Conspectus of Feuerbach’s Book
Lectures on the Essence of Religion

The preface is dated 1. I. 1851.—Feu-
erbach speaks here of the reasons why
he did not take part in the 1848 revolu-
tion, which had “such a shameful, such
a barren end” (VII).^[1] The revolution of
1848 had no Orts- und Zeitsinn,^[2] the
constitutionalists expected freedom from
the word des Herrn,^[3] the republicans

(VII-VIII) from their desire (“it was only
necessary to desire a republic for it to
come into being”).... (VIII)

“If a revolution breaks out again and I
take an active part in it, then you can ...
be sure that this revolution will be vic-
torious, that Judgment Day for the mon-
archy and hierarchy has arrived.” (VII)

Sic!!

Second Lecture  (12-20).

Third Lecture (21-30).

The objection was raised to my Essence
of Christianity ^[13] that for me man does not
depend on anything, “there was opposition
to this alleged deification of man by me.”
(24) “The being, whom man presupposes ...
is nothing other than nature, not your
God.” (25)

“The unconscious being of nature is for
me the eternal being, without origin, the
first being, but first in point of time, and
not in point of rank, the physically but
not morally first being....” (27)

My denial includes also affirmation....
“It is, of course, a consequence of my doc-
trine that there is no God” (29), but this
follows from the conception of the essence
of God (=an expression of the essence
of nature, of the essence of man).

Fourth Lecture.

“The feeling of dependence is the basis
of religion.” (31) (“Furcht”^[14] 33-4-5-6)

“The so-called speculative philosophers
are ... those philosophers who do not con-
struct their notions in accordance with
things, but rather construct things accord-
ing to their notions.” (31)

(Fifth Lecture).

— it is especially death that arouses
fear, belief in God. (41)

“I hate the idealism that divorces man
from nature; I am not ashamed of my de-
pendence on nature.” (44)

“As little as I have deified man in Wesen
des Christenthums, a deification with which
I have been stupidly reproached ... so little
do I want to deify nature in the sense
of theology....” (46-47)

Sixth Lecture — The cult of animals (50
u. ff.^[16]).

“What man is dependent on is ... nature,
an object of the senses ... all the impressions
which nature makes on man through the
senses ... can become motives of religious
veneration.” (55)

(Seventh Lecture.)

By egoism I understand, not the egoism
of the “philistine and bourgeois” (63), but
the philosophical principle of conformity
with nature, with human reason, against
“theological hypocrisy, religious and spec-
ulative fantasy, political despotism.” (63
i. f.) Cf. 64  very important.

Idem 68 i. f. and 69 i. f. — Egoism (in the
philosophical sense) is the root of religion.

NB

 ˘

“Thus, Die Grundsätze der Philosophie
is interconnected with the Wesen der Re-
ligion.” ^[21] (113)

“I deify nothing, consequently not even
nature.” (115)

“I understand by nature the total-
ity of all sensuous forces, things and
beings which man distinguishes from

himself as not human.... Or, if the
word is taken in practice: nature is
everything that for man—indepen-
dent of the supernatural whisperings

of theistic faith—proves to be imme-
diate and sensuous, the basis and
object of his life. Nature is light,
electricity, magnetism, air, water,
fire, earth, animal, plant, man, in-

sofar as he is a being acting involun-
tarily and unconsciously—by the word
‘nature’ I understand nothing more
than this, nothing mystical, nothing
nebulous, nothing theological” (above:
in contrast to Spinoza).

...“Nature is ... everything that you see
and that is not derived from human hands
and thoughts. Or if we penetrate into the
anatomy of nature, nature is the being,
or totality of beings and things, whose
appearances, expressions or effects, in which
precisely in their existence and essence are
manifested and consist, have their basis
not in thoughts or intentions and decisions
of the will, but in astronomical, or cosmic,
mechanical, chemical, physical, physiolo-
gical or organic forces or causes.” (116-117)

[Here too it amounts to opposing matter
to mind, the physical to the psychical.]
121 — against the argument that there must
be a prime cause (= God).

“It is only man’s narrowness and love of
convenience that cause him to put eternity
in place of time, infinity in place of the
endless progress from cause to cause, a stat-
ic divinity in place of restless nature,
eternal rest instead of eternal movement.”
(121 i. f.)

Yet, “no objective validity and exist-
ence, no existence outside ourselves” must
be ascribed to these abstractions. (125)

...“Nature has no beginning and no end.
Everything in it is in mutual interaction,
everything is relative, everything at once
effect and cause, everything in it is all-
sided and reciprocal....” (129)

there is no place there for God (129-130;
simple arguments against God).

