SOURCE: Preuss, Peter. “Feuerbach on Man and God.” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 11, no. 2 (1972): 204-23.

[In the following essay, Preuss argues that in The Essence of Christianity Feuerbach attempted and failed to surpass Hegelian philosophy.]

I

When Feuerbach published his The Essence of Christianity in 1841 it excited a “clamour” in the educated circles of the day, a “clamour” which apparently did not surprise Feuerbach nor cause him to back down from the bold thesis of the work. Rather it caused him “once more, in all calmness” to subject his work “to the severest scrutiny, both historical and philosophical” and in the full conviction of the truth of his thesis to publish a second edition two years later.¹

What was this bold thesis and in what circles did it create this clamour? The thesis was that “religion is the dream of the human mind” (F xxxix) or, put more boldly, that man created God in his own image (F 118). The key to establishing this thesis will be the claim that the divine and human natures are identical (F xxxvii). And the circles in which the clamour reached its highest pitch were the philosophers and theologians.

There is no doubt whatever that Feuerbach's book presents one of the most profound challenges to the theologian, a challenge which cannot be dismissed by dubbing it, with Karl Barth, “shallow” or “impertinent”; and the theologian whose sole response is “to laugh in [Feuerbach's] face” must himself appear ridiculous.² We are, in the present essay, however, concerned with philosophy rather than theology.

While the clamour excited in theological circles is best described as outrage, the effect on philosophical circles was quite the opposite. This effect is best recaptured in the words of Engels. “One must himself have experienced the liberating effect of this book to get an idea of it”, he writes. “Enthusiasm was general; we all became at once Feuerbachians”.³ In the eyes of the young Hegelians Feuerbach became the leading philosopher of religion of his day. Marx sought to transform philosophy into criticism of all forms of human self-alienation, but “criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism”. It is only because Feuerbach proclaimed to the world that “Man makes religion, religion does not make man” that Marx's transformation of all philosophy into criticism could aim at unmasking “self-alienation in its secular forms”. The presupposed task of unmasking the “sacred form of human self-alienation” was, for Germany at least, “in the main complete” in Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity.⁴

Outrage and liberated enthusiasm may be appropriate reactions to a bold philosophy because it is bold, but if these reactions are the only ones then they cannot be taken seriously because this bold philosophy is not only bold but philosophy as well. It must be quite clear that Feuerbach's book is not intended as a sermon, which may not need justification, not as the record of a revelatory religious experience which may somehow be self-validating or self-justifying. It is intended to be philosophy, and philosophy means argument.

In fact Feuerbach is quite clear on this point. He demands that his work be taken as philosophy. To agree with his conclusion is worth nothing if one has not understood and been convinced by his arguments for that conclusion, and he warns him who would disagree with it to do so on rational grounds. He writes: “let it be proved that the … arguments of my work are false; let them be refuted … by reasons” (F xxxvi). It is my intention in this paper to treat Feuerbach's work as philosophy and to reject any other treatment of it as inappropriate.

II

It is well known that Feuerbach's education in philosophy was an education in Hegelian philosophy, and the Hegelian origins of Feuerbach's work are quite evident. We shall in the course of the argument become involved with the Hegelian philosophy so far as our concern with Feuerbach poses a systematic requirement to do so. The case we intend to establish is that Feuerbach's rejection of Hegel fails on precisely the grounds which were to support this rejection in the first place. It is widely believed that Feuerbach attempts to reject the Hegelian philosophy by rejecting its speculative method. We shall find, however, that he must not only appeal to certain of Hegel's conclusions in order to continue his argument, but that finally he rejects Hegel's philosophy, not on the grounds that it is merely speculative, but that it is not speculative enough.

The Hegelian thesis which is relevant to the present issue is that although religion and philosophy are identical in content they differ in form. The content of both is, briefly, the absolute; but the form of religion, mythology, is inadequate to this content. It is the inadequacy of religion which justifies, and indeed demands, philosophy as the final and adequate comprehension of the absolute. This Hegelian thesis is the theme of Feuerbach's work, it describes the structure of The Essence of Christianity. We find here an attempt to overcome religion towards philosophy. Where Hegel speaks of inadequacy, Feuerbach speaks of contradiction. Religion, according to Feuerbach, attempts to give an account of the man-God relationship, but in giving this account it necessarily becomes self-contradictory. It is the task of philosophy to give an adequate account where religion failed.⁵

It seems at first that the job of transcending toward philosophy is an easy one. Feuerbach is not writing in the middle ages, when this task might have been a giant one, but in the nineteenth century, a century of “fire and life assurance companies … railroads and steamcarriages … picture and sculpture galleries … military and industrial schools … theatres and scientific museums”. Christianity had no place in nineteenth century life, it was an anachronism there; it had “long vanished, not only from the reason but from the life of mankind” (F xliv).

