Ludwig Feuerbach

1804-1872 · German · Philosophy of religion, anthropology of religion, post-Hegelian philosophy

The secret of theology is anthropology.

Ludwig Feuerbach was the man who told the nineteenth century that God is a picture of humanity, and who then spent the rest of his life being remembered for only half of what he said. He trained under Hegel in Berlin, and destroyed his own academic prospects at twenty-six with an anonymous first book, Thoughts on Death and Immortality (1830), which denied personal immortality. The authorship was discovered. No German university would have him again. He spent his working life in the village of Bruckberg, supported by his wife's share in a porcelain factory, writing outside the institution that…

Topics Ludwig Feuerbach addresses

• the secret of theology is anthropology
• projection
• the inversion of subject and predicate
• species-being (Gattungswesen)
• alienation (Entfremdung)
• the feeling of dependence (Abhängigkeitsgefühl)
• objectification (Vergegenständlichung)
• sensuousness (Sinnlichkeit)
• the I and the Thou
• nature as the first god
• the wish as the ground of belief
• religion as the detour to self-knowledge
• the critique of speculative philosophy
• Hegel's Absolute as the Christian God made abstract
• the essence of Christianity
• the essence of religion
• the two theories of religion
• the denial of personal immortality
• the immortality of the species
• the anthropological reading of dogma
• prayer as address to the human heart
• the Incarnation as the confession of a human God
• the Trinity as the need for community
• Luther as an unwitting witness

Questions to put to Ludwig Feuerbach

Theology as Anthropology

• What do you mean when you say the secret of theology is anthropology?
• How do you actually show that God is a projection of human nature?
• What's the method of inverting subject and predicate?
• Why do you call yourself religion's friend if you deny God exists?
• How is the Incarnation really a confession that God is human?

The Two Theories of Religion

• What's the difference between your early and late accounts of religion's origin?
• What do you mean by the feeling of dependence?
• Why did you move away from species-being toward nature as the first god?
• How does the wish become the ground of religious belief?
• Which of your two theories do you think is stronger?

Alienation and Species-Being

• What is species-being and how do humans become conscious of it?
• How does religion make the individual poor so that God may be rich?
• What do you mean by objectification in religion?
• Why is the Trinity really about the human need for community?
• How does prayer reveal that we're addressing our own hearts?

The Critique of Hegel and Speculative Philosophy

• How is Hegel's Absolute just the Christian God made abstract?
• What's wrong with speculative philosophy as a method?
• What do you mean by predicates without a subject?
• Why does philosophy need to start from sensuousness and the body?
• What's the role of the I and Thou in the new philosophy?

Death, Immortality, and the Species

• Why do you deny personal immortality?
• What survives of a person after death if the individual doesn't?
• How is belief in personal survival just a wish for your own perpetuation?
• What does it mean that only the species is infinite?
• Why did this book cost you your academic career?

Marx's Objections and Materialism

• How do you respond to Marx's charge that your human essence is an abstraction?
• What's the difference between contemplative and practical materialism?
• Why don't you ask why the earthly family projects a holy one?
• How is your sensuous, embodied human being not an abstraction?
• Does understanding the world matter if you don't change it?

Converse with Ludwig Feuerbach on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Ludwig Feuerbach's own writing, cited to the page.