Ludwig Feuerbach: Philosopher of Revolution

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Reading 1

Our hearts are filled with compassion, for it is old Jehovah himselfwho is making ready to die. We have known him so well, from hiscradle in Egypt where he was brought up among the divine crocodilesand calves, the onions and the ibises and sacred cats….Wesaw him bid farewell to those companions of his childhood, theobelisks and sphinxes of the Nile, to become a little god-kingin Palestine to a poor nation of shepherds. Later we saw him incontact with the Assyro-Babylonian civilization; at that stagehe gave up his far-too-human passions and refrained from spittingwrath and vengeance; at any rate, he no longer thundered for theleast trifle…We saw him move to Rome, the capital, wherehe abjured everything in the way of national prejudice and proclaimedthe celestial equality of all peoples; with these fine phraseshe set up in opposition to old Jupiter and, thanks to intriguing,he got into power and, from the heights of the Capitol, ruledthe city and the world, urbem et orbem….We have seenhim purify himself, spiritualize himself still more, become paternal,compassionate, the benefactor of the human race, a philanthropist….Butnothing could save him!

Don't you hear the bell? Down on your knees! The sacrament isbeing carried to a dying God!

Heinrich Heine: 1834

Reading 2

…What manner of infinite wisdom and power isit that merely palliates the consequences of an evil or deficiency?Why does it not prevent the evil itself? Why does it not preventthe cause? If the carriage I am riding in collapses, but I breakno bones, should I attribute my good fortune to divine Providence?Why couldn't it have prevented the carriage from collapsing? ….How…canone take refuge in the religious conception of divine wisdom andgoodness, when even religion, faced with the contradictions betweenthe world as it is and divine goodness and wisdom, does not claimthat God made the world as it is, but prefers to suppose thatthis world has been corrupted by sin and the Devil, and thereforeholds out the prospect of a better, divine world?

From Lecture 15 of the Lectures on the Essence ofReligion: Ludwig Feuerbach: 1848

The talk

Human beings are essentially good. The proof is theirconception that god is good. Never mind that the song says that"Amazing grace … that saved a wretch likeme." How we came to abase ourselves before an infinitelygood god was made clear in Ludwig Feuerbach's analysis of religionand Christianity.

Ludwig Feuerbach was the most remarkable member ofa remarkable family (of men, that is). His mother figures in hisbiography as the descendent of a long line of gifted…men.

His father, Anselm, was the leading German criminologistin the Napoleonic era; he had a lasting influence on criminallaw on the continent. He also for a time lived openly with anotherwoman than his wife, the wife of a friend of his. He had a fierytemper and was known in the family as Vesuvius. Ludwig's oldestbrother was a well-known archeologist, while his nephew was agifted painter. And there were others. But we are concerned withLudwig.

Feuerbach-the fiery brook-was the philosopher whoinspired the abortive revolution of 1848 in Germany, who inspiredSigmund Freud and Martin Buber…and Karl Marx. Indeed, fora hundred years he was known almost exclusively through Marx'sacknowledgement of his influence. Then came a revival of interestin him, as Marxism waned and Humanism waxed.

Sidney Hook, the eminent critic of Marxism, wroteabout 1940:

…increasing interest in the philosophy and psychologyof religion have gradually brought Feuerbach into the field ofphilosophic consciousness. It would be more accurate to say thathe is being restored to his rightful place, for as lonely andmodest a figure as he was, during one brief decade the whole ofGerman philosophy and culture stood within his shadow….Feuerbachwas the philosophical arch-rebel from the publication of his TheEssence of Christianity to the eve of the revolution of 1848.

The Essence of Christianity was translated into Englishby none other than George Eliot. Between the German philosophicalstyle and Eliot's early Victorian style, that book makes difficultreading. But its message is clear. Clearer still are the Lectureson the Essence of Religion, given in the winter of 1848-1849,at the height of the revolution. These were addressed to a Heidelbergaudience of academics, students, townspeople and workers. Theymarked his last public appearance. Our second reading was takenfrom lecture 15 of that series.

Feuerbach was the first to analyze religion as apsychological phenomenon, the product of the human psyche. Hecame into a Germany dominated by idealist philosophers, philosopherswho attempted to derive the world from human thought. Hegel wasthe continuer of Plato: behind the tree is the concept of tree.Feuerbach, on the contrary, derived human thought from human experience.For Feuerbach there can be no concept of tree without the realtrees. And this is how he approached religion.

