Feuerbach’s thoughts are as exciting as Nietzsche’s and his style is almost as electric. Whether it was his retro-Marxist aura or simply a lack of readers, somehow this great thinker has been overlooked. Harvey wonders if the lack of Feuerbach appreciation is due to people focusing too much on his work The Essence of Christianity and not enough on his Lectures on the Essence of Religion.

While The Essence of Christianity is a fine read and a thorough critique of that faith, it is his Lectures that provide insights jarring even in the 21st century. While recognition for Ernest Becker is just building steam (he insightfully traced a great deal of human behavior to our evasion of death anxiety), Feuerbach remains a footnote in Marxian studies despite having developed a thesis similar to Becker’s 120 years earlier.

Feuerbach found religion rooted in a few core drivesâ€"including the fear of death. He also noted that many of our sacred cows came from the sanctification of those things that our lives and cultures depended upon (like the cow). In short, he defined theology as anthropology. The things we worship are the very things that support human life. Feuerbach is the Xenophanes of the 19th century.

Harvey’s book, grounded in careful scholarship, teases out the best of Feuerbach and considers his ideas in the context of our own time.

At first I became interested in this book due to my interest in Feuerbach but was immediately overwhelmed by Engels' command of the history of European philosophy from the Greeks to his present time. From what little I have read of Marx himself, it seems an irony that history has placed Engels subordinately to Marx. Engels is a first rate intellect not to be overlooked. This brief, content filled book, "Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy," is an excellent overview of continental philosophy and the brilliant zeitgeist that permeated pre-turn of the century European thought, and which has lamentably fallen into disuse in our own time. This book, published in 1888, takes us from Hegel to Feuerbach, to the most sublime manifestations of idealism and pragmatic materialism (hence Marx's dialectical materialism), conditioning for us all along the way religion and ethics; and all of this in the span of 50 pages. This book is well written, informative, and highly recommended for any student of European history, philosophy, sociology, and political science. It rather poops out at the end as Engels makes his final sales plug, but this weakness is tertiary to the overall scope and historical exegetics offered here.

The book really reads like a collection of four essays.

I). From Hegel to Feuerbach: This chapter is an overview of the failure of Hegelian thought that German philosophy was so imbued with in the mid-19th century, which also serves as a kind of marker for the beginning of modern philosophy.

II). Idealism and Materialism: This chapter is Engels version of sociology and psychological anthropology. His expectation of the emergence of a pragmatic materialism parallels that of Feuerbach's. This chapter leads through the death of idealism to the birth of materialism.

III). Feuerbach's Philosophy of Religion and Ethics: As the first chapter gives us an overview of Hegel, so this third chapter outlines the successes and failures of Feuerbach's thought. We also see the emergent thrust that led to Marxism in its organic position at the time of its advent, not as the polemics of conservative, Christian historians of today have painted it.

IV). Dialectical Materialism: Finally, chapter four outlines Engels's sociological expectations in the context of the preceeding three chapters; from feudalism to the industrial modernity of his time. Not only does Engels scetch out how Christianity became the possession of the ruling class as a means of government, but how philosophy too became a tool of their hegemony. His expectation that science would eventually meld with the worker rather than commercial interests belies the naivete that saw the failure of modern Marxism. His conclusion that philosophy too would emerge victorious along with the worker is certianly puzzling in hindsight, and can still be seen in the tenacious frustrations of post-modernism over the failure of Marxism.

Feuerbach aside, this little book is an excellent read full of vitality.

I first checked this book out because of its intriguing title. Brudney primarily analyzes Marx's work from 1844 to 1846, particularly his conception of the good life. To set the stage, Brudney spends the first third of the book showing how the works of Feuerbach and Bauer inform Marx's treatment of human fulfillment and his stance toward philosophy. This is quite helpful since Marx's relation to philosophy turns out to be complex and changeable even in his earliest works. Brudney's explanations and evaluations of Marx's arguments are a model of philosophical analysis: they are exceptionally clear, thorough, rigorous, give a charitable but not uncritical presentation of the thinker analyzed, and connect early works with contemporary philosophical concerns. Would that Marx had written this way! For anyone from upper-division undergraduates to Marxist scholars, this excellent book is a must read.

The fashionable revisions and reifications of Hegel (the "official" political theory of Germany) common to Marx's era filled him with such disgust that he and Engels penned an entire rhetoric-laced diatribe against them, "The German Ideology." This book served, for Marx and his sidekick, not only as a materialist attack on Hegelian idealism and its conceptions of history, but also served, in their words, as a "self-clarification" of their own stances on a number of issues. Foremost among these issues is the actual role of the political philosopher in society and in history. Indeed, Marx is directly referring to the legacy of his Hegelian contemporaries when he says that "philosophers have only interpreted the world . . . the point, however, is to change it."