Given this situation, the job of transcending religion towards philosophy at first appears merely to be a case of translating “the Oriental language of imagery into plain speech” (F xxxiii). Yet this is no ordinary translation but an improvement involving a radical revision. It is not that this language of imagery is used with greater clarity than ever before, but that it is rejected because of its fundamental incapacity to say what it is trying to say. Instead Feuerbach intends to construct a language in which what must be said can be said. This, according to Feuerbach, involves a change of standpoint. It requires that one abandon the standpoint of the religious votary from whom the truth of religion is hidden precisely because it is not attainable from the standpoint of religion, and adopt the standpoint of the thinker, the standpoint of theory, from which what is hidden from the votary becomes evident (cf F 13). This change of standpoints is both difficult and crucial to an understanding of Feuerbach's work; its discussion is reserved for Sections III and IV below.

In overcoming the standpoint of the religious votary does Feuerbach take himself to be overcoming the standpoint of all religion or of Christianity only? Might not a Jew, upon reading Feuerbach, believe himself quite untouched by Feuerbach's conclusion and lay the book aside confirmed in his conviction that nothing good would come of Christianity in the end? Feuerbach is, of course, aware that Christianity is not the only religion that exists or has ever existed. But this evident multiplicity of religions does not make it necessary to overcome each of them separately because they are not independent of each other. Feuerbach points to a “historical progress in religion” and succinctly characterizes religion as “consciousness of God” (F 13). Progress in religion, therefore, is progress in the consciousness of God, in the course of which man's idea of God becomes ever more adequate or true until finally “in Christianity is given the idea of the true God” (F 56). Christianity is the final result of a long history of progress in religion, it is the final religious achievement which cannot be improved upon by another more adequate religion. To overcome Christianity, therefore, is to overcome all religion, not just one among others.

Without the thesis of a progress in religion culminating finally in Christianity Feuerbach's work would lose immensely in significance even if in all other respects it were above reproach. How, then, does Feuerbach establish this thesis? He offers two things in defence of the thesis. First, he offers a brief and general historical sketch which may be summarized with the conclusion that each religion “pronounces its predecessors idolatrous” (F 13). It may be true that each religion views itself as superior to all of its predecessors, but it is also true that any surviving religion views its historical successors as inferior. Further a mere history of religion cannot pronounce on the value of any religion, nor call the historical sequence of religions “progress” without the addition of a criterion not itself historically establishable. A historical argument, therefore, is in principle incapable of establishing the thesis Feuerbach needs to establish.

Feuerbach is aware of this for he offers, in the second place, the required criterion, namely, the claim that the divine and human natures are identical. Before we can proceed any further, we must consider his argument to justify this criterion and see how it functions as the required criterion. Only man has religion, the brute does not. If we are to understand religion, therefore, we must understand the essential difference between man and brute, for it is in this difference that religion has its “basis” or, put more strongly, with which it is “identical” (F 2). This essential difference Feuerbach describes in terms of consciousness. Man possesses consciousness, the brute does not. The consciousness at issue here, however, is a special kind of consciousness. Certain kinds of consciousness, namely, those “implied in the feeling of self as an individual, in discrimination by the senses, in perception and even judgment of outward things according to definite sensible signs, cannot be denied the brute” (F 1). The special kind of consciousness Feuerbach has in mind is that in which one's own species or essential nature becomes an object of thought.

The conception of the species, however, is not entirely foreign to the brute, for brutes do discriminate between members of their own species and others, say, for the purpose of mating, and between species of plants, for the purpose of feeding. This limited consciousness is not what Feuerbach has in mind, yet he recognizes it as “instinct”. The difference between instinct and the higher consciousness at issue lies in the fact that the brute requires some external aid for all its species-directed functions, whereas man does not. The brute, in order to relate to a species, requires another individual outside itself, whereas man has the capacity to “put himself in the place of another” and in this way attain to true thought or the required kind of consciousness (F 2). This capacity which man has profoundly transforms his consciousness and serves radically to distinguish it from that of the brute. The result of this transformation is that in man his “inner life” and his “outer life” become distinct, while in the brute there is no such distinction. Man can think, that is, he can converse with himself: “man is at once I and thou” (F 2). This inner life of man, the life of thought, is “the life which has relation to his species, to his general, as distinguished from his individual, nature” (F 2). This higher consciousness then, which is enjoyed by man alone, is a special kind of self-consciousness which, in making man aware of his own species, also enables him to make of the species of other beings an object of thought; it makes man capable of science.