Let us start with Feuerbach's conception of whatit is to be human. What is his divine trinity? He wrote:

"What then is the nature of man, of whichhe is conscious, or what constitutes the specific distinction,the proper humanity of man? Reason, Will, Affection. To a completeman belong the power of thought, the power of will, the powerof affection….We think for the sake of thinking; love forthe sake of loving; will for the sake of willing-i.e., that wemay be free." And in a footnote he adds:

The obtuse Materialist says: 'Man is distinguishedfrom the brute only by consciousness-he is an animal withconsciousness superadded;" not reflecting, that in a beingthat awakes to consciousness, there takes place a qualitativechange, a differentiation of the entire nature. For the rest,our words are not intended to depreciate the nature of the loweranimals.

For Feuerbach, god is an anthropomorphism, but ananthropomorphism that has taken on an independent reality.

"Whatever man conceives to be true, he immediatelyconceives to be real (that is, to have an objective existence),because originally, only the real is true to him-true in oppositionto what is merely conceived, dreamed, imagined….Now God isthe nature of man regarded as absolute truth-the truth of man;but God, or what is the same thing, religion, is as various asare the conditions under which man conceives this his nature,regards it as the highest being….The qualities of God arenothing else than the essential qualities of man himself."

So, if our god is good, it is because we are good."It does not follow that goodness, justice, wisdom, are chimerasbecause the existence of God is a chimera, nor truths becausethis is a truth. The idea of God is dependent on the idea of justice,of benevolence; a God who is not benevolent, not just, not wise,is no God; but the converse does not hold. The fact is not thata quality is divine because God has it, but that God has it becauseit is in itself divine….Justice, wisdom, in general everyquality which constitutes the divinity of God, is determined andknown by itself independently."

This is Feuerbach's defiant answer to those who tellus that without god there can be no morality. Humans are firstmoral and then they project their morality into a conceived object,a god.

We meet here Feuerbach's concept of "alienation,"translated by George Eliot by "projection," known tous today through Freud, who openly acknowledged his debt to Feuerbach.Projection is the attribution of our own properties to an externalsubject, in the current context, our most basic human characteristicsto the concept of God.

But alienation is more than projection. Entäuserrung,the German word used by Feuerbach, implies divestiture, a partingwith. In attributing to god our divine qualities we have lostthem for ourselves. And so it happens that we grovel before thegod we have created, we fear god, our god declares that he is"a jealous god." Even the man become god, Jesus, theincarnation of love, warns us of the final judgement for doesnot Matthew quote him as saying: "When the man comes intohis glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on hisglorious throne. In front of him will be gathered together allthe peoples; he will separate them from each other, just as ashepherd separates sheep from goats, and he will place the sheepat his right hand, but the goats on his left. Then the King willsay to those at his right hand, 'Come, you who have been blessedby my Father, inherit the Kingdom which has been prepared foryou from the foundation of the world'….He will then say tothose on his left hand, you accursed ones! Go away from me intothe eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his agents'….And they will go into eternal punishment, but the righteous intoeternal life."

Am I glad we're Universalists!

The message of powerlessness before god is even strongerin Job. Here is a perfectly righteous man. He does everythingaccording to the Book. And he knows that god knows this. And yethis life and his family are destroyed by a silly wager god makeswith Satan. When his friends say he must have committed some secretsin Job protests his perfect righteousness. He demands to be heardby god. When god comes to him out of the tempest and flaunts hispower and his total unaccountability, Job cowers and abandonshis case. Only then is he rehabilitated, having won god's wagerwith Satan for him. Of course, his dead children are dead. Thereis no everlasting life in the Hebrew Bible a.k.a. Old Testament.He is given a new brood.

It is "Amazing Grace" that saves wretcheslike us. Feuerbach points out that in the religious conception,all good flows from god, all evil from Satan.

