Priestly fraud

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Priest fraud or Herrentrug (also: "Doctrine of Priester- und Herrentrug", "Priestertrugidee" or "Priesterbfrugstheorie") is a concept developed by various enlightenment philosophers that criticizes religious statements as fraudulent inventions by religious officials . It was part of the French social and state philosophy of the Enlightenment and represented a battle thesis against the Ancien Régime in the 18th century . Today, the term is mostly only used in a generalized way to denote a certain argumentation pattern in the criticism of religion and ideology .

Indian philosophy

The idea of ​​priestly deception can already be found in the charvakas , one of the unorthodox currents of Indian philosophy. The Brahmins caste that existed in India at that time is strongly criticized: It is portrayed as useless and undervalued. The Brahmins came up with the Vedas in order to secure their position as spiritual mediators and thus their livelihood through gifts and offerings. The extent to which common people are deprived of the possibility of an actual carefree life by orienting themselves towards the divine and beyond is also critically questioned.

Role models in antiquity

The idea of ​​"pious deceit" ( Ovid ) is older than Christianity. Already Xenophanes of Colophon (570-470 v. Chr.) Held the gods of popular belief in ancient Greece for inventions of the poet. The pre-Socratics Kritias (approx. 460–403 BC), an uncle of Plato, looked for an explanation for the origin of religion. Critias described an original human condition; "There was brute force". At that time the laws were invented. However, these could only have prevented open violence, not the crimes committed in secret. “It seems to me that a shrewd and wise mind first invented the fear of the gods for people so that the evildoers would be afraid, even if they secretly did or said or thought something bad. He therefore introduced the belief in God. "Critias calls it" the most cunning of all doctrines. "The whole fragment highlights two sides to the invention of religion, on the one hand the deception (" by concealing the truth with deceptive words "), on the other hand the context of fear and religion. Both aspects of this criticism of religion recur in the history of antiquity, the Enlightenment, and modern times.

In the great didactic poem of Lucretius (98-55 BC) "Of the essence of the universe" it is emphasized how the priests exploit the fear of the people. “Fear surrounds mortals because they see so many processes taking place in heaven as on earth that they cannot explain with the means of their understanding.” Lucretius “wants to redeem humanity from the compulsion of religions”. He imagines how the priests will deal with his poem: “Of course, priests will try to force you with terrifying words to renounce me and my work, they will incite many horrific illusions against you in order to adopt principles of life based on reason fall. Certainly, for good reason, because if mortals saw the end of misery clearly before them, they could also use spiritual weapons to resist delusional delusions, the threats of the priests. "Lucretius and his work were forgotten until Poggio Bracciolini (1380 -1459) made accessible again to the public of humanistic scholars.

18th century

On the questions of

  1. Origin of religion ,
  2. Role of religion in the life of society.
  3. personal or social benefit of religion

the supernatural sources of religion ( revelations ) were called into question in the sense of a critique of rule , which seeks to expose the one-sided interests of the priests for power, wealth and prestige. Religion is taken into account in connection with the role of everyday knowledge , error , prejudice , deception , dogmatism , worldview , ideology , utopia , mysticism , tradition, etc. The aim of the Enlightenment was, in addition to the struggle for equality, which the Church in particular refused to do , the liberation of people's consciousness from the superstition based on such possible sources of error. Paul Heinrich Dietrich Holbach (1723–1789) and Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771) are considered to be the founders of the theory alongside Francis Bacon (1561–1626).

present

The great atheistic critics of the religion Feuerbach , Marx , Nietzsche , Freud set other priorities in their criticism of religion than the moralizing theory of priestly deception, even if Nietzsche, for example, vehemently advocated it in his work “The Antichrist”. The subject of priestly deception has disappeared from philosophy. The modern critique of ideology, like the aforementioned critics of the 19th century, particularly emphasizes the difference between “knowledge and illusion” (E. Topitsch). Nevertheless, accusations of fraud still play a role among critics of religion from outside or inside, as some book titles show: “The fake belief” (K. Deschner), “The great betrayal” (G. Lüdemann).

The criticism starts with the historical findings of the work of religions - especially Christianity - and comes to the conclusion that all religions were built on the ground of fear :

  1. The causes of this fear were originally storms, thunder, storms and other natural forces to which people felt powerless. Therefore, people would have sought refuge with beings who were stronger than themselves.
  2. It was only later that “ambitious men, sophisticated politicians and philosophers” - according to the Marquis d'Argens in a moral picture of the 18th century - exploited the people's gullibility to maintain the existing social order. The intimate friend of Frederick the Great thus characterized not only the priests, but also the secular rulers and thus the alliance of nobility and clergy that had existed since the Middle Ages .

There are examples of this conception in ancient Greece. The sophist Critias the Younger portrays both aspects of religion as the willful creation of man. According to Freud's theory of religion, fear is based on totemism , as a reaction to the killing of the father in the primal horde and the instinctual conflicts connected with it.

Religion serves to educate people about how to cope with fear of life and to legitimize oppressive social systems. In the priestly deception theory, an areligious consciousness of the rulers emerges, which religion uses as an instrument of rule . The Enlightenment therefore assumes that the rulers are aware of their non-religious attitude and use it with calculation in their favor. It is a "refinement" of knowledge of rulership , in which the rulers have outgrown religious self-deception, but still allow the deception to work in their favor. “This knowledge does not believe, but it makes one believe. Many have to be stupid so that a few remain the smart. ”( Peter Sloterdijk in“ Critique of Cynical Reason ”). In this context, the following verses also fit:

“I know the way, I know the text,
I also know the authors;
I know they secretly drank wine
And publicly preached water. "

- Germany. A winterstory

In contrast to the usual ideology criticism , in which the “false consciousness” of the other side and their “blindness” lead to speechlessness , the theory of fraud contains the approach to a dialogue in which it grants the opponent an intelligence at least as equal.

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Theodor Geiger : Ideology and Truth . A sociological critique of thought. Luchterhand, Neuwied / Berlin 2nd edition 1968, p. 13.
  2. ↑ Hans Joachim Störig : Small world history of philosophy Volume 1, 12 revised. and supplementary edition, Frankfurt am Main, 1985, p. 43 f.
  3. ^ Paul Heinrich Dietrich Holbach Système de la nature ou des lois du monde physique et du monde moral. In: Lenk. Ideologie , Neuwied 1961, pp. 69–73.
  4. ^ Klaus Dörner : Citizens and Irre . On the social history and sociology of science in psychiatry. (1969) Fischer Taschenbuch, Bücher des Wissens, Frankfurt / M 1975, ISBN 3-436-02101-6 ; Pp. 123 f., 233
  5. ^ Karl-Heinz Hillmann : Dictionary of Sociology (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 410). 4th, revised and expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-520-41004-4 , p. 421, Lexikon-Stw. “Doctrine of priests”: p. 689 f.
  6. ↑ Sigmund Freud : The man Moses and the monotheistic religion . (1939) Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2010; ISBN 978-3-15-018721-0 ; After the page number, the line number is shown separated by an asterisk (*); P. 103 * 31 ff.

literature

Web links