...“The cause of the first and general
cause of things in the sense of the
theists, theologians and so-called spec-
ulative philosophers is man’s under-
standing....” (130) “God is ... cause in
general, the concept of cause as essence
personified and become independent....”
(131)

“God is abstract nature, i.e., nature re-
moved from sensuous perception, mentally
conceived, made into an object or being

of the understanding; nature in the proper
sense is sensuous, real nature, as immedi-
ately manifested and presented to us by
the senses.” (133)

The theists see in God the cause of the
movement in nature (which they make into
a dead mass or matter). (134) The power of
God, however, is in reality the power of
nature (Naturmacht: 135).

...“Indeed it is only through their effects
that we perceive the properties of things....”
(136)

Atheism (136-137) abolishes neither das
moralische Über (= das Ideal)^[24] nor das
natürliche Über (= die Natur.)^[25]

...“Is not time merely a form of the
world, the manner in which particular
beings and effects follow one another? How
then can I ascribe a temporal beginning
to the world?” (145)

...“God is merely the world in thought....
The distinction between God and the world
is merely the distinction between spirit
and sense, thought and perception....” (146)

God is presented as a being existing out-

side ourselves. But is that not precisely
an admission of the truth of sensuous being?
Is it not (thereby) “recognised that there
is no being outside sensuous being? For,
apart from sensuousness, have we any
other sign, any other criterion, of an exist-
ence outside ourselves, of an existence in-
dependent of thought?” (148)

...“Nature ... in isolation from its mate-
riality and corporeality ... is God....” (149)

“To derive nature from God is equivalent

to wanting to derive the original from the
image, from the copy, to derive a thing

from the thought of the thing.” (149)

Characteristic of man is Verkehrtheit
(149 i. f.) verselbständigen^[26] abstractions—
for example, time (150) and space:

“Although ... man has abstracted space
and time from spatial and temporal things,
nevertheless he presupposes those as the
primary grounds and conditions of the
latter’s existence. Hence he thinks of the
world, i.e., the sum-total of real things,
matter, the content of the world, as having
its origin in space and time. Even Hegel
makes matter arise not only in, but out of,

space and time....” (150) “Also, it is really
incomprehensible why time, separated from
temporal things, should not be identified
with God.” (151)

...“In reality, exactly the opposite holds
good, ...it is not things that presuppose
space and time, but space and time that
presuppose things, for space or extension

presupposes something that extends, and
time, movement, for time is indeed only a
concept derived from movement, presup-
poses something that moves. Everything is
spatial and temporal....” (151-152)

“The question whether a God has created
the world ... is the question of the relation
of mind to sensuousness” (152—the most
important and difficult question of philos-

ophy, the whole history of philosophy
turns on this question (153)—the conflict
between the Stoics and the Epicureans,
the Platonists and the Aristotelians, the
Sceptics and the Dogmatists, in ancient
philosophy; between the nominalists and

realists in the Middle Ages; between the
idealists and the “realists or empiricists”

(sic! 153) in modern times.

It depends in part on the nature of people
(academic versus practical types) whether
they incline to one or another philosophy.

“I do not deny ... wisdom, goodness,
beauty; I deny only that, as such generic
notions, they are beings, whether in the
shape of gods or properties of God, or as
Platonic ideas, or as self-posited Hegelian
concepts....” (158)—they exist only as prop-
erties of men.

Another cause of belief in God: man
transfers to nature the idea of his own
purposive creation. Nature is purposive—
ergo it was created by a rational being. (160)

“That which man calls the purposiveness
of nature and conceives as such is in real-
ity nothing but the unity of the world,
the harmony of cause and effect, the in-
terconnection in general in which every-
thing in nature exists and acts.” (161)

...“Nor have we any grounds for imagin-
ing that if man had more senses or organs
he would also cognise more properties or
things of nature. There is nothing more
in the external world, in inorganic nature,
than in organic nature. Man has just as
many senses as are necessary for him to
conceive the world in its totality, in its
entirety.” (163)

Where does spirit (Geist) come from?—
ask the theists of the atheist. (196) They
have too disdainful (despektierliche: 196)

an idea of nature, too lofty an idea of spir-
it (zu hohe, zu vornehme (!!) Vorstel-
lung^[29]).

Even a Regierungsrath^[31] cannot be
directly explained from nature. (197)

“The spirit develops together with the
body, with the senses ... it is connected
with the senses ... whence the skull, whence
the brain, thence also the spirit; whence
an organ, thence also its functioning” ((197):
cf. above (197) “the spirit is in the head”).