Marx departs from Hegel and his latter-day followers (whether revolutionary or conservative) in both method and in goals. As far as methodology is concerned, Marx is an empiricist of a certain normatively world-changing brand, which obviously leaves him open to critiques from "pure" empiricism as being either an outright determinist (an obviously abhorrent concept to the entire Humean tradition) or else being merely a moral philosopher in scientist's clothing.

As for goals, while some of Hegel's followers might share a certain revolutionary telos with Marx, they cannot truly be his comrades because for Marx the revolutionary method (historical materialism) is inseparable from the revolutionary goal (communism); that is, communism cannot by nature be an "ideal" . . . "to which reality will have to adjust itself" (as it is for the Hegelians). Instead, the ideal of communism must adjust itself to reality (thus becoming no longer an ideal), and that is precisely Marx's project as expressed in the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach: through his writings, to "adjust" the real world to his view of the way it's going to be (by writing about the world the way that it has been, and the way that it is now).

First of all, the correct title would refer to the THESES on Feuerbach, of which there are eleven. These are terse exhortations, which Marx apparently wrote out for himself as a reminder of principles, not intended for publication. They remain brilliant and challenging to readers. The rest of the volume is taken up by *excerpts* from the vast manuscript on the German Ideology, which is an uneven early work of Marx and Engels. There are brilliant passages, crucial to Marxist thought, but there's also a lot of directionless vitriol directed at now relatively unimportant thinkers.

I disagree with the previous reviewer -- this is not an ideal intro to Marxism. Read the Communist Manifesto, then move on to the Eighteenth Brumaire, or this, or Capital, or the early works.

And by the way, get the International Publishers edition if you can find it.

the first part of this book, on feuerbach, lays out marx's conception of history, and is, for me, the best brief description of marxism available. this impacted me much more profoundly than the communist manifesto. anyway, i'd read the first part, and then skip the rest. in the latter part of the book, he does battle with forgotten german intellectuals (the part on max stirner might be worth reading), mostly upbraiding them for their idealistic view of the world. the essence of this critique, however, is dealt with in the part on feuerbach. seriously, if you'd like to know what marx is all about, but aren't sure than you're ready to commit to reading capital, read the 70 pages or so on feuerbach. if you do, feel free to e-mail me & let me know what you think.

The book "The Princicples of the Philosophy of the Future" is a look into the mind of a man convinced that pragmatic atheism was all but a fait accompli in late 19th-century Europe. Feuerbach set out to explore some of the possibilities about how modern (at that time) humans would transition from their mythical past into a more meaningful anthropology, psychology, philosophy, etc.; i. e., Feuerbach wanted to be among the architects of how we humans would respond in "pull[ing] [ourselves] out of the [psychological] mud" we had evolved from.

Philosophically, Feuerbach does a credible job of interpreting theism into a well structured pshycological description. He really does a far better job of this than the majority of his contemporaries and even most modern day thinkers. Although Camus observed as far back as the 1930s that god was really no longer an interesting discussion, and Nietzsche before him, for the purposes of Feuerbach's book one must realize that in the mid-19th century Hebrew monotheism was still a vital psychology. Feuerbach, a left Hegelian, offered a cutting edge analysis of how the logical mechanisms of organic cognition had been formulated into what his fellow Germans and other Europeans knew as Christianity, or religion.

His articulation of theism verses speculative theology is still a relevant schema, juxtaposing naive metaphysics with the complex logic of what Kant had called 'pure reason.' His anaysis of religion in this context, which he further contrasted with Spinozan pantheism as the precursor to atheism, is an excellent outline of the development of European thought as it emerged from antiquity into 19th-century scientific realism. In Feuerbach we see a cogent post-Hegelian synthesis of European philosophy, however obscure Feuerbach may be in modern times. Feuerbach's errors are aplenty here, as he casts much of his philosophy on the wager of pure sensation without delving much into cognition. This oversight is understandable however within the time frame he wrote in and does little to undercut the primary thrust of his message: the urgency and necessity of a post-religious, existential anthropology. His lack of focus on cognition leads him almost to an untenable level of idealism, but an idealism at least predicated on an organic anthrological perspective free of cartoonish metaphysics.

The object of his then 'new philosophy' was not an abstraction of humans as some Hegelian spirit, but "the real and whole being of man", warts, protein, myths and all; a type of reason that Feuerbach ironically called "reason saturated with the blood of man." Feuerbach was capable of articulating a humanism really more serious and pragmatic than many of the versions we hear of even in today's world. Feuerbach is definitely an inspiration.