It is precisely this self-consciousness which is the distinctive characteristic of man with which religion is identical: religion is the exercise of self-consciousness. What we are conscious of in this exercise, however, is not our individuality, our finite and limited nature, but our essential, our infinite nature. For this reason religion is also correctly characterized as “consciousness of the infinite” (F 2). The infinity of our nature, however, is not an abstract infinity in itself, rather it is infinity for us. Since the feeling and understanding of every being are perfectly in harmony with its nature (cf F 8), “no being is a limited one to itself” (F 7). In fact, so far as any being is limited at all, this limit is “cognizable only by another being out of and above him” (F 2). It is true that man can recognize his individual self as finite, but only because in thought he can rise above his individuality to his nature from which position he can recognize his individual finitude. But “man cannot get beyond his true nature” (F 11) and for that reason cannot admit any limits in his true nature which must, to him, necessarily appear as infinite. This consciousness of the infinite, however, is “nothing else than the consciousness of the infinity of consciousness” (F 3), or this consciousness has for its object only the infinity of my own nature. God, however, is “the highest conceivable being” (F 7), which for any being is precisely its own nature. Because in my highest self-consciousness I am conscious of this highest conceivable being, God, religion is also accurately characterized as “consciousness of God” (F 13). In being conscious of God, however, man is only conscious of his own nature: the divine and human natures are identical.

This, then, is the criterion according to which we can call the history of religion a progress, for the history of religion seems to display an ever increasing approximation to the realization that the divine and human natures are identical. In Christianity this realization has been developed as far as it can be in the person of Christ who is both God and man. The overcoming of Christianity, therefore, is an overcoming of all religion, an overcoming which cannot result in a further, more developed religion, but only in philosophy.

How good is Feuerbach's justification of this criterion? After considering it we are struck by the number of crucial premises which, while being highly problematical, appear as mere assertions. For example, how are his assertions about the brute's consciousness established, or how the claim that man cannot get beyond his true nature? In fact, what we have here is the mere outline of an argument which, for some reason, Feuerbach did not see fit to expand. The reason, I think, is that Feuerbach saw himself here as merely recapitulating the opinions of his contemporaries, opinions which were generally held and familiar to all. But the religious votary might, of course, agree with many of these opinions and yet not be persuaded by the argument. He might, for example, agree that man cannot get beyond his true nature unaided, but he has grace and revelation to fall back on. If man has any knowledge of God he has this through grace and God's self-revelation to man. Further, he might agree that the capacity for science is an essential difference between man and brute, and yet claim that this is not the decisive difference so far as religion is concerned. Rather he might assert that man has an immortal soul and a divine destiny, whereas the brute does not, and that in this lies the relevant essential difference.

But the problem with which we are faced here is not so much the possibility of differing opinions. It is more fundamental than that, for it has to do with the philosophical quality of Feuerbach's work, which we need not judge by haphazardly imported criteria. What Feuerbach is doing here is attempting to overcome religion towards philosophy by a change of standpoint. That in justifying his criterion for calling the history of religion a progress, no matter how good or bad that justification is, he is already adopting the standpoint to be achieved is evident. This circumstance introduces a vicious circularity into his philosophical enterprise insofar as it already presupposes what must first be demonstrated.

It is true that if each religion were adequately presented in terms of its own religious self-understanding and that if their historical sequence showed a tendency to approximate Feuerbach's thesis we would have reason to pause, although, of course, we would not as yet have an established thesis. But there may be another reason to pause and not to condemn Feuerbach out of hand. The important thesis which Feuerbach must establish may already have been established elsewhere in philosophy. And, in fact, Hegel claims to have established it. Could we not grant, then, that Feuerbach accepted the success of the Hegelian demonstration of this thesis and, reserving judgment on whether or not Hegel actually succeeded in doing so, press on with our consideration of Feuerbach? [Whatever the judgment on Hegel may finally be we must admit that the so-called Feuerbachian rejection of Hegel cannot be as complete as many think it is.]