"Grace and its works are the antitheses of thedevil and his works. As the involuntary, sensual impulses whichflash out from the depths of the nature, and. In general, allthose phenomena of moral and physical evil which are inexplicableto religion, appear to it as the work of the Evil Being; so theinvoluntary movements of inspiration and ecstasy appear to itas the work of the Good Being, God, of the Holy Spirit or of grace.Hence the arbitrariness of grace-the complaint of the pious thatgrace at one time visits and blesses them, at another forsakesand rejects them….In relation to the inner life, grace maybe defined as religious genius; in relation to the outerlife as religious chance. Man is good or wicked by no meansthrough himself, his own power, his will; but through that completesynthesis of hidden and evident determinations of things which,because they rest on no evident necessity, we ascribe to the powerof 'chance.' Divine grace is the power of chance beclouded withadditional mystery. Here we have again the confirmation of thatwhich we have seen to be the essential law of religion. Religiondenies, repudiates chance, making everything dependent on God,explaining everything by means of him; but this denial is onlyapparent; it merely gives chance the name of the divine sovereignty.For the divine will, which, on incomprehensible grounds, for incomprehensiblereasons, that is, speaking plainly, out of groundless, absolutearbitrariness, out of divine caprice, as it were, determines orpredestines some to evil and misery, others to good and happiness,has not a single positive characteristic to distinguish it formthe power of chance. The mystery of the election of grace is thusthe mystery of chance. I say the mystery of chance; forin reality chance is a mystery, although slurred over and ignoredby our speculative religious philosophy, which … has forgottenthe profane mystery of chance."

And in a footnote he adds:

"Doubtless, this unveiling of the mystery ofpredestination will be pronounced atrocious, impious, diabolical.I have nothing to allege against this; I would rather be a devilin alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood."

As I have written elsewhere, I would rather believein a random, but not arbitrary universe than in an arbitrary butnot random god.

Turning to prayer, Feuerbach labels it "theessential act of religion….Prayer is all-powerful. What thepious soul entreats for in prayer God fulfils." But, he adds,in a footnote to his discussion of prayer, "It is only unbeliefin the efficacy of prayer which has subtly limited prayer to spiritualmatters."

Do not get the idea from all this that Feuerbachwas not a religious person. His quarrel was not with religion,but with religions. He was an atheist, true, but his definitionof religion as the alienation from mankind of mankind's true characteristicsenabled him to define a religion without alienation. We UUs haveour flower communion and our water ceremony. Here's Feuerbachon Baptism:

"The Water of Baptism is to religion only themeans by which the Holy Spirit imparts itself to man. But by thisconception it is placed in contradiction with reason, with thetruth of things. On the one hand, there is virtue in the objective,natural quality of water; on the other, there is none, but itis a merely arbitrary medium of divine grace and omnipotence.We free ourselves from these and other irreconcilable contradictions,we give a true significance to Baptism, only by regarding itas a symbol of the value of water itself. Baptism should representto us the wonderful but natural effect of water on man. Waterhas, in fact, not merely physical effects, but also, and as aresult of these, moral and intellectual effects on man….Topurify oneself, to bathe, is the first, though the lowest of virtues."

And in another of his marvelous footnotes he adds:

"Christian baptism also is obviously only arelic of the ancient Nature-worship, in which…water was ameans of religious purification. Here, however, water baptismhad a much truer, and consequently a deeper meaning, than withthe Christians, because it rested on the natural power and valueof water….When therefore the Persians, the Hindoos, the Egyptians,the Hebrews, made physical purity a religious duty, they wereherein far wiser than the Christian saints who attested the supranaturalprinciples of their religion by physical impurity. Supranaturalismis only a euphemism for anti-naturalism."

"The course of religious development …consists specifically in this, that man abstracts more and morefrom God and attributes more and more to himself….That whichto a later age or a cultured people is given by nature or reason,is to an earlier age, or to a yet uncultured people, given byGod. Every tendency of man, however natural-even the impulse tocleanliness, was conceived by the Israelites as a positive divineordinance. From this example we again see that God is lowered,is conceived more entirely on the type of ordinary humanity, inproportion as man detracts from himself. How can the self-humiliationof man go further than when he disclaims the capability of fulfillingspontaneously the requirements of common decency? The Christianreligion, on the other hand, distinguishes the impulses and passionsof man according to their quality, their character; it representedonly good emotions, good dispositions, good thoughts, as revelations-ofGod; for what God reveals is a quality of God himself; ….TheChristian religion distinguishes inward moral purity from externalphysical purity; the Israelite identified the two. In relationto the Israelitish religion, the Christian religion is one ofcriticism and freedom. The Israelite trusted himself to do nothingexcept what was commanded by God;….the authority of religionextended itself even to his food. The Christian religion , onthe other hand, in all these external things made man dependenton himself, i.e., placed in man what the Israelite placedout of himself in God. In relation to the Israelite, the Christianis an esprit fort, a free-thinker. Thus do things change.What yesterday was still religion is no longer such today; andwhat today is atheism, tomorrow will be religion."

And he concludes:

Let bread be sacred for us, let wine be sacred,and also let water be sacred! Amen.

Copyright 1997, Morton Nadler; Commercial Duplication Prohibited

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