Feuerbach Ludwig Andreas (1804–72), German materialist philosopher and critic of religion. He provided the major link between Hegel’s absolute idealism and such later theories of historical materialism as those of Marx and other ‘young (or new) Hegelians.’ Feuerbach was born in Bavaria and studied theology, first at Heidelberg and then Berlin, where he came under the philosophical influence of Hegel. He received his doctorate in 1828 and, after an early publication severely critical of Christianity, retired from official German academic life. In the years between 1836 and 1846, he produced some of his most influential works, which include ‘Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy’ (1839), The Essence of Christianity (1841), Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843), and The Essence of Religion (1846). After a brief collaboration with Marx, he emerged as a popular champion of political liberalism in the revolutionary period of 1848. During the reaction that followed, he again left public life and died dependent upon the support of friends.
Feuerbach was pivotal in the intellectual history of the nineteenth century in several respects. First, after a half-century of metaphysical system construction by the German idealists, Feuerbach revived, in a new form, the original Kantian project of philosophical critique. However, whereas Kant had tried ‘to limit reason in order to make room for faith,’ Feuerbach sought to demystify both faith and reason in favor of the concrete and situated existence of embodied human consciousness. Second, his ‘method’ of ‘transformatory criticism’ – directed, in the first instance, at Hegel’s philosophical pronouncements – was adopted by Marx and has retained its philosophical appeal. Briefly, it suggested that ‘Hegel be stood on his feet’ by ‘inverting’ the subject and predicate in Hegel’s idealistic pronouncements. One should, e.g., rewrite ‘The individual is a function of the Absolute’ as ‘The Absolute is a function of the individual.’ Third, Feuerbach asserted that the philosophy of German idealism was ultimately an extenuation of theology, and that theology was merely religious consciousness systematized. But since religion itself proves to be merely a ‘dream of the human mind,’ metaphysics, theology, and religion can be reduced to ‘anthropology,’ the study of concrete embodied human consciousness and its cultural products. The philosophical influence of Feuerbach flows through Marx into virtually all later historical materialist positions; anticipates the existentialist concern with concrete embodied human existence; and serves as a paradigm for all later approaches to religion on the part of the social sciences. See also HEGEL, KANT, MARX, MARXISM. J.P.Su.