Feuerbach overcomes Christianity toward philosophical theory, and this overcoming is a replacement of the religious standpoint by the theoretical standpoint from which the truth of Christianity will become evident. What Feuerbach intends is to view Christianity from the standpoint of the thinker, i.e. objectively, and from this standpoint Christianity will look different than it does from the standpoint of Christianity itself. Feuerbach's claim is that the essence or truth of Christianity, and so of all religion, may be known in two ways which are distinguished in terms of standpoint. First, it is known in the religious self-understanding itself, i.e. from the religious standpoint, second, it is known “objectively” from the theoretical standpoint; The knowledge gained from the theoretic standpoint is true knowledge while the knowledge gained from the religious standpoint is, at best, inadequate.

Two questions arise at this point. First, what are these standpoints and how do they differ? Second, how is the adoption of the second standpoint justified?

III

Feuerbach first draws attention, in Section 2 of chapter I, to the distinction he is making between two standpoints, to his intention of viewing religion from the second of these and to the claim that the truth is accessible only from this second standpoint (F 13). It is now systematically required that he answer the above two questions. But we are kept for the most part in the dark until he undertakes, in Chapter XIX, to explain what the standpoint of religion is.

The standpoint of religion is the “practical or subjective”, it is the standpoint of a troubled and suffering being, a being essentially concerned with its own welfare, salvation and ultimate felicity (F 185-6). From this standpoint I always enter into relation with others, particularly with the divine other, God, “only for my own sake”. It is an “impure” standpoint because “it is tainted with egoism” (F 196). The religious standpoint stunts man's own conception of himself. From this standpoint only the practical man is acknowledged to be real and the whole man cannot be admitted. The religious man is stunted because he is incapable of admiring anything and, therefore, incapable of art; and he is incapable of objective contemplation and therefore of theory. The religious votary is incapable of admiring anything because the object of admiration is unreal to him. Nature, or the sensible world, is “nothing in itself” (F 196), it will someday “fall away” (F 190) and is even now “only an appearance” (F 189). The religious votary is incapable of theory because “doubt, the principle of theoretic freedom” is for him a “crime” (F 186).

There is a sting in this characterization of the religious standpoint.⁶ Yet philosophy is not valued for its sting but for its truth. Is this characterization true?

How can we decide whether it is true? Does it coincide with religious self-understanding, would the religious votary characterize himself in this way? Clearly not. Yet even if a religious man were stung to the quick by this characterization and were forced to admit that in his own case it was true, he would immediately see this to be a grave fault on his part. He would claim that to the degree that this characterization is true of him he falls short of adopting the true religious standpoint, that this characterization is true only of an imperfect man's attempt to live a religious life. As a characterization of the true religious standpoint however, it is as false as the claim that sin is the religious man's concept of virtue. Just because all Christians sin, a characterization of sin is not a true characterization of Christian virtue.

It is clear that Feuerbach's characterization of the religious standpoint is not given from the religious standpoint but from the standpoint of theory. The standpoint of theory is objective, it is characterized as a quest for pure understanding, pure because free to doubt and undaunted by fear, pure because not tainted by egoism (cf F 196 passim). From this objective standpoint we can admit the whole reality of man and nature; we can, therefore, welcome the joys of art and theory which are denied to the religious man, while enjoying a certain moral superiority over him because we are cleansed of the taint of egoism. From the theoretic standpoint we are free to pursue the truth and only from this standpoint are we capable of attaining truth. Because Feuerbach's characterization of the religious standpoint was intended as the true characterization it could, of course, not be given in terms of religious self-understanding but had already to be given from the theoretic standpoint.

It is clear, then, that Feuerbach's characterization of the religious standpoint is given from the theoretic standpoint and, if the truth is attainable only from the theoretic standpoint, that it had to be given from that standpoint. Feuerbach is confronted with a dilemma here. If truth is attainable only from the theoretical standpoint how can a justification of that standpoint be given which does not already adopt that standpoint? Were a justification to be given which did not as yet avail itself of this standpoint, would it not have to be rejected with the adoption of the standpoint it justifies and so be rejected as a justification? Feuerbach himself seems quite innocent of any awareness of a problem here. But perhaps we can do for him what he failed to do.

It has been claimed that “truth bears within itself a power of conviction, nay, of conversion”.⁷ Perhaps Feuerbach implicitly held a similar view, on the strength of which the standpoint from which truth was attainable would be self-justifying through the sheer power of the truth attained through it. Let us then look at the truth presented here concerning the religious standpoint.

