Luke Morris
PHL 420 – Philosophy of Religion
4/20/2004
Presentation on Feuerbach
“The Essential Nature of Man” and “The Essence of Religion Considered Generally,” from The Essence of Christianity
Introduction: Religion, the consciousness of God, is actually the self-consciousness of man, though man does not realize this. Man creates God as an objectification of his own nature. Each step in the development of religion, from pantheism to polytheism to monotheism, represents a movement towards a better self-knowledge of man. Each new religion recognizes that the qualities that old religions attributed to god(s) are actually human attributes. The new religion then proffers something new, transcendent of the old ideas, a greater, more superhuman object of worship. But, viewed objectively, religion amounts to the alienation of human nature from the human individual – God is human nature objectified and separated from man.
I. Feuerbach, the Young Hegelian
A radical theologian of his time, he rejected traditional theology for Hegelian philosophy. Discarding Hegel’s conservative Idealism, Feuerbach applied the dialectic method to the phenomenon of religion, analyzing its importance from a materialist perspective. But he did not promote atheism; rather, he believed that he had discovered the correct attitude towards the power and importance of religion in human life. His adaptation of Hegel’s ideas had a profound effect on Karl Marx’s “dialectical materialism” and social theory.
II. The nature of religion
Religion’s basis lies in man’s consciousness – the essential nature of his species is an object of his thought. Religion is our self-consciousness of human nature.
“In the perceptions of the senses consciousness of the object is distinguishable from consciousness of self; but in religion, consciousness of the object and self-consciousness coincide.” 12
“Religion is man’s earliest and also indirect form of self-knowledge.” 13
“Religion is that conception of the nature of the world and of man which is essential to, i.e., identical with, a man’s nature.” 20
Religion is a practical myth. Through religion, man is able to overcome his limitations; but as humanity progresses, the need for religion will die away.
“Religion, expressed generally, is consciousness of the infinite; thus it is and can be nothing else than the consciousness which man has of his own – not finite and limited, but infinite nature.” 142
III. God – positive and negative predication
We can only know anything through what we can positively predicate of that thing. If the only way we can describe something is by reference to the qualities it does not have, then that thing has no real meaning for us.
“That which has no predicates or qualities, has no effect upon me; that which has no effect upon me has no existence for me.” 14
God, for man, must have human-like attributes (analogously) in order to mean anything to man. Otherwise, any predicates we give Him will not tell us anything about Him.
“I cannot know whether God is something else in himself and for himself than he is for me . . . The religious man finds perfect satisfaction in that which God is in relation to himself.” 16
Our predicates of God are amplifications of our predicates of man – anthropomorphisms.
“We extend our conceptions quantitatively not qualitatively.” 147
If we doubt that the qualities we attribute to God can truly be God’s qualities, then we have reason to doubt the existence of God himself.
“If thou doubtest the objective truth of the predicates, thou must also doubt the objective truth of the subject whose predicates they are.” 17
IV. The divinity of man
“Consciousness is the characteristic mark of a perfect nature; it exists only in a self-sufficing, complete being.” 145
A man’s consciousness shows his divinity, as a subject that can hold its own species-nature as its object. Reason, Will, and Love are the trinity of man’s consciousness, the necessary activities of his existence, identical with his being – they make a man who he is, and prove him divine by each existing for its own sake.
“The object to which a subject essentially, necessarily relates, is nothing else than this subject’s own, but objective, nature.” 143
We see our own nature as divine, and we objectify this in our concept of God. We identify the positive qualities of human beings, such as love and goodness, with an object that we call “God.”
“Whatever is God to a man, that is his heart and soul; and conversely, God is the manifested inward nature, the expressed self of a man.” 12-13
“Thou believest in love as a divine attribute because thou thyself lovest; thou believest that God is a wise, benevolent being because thou knowest nothing better in thyself than benevolence and wisdom; and thou believest that God exists, that therefore he is a subject . . . because thou thyself existest, art thyself a subject.” 18
“God is the nature of man regarded as absolute truth, - the truth of man.” 19
The ontological conception of divinity exists within the subject itself. Therefore that divinity exists within the subject’s consciousness, from which the subject can view it as an object.
