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Ludwig FeuerbachA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Religion is what distinguishes human beings from all other animals. Human beings have religion because they are conscious in a way other animals are not: “Consciousness in the strictest sense is present only in a being to whom his species, his essential nature, is an object of thought” (13). Because humans are able to contemplate themselves as humans, they are also able to contemplate the nature of things outside themselves. In addition, human beings are distinguished from animals by their ability to exercise the powers of reason, will, and affection. In the exercise of these powers, humans come to recognize themselves: The way in which the human relates to the exterior object of contemplation reflects the way in which the individual relates to their own nature and existence.
In contemplating the things that seem highest and most expansive, humans come to understand the infinite and ascribe certain powers to objective reality. However, humans’ apprehension of these powers only shows that they recognize those powers within themselves. One must conclude that all “feelings” of the infinite and divine are rather the recognition that the infinite and divine exist within the human, not outside the human as an infinite and divine being.
Christianity, which champions this understanding of a transcendent and independent divine being, must therefore be rejected: “The divine being is nothing else than the human being, or, rather, the human nature purified, freed from the limits of the individual man, made objective” (20). God is only an expression of human nature.
Religion distances God from humans, positioning “God as the antithesis of man, as a being not human, i.e., not personally human” (31). In fact, God is an object of thought, and not a real object in nature that one can readily observe or come up against. This becomes clear when we consider descriptions of God’s nature that come to us from the ancient philosophers and theologians: God is infinite and eternal; God is intelligence and understanding. All these things are found in the existence of human reason.
God, as an expression of disembodied human nature, represents the highest degree of human reason and intellectual power, but only exists in relation to the human: “All metaphysical predicates of God are real predicates only when they are recognised as belonging to thought, to intelligence, to the understanding” (33). The idea that God cannot do something contrary to reason only proves that the idea of God is that of reason. What is revealed and understood is not God but the self-recognition of the understanding that exists within our own selves. Within reason lies the self-consciousness; at first, we attribute self-consciousness to a God, but as we advance, we recognize that it belongs to human nature alone.
God, humans, and religion are so tied up with one another that to deny the existence of one is essentially to deny the others. When humans desire a transcendent cause or source of salvation, they do not desire something other than themselves; rather, they desire the best of themselves and for themselves: “In religion man seeks contentment; religion is his highest good. But how could he find consolation and peace in God if God were an essentially different being?” (38). God is the name given to the state of achieving ultimate peace and contentment.
Furthermore, the idea that God is a perfect moral being or is the cause of moral perfection in the universe, is nothing other than the human idea of moral perfection played out in transcendent categories. Human beings desire moral perfection, but transfer this abstract desire to the loving and provident being known as God. In between human imperfection and divine perfection, as it is imagined, is the reality of love: “Love is the middle term, the substantial bond, the principle of reconciliation between the perfect and the imperfect, the sinless and sinful being, the universal and the individual, the divine and the human” (40). Uniting all of these categories is the God who is love, made incarnate.
According to Christianity, the Incarnation refers to the transcendent God becoming human on account of sin. In fact, the appearance of God in the flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is evidence simply of a deified man. Christianity teaches that Incarnation is known to humans through a special revelation, but this is impossible. It could only be known by natural reason, and in fact would be materialistic to insist otherwise. Rather a historical event made known by revelation, the Incarnation is proof that human beings understand love, and love must become incarnate to truly be love.
Love that is disinterested is not love; it is selfish, and it renounces itself. Thus, if God is love, God must renounce himself, and, if God renounces himself “out of love, so we, out of love, should renounce God; for if we do not sacrifice God to love, we sacrifice love to God” (43). The idea of a special incarnation of God that is to be worshipped uniquely is insufficient; it has precedent in the ancient world among other myths and ideas, and the truly important aspect of the doctrine is that God is a human being. When theological accretions are purged from this idea of the Incarnation, then the basic fact of God-as-human-being remains. The essential question is this: “If God loves man, is not man, then, the very substance of God?” (45). Christianity, distilled to its essence, is about a human—Jesus—teaching us that love for human beings should be our ultimate goal.
