FEUERBACH'S PHILOSOPHY

The purpose of this paper is to examine the philosophical model of Ludwig Feuerbach (1957, 1986). In particular, the paper attempts to answer three primary questions with the goal of explicating the essential philosophical postulates and principles of FeuerbachÆs perspective. These questions are:

(1) How is it that FeuerbachÆs assertion ôI am human and believe nothing human is alien to me,ö has come to be considered the motto of the ônew philosopher?ö

(2) What connection does FeuerbachÆs basic assertion (motto) have to Hegelian philosophy?

(3) In what sense can Feuerbach be viewed as a founder of secular humanism?

FeuerbachÆs Assertion and the New Philosophers.

FeuerbachÆs (1957, 1986) assertion, ôI am human, and believe nothing human is alien to meö is best understood as the expression of a perspective that places humankind at the core of all attempts at a philosophical understanding of truth and reality. Contrasting this to earlier philosophical notions (the old philosophers), Harvey (1997) points out that up until Feuerbach expressed his views, human beings in philosophical thought were thinking beings who were essentially conceptualized as abstract minds to which bodies hardly belonged. This emphasis upon the mind of man as the epitome of both his nature and the source whereby his nature was best understood constituted the core concept of the philosophic

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s an ôold philosopherö whose notion of God, while as negating as FeuerbachÆs, is nonetheless not rooted in sense knowledge. As Jamros notes, HegelÆs view was that sense knowledge cannot explain itself and therefore knowledge must be sought via in an inward exploration of mind. Hegel, Jamros (1994) states, felt that what humankind most needed was a new way of thinking, and proposed a process that involved contradictory thinking, the dialectical method. Thus, it is not the physical but the mind that is the supreme process in Hegelian theory. The ego becomes the real universe but it is devoid of all personality and subjective properties. Regarding notions of the Divine, in HegelÆs view, the idea of spirit is an idea of spirit as a process and of man as a type of God. The view is reductionist. God is the real universe, history is the external manifestation of the Divine Plan, and the internal manifestation is dialectical thought. Man is God attempting to realize himself. In other words, Hegel placed far greater value on mind and thought than did Feuerbach and rather than simply reducing God to a man-made concept and throwing away the infinite, he attempted to reconcile the finite with the infinite. What Hegel attempted was to c
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Approximate Word count = 1514
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)