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The Essence of Christianity The Essence of Christianity Ludwig Feuerbach Translated from the original German by George Eliot With a Foreword by Rachel V Kohout Lawrence The Essence of Christianity Copyright © 2008 (Foreword only) by Rachel V Kohout Lawrence All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author. First Neural Library Edition ISBN 1-56543-102-2 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Published by the MSAC Philosophy Group Mt. San Antonio College, Walnut General Editors: Dr. Andrea Diem and Dr. David Lane To the Lawrence Family Foreword By Rachel V Kohout Lawrence Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach was born into ecumenical privilege as the fourth son of German liberal jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach in Landshut, Bavaria July 28th, 1804. Raised in Munich for much of his life until his father‘s death in May 1833, Feuerbach attended Heidelberg University in 1823, followed by the University of Berlin in 1824, and ultimately the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, where he fulfilled his studies in Anthropology and Theology under theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and Hegelian Karl Daub. Matriculating with the intention to pursue a calling in the church, Feuerbach later corresponded, ―Theology, I can bring myself to study no more. I long to take nature to my heart, that nature before whose depth the faint-hearted theologian shrinks back; and with nature man, man in his entire quality.‖ It was this ideal that insinuated his life‘s path and instigated further studies into Anthropology, Hebrew, and Philosophy. Ludwig Feuerbach attained his doctoral degree and philosophical professorship at Erlangen in 1828 by means of his dissertation: De Ratione, Una, Universali, Infinita. His primary formal work was published anony- mously in 1830 under the title, Gedanken uber Tod und Unsterblichkeit (Thoughts on Death and Immortality), containing a strike against personal immorality and corruption. Restless with his lecturing career, Feuerbach left his position in 1832, and found work subsequently unattainable. Encountering more modern philosophies, he continued to write: Geschichte der neueren Philosophie von Bacon von Verulam bis Benedict Spinoza (1833), Darstellung, Entwicklung und Kritik der Leibnitz’schen Philosophie (1837), Abelard und Heloise (1834), and Pierre Bayle (1838). In his most renowned work of this period, Philosophie und Christentum (1839), Feuerbach seemed to have anticipated Nietzsche‘s ―God is dead‖ theory entirely with his abstraction, ―Christianity has in fact long vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed idea.‖ In 1841, authoress George Eliot translated Das Wesen des Christen- tums (The Essence of Christianity) into English, French, and Russian. Feuerbach‘s endeavor with this work was to wholly humanize theology. He derives this undertaking from his prior studies on Hegel‘s theology and the myth of Creation. It was during this time that Feuerbach bravely sought to unite Anthropology with Theism; speaking on man‘s view of God as moral being, love, law, and righteousness. He asserts that man is equally capable of such consciousness due to God‘s bestowing knowledge unto him, ―If man is to find contentment in God, he must find himself in God.‖…Therefore nothing further than an outward projection of man‘s inner nature and self; God is a being who acts throughout man in all forms and grants divinity upon belief. Wolfgang Vondey asks, ‗Feeling is the organ of the divine. How couldst thou perceive the divine by feeling, if feeling were not itself divine in its nature?‘‖ Although attracting political attention, Feuerbach resisted any polit- ical association or statement during the time, and instead composed Theogonie in 1857 dealing with criticisms made upon his most notorious volumes, The Essence of Christianity (1841) and its sequel The Essence of Religion (1846). These made him the most respected and controversial German philosopher throughout the 1840‘s. It is important to note the aforemen- tioned works were not his final word on religion itself, rather an attempt to humanize religion, evaluate truth, and bring meaning to daily sacramental acts. He observes archaic societies: humans gained reliance upon more natural effects which inspired fear and worship; thus formed ―religion‖ was born as a result. ―But to a limited being its limited understanding is not felt to be a limitation.‖—Wolfgang Vondey Feuerbach‘s final work, Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit was fina- lized and published in 1866 during a long period of illness. Ultimately, after suffering a stroke, Ludwig Feuerbach died on September 13, 1872. He is buried in the Johannis-Friedhof Cemetery in Nuremberg, Germany. Though many seek to label Feuerbach as atheist, he denied this asser- tion, stating that theism is atheism in an ordinary sense. His insightful and intuitive works unfurled long after into the efforts of his admirers: Marx, Nietzsche, Engels, and others. As in love, projection is fundamental. We project ourselves upon an external entity as provocation for increased internal knowledge. Similarly, religion enables us to deflect our imperfections upon an enlightened and external deity. Religion is more about falling in love, than it is about ontological influences; religion mandates our soul, our hearts mandate our religion. This was Ludwig Feuerbach‘s centrifugal thesis; religion itself is consciousness of the infinite, ―God springs out of the feeling of a want; therefore conscious, or unconscious need,--that is God.‖ Feuerbach‘s caveat to this assertion was an inverted sense of the ―divine‖; that ―God‖ was purely a human projection stemming from man‘s need for denotation and an object independent of himself. Parallel to Ernest Holmes and Paramahansa Yogananda, Feuerbach believed our own divinity was attainable via philosophical abstractions of complete self-realization, fulfillment, purpose, and presence. Feuerbach asserts that faith, not religion, is human nature. ―Man is nothing without an external object,‖ and to God, Feuerbach gives the name ―Our Essence‖. Kierkegaard predicts the change of modern man will originate from a leap of faith into the unknown. Nietzsche recognized the subjectivity of our religious ethics, ―You must be an extraordinary being to realize you are the sum of your own morals.‖ This is Feuerbach‘s declaration as well, ―My only wish is…to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world…‖—Ludwig Feuerbach (Lectures on The Essence of Religion 1842). Table of Contents 1. God as Being of Understanding ................................................................ 1 2. God as Moral Being or Law ..................................................................... 11 3. God as Love ............................................................................................... 17 4. The Suffering God ..................................................................................... 25 5. The Trinity and Mother of God .............................................................. 31 6. The Logos and Divine Image .................................................................. 39 7. The Cosmogonical Pirnciple .................................................................... 45 8. The Nature in God .................................................................................... 51 9. Creation out of Nothing ........................................................................... 63 10. Creation in Judaism ................................................................................. 73 11. The Mystery of Prayer ............................................................................. 81 12. Faith and the Miracle............................................................................... 87 13. The Resurrection ..................................................................................... 97 14. The Personal God.................................................................................. 103 15. Christianity and Heathenism ................................................................ 113 16. Celibacy and Monachism ...................................................................... 123 17. Heaven and Immortality ....................................................................... 131 18. The Essential Standpoint of Religion ................................................. 145 19. Contradiction in Existence of God ..................................................... 155 20. Contradiction in Revelation of God ................................................... 163 21. Contradiction in the Nature of God ................................................... 171 22. The Speculative Doctrine of God ....................................................... 183 23. Contradiction in the Trinity ................................................................. 189 24. Contradiction in the Sacraments ......................................................... 193 25. Faith and Love ........................................................................................ 203 26. Concluding Application ........................................................................ 221 1. God as Being of Understanding RELIGION is the disuniting of man from himself; he sets God before him as the antithesis of himself God is not what man is – man is not what God is.
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