Theology Is Anthropology From Feuerbach, Ludwig. The Essence of Christianity. trans. Goerge Eliot (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989), xiii-xvi, xviii-xix.

In this excerpt from the Preface to The Essence of Christianity (1843), German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) explains the intention of his book. Feuerbach was criticized for mocking religion and theology, but in his view, he was simply explaining their real meaning and importance. For Feuerbach, religion represents the striving of humanity for its noblest ideals, and theology is the discipline that is--or ought to be--devoted to revealing just what these ideals are and how they might be achieved. His musings led to his view that theology is (really) anthropology. Schleiermacher had argued that the religious consciousness of a Divinity out there was essential to human nature; Feuerbach agreed that this consciousness was real, but that it referred simply to the divine essence within humanity. Feuerbach was a student of Hegel in Berlin, and his philosophy of materialism made a great impression on Karl Marx. It is noteworthy, too, that Feuerbach's book was translated into English by George Eliot (1819-1890), whose own novels reveal much about the religious sensibilities of nineteenth-century Europeans.

The clamour excited by the present work has not surprised me, and hence it has not in the least moved me from my position. On the contrary, I have once more, in all calmness, subjected my work to the severest scrutiny, both historical and philosophical; I have, as far as possible, freed it from its defects of form, and enriched it with new developments, illustrations, and historical testimonies,--testimonies in the highest degree striking and irrefragable. Now that I have thus verified my analysis by historical proofs, it is to be hoped that readers whose eyes are not sealed will be convinced and will admit, even though reluctantly, that my work contains a faithful, correct translation of the Christian religion out of the Oriental language of imagery into plain speech. And it has no pretension to be anything more than a close translation, or, to speak literally, an empirical or historico-philosophical analysis, a solution of the enigma of the Christian religion. The general propositions [of this work] . . . are . . . no[t] products of speculation; they have arisen out of the analysis of religion; they are only . . . generalisations from the known manifestations of human nature, and in particular of the religious consciousness. . . . The ideas of my work are only conclusions, consequences, drawn from premises which are not themselves mere ideas, but objective facts either actual or historical. . . . I unconditionally repudiate [the] absolute, immaterial, self-sufficing speculation . . . [of] those philosophers who pluck out their eyes that they may see better. . . . I do not generate the object from the thought, but the thought from the object. . . . Briefly, the "Idea" is to me only faith in the historical future, in the triumph of truth and virtue; it has for me only a political and moral significance; for in the sphere of strictly theoretical philosophy, I attach myself, in direct opposition to the Hegelian philosophy, only to realism, to materialism. . . .

This philosophy has for its principle, not the Substance of Spinoza, not the ego of Kant and Fichte, not the Absolute Identity of Schelling, not the Absolute Mind of Hegel, in short, no abstract, merely conceptional being, but a real being, the true Ens realissimum--man; its principle, therefore, is in the highest degree positive and real. It generates its thought from the opposite of thought, from Matter, from existence, from the senses. . . . Speculation makes religion say only what it has itself thought, and expressed . . . it assigns a meaning to religion without any reference to the actual meaning of religion; it does not look beyond itself. I, on the contrary, let religion itself speak; I constitute myself only its listener and interpreter. . . . It is not I, but religion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion that denies the God who is not man . . . since it makes God become man, and then constitutes this God, not distinguished from man, having a human form, human feelings, and human thoughts, the object of its worship and veneration. I have only found the key to the cipher of the Christian religion, only extricated its true meaning from the web of contradictions and delusions called theology. . . . If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism--at least in the sense of this work--is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else but the truth and divinity of human nature. . . .

The reproach that according to my book religion is an absurdity, a nullity, a pure illusion, would be well founded only if, according to it, that into which I resolve religion, which I prove to be its true object and substance, namely, man,--anthropology, were an absurdity, a nullity, a pure illusion. But so far from giving a trivial or even a subordinate significance to anthropology . . . I, on the contrary, while reducing theology to anthropology, exalt anthropology into theology, very much as Christianity, while lowering God into man, made man into God. . . . Hence it is obvious that I do not take the word anthropology in the sense of the Hegelian or of any other philosophy, but in an infinitely higher and more general sense.

Religion is the dream of the human mind. . . . Hence I do nothing more to religion--and to speculative philosophy and theology also--than to open its eyes, . . . [to] change the object as it is in the imagination into the object as it is in reality.

From Ludwig Feuerbach, translated by George Eliot, The Essence of Christianity, pp. xiii-xvi, xviii-xix (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books), published 1989. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.