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Cargando... The Essence of Religionpor Ludwig Feuerbach
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Originally published in 1845, this concise critique formed the basis of thirty later lectures delivered in 1848 by Ludwig Feuerbach, one of Germany’s most influential humanist philosophers. In The Essence of Religion Feuerbach applied the analysis expounded in The Essence of Christianity (1841) to religion as a whole. The main thrust of Feuerbach’s argument is aptly summed up in the original subtitle to this work: "God the Image of Man. Man’s Dependence upon Nature the Last and Only Source of Religion." Feuerbach reviews key aspects of religious belief and in each case explains them as imaginative elaborations of the primal awe and sense of dependence that humans experience in the face of nature’s power and mystery. Rather than humans being created in the image of God, the situation is quite the reverse: "All theology is anthropology," he says, and "the being whom man sets over against himself as a separate supernatural existence is his own being." Feuerbach goes on to argue that the attributes of God are no more than reflections of the various needs of human nature. Further, as human civilization has advanced, the role of God has gradually diminished. In ancient times, before human beings had any scientific understanding of the way nature works, divine powers were seen behind every natural manifestation, from lightning bolts to the change of seasons. By contrast, in the modern era, when an in-depth understanding of natural causes has been achieved, there is no longer any need to imagine God behind the workings of nature: "He who for his God has no other material than that which natural science, philosophy, or natural observation generally furnishes to him . . . ought to be honest enough also to abstain from using the name of God, for a natural principle is always a natural essence and not what constitutes the idea of a God." Feuerbach’s naturalistic philosophy had a decisive influence on Karl Marx and radical theologians such as Bruno Bauer and David Friedrich Strauss. His incisive critique remains a challenge to religion to this day. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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In contrast to the author's earlier books on Christianity, this one takes a wider, more comparative approach, and consequently offers two complementary theories regarding the nature of religious thought, which is nevertheless always a confusion of subjective and objective phenomena. The Christian type takes the subjective human ideal as an objective cosmic force, while its earlier and less "sophisticated" complement, as is found in ancient Greek pagan cults, attires the objective powers of nature with the human sort of subjectivity.
As always, Feuerbach demonstrates the sane approach to the simple fact that There is no god but man. He writes of the "spiritual" sort of religion championed by Christians: "As the life to come is nothing but the continuation of this life uninterrupted by death, so the divine being is nothing but the continuation of the human being uninterrupted by Nature in general--the uninterrupted, unlimited nature of man" (63, italics in original). He also exhibits his rancor and contempt for the theological enterprise. He shows theology straining at gnats while swallowing camels, when it tries to remove the supernatural element from sacramental rites while retaining the supernatural in stories of cosmic origin. "But it is in the world of theology just as in the political world; the small thieves are hanged, the great ones are suffered to escape" (58).