I take it that the medieval Europeans lived, worked and thought from the religious standpoint and were for that reason incapable either of theory or of art. But this is preposterous! Are medieval cathedrals, frescoes, and the Gregorian chant to be dismissed without so much as a word of dismissal? And whatever the shortcomings of scholastic philosophy may be, how can it be dismissed without being mentioned? True, the relation between truth attainable by natural reason and revealed truth was a problem which haunted every medieval philosophy, but it must be clear that the problem itself was a theoretical one formulated on the basis of the theoretical assumption that reality is intelligible.

Feuerbach's theoretical standpoint is not self-justifying in the sense that the truth attainable from it has the power of conviction of self-evidence. Our demand that this standpoint be justified remains.

But how is it to be justified? “Religion everywhere precedes philosophy” writes Feuerbach (F 13). The theoretical standpoint, then, is historically later than the religious one. History, however, cannot justify anything. Even if it were true that once men were at the religious standpoint and we today find ourselves at the theoretical standpoint, this cannot count as a justification. A justification of the theoretical standpoint which understands it to be the historical successor of the religious standpoint would have to show three things. First, that the religious standpoint was abandoned, not by historical accident but because it is untenable. Second, that the theoretical standpoint is the necessary result of the abandonment of the religious standpoint. Third, that the theoretical standpoint is tenable. These three demands are systematic demands, i.e., demands presented by the nature of Feuerbach's work. They are not a list of arbitrary demands he could not foresee and need not face. We must now see how Feuerbach deals with these demands.

IV

If the religious standpoint is to be abandoned because untenable it must be abandoned by and untenable for someone actually at that standpoint. Feuerbach uses Hegelian terminology to characterize an untenable standpoint: a standpoint is untenable because contradictory. This contradiction cannot be a contradiction with something alien to it, i.e., some other standpoint, for mutual contradictoriness is precisely the criterion by which one standpoint is distinguished from another. The fact that a standpoint contradicts another is true by definition and offers no reason to abandon one for the other. If a standpoint is contradictory in the required sense it must contain the contradictory elements within itself, i.e., it must be self-contradictory. And these elements must be seen to be contradictory from the very standpoint which harbours them. One implication of this is that the nature of the contradiction involved will vary depending on the standpoint which is self-contradictory, for the nature of the contradiction is one with the nature of the standpoint. So far as standpoints differ contradictions differ. This is precisely the reason why no standpoint can be refuted from another standpoint and with the criteria of another standpoint. The only refutation of a standpoint must finally be self-refutation. If the religious standpoint is to be overcome, therefore, it must become untenable because self-contradictory and self-contradictory in terms of criteria recognized by the man at that standpoint, the votary. How is the religious standpoint self-contradictory?

Feuerbach presents a long list of contradictions to be found in the religious standpoint (F Chapters 20-26), but each of these is a contradiction seen to be such only from the theoretic standpoint.⁸ They are not contradictions evident as such to the religious self-understanding and as such cannot justify the abandoning of the religious standpoint. Each, that is, except one: the contradiction of faith and love.

Feuerbach characterizes the contradiction between faith and love as “the primary contradiction” to be found in the religious standpoint. Primary because religion is precisely this contradiction, and it is finally this contradiction which accounts for all the other contradictions he has found. It is curious that with this contradiction we find ourselves back in the Hegelian overcoming of religion, for this contradiction is the contradiction of the content of religion with its form. Love is the content, faith the form. The difference is that Hegel did not identify content with love nor form with faith, and that where Hegel speaks of inadequacy Feuerbach speaks of contradiction. But let us look at this contradiction as presented by Feuerbach.

The standpoint of religion is essentially a practical standpoint. The contradiction which destroys it, therefore, cannot be a mere theoretical one but must be a practical one. It should come as no surprise by now, however, that Feuerbach again begins by showing this contradiction to be a theoretical one without apparently realizing that his systematic task is to show this contradiction as it exists for the religious self-understanding. Theoretically the contradiction is that love, the essence and latent nature, i.e., the content, of religion is the identity of the divine being with the human; while faith, the apparent or conscious nature, i.e. the form, of religion is the distinction between them (cf F 247). It is not clear how this is a contradiction. Is he claiming that the solution to the metaphysical problem of relation in terms of an identity in difference is false because self-contradictory? If so, where is the argument to show this? But we are not concerned with theoretical contradiction here for no such contradiction will do the job systematically required here. Faith and love must be shown to be contradictory for the religious self-understanding, i.e. the contradiction must be a practical one.

