FEUERBACH, LUDWIG ANDREAS. - German philosopher, b. at Landshut on 28 July 1804, son of the celebrated jurist Anselm, d. at Rechenberg (Nuremberg) on 13 Sept. 1872. He studied (Protestant) theology at Heidelberg. Having converted to the Hegelian doctrines, he went (1824) to Berlin, where he heard Hegel. He was (1828-32) a Privatdozent at Erlangen; he then abandoned the career of academic teaching and lived from 1836 in the village of Bruckberg, then, struck by severe financial hardship, at Rechenberg, near Nuremberg.
He is the most notable representative of the so-called "Hegelian left" of materialistic and atheistic tendency. After an initial adherence to Hegelianism, he passed to the most radical criticism, inasmuch as the self-consciousness of idealism, which culminates in Hegel's Geist or absolute Spirit, is nothing but the human spirit elevated to the absolute. Thus in his mature works, such as Das Wesen des Christenthum (Leipzig 1841) and Vorlesungen über das Wesen der Religion (delivered in 1848-49, published in 1851 in vol. VIII of the Sämtl. Werke) he affirms the cornerstone of his criticism, namely that "the secret of theology is anthropology." It is therefore necessary to "overturn" the traditional point of view that sees in the divinity a reality superior to human nature, on which man depends: the only reality on which man depends is "nature," which becomes the actual object of man's relation to being. The only true religion remains the relation of man to man as a relation or "dialogue" of "I and thou," and to this dialogue F. also reduces the meaning of the greatest mystery of Christianity, the divine Trinity (Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft, Zurich and Winterthur 1843, §§ 64-65, p. 83 ff.). The origin of religion, as ancient materialism had already said, is to be seen in the fear of the destructive power of natural phenomena, from which man seeks to defend himself by resorting to superior forces, and above all in the fear of death, which threatens to "plunge him into nothingness": therefore F. wrote that "the tomb of man is the care of the gods" (cf. Vorlesungen, ed. cit., VIII, p. 41). In this "resolution" of religion and of Christianity into naturalism and straightforward humanism, F. appeals to Luther, who, by emphasizing in religion the element of terror, revealed its inhuman character. Hence F. deplored the hypocrisy of modern philosophy, which claimed to save Christianity by immanence, indeed to be its only legitimate interpreter, while no value was any longer attributed to the authority of the sacred books, to ecclesiastical tradition, to religious rites, etc.: that is, when all existence has been emptied of every actual relation to the divinity (cf. Ueber das Wesen der Religion, in Ludwig F.s Briefe und Nachlass, edited by K. Gruen, Leipzig and Heidelberg 1874, p. 423 ff.).
F.'s anthropological materialism was the starting point of K. Marx's dialectical materialism (cf. K. Marx, Thesen über F., 1845). Thus in the historical process from the theism of Greco-Christian philosophy to the pantheism of modern philosophy, to its materialist anthropologism, F. saw the complete liberation of human reason from metaphysical fiction.
Among his other works are remembered: Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit (anon., Nuremberg 1830); Gesch. der neueren Philos. etc. (Augsburg 1833); Pierre Bayle, (ibid. 1838); Grundsätze der Philos. der Zukunft (Zurich 1843); Das Wesen des Glaubens im Sinne Luthers (ibid. 1844); Theogonia, etc. (ibid. 1837, in vol. IX of the Sämtl. WW.); Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit (ibid. 1866, collective title of vol. X of the Sämtl. Werke) etc.
Bibliography10 works
Cornelio Fabro