Feuerbach was initially influenced by Hegel, his teacher, and accepted much of his analysis on the stages of the history of philosophy. However, he preferred to stress the sensory aspect of experience and psychological details in what he termed alienated religiosity, particularly in dogmatic Christianity.
Feuerbach's anthropological interpretation of religion derived from Hegel's speculative theology in which the Creation remains a part of the Creator, while the Creator remains greater than the Creation. Hegel had argued that his philosophy offered a clarification of ideas of Christian theologies' imaginative symbolism. Feuerbach, on the other hand, viewed Christianity as a religion of selfhood in its doctrines of immortality and a personal deity.
Feuerbach's difficulty with Hegel's philosophy was that everything is seen as a development and the last stage is considered a totality that includes all previous steps. For Feuerbach this ignored all variety and particularity. This is how Hegel concluded that Christianity was an Absolute religion.
Feuerbach contended that Hegel's idealism was the final conclusion of the speculative theology of the Middle Ages when the concept of a personal God was thought of as an infinite, omniscient, omnibenevolent, necessary being. Believers could relate to a personal deity while for metaphysicians, such as Descartes and Leibnitz, God was a pure mind separate from material beings:
“Absolute idealism is nothing but the realized divine mind of Leibnizian theism…”
A central tenet in Hegel is the identity of thought and being and thinking can only deal with abstraction. Feuerbach argues that thinking does not produce existence and real objects only appear to us when another being affects our personal activity in space and time. Feuerbach's philosophy was based on the sensorial and concrete reality and so he considered that the human being is not primarily a holder of reason, but an embodied being in sensuous relationships with other embodied beings. (Lakoff & Johnson argue a similar hypothesis in Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. 1999)
Feuerbach distanced himself from Hegel's philosophy through his emphasis on the material life. He disagreed with Hegel's interpretation of religion as a huge part of the dialectics of history. Feuerbach took the Enlightenment view that religion was passing away due to scientific progress. On the other hand, he still committed to the concept that reality finds unity in the developing mind of God and that humans are the manifestations of this reality.
Commentary
The Essence of Christianity (1841) is a critical examination of religion, particularly Christianity, from a philosophical and anthropological perspective. In sum, it declares that God did not create humans; humanity created God.
The main thesis of the book is seemingly simple: the self becomes conscious of itself through meeting other selves and so understands that it is a member of a species. The imagination grasps the idea of species and turns it into an individual.
In the first chapter this simple thesis turns obscure with the arguments that religion is the same as self-consciousness, which in turn is the same as the “infinite nature of consciousness,” and that a limited consciousness is no consciousness.
These allusions are only intelligible against the backdrop of The Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel from which they draw ideas like objectification, alienation, and reconciliation. It appropriates these central elements without including Hegel's metaphysics and his approval of Christianity. Just as Hegel asserted that the Absolute Spirit came to self-knowledge by objectifying itself in the finite world, so Feuerbach's finite spirit arrives at self-knowledge by externalising itself in God, and then concluding that this is the way the human spirit discovers its own essential nature. Thought comes out of being, not the reverse.
Hegel regarded religion as the apprehension of ideas in symbolic form. Feuerbach believed that religion was based on a feeling of longing. This is free from the influence of nature and reason and so assumes its sentiments as truths. Longing declares:
"There must be a personal God, i.e., it cannot be that there is not; satisfied feeling says he is."
Feuerbach called this the “omnipotence of feeling” that is stronger than understanding and is seen in several religious beliefs. One is faith in Providence, which is confidence in infinite self-value, not in help from a divinity:
“Providence is the conviction of man of the infinite value of his existence, a conviction in which he renounces faith in the reality of external things; it is the idealism of religion.”
Another is faith in miracles, which is the belief that the gods are free from natural limitations and can deliver our wishes. Finally, faith in immortality: the certainty that the gods will accord us imperishability.
Another faculty involved in religious objectification, according to Feuerbach, is imagination (phantasie) and which he points to as the original organ of religion. He argues that contrary to abstract thought the imagination provides images that affect people's emotions, hopes and dreams. Imagination can also offer human beings unlimited satisfaction to their subjective aspirations. Imagination can absorb abstractions from reality by representing them in sensory imagery.
However, the imagination can deceive by confusing the abstract with the concrete, which is the case of Christianity. The imagination has united the characteristics of human consciousness, thinking, will and feeling, in a perfect Being:
"God is the idea of the species as an individual… freed from all limits which exist in the consciousness and feeling of the individual …"
Part 1 of his book, The True or Anthropological Essence of Religion, is regarded as positive by Feuerbach and there he tries to show how the Christian doctrines of creation, Incarnation, Logos, Trinity and immortality are to be interpreted as the objectification of some human desire.
In Part II, The False or Theological Essence of Religion, he attempts to demonstrate how harmful Christianity can be when it rationalises its naïve beliefs in theology.