As a corollary to the necessity of the incarnation and the recognition of God as love is Christianity’s insistence that love necessitates suffering of some kind, as Jesus Christ attests. The narrative of the Passion incites the heart to compassion for misery and suffering, and thus reveals the nature of the human heart. Suffering is inextricably woven into Christianity, and is in fact the highest command of the Christian life, which demands that humans pick up their cross and follow the path of Jesus.
A God who suffers is a God who must be like human beings; therefore the “mystery of the suffering God” is the mystery of the human experience (48). Feuerbach concludes that “religion is human nature reflected, mirrored in itself” (49). When humans worship God, they worship what human beings contain within themselves, and what must now be recognized as human.
The danger of the Christian religion is that it provides a means to make everything an abstraction, which removes the self from the reality of the world. In truth, the notion of God is reality itself:
God, as an extramundane being, is however nothing else than the nature of man withdrawn from the world and concentrated in itself, freed from all worldly ties and entanglements, transporting itself above the world, and positing itself in this condition as a real objective being (50).
God is comprehended by the heart, and thus needs to retain an aspect of the finite, in addition to all his timeless and eternal qualities. God can only be love to finite creatures if he understands and contains finitude within his own divinity. This need for the finite is the source of the Christian teaching on the Virgin Mary. Along with the need for the finite, the need for love illustrates the need for human love to be a part of the divine persons of Father and Son.
Feuerbach’s book is a critique of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. To start the book, he engages in a discussion of how human beings differ from other creatures. As the ancient philosophers were fond of saying, human beings are rational animals. As such, humans share many traits and similarities with other animals, but human beings are unique in their intellectual capacities. Here, the author points to the fact that human beings alone, among all creatures, practice religion.
The reason for this difference is that human beings alone experience a specific mode of consciousness that allows for self-reflection, in which an individual can have a conversation with themselves about a thing. This particular mode of consciousness allows the human to put themselves in the place of another, which in turn gives rise to religion and the belief in God. When human beings are conflicted or confused about their own experience, especially regarding those things that seem transcendent or ecstatic, they tend to relegate their experience to a divine other.
Human consciousness—the apex of the gifts of Human Nature—is the aspect of human experience. It allows not only for human emotion and love, but also for the recognition of perfection. Since human beings can put themselves in the place of others, and they are capable of recognizing the perfection of consciousness, they are capable of synthesizing these various realities and fashioning the phenomenon of religion. In religion, the experience of consciousness is transposed onto the idea of God, and so the various human emotions and passions and powers are viewed as having their source in a transcendent, divine other who possesses these traits perfectly.
When considering the Christian religion specifically, Jesus Christ—viewed as the presence and person of God in the flesh—is the locus of divine love, and thus worthy of worship. Feuerbach’s insistence on this point is a means of elucidating his principle that love is really only love if it finds expression in human activity. Further, if the Christians say that God is love, and yet love is what causes God to act and sacrifice himself in the person of Christ, then love is an even higher reality than God himself. Introducing the theme of Tensions and Contradictions Within Christian Doctrine, Feuerbach argues that the Christian conception of God is logically impossible since it presupposes a being who is omnipotent, and yet is capable of submitting to a human emotion.
Christianity’s understanding of the relationship between the divine and love is most tangible in its doctrine of suffering, which helps to demonstrate that the experience of God is in fact the experience of the human person. While Christianity elevates and adores the suffering and death of the man Jesus, Jesus’s suffering actually reveals humanity’s adoration of human experience. Acknowledging the suffering of Jesus shows that the divine is capable of suffering, and it also reveals the emotions of the human heart. The story of the passion elicits feelings of sorrow, compassion, empathy, and love; ultimately, the story of the passion and death of Christ is not the story of a God who experiences pain, but the story of the subjective human experience of love. Since religion is the mirror in which humanity views itself, it makes sense to interpret the story of Jesus’s experience of pain as a reflection of human experience. In Jesus, the interior subjectivity is externalized, allowing it to view itself.