Faith practically contradicts love because “in faith there lies a malignant principle” (F 252), a principle which contradicts the essential benevolence of love. Religious faith, by its very nature, distinguishes between true faith and false faith, between the believer and the unbeliever, and condemns the unbeliever. Faith, of its very nature, requires hell. But “love recognizes virtue even in sin, truth even in error”. Christian love is “tainted by faith”, thus it is a “love which curses, an unreliable love, a love which gives me no guarantee that it will not turn into hatred” (F 264-5). “Christian faith, and nothing else, is the ultimate ground of Christian persecution and destruction of heretics” (F 321). It is in the torture chambers of the Inquisition that the practical contradiction between faith and love is evident even to the religious self-understanding. Even if one can point to the historical fact that the Inquisition was not long-lived it still remains that it was not an arbitrary, aberrant phenomenon but the clearest expression of the malignant principle which is the very essence of faith.

The case I have presented is the best that can be culled out of Feuerbach. Is it sufficient to prove his point that Christianity is self-refuting? I think not, for two reasons. First, the religious standpoint itself is presented, if not unfairly, then at least inadequately. Second, Feuerbach has not shown but merely assumes that the Christianity of which he speaks is the culmination of the religious self-understanding.

Faith, as Feuerbach presents it, is an order of knowledge. It is belief or probable knowledge parading as certainty, and the only guise in which this parade is possible is fanaticism. For this reason faith essentially contains a malignant principle, i.e., fanaticism. But to understand religious faith as an order of knowledge is to misunderstand it. Rather, religious faith is an order of love. Far from being in contradiction with religious love, faith is precisely the same as religious love. Of course, I cannot demonstrate this here. But I can give an indication of this even from the pages of Feuerbach. He writes: “The devils believe that God is, without ceasing to be devils. Hence a distinction has been made between faith in God, and belief that there is a God”. What the devils possess is belief which is merely an order of knowledge and thus fails to be faith. Feuerbach continues: “But even with this bare belief in the existence of God, the assimilating power of love is intermingled;—a power which by no means lies in the idea of faith as such” (F 248). Feuerbach, then, rejects the distinction between faith and belief, insists that even the belief of the devils is intermingled with love while faith and love nevertheless remain distinct and mutually contradictory. The claim, in short, is that since no distinction can be made between faith and belief and belief is nowhere found without love the very devils are at the standpoint of religion. As a mere claim, and it is no more than this, it is an outrageous distortion of religion, to say the least.

We have failed to receive a satisfactory answer from Feuerbach to our first two questions. There remains the third: is the theoretic standpoint tenable? We might reasonably wonder here, however, whether there is any point to continuing with our inquiry. Will not anything we discover from this standpoint remain arbitrary precisely because the adoption of this standpoint is arbitrary? To be sure, the Feuerbachian philosophical enterprise suffers immensely from this arbitrariness. But though the overcoming of religion toward philosophy remains an arbitrary leap in Feuerbach's work, it may not be necessarily arbitrary. Indeed, it is possible that the work which would remove this arbitrariness from Feuerbach's philosophy had already been done by Hegel, or if Hegel's attempt failed, that it might someday be done. But there is a further consideration. If it is true that religion has long passed from the life of contemporary man who today finds himself at the theoretical standpoint, then, however he may ultimately attempt to justify himself, it may still be worthwhile to explore this contemporary standpoint. With this in mind I now turn to Feuerbach's positive claims.

V

Having risen to the standpoint of thought, of science, we no longer have to do with individuals, but with species (F 2). In science we have before us the species, while religion “cared nothing for the species and had only the individual in its eye and mind” (F 151). But now that we have the species before us we notice that the predicates of God and of the human species are the same. Consequently there is no distinction between the divine and human natures and for that reason between the divine and human subjects.⁹ When in philosophy, therefore, we speak of the human species we are speaking of what in religion was called God.

Having risen to the standpoint of science we discern that Christians “immediately identify the individual with the species”¹⁰ but we also discern that the immediate identification of the individual with the species is not possible, “for it oversteps the limits of reason” (F 155). We must, therefore, ask: what is the individual, what the species and what the relation between them?

The individual is simply any human being, say you or I. What is significant about the individual is that he is finite.¹¹ In the true self-understanding the individual can and must feel and recognize himself to be limited: he must become aware of these limits as his limits qua individual. A being is finite in so far as it can recognize its own finitude, but to recognize this finitude is already to transcend it. The individual can recognize his limits, his finiteness, only because he can become aware of the infinitude of the species (cf. F 7). To recognize your own finitude is to rise to the species, which, for Feuerbach, means to become identical with the species. But this identity is not immediate, for it is achieved only in this “rise”. True, having risen to the species, we recognize each individual qua individual as a “deputy” or a “representative” of the species, (cf F 158) but “no individual is an adequate representation of his species” (F 281).

