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The Essence of Christianity
God is the projected essence of humanity.
Introduction
Feuerbach’s best-known book appeared in Leipzig in 1841, while he was living as a private scholar in Bruckberg, and quickly became a manifesto of the Young Hegelians. The first part describes the “true”, anthropological essence of religion: in God, humans worship their own species-being – reason, will and love – without recognising it as their own. The second part attacks its “false”, theological essence and points out contradictions in doctrines such as revelation and the sacraments. Engels later recalled how enthusiastically the young radicals received it, and George Eliot translated it into English in 1854. Through Marx and later Freud’s critique of religion, its pattern of argument travelled far beyond theology.
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Connections
Taken up in
- Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 18441844 · Karl Marx
- The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy1860 · Nikolai Chernyshevsky
- God and the State1882 · Mikhail Bakunin
Criticized in
- The Ego and Its Own1844 · Max Stirner
- Theses on Feuerbach1845 · Karl Marx
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