“Mental activity is also a bodily activi-
ty.” (197-198)

The origin of the corporeal world from the

spirit, from God, leads to the creation of
the world from nothing—“for whence does
the spirit get the matter, corporeal sub-
stances, if not from nothing?” (199)

...“Nature is corporeal, material, sen-
suous....” (201)

Jakob Boehme = a “materialistic
theist” (202): he deifies not only the
mind but also matter. For him God is ma-
terial—therein lies his mysticism. (202)

...“Where the eyes and hands begin, there
the gods end.” (203)

(The theists) have “blamed matter or
the inevitable necessity of na-
ture ... for the evil in nature” (212)

I abolish (aufhebe) religion “only in-
sofar” (Feuerbach’s italics) “as it is
not poetry, but ordinary prose.” (233)

Art does not require the recognition of
its works as reality. (233)

Besides fantasy, of great importance in
religion are das Gemüth^[35] (261), the prac-
tical aspect (258), the search for the better,
for protection, help, etc.

(263)—In religion one seeks consolation
(atheism is alleged to be trostlos^[36]).— — —

“A concept, however, congenial to man’s
self-love, is that nature does not act with
immutable necessity, but that above the
necessity of nature is ... a being that loves
mankind.” (264) And in the next
sentence “Naturnotwendigkeit”^[37] of
the falling of a stone. (264)

Religion = childishness, the childhood
of mankind (269), Christianity has made
a god of morality, it has created a moral
God. (274)

Religion is rudimentary education—one

can say: “education is true religion....”
(275) “However, this is ... a misuse of
words, for superstitious and inhuman ideas
are always linked with the word religion.”
(275)

Eulogy of education—(277).

“Superficial view and assertion ... that
religion is absolutely of no concern to
life, namely to public, political life.” (281)

I would not give a farthing for a political
freedom that allows man to be a slave
of religion. (281)

Religion is innate in man (“this state-
ment ... simply means”) = superstition is
innate in man. (283)

“The Christian has a free cause of nature,
a lord of nature, whose will, whose word,
nature obeys, a God who is not bound by the
so-called causal nexus, by necessity, by the
chain which links effect to cause and cause

to cause, whereas the heathen god is bound
by the necessity of nature and cannot save
even his favourites from the fatal necessity
of dying.” (301) (Thus Feuerbach says sys-

tematically: Notwendigkeit der Natur.)

“The Christian, however, has a free cause
because in his wishes he is not bound by
the interconnection of nature, nor by the
necessity of nature.” (301) ((And three
times more on this page. Notwendig-

keit der Natur.))

And p. 302: “...all the laws or natural
necessities to which human existence is
subjected....” (302)

“To make nature dependent on God, means
to make the world order, the necessity of
nature, dependent on the will.” (312) And

p. 313 (above)—“Naturnotwendigkeit”!!

In religious ideas “we have ... examples-
how in general man converts the subject-
ive into the objective, that is to say, he makes
that which exists only in his thought only in
his thought, conception, imagination into
something existing outside thought,

conception, imagination....” (328)

“So Christians tear the spirit, the soul,
of man out of his body and make this
torn-out, disembodied spirit into their God.”
(332)

Religion gives (332) man an ideal. Man
needs an ideal, but a human ideal corres-
ponding to nature and not a supernatural
ideal:

“Let our ideal be no castrated, disem-
bodied, abstract being, let our ideal be the
whole, real, all-sided, perfect, developed
man.” (334)

“Man has no idea, no conception, of
any other reality, of any other existence,
than sensuous, physical existence....”
(334)

“If one is not ashamed to allow the sen-
suous, corporeal world to arise from the
thought and will of a spirit, if one is not

ashamed to assert that things are not
thought of because they exist, but that
they exist because they are thought of;

then let one also not be ashamed to allow
things to arise from the word; then let one
also not be ashamed to assert that words
exist not because things exist, but that
things exist only because words exist.”
(341-342)

A God without the immortality of the
soul of man is only a God in name:

...“Such a God is ... the God of some
rationalist natural scientists, who is noth-
ing but personified nature or natural
necessity, the universe, with which of course
the idea of immortality is incompatible.”

The last (30th) lecture, pp. (358-370),
could be put forward almost in its entirety
as a typical example of an enlightening
atheism with a socialist tint (concerning
the mass that suffers want, etc., p. 365
middle), etc. Final words: it was my task
to make you, my hearers,

“from friends of God into friends of man,
from men of faith into thinkers, from men
of prayer into workers, from candidates
for the beyond into students of this world,

from Christians, who, as they themselves
acknowledge and confess, are ‘half-
beast, half-angel,’ into men, whole men”
(370 end).

