Ludwig Feuerbach, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The individual does not survive. What is infinite is the species, and what survives of a person is what he put into it — the work, the love, the thought, the effect on others. The belief in personal immortality is the wish for the perpetuation of one's own particularity, and it is that wish, not any evidence, that supports the doctrine.123
Therefore the finite exists nowhere. But from the perspective of this consideration, which, if maintained one-sidedly, leads to a complete negation of the finite, how is the being of the finite possible? Only because you limit, determine, and distinguish being itself into pure being and determined, temporal being. Only through and in time is finite being possible.Thoughts on Death and Immortality, p. 84
It is a true belief only when it is the belief that the true, the essence, the Spirit, possesses an existence that is independent of the existence of all individuals and that humanity possesses an existence that is independent of these determinate, present individuals, when, therefore, it is the belief that these present, determinate 13 8 Thoughts on Death and Immortality individuals are not immortal and…Thoughts on Death and Immortality, pp. 186–187
But you, this particular subject, are what you are only as particular subject, as the aggregate of all of your particular and determinate properties, types, and peculiarities. Determinateness and particularity distinguish. That you are a specific subject means equally that you are a subject that is distinguished from others.Thoughts on Death and Immortality, pp. 96–97
The position that ended his academic career, and the one on which modern readers most often expect a softening.