Nineteenth century German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach describes the philosophy of the future or the "new philosophy," as that which modern philosophy has endeavored to construct, in turning it's back on the traditionally bound theology and philosophy of prior and ancient ages. This "new philosophy" that Feuerbach speaks of is a materlialist philosophy, void of the misconceptions that traditional theology and philosophy tragect, that which explains God or religion as something being external from Human counciousness and that the external world does not exist or is not important, that being can be abstracted or seperated from the object itself, these are the myths that the "new philosophy" wishes to do away with. Feuerbach's classic "Priniciples of the Philosophy of the Future" precisley captures the full principles of materialism, as well as introducing other interesting notions along the way, such as his conception that religion and God is a completley human creation, a product of creativity and imagination, and therefore should be studied from the aspect of the social sciences, namley anthropology. "Religion is a dream of the human mind," Feuerbach states. Being a uniquley human conception, those fields which seek to study and understand man and his behaviors are better suited to provide a more adequate explanation of religion, such as sociology, psychology, pyhsiology and once again anthropology, or the study of man. For those who are skeptical of the biases of theology or the "old philosophy," this book provides a wonderful and thoughtful treatise on materlialistic, secularized or humanized philosophy. It is easy to trace the influences from Feuerbach to such thinkers as Marx, Ponty, Sartre and Heidegger.

This book needs to be back on College Philosophy and Religion reading lists! Never before have I read such a clear and obvious explanation of the religious mind. Wonderful translation and editing work by George Eliot make this a revolutionary work of religious philosophy. I'm a wife, mother, English Literature graduate and a spiritual seeker whose life was changed by reading Feuerbach's analysis of God as our subjective projection as Other. Please don't let your questing mind miss this one.

I read this book in search of the philosophical roots of Max Stirner, author of The Ego and Its Own. For this purpose, the book is excellent; you can see where Max Stirner came from on a number of issues that had hitherto seemed a bit cloudy to me - both in what Stirner reacts to and what he has drawn on.

The book is, however, a very compelling read in its own right as well. Feuerbach takes us through literally the whole catalogue of Christian belief, and shows us how each item of belief is explained at least as well - or perhaps even better - as an anthropomorphism rather than as a supernatural manifestation. It must be said, though, that each single one of his arguments on their own do not lead to such a conviction. Just like you are not convinced that the dice are loaded by getting 6 once or twice, you will not be convinced if anthropomorphism fits the bill of Christianity in a few single instances. However - analogously with the dice - when you strike 6 nearly every time, you will be convinced that the dice are loaded.

If I have a criticism of Feuerbach, it is that after he has revealed the Essence of Christianity as being the worship of Man, he keeps the essence and only discards the accidental properties of Christianity, i.e. the supernaturalism. This was also what Max Stirner called him on. But my disagreement does not mean a disparagement of the value of the book. So I recommend it as a read.

I read this book in search of the philosophical roots of Max Stirner, author of The Ego and Its Own. For this purpose, the book is excellent; you can see where Max Stirner came from on a number of issues that had hitherto seemed a bit cloudy to me - both in what Stirner reacts to and what he has drawn on.

The book is, however, a very compelling read in its own right as well. Feuerbach takes us through literally the whole catalogue of Christian belief, and shows us how each item of belief is explained at least as well - or perhaps even better - as an anthropomorphism rather than as a supernatural manifestation. It must be said, though, that each single one of his arguments on their own do not lead to such a conviction. Just like you are not convinced that the dice are loaded by getting 6 once or twice, you will not be convinced if anthropomorphism fits the bill of Christianity in a few single instances. However - analogously with the dice - when you strike 6 nearly every time, you will be convinced that the dice are loaded.

If I have a criticism of Feuerbach, it is that after he has revealed the Essence of Christianity as being the worship of Man, he keeps the essence and only discards the accidental properties of Christianity, i.e. the supernaturalism. This was also what Max Stirner called him on. But my disagreement does not mean a disparagement of the value of the book. So I recommend it as a read.

When I received the book, I thought wow. It is a glossy, hard cover (sort of) paperback. It looked so promising. However, when I went to read the book I was flustered. The author writes in sentences and word combinations that to me spell "I don't know what I'm talking about so I'll use these sentence structures so I look good".

Beyond this, I tried to understand his work. He had no concrete authority for some of his thoughts. I do not think you can just espouse a theory without providing hooks to help it stand up to argument. Really it is just a book of opinions written in gobbldy gook.

I do not recommend you buy this book or this author.

Jimmy