Ludwig Feuerbach

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) radicalised the anthropological turn into a criticism of all speculative philosophy. His Wesen des Christenthums (1841) became the basic book of anthropological materialism.

The projection thesis runs: man created God in his own image. Hegel’s absolute idea too counts for him as the most sublimated form of religious projection — the logic as theology in disguise. In its place steps anthropology: man is the highest being for man.

What is productive in this is what Hegel had not explicitly developed: the constitutive role of sensuous human activity. Feuerbach’s emphasis on the bodily human being anticipates Marx’s concept of action.

The foreshortening lies in the turn becoming a reduction instead of a mediation. Man as a species-being that becomes conscious of itself is itself already a mediated concept — it presupposes reflection, language and culture, that is, precisely what Hegel develops as absolute spirit. Erdmann noted the outcome: “In the end Feuerbach’s doctrine turns into complete materialism and atheism.”