Next follow Additions and Notes. (371-
463)

Here there are many details, quotations,
which contain repetitions. I pass over all
that. I note only the most important of
that which affords some interest: the
basis of morality is egoism (392). (“Love
of life, interest, egoism”)... “there is

not only a singular or personal, but
also a social egoism, a family egoism,
a corporation egoism, a community egoism,
a patriotic egoism.” (393)

...“The good is nothing but that which
corresponds to the egoism of all men....”
(397)

“One has only to cast a glance at history!

Where does a new epoch in history begin?
Only wherever an oppressed mass or major-
ity makes its well-justified egoism effec-
tive against the exclusive egoism of a na-
tion or caste, wherever classes of men (sic!)
or whole nations, by gaining victory over

the arrogant self-conceit of a patrician mi-
nority, emerge into the light of historical
glory out of the miserable obscurity of

the proletariat. So, too, the egoism of the
now oppressed majority of mankind must
and will obtain its rights and found a new
epoch in history. It is not that the aristoc-

racy of culture, of the spirit, must be abol-
ished; no indeed! it is merely that not
just a handful should be aristocrats and all
others plebeians, but that all should—
at least should—be cultured; it is not that
property in general should be abolished;
no indeed! it is merely that not just a hand-
ful should have property, and all others
nothing; all should have property.” (398)

Examples from the classics of the use
of the words God and nature without dis-
tinction. (398-399)

Pp. 402-411—an excellent, phi-
losophical (and at the same time simple
and clear) explanation of the essence of
religion.

“In the final analysis, the secret of reli-
gion is only the secret of the combination
in one and the same being of consciousness
with the unconscious, of the will with the
involuntary.” (402). The Ego and the non-

Ego are inseparably connected in man.
“Man does not grasp or endure the depths
of his own being and therefore splits it into
an 'Ego’ without a ‘non-Ego,’ which he

calls God, and a ‘non-Ego’ without an
‘Ego,’ which he calls nature.” (406)

P. 408—an excellent quotation from Sen-
eca (against the atheists) that they make
nature into a god. Pray!—Work!^[44] (p. 411)

Nature is God in religion, but nature

as Gedankenwesen.^[45] “The secret of re-
ligion is ‘the identity of the subjective
and objective,’ i. e., the unity of the being

of man and nature, but as distinct from the
real being of nature and mankind.” (411)

“Human ignorance is bottomless and the
human force of imagination is boundless;
the power of nature deprived of its foun-
dation by ignorance, and of its bounds
by fantasy, is divine omnipotence.” (414)

...“Objective essence as subjective, the
essence of nature as different from nature,
as human essence, the essence of man as

different from man, as non-human essence—

that is the divine being, that is the essence
of religion, that is the secret of mysticism
and speculation....” (415)

“Man separates in thought the adjective

from the substantive, the property from
the essence.... And the metaphysical God
is nothing but the compendium, the total-
ity of the most general properties extracted
from nature, which, however, man by
means of the force of imagination—and
indeed in just this separation from sen-
suous being, matter, nature—reconverts
into an independent subject or being.”

(417)

The same role is played by Logic ((418)—
obviously Hegel is meant)—which converts
das Sein, das Wesen^[46] into a special real-
ity—“how stupid it is to want to make

metaphysical existence into a physical one,
subjective existence into an objective one,
and again logical or abstract existence into
an illogical real existence!” (418)

...“‘Is there, therefore, an eternal gulf
and contradiction between being and think-
ing?’ Yes, but only in the mind; however
in reality the contradiction has long been
resolved, to be sure only in a way corres-
ponding to reality and not to your school
notions, and, indeed, resolved by not fewer
than five senses.” (418)

“The head is the house of representa-

tives of the universe”—and if our

heads are stuffed with abstractions,
Gattungsbegriffen,^[48] then of course
we derive (ableiten) “the individual
from the universal, i.e., ... nature
from God.”

Interesting is the answer to (Feuerbach’s)
critic Professor von Schaden (448-
449) and to Schaller. (449-450-463)

...“I do indeed expressly put nature
in place of being, and man in place of think-
ing,” i.e., not an abstraction, but something
concrete— — —die dramatische Psycholo-
gie.^[49] (449)

“Jesuitism, the unconscious original and
ideal of our speculative philosophers.” (455)

“Thinking posits the discreteness of real-
ity as a continuum, the infinite multiplic-
ity of life as an identical singularity.
Knowledge of the essential, inextinguishable
difference between thought and life (or
reality) is the beginning of all wisdom
in thinking and living. Only the distinc-
tion is here the true connection.” (458)