Feuerbach's interpretation of the Incarnation shows how he argues. Previously he had asserted that Christians assigned the ideas of absolute human perfections to the deity. These ideas are not divine because God possesses them, but rather God is assigned them because they are thought to be divine. This means that when Christians say that God is love it is the idea of love that is important. In the Incarnation, when God became man, Feuerbach argues that it is an unconscious recognition that love is more important than God:
"Who then is our Saviour and Redeemer? God or Love? Love; for God as God has not saved us, but Love, which transcends the difference between the divine and human personality. As god has renounced himself out of love, so we, out of love, should renounce God; for if we do not sacrifice God to love, we sacrifice love to God, and in spite of the predicate of love, we have the God—the evil being—of religious fanaticism."
In an inverted parallelism with Hegel who held that the Absolute objectifies itself in creation; Feuerbach maintained that humans alienate themselves by objectifying their nature in the divine. He believed that by attributing specifically human attributes to the deity humanity denied itself those characteristics. He added that when religion is a matter of personal feeling the human species loses consciousness and with it unity with Nature and fellow humans. The only acceptable object of human veneration should be the human species.
In the second part of the book the author uses 'contradictions' instead of 'alienation'. These appear when involuntary beliefs are rationalised in theology. One of these contradictions, for example, is the Christian truth that their religion will set humanity free. The author points out that this is a corruption of the sentiment of truth since it claims that some are enabled to believe while others are not and thus leads to superstition and sophistry.
Another contradition is the theological concept of God as metaphysical and personal. Feuerbach argues that the attribute of the metaphysical arises out of the objectification of human reason; the personal attribute is based on a projection of love.
A further contradiction is psychological. It concerns the disconnect between faith and love. For Feuerbach faith depends on an intellectual distinction between true and false. Heresy is embedded in a religion where faith is a primary virtue and leads to a partisan outlook where those who do not follow are damned. Faith understood in this way contradicts love which is naturally universal. It is because of this contradiction that Christian theologians have gradually marginalised the idea of damnation in Hell.
Themes
Theology as Anthropology
One of the main criticisms Feuerbach aims at religion and theology is that they are putting God in the place of humans. In his Preface to The Essence of Christianity the author states:
It is not I, but religion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this.”
He considers that theology misunderstands its pretended study of the nature of God. In the first part of his book he builds up anthropology into theology by explaining his theory of religion as a human projection. In part two The False or Theological Essence of Religion, which is more critical, he emphasises the negative sides of religion, that is the contradictory theological statements that further objectify what is already objectified. He does not present religion as absurd, but comprehensible through anthropological explanations.
Feuerbach reverses the Christian vision and instead of looking to heaven to understand religion he turns the question around and begins with human needs. Why do we yearn for immortality? Why do we need to believe? Why do we project our capacity to love, create and forgive onto a transcendental being we cannot prove exits? Feuerbach sustains that all of the aspects of the divinity we call God correspond to a need of human nature. We project because our imagination far outstrips what our mortal possibilities can achieve. The author argues that we should take back these qualities given over to religion and include them in human ambitions, not divine attributes.
Influences
Auguste Comte (1798 -1857)
Although separated by geography and language Comte and Feuerbach had similar intuitions about the demise of religion in Europe. Both railed against the continuing influence of traditional religion and sought its demise. Feuerbach undertook this by unmasking belief in God as humanity's illusionary self-worship. Comte wanted to replace traditional religion as a religión of humanity, through a positivist account of science. If Feuerbach sought to turn the illusion of religion into an anthropology, Comte aimed to ground religion in the objectivity of science.
However, neither approach could guarantee dignity for humanity which is based on the traditional 'created in the image of God'. This has been borne out by future philosophy in history particularly Nietzsche announced the death of God and the rise of the Ubermensch and the will to power.
Karl Marx (1811-1863)
From Feuerbach Marx learned several lessons:
- humans create religion in their own image
- people maintain their projection as long as they cling to their dreams more than the reality of the world
- human maturity is recognisable in attempts to overcome the self-alienation of religion and reject it
Marx analyses alienation further and concludes that the root of the problem is political. He believed that Feuerbach's concept of human essence must be explained in concrete social and political terms. Applied to religion our projections make sense: we are dealing with an unhappy, oppressed situation:
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition that needs illusions…Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of earth…the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics."
Marx understands religion as a product of social, economic and political forces whose alienating effects can be analysed in specific times and places. He criticises religion, not as the source of the problem of alienation, but as a symptom. His thesis is that religion forms part of a corrupt social-political order and it perpetuates the problem it feigns to resolve.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Freud describes his approach to religion in several works: Totem and Taboo, The Future of an Illusion, Moses and Monotheism. Following Feuerbach Freud argued that religion springs from the human desire to fulfil wishes. It is an illusion because it simply projects human longings.
Freud analysed religion as part of the human psychological structure. He also assumed that if you could explain religion without a reference to God then you should do so. This is a direct challenge to theology since it offers an equally reasoned alternative to religion which undermines theological teachings about ultimate reality.
Freud goes further, however, and labels religion as dangerous. He gives the example of the religious belief in God as Father. He sustains that this idea of a perfect father bolsters the childish longing for a comforting parental figure. In other words, religion hampers human maturity because it obscures the distinction between reality and illusion.
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