In his book The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach claims that religious beliefs are basically the result of confusion about human potentiality and the expression of our dependent situation as humans. He says God is “an instantiation of the ideals of humanity.” This seems to be a purely atheistic claim. Why do you think Feuerbach does not want his theory to be called atheism? Why would he rather prefer to refer to his theory as to the anthropological analyses of religion?
Feuerbach doesn't want his theory to be called atheism because it is not atheism.1 Atheism is belief that there is no God; but Feuerbach thinks the question of if there is a God is a distraction. The theory has to do with God, but is not about the existence of God. Feuerbach contrasts this with deluded religion when he says, “Feeling is atheistic in the sense of the orthodox belief, which attaches religion to an external object; it denies an objective God—it is itself God” and he also says, “Thou hast thus no other definition of God than this: God is pure, unlimited, free Feeling” (both on page 147). It's beside the point to consider God in a more unlimited sense than the sense that we have of God already.
Feuerbach's theory is not really religion and is an anthropological analyses of religion because the theory describes how people realize the divinity of nature. The theory itself can only describe what can be felt. “True existence is thinking, loving, willing existence. That alone is true, perfect, divine, which exists for its own sake,” says Feuerbach (on 143). I think he's trying to say that divinity exists, but divinity is not what we might be lead to believe it traditionally is. Describing what divinity objectively is and how it could be realizable objectively is a marked departure from the mysticism of religion, and into studies of human nature (anthropology).
The theory is a study of what humans feel, but to leave it at that would be wrong. Old religion traditionally has God as a separate entity which seems to make things divine by a grace outside of what the objective world is. Feuerbach would say that there is no need for anything extra. Nature is already divine. For this philosopher, there is no need for “divine” divinity. It's just divinity in the first experience, the first sense.
Feuerbach's theory holds beauty as divine, but the theory is still more than this. The theory goes further because the only realness of God is the infinite that we pose as an idea anyway. The idea of infinite love is infinite, but the act of loving is real. “It follows that if thou thinkest the infinite, thou perceivist and affirmest the infinitude of the power of thought; if thou feelest the infinite, thou feelest and affirmest the infinitude of the power of feeling.” (146). The thought is absolutely objectively real, but the thought is not just the objective thought that it is. It is the greater feeling that Feuerbach refers to.
The greater feeling-ness of a thought is the way the thought is felt. Feuerbach says, “Feeling speaks only to feeling; feeling is comprehensible only by feeling. That is, by itself – for this reason, that the object of feeling is nothing else than feeling.” (146). Feuerbach thinks first we could talk about the scientific makeup of honey; the way honey is made by bees, the chemical composition of honey, how it is harvested by farmers. He thinks secondly we might address the actual feeling of tasting the honey. But this joy, which is especially pertinent considering how honey tastes, only reacts to feeling and can only be considered through feeling. There is objective reality to all of this, but the only real thing is the feeling, and the feeling of “tasting honey” is only possible through feeling it. This is an objective process that can be considered in the first way, but the second way is divine in the only way Feuerbach sees it could be divine.
I critically compare Feuerbach's theory of religion with Baruch Spinoza's (b. 1632- d. 1677, with help from course notes) because Spinoza's theory of attributes is one of the philosopher's most controversial claims and it resembles Feuerbach's theory. Spinoza claims there are infinite attributes of which humans only know two, thought and extension. Some critics would say this is similar to Feuerbach's theory because thought only reacts with thought (like Feuerbach's feeling) and extension only with extension (which is something akin to describing the honey scientifically).2 By some critics, Spinoza's claim of thought and extension resembles Feuerbach's description of divinity.
1(Perhaps) For your information: In the course notes you say that Feuerbach takes a Spinozistic approach to God. George Eliot did the English translations for Feuerbach (for our course text) and she did one of the first English translations of Spinoza's Ethics. You might remember from class that I am a huge fan of Spinoza and he is my favorite philosopher. I read something similar in some Spinoza literature which resembles Feuerbach in Spinoza's application of the two attributes of Thought and Extension. It's all one philosophy family.
2Using Spinoza by Scruton, Roger.
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