The Essence of Religion

Feuerbach widens his projection thesis from human nature to nature itself: religion born of our dependence on the earth we cannot live without.

by Ludwig Feuerbach37 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Das Wesen der Religion
First published: 1845(aged 41)
Original language: German

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Overview

Five years after the book that made his name, Feuerbach returned to the question behind it. The Essence of Christianity had found God in human nature; this shorter work of 1846 pushes past the human to nature itself. Religion, it argues, begins in the feeling of dependence — not the refined absolute dependence Schleiermacher had made the ground of faith, but the plain dependence of a creature on the sun, the earth, the water it cannot live without, personified and then worshipped. The move answers a question the first book left open: where the sense of a power greater than oneself comes from before any idea of a human essence. The record around it is thin. He took its argument up again in the lectures he gave at Heidelberg in the winter of 1848–49, published in expanded form as a separate volume in 1851.

Key concepts

What is the feeling of dependence in this book?

It is Feuerbach's proposed root of all religion: the felt condition of a creature that cannot sustain itself, depending on the sun, earth, water and elements it needs to live. From this need, mixed with fear and gratitude, the sense of a higher power grows. He means ordinary, concrete dependence on nature, not a refined spiritual intuition — religion begins in the plain situation of being a needy natural being.

How does this book differ from The Essence of Christianity?

The earlier book located God in human nature — the species worshipping its own essence. This shorter work pushes past the human to nature itself, arguing that the powers first worshipped were natural forces personified. It fills a gap the first book left: where the sense of a higher power comes from before any idea of a human essence. So it is the same projection thesis carried back to a more primitive stage.

What does Feuerbach mean by nature here?

Nature is the concrete world of forces a living creature depends on and cannot control — sun, earth, water, weather, growth and decay. In religion these are felt as powers, given faces by the imagination, and worshipped. Feuerbach's naturalism treats them as real and material rather than divine; the error of religion is not that nature is powerful but that it is personified and adored instead of understood.

Why is this work called a bridge?

Feuerbach himself treated it as a transition rather than a finished statement. It was read as an appendix to his famous book rather than on its own terms, and he took its argument up again in the lectures he gave at Heidelberg in the winter of 1848 to 1849, published in expanded form in 1851. So it links the projection thesis of 1841 to his later, more openly naturalistic account of religion.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Religion born of dependence

Where does the sense of a power greater than oneself come from, before any idea of God? Feuerbach roots it in the plain dependence of a creature on the things it cannot live without.

Feuerbach traces religion to the feeling of dependence — but not the refined absolute dependence Schleiermacher had made the ground of faith. He means the ordinary dependence of a living creature on the sun, the earth, the water it needs to survive. Out of that felt need, and the fear and gratitude bound up with it, religion is born. This answers a question his famous earlier book had left open: where the sense of a higher power comes from before any human essence is projected. Faith begins not in a special religious intuition but in the bare condition of being a needy natural creature.

religion
theology
nature
naturalism
dependence
mortality
political theology
causation

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Nature as the first god

What were the earliest gods, before they wore human faces? Feuerbach pushes his projection thesis past the human: the powers first worshipped were the natural forces on which life hangs.

Five years after finding God in human nature, Feuerbach widens the claim: religion personifies nature itself and bows to it. The sun, the earth, the elements a creature depends on are felt as powers, given a face by the imagination, and worshipped. This extends the projection thesis of The Essence of Christianity backward, to a stage before any human essence is at stake, so that nature-worship is the earliest form the same human tendency takes. The record around the book is thin — it was read as an appendix to the famous one — but its argument reappears in the Heidelberg lectures he gave two years later.

projection
nature
divinity
imagination
anthropomorphism
theism
anthropology
desire

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Within this work

passages held: 37
distinct concepts: 76
by passages held, corpus-wide: #246

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: causality with theology.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 14 pairings. 40 shared passages in all. 22 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
causality	theology	4
naturalism	nature	4
nature	religion	4
nature	theology	4
causality	nature	3
desire	theology	3
divinity	nature	3
nature	projection	3
causality	naturalism	2
desire	divinity	2
desire	religion	2
divinity	projection	2
divinity	theology	2
naturalism	theology	2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1841 The Essence of Christianity (Das Wesen des Christentums)
The book that turned the Young Hegelians, and the young Marx, against Hegel by recasting theology as disguised anthropology — Feuerbach's most consequential work, and the one that named a moment.
DE
1845 The Essence of Religion (Das Wesen der Religion) you are here DE

— or open another of their works