Ludwig Feuerbach

"Feuerbach" redirects here. For other uses, see Feuerbach (disambiguation).

Ludwig Feuerbach
Portrait of Feuerbach published in Die Gartenlaube, 1872
Born
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach

(1804-07-28)28 July 1804
Landshut, Electorate of Bavaria
Died13 September 1872(1872-09-13) (aged 68)
Rechenberg near Nuremberg, German Empire
EducationUniversity of Heidelberg
University of Berlin
University of Erlangen
(Ph.D./Dr. phil. habil., 1828)
Era19th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolAnthropological materialism[1]
Secular humanism[2]
Young Hegelians (1820s)
Theses
Main interests
Philosophy of religion
Notable ideas
All theological concepts as the reifications of anthropological concepts[3]
Signature

Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (German: [ˈluːtvɪç ˈfɔʏɐbax];[4][5] 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book The Essence of Christianity, which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced generations of later thinkers, including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx,[6] Sigmund Freud,[7] Friedrich Engels,[8] Mikhail Bakunin,[9] Richard Wagner,[10] Frederick Douglass,[11] and Friedrich Nietzsche.[12]

An associate of Young Hegelian circles, Feuerbach advocated anthropological materialism.[1] Many of his philosophical writings offered a critical analysis of religion. His thought was influential in the development of historical materialism,[6] where he is often recognized as a bridge between Hegel and Marx.[13]

  1. ^ a b Axel Honneth, Hans Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 18.
  2. ^ Robert M. Price, Religious and Secular Humanism – What's the difference?
  3. ^ Feuerbach, Ludwig (1957). Eliot, George (ed.). The Essence of Christianity. New York: Harper & Brothers. pp. 29–30. 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. Thus here. Man is an object to God.
  4. ^ Dudenredaktion; Kleiner, Stefan; Knöbl, Ralf (2015) [First published 1962]. Das Aussprachewörterbuch [The Pronunciation Dictionary] (in German) (7th ed.). Berlin: Dudenverlag. pp. 367, 566. ISBN 978-3-411-04067-4.
  5. ^ Krech, Eva-Maria; Stock, Eberhard; Hirschfeld, Ursula; Anders, Lutz Christian (2009). Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch [German Pronunciation Dictionary] (in German). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 507, 711. ISBN 978-3-11-018202-6.
  6. ^ a b Nicholas Churchich, Marxism and Alienation, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, p. 57: "Although Marx has rejected Feuerbach's abstract materialism," Lenin says that Feuerbach's views "are consistently materialist," implying that Feuerbach's conception of causality is entirely in line with dialectical materialism."
  7. ^ Gay, Peter (1988). Freud: A Life for Our Time (1st ed.). New York: Norton. pp. 28–29. ISBN 0393025179. OCLC 16353245.
  8. ^ Engels, Friedrich (1903), Feuerbach: The Roots of the Socialist Philosophy, C.H. Kerr & Co., Chicago, p. 5
  9. ^ Uglik, Jacek (2010). "Ludwig Feuerbach's conception of the religious alienation of man and Mikhail Bakunin's philosophy of negation". Studies in East European Thought. 62 (1): 19–28. doi:10.1007/s11212-010-9098-7. ISSN 0925-9392. JSTOR 40646258.
  10. ^ Wagner, Richard (1850), The Artwork of the Future, Otto Wigand, Leipzig, p. 7
  11. ^ Diedrich, Maria (1999). Love across color lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass. New York: Hill and Wang. pp. 259–260. ISBN 978-0-8090-1613-6.
  12. ^ Higgins, Kathleen (2000), What Nietzsche Really Said, Random House, NY, p. 86
  13. ^ Harvey, Van A., "Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).