The Essence of Christianity
Ludwig Feuerbach
Language: English
Pages: 364
ISBN: 1605204439
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
German philosopher and anthropologist LUDWIG ANDREAS VON FEUERBACH (1804-1872) was a powerful influence on Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Feuerbach's atheism is reflected in their socialist philosophies, and that humanized theology-essentially, a rational approach to understanding concepts of God and Christianity-gets its greatest exploration here. In The Essence of Christianity-this is the classic 1853 translation of the 1841 German original-Feuerbach discusses the "true or anthropological" root of religion, exploring how everything from the nature of God to the mysteries of mysticism and prayer can be viewed through such a prism. He goes on to examine the "false" essences of religion, including contradictions in ideas of the existence of a deity, and then how God and religion are merely expressions of human emotion. This is essential background reading for understanding everything from Marx's Communist Manifesto to modern apolitical philosophies of atheism.
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efficient and the final cause of the world – the existence of the world is only then clear and comprehensible when it sees the explanation of that existence in the source of all clear and intelligible ideas, i.e., in itself. The being that works with design towards certain ends, i.e., with understanding, is alone the being that to the understanding has immediate certitude, self-evidence. Hence that which of itself has no designs, no purpose, must have the cause of its existence in the design of
psychological genesis of miracles superficial. It is no valid objection that miracles have happened, or are supposed to have happened, in the presence of whole assemblies: no man was independent, all were filled with exalted supra-naturalistic ideas and feelings; all were animated by the same faith, the same hope, the same hallucinations. And who does not know that there are common or similar dreams, common or similar visions, especially among impassioned individuals who are closely united and
denying that existence. Kant is well known to have maintained, in his critique of the proofs of the existence of God, that that existence is not susceptible of proof from reason. He did not merit, on this account, the blame which was cast on him by Hegel. The idea of the existence of God in those proofs is a thoroughly empirical one; but I cannot deduce empirical existence from an a priori idea. The only real ground of blame against Kant is, that in laying down this position he supposed it to be
– moral actions, but no moral dispositions. Moral rules are indeed observed, but they are severed from the inward disposition, the heart, by being represented as the commandments of an external lawgiver, by being placed in the category of arbitrary laws, police regulations. What is done is done not because it is good and right, but because it is commanded by God. The inherent quality of the deed is indifferent; whatever God commands is right. If these commands are in accordance with reason, with
distinguished from him; but an especial emphasis is laid on this, that his making is free, arbitrary, at his pleasure. ―It has pleased God‖ to create a world. Thus man here deifies satisfaction in self-pleasing, in caprice and groundless arbitrariness. The fundamentally human character of the divine activity is by the idea of arbitrariness degraded into a human manifestation of a low kind; God, from a mirror of human nature, is converted into a mirror of human vanity and self-complacency. And now