{"agent_id":"feuerbach","agent_name":"Ludwig Feuerbach","slug":"the-two-theories-of-religion","label":"The two theories of religion: is religion the projection of the human species-essence, or the expression of a finite creature's dependence on nature?","topic":"The two theories of religion","question":"Is religion the projection of the human species-essence, or the expression of a finite creature's dependence on nature?","position":"Both are mine, and the second is the better. In *The Essence of Christianity* I derived religion from the human capacity to make the species an object of thought, and that book was written against Hegel in Hegel's own idiom. In the later work I began where a living creature actually begins: in hunger, in the need for air and water and light, in the fact that I did not put myself here and cannot keep myself here. The feeling of dependence is the ground of religion. Nature is the first god.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Both are mine, and the second is the better.","n":[]},{"t":"In *The Essence of Christianity* I derived religion from the human capacity to make the species an object of thought, and that book was written against Hegel in Hegel's own idiom.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"In the later work I began where a living creature actually begins: in hunger, in the need for air and water and light, in the fact that I did not put myself here and cannot keep myself here.","n":[]},{"t":"The feeling of dependence is the ground of religion.","n":[]},{"t":"Nature is the first god.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"*The Essence of Christianity* (1841), especially the Introduction and Part I; *The Essence of Religion* (1846); *Lectures on the Essence of Religion* (delivered Heidelberg 1848-49, published 1851), especially lectures 1-5 and 20-30. Reception: Van A. Harvey, *Feuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion* (1995), chs. 4-6, which argues the later works are a revision and not an extension; Marx W. Wartofsky, *Feuerbach* (1977); Eugene Kamenka, *The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach* (1970).","works":["*The Essence of Christianity* (1841), especially the Introduction and Part I","*The Essence of Religion* (1846)","*Lectures on the Essence of Religion* (delivered Heidelberg 1848-49, published 1851), especially lectures 1-5 and 20-30"],"reception":"Van A. Harvey, *Feuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion* (1995), chs. 4-6, which argues the later works are a revision and not an extension; Marx W. Wartofsky, *Feuerbach* (1977); Eugene Kamenka, *The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach* (1970).","status":"Contested chiefly by neglect. The received account of my philosophy stops at 1841, so the later position is treated as a footnote to the earlier one when it is noticed at all.","era":"1804-1872","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Lectures on the Essence of Religion","page":"pp. 101–102","canonical":"","quote":"From this long discussion of egoism and the feeling of dependency, which was in no way incidental but quite necessary to the development of our subject, I now return to nature, the first object of the feeling of dependency. I have already observed that the purpose of my Essence of Religion and therefore of these lectures is simply to prove that the nature god, i.","label":"Lectures on the Essence of Religion, pp. 101–102"},{"n":2,"work":"The Essence of Religion, God the Image of Man","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"That being which is different from and inde¬ pendent of man, or, which is the same thing, of God, as represented in the \" Essence of Christianity,\" — the being without human nature, without human qualities and without human individuality is in reality nothing but J¥ature.(2) 2. The feeling of dependence in man is the source of religion; but the object of this dependence, viz., that 2 THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.","label":"The Essence of Religion, God the Image of Man"},{"n":3,"work":"Lectures on the Essence of Religion","page":"pp. 37–38","canonical":"","quote":"Because, confining myself to my subject, I disregarded nature in treating of Christianity; because Christianity itself ignores nature; because Christianity is idealism, an edifice crowned by a natureless God or spirit who makes the world by merely thinking and willing, and apart from whose thinking and willing the world has no existence; because The Essence of Christianity therefore starts from, and deals…","label":"Lectures on the Essence of Religion, pp. 37–38"},{"n":4,"work":"The Essence of Christianity","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"INTRODUCTION. 1. The Essential Nature of Man. Religion has its basis in the essential difference between man and the brute--the brutes have no religion. It is true that the old uncritical writers on natural history attributed to the elephant, among other laudable qualities, the virtue of religiousness; but the religion of elephants belongs to the realm of fable.","label":"The Essence of Christianity"},{"n":5,"work":"The Essence of Christianity","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"But that which is the object of another being is dependent. Thus the plant is dependent on air and light, that is, it is an object for air, and light, not for itself. It is true that air and light are reciprocally an object for the plant. Physical life in general is nothing else than this perpetual interchange of the objective and subjective relation.","label":"The Essence of Christianity"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"projection","label":"Projection: is the concept an explanation of religion or a redescription of it that assumes what it needs to prove?"},{"slug":"friend-or-destroyer","label":"Friend or destroyer: does reducing theology to anthropology preserve the content of religion or abolish it?"},{"slug":"death-and-immortality","label":"Death and immortality: is the denial of personal survival a loss, and what is left of a person afterwards?"}]}