We can now ask, first, “what is the species?” and, since the question concerning the relation between individual and species has become the question concerning the rise of the individual to the species we can ask, second, “what is this rise?”

The species is human nature, the nature of man. In his effort to define the species, Feuerbach at first attempts to remain true to his commitment to the empiricism proclaimed in the Preface. He writes: the species “has its complete existence only in all men taken together” (F 152). Each man is an object of a possible empirical observation and the species is simply the collection of them all. But this collection itself cannot be an object of empirical observation, owing to its extension in time and space. The collection of all men is not simply the collection of all men presently living which might conceivably be brought together and so be an object of empirical observation, but all men who have ever lived and will live in time to come. Rather, because the species “has its adequate existence only in the sum total of mankind [it] is, therefore, only an object of reason” (F 157).

But what is reason? Reason, according to Feuerbach, is finally self-consciousness, but not just your self-consciousness or mine so far as we are individuals. The “self-consciousness of individuality” is “feeling” while “reason is the self-consciousness of the species, as such” (F 285). To rise to the species is to rise to reason for only to reason can the species be an object. But to rise to reason is to overcome individual self-consciousness which is mere self-feeling and to attain to reason which is the self-consciousness of the species. Reason is both the consciousness of the species and the self-consciousness of the species because in rising to reason I become identified with the species. “Reason is the essence of nature and man, released from non-essential limits, in their identity; it is the universal being, the universal God” (F 287). To rise to reason is to comprehend your identity with God for “to think is to be God” (F 40). This rise, which is the relation between individual and species, is a rise from feeling to thought and from empirical observation to philosophical speculation. And in attaining to philosophical speculation the individual attains to a consciousness of God which, at the same time, is the self-consciousness of God. For this reason the speculative thinker attains to an identity with God which surpasses the difference between man and God posited by religion. The religious man yearns to be reunited with God, a reunion possible only if the religious standpoint is overcome. Only from the theoretical standpoint can the yearning of religion be satisfied, for only in speculative philosophy is the reunion of myself with God possible.

Religion divides man from God and as a result the religious man suffers from this separation. Only once before had this disunion been overcome speculatively, namely by the Hegelian speculation. But the Hegelian speculation fell short of attaining the radical identity sought by Feuerbach. For “the Hegelian speculation identifies the two sides, but so as to leave the old contradiction still at the foundation” (F 230). The Hegelian speculative rise to the absolute, while identifying man and God, nevertheless at the same time speculatively comprehends the difference between man and God and does not leave it out of account in the final speculative rise to the absolute.

It is, therefore, only the consistent carrying out, the completion of a religious truth. The learned mob was so blind in its hatred towards Hegel as not to perceive that his doctrine … does not in fact contradict religion;—that it contradicts it only in the same way as, in general, a developed, consequent process of thought contradicts an undeveloped, inconsequent, but nevertheless radically identical conception.

(F 230)

In fact it is Hegel's philosophy which is a faithful translation of religion into speculative language where religion is not rejected because contradictory but merely made formally adequate in order to have its content comprehended. It is precisely because Hegel's philosophy remains faithful to the doctrine of religion that Feuerbach's rejection of religion as contradictory must finally be a rejection of Hegel's philosophy on the same grounds. And Hegel's philosophy is rejected by Feuerbach not because it is too speculative and fails to do justice to what is empirically ascertainable, but rather because it is not speculative enough. It fails to be speculative enough precisely because it fails to overcome the difference between man and God which is the foundation of religion.

The conclusion of the Feuerbachian philosophy, then, seems to differ from the Hegelian in this: while Feuerbach rises to a divine-human identity which is unqualified by any difference, the Hegelian identity is fundamentally qualified by difference. We must now see whether, in the context of Feuerbach's own writings, his position is tenable. Feuerbach concludes with an identity between God and man which transcends all difference and this identity is to be achieved by speculative reason. But the achievement of this identity is impossible for Feuerbach precisely because it is to be achieved by reason. Feuerbach posits “difference as an essential category, as a truth” and his “rational expression” of this positing is: “Difference lies as necessarily in the reason as identity”, in other words, “difference is a positive condition of the reason”. Difference is

an original concept, a ne plus ultra of my thought, a law, a necessity, a truth. … I first establish difference for thought when I discern it in one and the same being [God], when I unite it with the law of identity. Herein lies the ultimate truth of difference. … If I remove difference from God … he ceases to be an object of thought; for difference is an essential principle of thought.

