The essence of Christianity (Feuerbach)

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Title page of the second edition from 1848

The essence of Christianity is a work by Ludwig Feuerbach published by Otto Wigand in Leipzig in 1841 . It is the central work of his criticism of religion and thus an extremely important publication of the philosophy of religion of the 19th century. In this work, Feuerbach sets out his projection theory of God and his understanding of Christianity .

content

For Feuerbach, the starting point is the assumption that animals are just as conscious living beings as humans, but that they do not seem to have any religion . To him, the ability of the individual to see himself in relation to the species seems to be relevant . So he moves in the tradition of Hegel .

The “generic functions” of thinking and speaking are related to community, but can also be performed by the individual person alone. The individual is "at the same time me and you", he puts himself in the place of another . In contrast, the action of animals is limited to what is immediately given ; For example, a caterpillar that lives on certain plants does not “think” beyond these plants, it can only distinguish these plants from others.

In comparison, human consciousness is unlimited. For Feuerbach, reason , will and love are the central essential determinations of man towards animals. In every consciousness that the individual has of an object , he becomes aware of his real finitude and limitation through these three fundamentally unlimited faculties .

However, man tends to explain his own barriers to barriers of the species. What is incomprehensible to oneself must also be incomprehensible to other people: I do not have to be ashamed because my understanding is finite.

Music , for example, is a monologue of feeling . If I have no feeling for music in myself, I cannot recognize music as such, for me it is only noise. The same is true of religious feeling. If I don't have a religious feeling in me, I can't see anything religious. So religion is just a feeling in myself. The religious arises in myself, so the object that triggers the religious feeling in me is variable outside of me. The feeling is atheistic in the sense of the orthodox faith, as which religion is linked to an external object; it denies an objective God - he is God to himself.

  • The same thing as with feeling applies to any other force, ability, potency, reality, activity.
  • The beings of a different, higher kind that man imagines are always endowed with essential determinations that he draws from his own being, determinations in which he only depicts himself.
  • The object of man is nothing other than his objective being itself. As man thinks, as he is minded, so is his God. The knowledge of God is therefore man's self-knowledge. However, man is not aware of this. He first relocates his being outside of himself before he finds it in himself. Man objectifies his being and worships it in the form of an object.
  • Religion admits that the characteristics of God are human. However, this does not say anything about God. Man can only imagine God what God is. Therefore the image of God is human-like , which does not mean that God is like that.
  • Nevertheless, humans assume that their idea of ​​God corresponds to the reality of God. If man did not have this claim to his image of God, belief would be arbitrary.
  • Whoever doubts the truth of his image of God must also doubt the very existence of God.
  • The highest thing for man is to exist. Hence for him God is an existing God.
  • God is the greatest thing you can imagine. If a bird imagined God, then his God would have wings, because there is nothing greater than wings for a bird.
  • The gods of men correspond to themselves. A god who lives in a temple has only existed since man has lived in houses. For the ancient Teutons, the virtue of war was their greatest virtue. Hence, their supreme god was the god of war - Odin .
  • A true atheist is therefore only someone to whom these predicates such as love, wisdom and justice mean nothing.
  • The predicate is the real subject of human worship. This has been forgotten through the combination of several predicates in one divine subject.
  • The religions justify the parallelism of humanly valued and divine predicates with the fact that this is only the selection of the divine predicates that humans recognize. God has infinitely many more.
  • To religion, anthropomorphisms (attributing human characteristics to gods) are not anthropomorphisms .
  • A quality is not divine because God has it, but God has it because it is divine itself, because without it God is a defective being.
  • The monks compensated for their chastity with the Virgin Mary . It became so important to them that it almost took the place of God.
  • In the mirror of the infinitely good God, man recognizes himself as limited. In order to worship God, people make themselves small and admit that, in contrast to God, they are only limitedly good, loving, wise, etc. Through God man recognizes what he is not himself, but ought to be, and thus can be. Because an ought without ability would be ridiculous.
  • As long as man worships God as good, he sees himself as good, since God is only the outwardly expressed characteristics of man.
  • The Israelite left it to God to make all the decisions for him. Until then, everything was regulated in the law, such as how to wash and what to eat. The Christian, on the other hand, decides these outward appearances himself. The Christian places in himself what the Israelite put outside himself in God. So God changes in history, depending on what man retains in himself or what he transfers from himself to a subject that has arisen from the imagination.

expenditure

  • Ludwig Feuerbach: The essence of Christianity . Otto Wigand, Leipzig 1841. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • Ludwig Feuerbach: The essence of Christianity. Reviewed and re-edited. by Wilhelm Bolin. Stuttgart 1903 (= Ludwig Feuerbach's Complete Works. Volume 6).
    • Ludwig Feuerbach: Explanations and additions to the essence of Christianity. Reviewed and re-edited. by Wilhelm Bolin. Stuttgart 1903 (= Ludwig Feuerbach's Complete Works. Volume 7).
  • Ludwig Feuerbach: The essence of Christianity . Reclam 1994, Stuttgart, ISBN 3-15-004571-1 (afterword by Karl Löwith).

Web links

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach: The essence of Christianity . Otto Wigand, Leipzig 1841. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  2. ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach: The essence of Christianity . ISBN 978-3-8496-8297-2 ( google.at ).