Feuerbach

Feuerbach, LUDWIG ANDREAS, German philosopher, fourth son of the following, was born at Landshut, 28th July 1804. After he had studied theology for two years at Heidelberg under Paulus and Daub, Hegel attracted him to Berlin, and ere long he abandoned theology for philosophy. In 1828 he became privatdozent at Erlangen, but failed as a lecturer, and next retired to Bruckberg, where his wife's means enabled him to live in studious quiet for more than twenty years. In 1830 he published anonymously his Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit—an attack on the doctrine of immortality—and during the next few years, works on the philosophers between Bacon and Spinoza, on Leibnitz, and Pierre Bayle. But these historical works only paved the way to a critical investigation into the nature of religion and its relation to philosophy, the results of which have been given to the world in several works well known to speculative theologians. The most celebrated of these is his famous work on the nature of Christianity, Das Wesen des Christenthums (1841), which had the honour of translation into English from the pen of Marian Evans (George Eliot). Starting from the Hegelian doctrine that the Absolute comes to consciousness only in humanity, Feuerbach denies to it any existence beyond the human consciousness, maintaining it to be merely the projection by man of his own ideal into the objective world, on which he feels his dependence. All authority above man, and consequently all moral obligation, is therefore consistently regarded as a delusion proceeding from man himself, and the highest good is explained as that which is on the whole most pleasurable. Yet even this highest good is further explained as consisting in resemblance to that ideal humanity which man creates for himself, and worships as God. A kind of ideal theism is therefore retained by Feuerbach; but when his doctrines were adopted by the mass of German communists, they degenerated, perhaps logically, into an actual atheism, which ignored any moral or social law imposed on the individual from any other source than himself. The last years of the philosopher were vexed with poverty, from which he was relieved by the offerings of admirers, by paralysis, and at last by death, 13th September 1872. His works were collected, with additions and corrections to bring them into accordance with his later views, in ten volumes (1846-66). See books by Grün (1874), Beyer (1872), Starcke (1885), Engels (1888), and Bolin (1891).