the other is not merely a relationship between two individuals but a realization of one's participation in the universal essence of humanity. The only point on which he diverged from Hegel was in his belief that Christianity could not be the perfect religion, as that domain was reserved for "the real idea and existing reason".In this early phase, Feuerbach maintained a sharp distinction between thinking and sensing. Communication and universality were possible only in the realm of thought, which he characterized as the "being of universality". Sense experience, by contrast, was private, incommunicable, and the mark of finite individuality. The I–Thou relationship was therefore a dialectic within thought, where the self differentiates itself from and then recognizes its identity with the other as a species-I. This early work laid the foundation for his later concepts of species-being and the I–Thou relationship, though he would later ground these not in abstract Reason but in concrete, sensuous existence.