(F 85-6).

Feuerbach's attempt to drive the Hegelian philosophy to his own conclusion fails, owing to the very nature of reason. To reject Hegel, it seems, is to reject reason itself and, therefore, to reject the theoretical standpoint as untenable. Precisely the condition which caused Feuerbach to reject the religious standpoint as untenable has come to characterize the theoretic standpoint itself.

VI

We have treated The Essence of Christianity as a work of philosophy and have found it to be the ruins of an attempt, by a vastly inferior mind, to surpass the Hegelian philosophy. Why, we might ask, has it continued to fascinate civilized men for over a century? Surely not only because these men are bad readers and worse thinkers, although just as surely that is one of the reasons. But I think there is another reason and Karl Barth may have put his finger on it when he characterized Feuerbach's teaching as “essentially a summons, an appeal, a proclamation” (Barth, F xi).

Feuerbach's philosophy is a tortured attempt to give expression to a thought which underlies the post-Hegelian rejection of speculative philosophy, whether Marxist or Existentialist. This thought is that the speculative thinker who rises to the absolute finds not God, but, at best, only himself. If this thought is true it may be true for one of two reasons, either because there is no God to be found (Marx) or because the quest was only speculative whereas what is required is a non-rational leap (Kierkegaard). It is this thought, I suggest, which sustained interest in Feuerbach. But in Feuerbach it is a mere proclamation, not yet a thought presented and comprehended as a thought. A philosophical presentation of this thought would have to survive a fundamental confrontation with Hegel.

Notes

1. Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity, translation by George Eliot, with an Introduction by Karl Barth, Harper and Row, New York, 1957, p. xxxiii. (Hereafter referred to as “F” in the text).

2. Barth, Karl F xxviii, xxix, xxx. Of course, this is not Barth's sole response to Feuerbach. He grounds this response in the Calvinist doctrine that “we men are evil from head to foot and … must die” and the admission that “even in our relation to God, we are and remain liars, and that we lay claim to His truth, His certainty, His salvation as grace and only as grace.”

3. Engels, Frederick, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy, New York, International Publishers, 1941, p. 18.

4. Marx, Karl, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right” in Early Writings translated and edited by T. B. Bottomore, McGraw Hill, New York, 1964, p. 44.

5. If Feuerbach's account parallels Hegel's account, why consider Feuerbach rather than Hegel? If it were clear that the Hegelian enterprise had succeeded or if it were clear that it had failed in such a way as clearly to demonstrate that it is in principle impossible, then there could be no justification for considering Feuerbach's work. But none of this is clear, and this unclarity provides a practical justification for considering Feuerbach, for Feuerbach claims that his work is clearly presented in “plain speech.” (F xxxiii). Not only does Feuerbach promise plain speech, however, he also claims his work to be a significant departure from Hegelian philosophy as far as philosophical method is concerned, a departure which makes it possible for his speech to be plain where Hegel's must remain obscure. Whereas Hegel was one of those philosophers “who pluck out their eyes that they may see better,” who engage in “absolute, immaterial, self-sufficing speculation,” Feuerbach intends to base his ideas “on materials which can be appropriated only through the activity of the senses.” (F xxxiv) Feuerbach in providing a justification for his own effort to attempt afresh the Hegelian enterprise, provides us with further justification for considering his philosophy rather than remaining exclusively with the Hegelian account.

6. Let any Christian make the following thought experiment. Suppose the worship of God were of no consequence for an after life. Suppose either final oblivion or heaven or hell were a certainty and suppose your present happiness were a fixed matter. Would you continue to worship?

7. Bergson, Henri, “Laughter,” in Sypher, Willie, Comedy, Doubleday and Company Inc., Garden City, New York, 1956, p. 165.

8. It is another sign of the systematic confusion evident in this book that we have to go to the end of it to find anything resembling a rejection of the religious standpoint. Chapter XXVI systematically belongs at the beginning of the book.

9. cf. F. xxxvii. Feuerbach seems to be employing a principle here similar to Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles.

10. F 154. Though I suppose that to the degree to which he does not care about the species the votary is indifferent to this.

11. Even “secondary” (F xxxvii) and “insignificant” (F xxxviii) in comparison with the species.