Ludwig Feuerbach Quotes on God
Ludwig Feuerbach's philosophy of God is the most influential statement of religion as human self-projection, and the quotes gathered here set it out. For Feuerbach the idea of God is the human essence itself, projected outward and worshipped: man, he argued, made God in his image, reversing the biblical claim. The cost of this projection is what he called religious alienation, for to enrich God, man must become poor, and that God may be all, man must be nothing, so that recovering the human is the task he sets for modern thought. He also contrasts the priorities of theology and philosophy, the one holding true whatever it deems sacred, the other holding sacred only what is true. Drawn from The Essence of Christianity and his Lectures on the Essence of Religion, these passages present God as a mirror of humanity; several condensed formulations are marked as attributed.
Quotes
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Attributed to Ludwig Feuerbach:
“Theology is anthropology.”
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Attributed to Ludwig Feuerbach:
“God is the projection of the human heart.”
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Attributed to Ludwig Feuerbach:
“What yesterday was still religion is no longer such today.”
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Attributed to Ludwig Feuerbach:
“Friendship is the highest form of religion.”
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“To theology, … only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.”
Lectures on the Essence of Religion(1851) | Lecture II, R. Manheim, trans. (1967), p. 11 -
“The present age... prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence... for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.”
The Essence of Christianity(1841) -
“God did not, as the Bible says, make man in His image; on the contrary man, as I have shown in The Essence of Christianity , made God in his image.”
Lectures on the Essence of Religion(1851) | Lecture XX, see Lectures on the Essence of Religion . Transl. Ralph Manheim . New York: Harper & Row. 1967. p. 187. German: Vorlesungen über das Wesen der Religion . Leipzig: Wigand. 1851. p. 241. -
“To enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must be nothing.”
The Essence of Christianity(1841)