“Every being is sufficient to itself . . . every being is in and by itself infinite – has its God, its highest conceivable being, in itself.” 145
“So far as thy nature reaches, so far reaches thy unlimited self-consciousness, so far art thou God.” 146
The feeling that we get when we witness what we see as a divine object, and not the object itself, is divine. We can only know the divine by means of the divine. Therefore, if feeling is what gives us a sense of the divine, then feeling in itself is God.
“The divine nature which is discerned by feeling is in truth nothing else than feeling enraptured, in ecstasy with itself.” 146
“God is pure, unlimited, free Feeling . . . Feeling is atheistic in the sense of the orthodox belief, which attaches religion to an external object; it denies an objective God – it is itself God.” 147
V. Man’s alienation from his own divinity
“To know God and not oneself to be God, to know blessedness and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of disunity, of unhappiness.” 18
Man objectifies the divinity of his nature into “God,” and then debases himself by bowing before this abstract image. He personifies his own goodness as God, then asserts that he has no goodness in and of himself, that he is fundamentally imperfect and corrupt. Thus he alienates himself.
“Man – this is the mystery of religion – projects his being into objectivity, and then again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself thus converted into a subject; he thinks of himself as an object to himself, but as the object of an object, of another being than himself.” 30
“God is the highest subjectivity of man abstracted from himself; hence man can do nothing of himself, all goodness comes from God.” 31
Man abstracts his own virtues, apart from any human limitation, personifies them in a being separate from himself, and worships them. In so doing he alienates himself from his own nature.
“Religion, at least the Christian, is the relation of man to himself, or more correctly to his own nature . . . but a relation to it, viewed as a nature apart from his own. The divine being is nothing else than the human being, or, rather, the human nature purified, free from the limits of the individual man, made objective – i.e., contemplated and revered as another, a distinct being.” 14
Discontent arises from being separated from one’s own nature. We lose true happiness when we deny the good within us, choosing instead to find it outside ourselves – we lose our sense of identity as a species.
“In proportion as the divine subject is in reality human, the greater is the apparent difference between God and man; that is, the more, by reflection on religion, by theology, is the identity of the divine and human denied, and the human, considered as such, is depreciated . . . as what is common in the conception of the divine being can only be human, the conception of man, as an object of consciousness, can only be negative. To enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must be nothing.” 26
VI. Religious development – from God(s) to man
Religion precedes philosophy. Man first finds his nature outside of himself, before he locates it within. “Religion is the childlike condition of humanity.” 13
“Man has given objectivity to himself, but has not recognized the object as his own nature: a later religion takes this forward step; every advance in religion is therefore a deeper self-knowledge.” 13
Each progressive step of religion considers its predecessor to be an idolatrous worship of human nature, while is sees itself as transcending human limitations and glimpsing the divine beyond man. Thus, religion gets continually more sophisticated, as it gradually moves away from man, leaving more and more of man’s life as distinctly human, continually more divergent from God. From primitive pantheism that ascribed human-like motives and qualities to everything in nature, to polytheistic pantheons of powerful man-gods, to the monotheistic conception of the one, all-powerful, personal Creator-God, religious alienation gradually fades.
“The course of religious development . . . consists specifically in this, that man abstracts more and more from God, and attributes more and more to himself.” 31
VII. My view on the matter – benefits and hazards
It seems that Feuerbach is right in pointing out that man feels a need to ascribe his nature, and the positive universals that apply to it (goodness, love, etc.), to something outside of himself. But it does not necessarily follow that that object does not exist – it may very well be that some transcendent divine being has imbued man with his nature, creating and providing for him those qualities that make up his life; and thus this being is worthy of the praise men give it.
Even if the divine exists inside man, and can only be known by human predicates, this does not mean that there could be no God serving as the ultimate cause of this divinity.
From chapters 1 and 2 of The Essence of Christianity. Chapter 1 excerpts come from 19th Century Philosophy, by Baird and Kaufmann; Chapter 2 excerpts are taken from a photocopied handout from the original book.