Summary of Ludwig Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Religion is the disuniting of man from himself. It begins with the differentiation of God and man, and man’s own nature, which is the object of religion, is actually different from God’s.
#2 The understanding is the part of our nature that is neutral, impassible, and not subject to illusions. It is the pure, passionless light of the intelligence. It is the consciousness of the objective fact as a fact because it is itself an objective nature.
#3 God, as a being not finite, not human, not materially conditioned, not phenomenal, is an object of thought. He is the incorporeal, formless, and incomprehensible being. He is known only through abstraction and negation. He is the objective nature of the thinking power.
#4 The understanding is the original, primitive being. It is the condition that connects and conditions all things. It is the immediate and unconditioned thing that inquires about the cause of all things because it has its own ground and end in itself. Only that which is nothing deduced, nothing derived, can deduce and construct.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Religion
• Philosophy
• Christianisme

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 04 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669347927
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Ludwig Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Religion is the disuniting of man from himself. It begins with the differentiation of God and man, and man’s own nature, which is the object of religion, is actually different from God’s.

#2

The understanding is the part of our nature that is neutral, impassible, and not subject to illusions. It is the pure, passionless light of the intelligence. It is the consciousness of the objective fact as a fact because it is itself an objective nature.

#3

God, as a being not finite, not human, not materially conditioned, not phenomenal, is an object of thought. He is the incorporeal, formless, and incomprehensible being. He is known only through abstraction and negation. He is the objective nature of the thinking power.

#4

The understanding is the original, primitive being. It is the condition that connects and conditions all things. It is the immediate and unconditioned thing that inquires about the cause of all things because it has its own ground and end in itself. Only that which is nothing deduced, nothing derived, can deduce and construct.

#5

The understanding is the criterion of all reality. That which is opposed to the understanding, which is self-contradictory, is nothing. That which contradicts reason contradicts God. The reason can only believe in a God who is in accordance with its own nature.

#6

The understanding is the most real being of old theology. It is the essence of God, and the nature conceived without limits is the nature of the understanding. When you declare that God is unlimited, you are saying that the highest being is the understanding.

#7

The understanding is the self-subsistent and independent being. That which has no understanding is not self-subsistent and is dependent. Only that which thinks is free and independent. The understanding alone enjoys all things without being itself enjoyed.

#8

The understanding is the essence perfectly self-subsistent, perfectly at one with itself, and perfectly self-existent. It is the essence that is free from all contradictions of life. It is the essence that thinks of itself as being united with something else, and yet remains completely united with itself.

#9

The understanding is the infinite being. It is immediately involved in unity and finiteness in plurality. Finiteness – in the metaphysical sense – rests on the distinction of the existence from the essence, of the individual from the species. The definitions which the speculative philosophers and theologians give of God as the being in whom existence and essence are not separable, who himself is all the attributes which he has, are thus ideas drawn solely from the nature of the understanding.

#10

The understanding or reason is the necessary being. Reason exists because only the existence of the reason is reason; because, if there were no reason, no consciousness, everything would be nothing. Existence would be equivalent to non-existence.

#11

God, the infinite, universal, and non-anthropomorphic being of the understanding, has no more significance for religion than a fundamental general principle does for a special science. The consciousness of human limitation or nothingness which is united with the idea of this being is not a religious consciousness.

#12

The understanding is the absolute indifference and identity of all things and beings. It is not Christianity, not religious enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm of the understanding that we have to thank for botany, mineralogy, zoology, and physics.

#13

The Christian religion assigns the highest importance to moral perfection, and the understanding believes that God is morally perfect. But God is not a separate, impersonal being; he is a loving, tender, even subjective human being.

#14

Love is the middle term, the substantial bond, the principle of reconciliation between the perfect and the imperfect, the sinless and sinful being, the universal and the individual, the divine and the human. Love is God himself, and apart from it there is no God.

#15

The consciousness of love is what reconciles man with God. The consciousness of the divine love, or what is the same thing, the contemplation of God as human, is the mystery of the Incarnation. The Incarnation is the material manifestation of the human nature of God.

#16

The Church doctrine of the Incarnation is that God was not the first person to be incarnate, but the second. The second person is the representation of man in front of God, and is in reality the only true first person. The Incarnation is a necessary consequence of God’s love, and it is only mysterious if considered in conjunction with the two persons of the Godhead.

#17

The idea of the Incarnation, though it is enveloped in the night of religious consciousness, is actually love. Love is a higher power and truth than deity. God sacrificed his divine majesty out of love for man. And what sort of love was that. It was human love.

#18

The religious man believes in a real sympathy of the divine being in his sufferings and wants, and that the will of God can be determined by the fervor of prayer.

#19

The religious mind, as has been said, places everything in God, excepting that which it despises. The Christians certainly gave their God no attributes which contradicted their own moral ideas, but they gave him without hesitation and of necessity the emotions of love, compassion, and forgiveness.

#20

The Christian Incarnation is different from the incarnation of the heathen deities, which are merely products of men or deified men. The Christian incarnation, on the other hand, is a divine being who appears as man.

#21

The central point of religion is the love of God. God loves man in general, and man is the heart of God because God’s love for man is an essential condition of his being God.

#22

The truth of the Incarnation has been recognized even in the religious consciousness. Luther says, He who can truly conceive such a thing in his heart should, for the sake of the flesh and blood which sits at the right hand of God, bear love to all flesh and blood here upon the earth, and never be able to be angry with any man.

#23

The heart is not an invention of the understanding or the poetic faculty, but of the heart. The heart knows no other God than itself, and out of the heart has sprung what is best and truest in Christianity: its essence, purified from theological dogmas and contradictions.

#24

The Christian religion is so little superhuman that it even sanctions human weakness. While Socrates empties the cup of poison with unshaken soul, Christ exclaims, If it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

#25

The Christian religion is the religion of suffering. The images of the crucified one which we still see in all churches, represent not the Savior, but only the crucified, the suffering Christ.

#26

The heart is the source and center of all suffering. A being without suffering is a being without a heart. The mystery of the suffering God is the mystery of feeling, which is absolute, divine in its nature.

#27

The religious man is not only protected from the danger of an unregulated life, but also from the danger of being lawless and arbitrary.