Religion as the Dream of the Human Mind - Essay Example

"Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity."1 " I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one."1 In this era, many people had already said popular words, thoughts and quotes which could influence and flare up the interests and emotions of mankind. Such sayings could either influence man for the better or for the worst. The quotes written above where the words spoken by the famous German philosopher and anthropologist, Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, of whom, as a child was very religious, but while attending the Gymnasium in Ansbach, he was introduced by his tutor to the speculative Christian theology propounded by the Hegelian theologian Karl Daub at Heidelberg University. (Harvey) Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, was born in Landshut, Bavaria. His family was one of the prominent people in their district. While studying at the Heidelberg University, he was greatly influenced by the Hegelian philosophy of which, George Frederick Hegel, philosopher and historian has often searched for the truth. As a philosopher of history, Hegel's concerns were primarily focused upon the finding of basic truths regarding the nature of reality. Because he seeks metaphysical "first principles" of nature, his results cannot judged through outside sources or objective facts, but only through individual reflection and inspiration. In contrast, the philosopher of history is expected to rely almost wholly upon facts, and to avoid the contamination of "bias." (Burell) In his youth, Feuerbach was enchanted by Hegels theory and was associated with the group known as the "Young Hegelians". While studying masters in Berlin, he still was not able to reconcile in his belief of the personal deity with the pure Vernunft of Hegelian philosophy and when the Hegelian influence begins to slacken, he then later rejected Hegels philosophy of idealism. Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach completed his education at Erlangen at the Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg with the study of natural science. His first book, published anonymously, Gedanken ber Tod und Unsterblichkeit (1830), contains an attack on personal immortality and an advocacy of the Spinozistic immortality of reabsorption in nature. These principles, combined with his embarrassing manner of public speaking, debarred him from academic advancement. After some years of struggling, during which he published his Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (2 vols., 1833-1837, 2nd ed. 1844), and Abelard und Heloise (1834, 3rd ed. 1877), he married in 1837 and lived a rural existence at Bruckberg near Nuremberg, supported by his wife's share in a small porcelain factory.(Wikipedia) In his works, he had always attacked religion by saying that; "That Christianity has in fact long vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed idea" His attacks to religion were then followed up by his most popular and important work written last 1841 entitled Das Wesen des Chrisantemums. It was the translated into English by George Eliot in 1853 which is now entitled "The Essence of Christianity". The Essence of Christianity was divided into two parts; Part 1: The True or Anthropological Essence of Religion and Part 2: The False Theological Essence of Religion. In the first part, Chapter 15, he speaks about the mystery of Christian Christ or the Personal God, where he argued that the basic principles and beliefs of Christianity are only formulated and thus, realized to fulfill the wishes and needs of a human heart. The human heart is a feeling heart where it feels pain, sadness and confusion. According to Feuerbach: "It is pleasanter to be passive than to act, to be redeemed and made free by another than to free oneself; pleasanter to make one's salvation dependent on a person than on the force of one's own spontaneity; pleasanter to set before oneself an object of love than an object of effort; pleasanter to know oneself beloved by God than merely to have that simple, natural self-love which is innate in all beings; pleasanter to see oneself imaged in the love-beaming eyes of another personal being than to look into the concave mirror of self or into the cold depths of the ocean of Nature; pleasanter, in short, to allow oneself to be acted on by one's own feeling,, as by another, but yet fundamentally identical being, than to regulate oneself by reason." To be able to fulfill the human feeling or need, a religion was being formulated to give the human feeling a sense of sentiment, sympathy, security and hope. These feelings which should be fulfilled by Christianity are the fulfillment of another being. Another self which is the ego, acted on by itself. This egoistic self is seen only during the waking stage of a human, where a human is conscious of his own feelings as well as how others would see him. The real self is present at the reverse side of waking. It is seen in dreaming, where everything is spontaneous and continuous. It is where the mind is acting up on its own where no other forces will influence the spontaneity of its actions. If the waking ego is acting on itself, dreaming is acting on by itself. Part 2, Chapter 20, speaks about the contradiction in the existence of God. He argued about the truth about religion which is not inline with the pronounced proof of the existence of God. The true meaning of religion was the relation of man to his own nature. But after the said proofs had been made known, which aims nothing more than to prove that the existing meaning of religion was right, its meaning had immediately represented man's inner nature as an objective, an external being. Just like Jehovah in ancient Judaism, who holds the same passions and attributes of a human was then later separated and help up which gives a stricter sense than what he should originally be. Christianity was not the real religion. It was being made up only by people and not with God. Just as Paul had written in the Bible which talks about Christ, who was born like a man but ascends to the highest. "His existence being proved, God is no longer a merely relative, but a nominal being (Ding an sich): he is not only a being for us, a being, in our faith our feeling our nature, he is a being in himself, a being external to us, - in a word, not merely a belief, a feeling, a thought, but also a real existence apart from belief, feeling, and thought. But such an existence is no other than a sensational existence; i.e., an existence conceived according to the forms of our senses." Christianity, like religious agnosticism and all other varieties of theism, maintains that the true nature of god-his essence-lies beyond the reach of man's reason. When god's attributes are pushed to the limits of absurdity, the Christian invariably falls back on man's inability to comprehend god. If the atheist complains that omnipotence is impossible, or that a benevolent god cannot be reconciled with the existence of evil in the universe, the Christian retreats into the unknowable god of agnosticism. Feuerbach argued that god of nature religion is nature and that the God of spiritual religion, of Christianity, is the spirit or essence of man. In the Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach argued that contrary to the belief that God created mankind, he believes that it is mankind who created God, where all the qualities and characteristics of God is so much like the qualities f humanity, only made stricter and higher to be more glorified and praised. Feuerbach has been the greatest influence of the atheist, philosophist and theologians. He has been an inspiration and his ideas were adopted by authors such as Strauss who had written Leben Jesu, Arnold Ruge and Friedrich Engels. Karl Marx, on the other hand, based his theories from Hegel and stick with Bruno Bauer, the leader of the Young Hegelians. However, Marx follows the lead of Feuerbach which was also a member of the Young Hegelians. He even wrote the Theses on Feuerbach (1845), wherein he writes that "the philosophers have only described the world, in various ways, the point is to change it". This opposition between, firstly, various subjective interpretations given by philosophers, which may be, in a sense, compared with Weltanschauung designed to legitimize the current state of affairs, and, secondly, the effective transformation of the world through praxis, which combines theory and practice in a materialist way, is what distinguishes "Marxist philosophers" from the rest of philosophers. What distinguished Marx from Feuerbach, however, was his view of Feuerbach's humanism as excessively abstract, and so no less a historical and idealist than what it purported to replace, namely the reified notion of God found in institutional Christianity that legitimized the repressive power of the Prussian state. (Wikipedia) Although his convictions needed more justification than that of what he is able to give, Feuerbach's legacy was continued by those who were influenced by him and considered him to be one of the fathers of the modern/critical academic study of religion. REFERENCES Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 3 Aug 2006, 03:20 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 17 Aug 2006 . Van A. Harvey. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. October 2003. Stanford University. August 18, 2006, Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2006. Aug 18, 2006. Answers.com. August 18, 2006. Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach. Feuerbach Internet Archive. 1841. Introduction from The Fiery Brook, remainder from The Essence of Christianity. August 18, 2006. Dave Burell. Dave Burrell's Home on the Web. 1991. A Historian Looks At Hegel Philosophically: Critical Examination of Hegelian Dialectic, Determinism, and Contingency. August 19, 2006. Read More