Ludwig Feuerbach

FEUERBACH, Ludwig (1804-1872). German materialist philosopher, son of a once-famous criminologist Paul-Anselme Feuerbach. Was obliged to give up his academic career because of his philosophical ideas and so lived in the countryside in straitened circumstances. From left-wing Hegelianism he evolved to materialism. “Thought came from being, not being from thought.” Man is the product of nature; religion is the mythical reflection of human nature. “In man’s God, you can recognize man and in man you can also recognize his God; the two things are identical.” It is not God who created man, but man who created God in his image. Feuerbach’s philosophy provided the intermediary link between Hegel’s and Marx’s philosophy. Although somewhere he wrote with scorn of the French materialism of the 18th century, nevertheless, Feuerbach was in fact the restorer of 18th century materialism, with all its great merits and all its faults with its noble, proud and revolutionary hatred for all “theology” and its tendency towards idealism when explaining social acts and phenomena.