FEUERBACH, LUDWIG ANDREAS. – German philosopher, born at Landshut on 28 July 1804, son of the celebrated criminal lawyer Anselmo, died on the Rechenberg (Nuremberg) on 13 September 1872. He studied (Protestant) theology at Heidelberg. Having converted to Hegelian doctrines, he went (1824) to Berlin, where he attended Hegel’s lectures. He was (1828–32) a privatdozent at Erlangen; he then abandoned an academic teaching career and lived from 1836 in the village of Bruckberg, and later, afflicted by severe financial hardship, on the Rechenberg, near Nuremberg.
He is the most notable representative of the so-called “left Hegelianism” of materialistic and atheistic tendency. After an initial adherence to Hegelianism, he moved to the most radical criticism, since the self-consciousness of idealism, which culminates in Hegel’s Geist, or absolute Spirit, is nothing other than the human spirit elevated to the absolute. Thus, in his mature works, such as Das Wesen der 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 asserts the cornerstone of his critique, namely, that “the secret of theology is anthropology.” It is therefore necessary to “reverse” the traditional point of view, which sees in 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 you,” and to this dialogue F. also reduces the meaning of Christianity’s greatest mystery, the divine Trinity (Grundrätze der Philosophie der Zukunft, Zurich and Winterthur 1843, §§ 64–65, p. 83 ff.). The origin of religion, as ancient materialism had already stated, is to be found in fear of the destructive power of natural phenomena, from which man seeks to defend himself by appealing to superior forces, and above all in fear of death, which threatens him with “plunging him into nothingness”: thus F. wrote that “man’s tomb is the care of the gods” (cf. Vorlesungen, cited edition, VIII, p. 41). In this “resolution” of religion and Christianity into naturalism and unalloyed humanism, F. refers to Luther, who, by emphasizing the element of terror in religion, revealed its inhuman character. F. therefore deplored the hypocrisy of modern philosophy, which claimed to save Christianity through immanence, indeed to be its sole legitimate interpreter, while no value was any longer attributed to the authority of the sacred books, ecclesiastical tradition, religious rites, etc.: that is, when all existence had been emptied of every effective relation to 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 point of departure for the dialectical materialism of K. Marx (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 and 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 (anonymous, Nuremberg 1830); Gesch. der neueren Philos. etc. (Augsburg 1833); Pierre Bayle (ibid. 1838); Grundrätze der Philos. der Zukunft (Zurich 1843); Das Wesen der Glaubens im Sinne Luthers (ibid. 1844); Theogonia, etc. (ibid. 1837, in vol. IX of the Sämtl. WW.); Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit (ibid. 1866, the collective title of vol. X of the Sämtl. Werke), etc.