Contemplating God: Perception, Existence and the Prism of Experience - Term Paper Example

Contemplating God: Perception, Existence and the Prism of Experience Ludwig Feuerbach was precisely what he espoused in his philosophy: a product of his environment, and of the Zeitgeist that characterized mid-19th-century Europe. The Prussian state in which he lived, and under which he developed his materialistic interpretation of society and man’s conception of God, was one of the most reactionary governments in Europe. As is common with intolerant states, the autocratic Prussian system justified itself through a derivative conservative creed rooted in a combination of country, Christianity and a compatible philosophy (Harvey, 2007). The reaction of Feuerbach and others of the German intelligentsia, animated by the revolutionary ferment then rising in Europe, was to cast aside the Hegelian philosophical orthodoxy of the day in favor of a radicalized view of the world, man’s place in it and what Feuerbach considered man’s naivete concerning theology. Feuerbach and his colleagues contended that “faith” and the supernatural basis of Christian doctrine was incompatible with rationalist thought and philosophy (Harvey, 2007). The ascendancy of the wealthy and powerful was based on a systematic exploitation of the majority of people, who simply lacked resources and social standing. From this standpoint, Christian practice had no practical use in that it could not improve the lot of the dispossessed. The writings of Feuerbach and his fellow “Young Hegelians” led to repressive measures by the Prussian state, particularly toward the university intellectuals. Feuerbach emerged from this experience a confirmed materialist and atheist and, in his evolving philosophy, he came to reject Christianity as an “absolute” religion, instead embracing rationalism which he believed more truly explained the world and the development of human society as a consequence of natural phenomena (2007). Thus, personal experience shaped his perspective and his philosophical position – when Feuerbach contended that God was a human construct, he was speaking as a man whose experiences taught that theology could not stand in the presence of reason and philosophy. Break with Hegel As a student at the University of Berlin, Feuerbach came under the influence of Hegelian thought, which held that individuality finds its ultimate expression within the “absolute” of the state. The state, which Hegel described as “absolutely rational,” represents a state of existence in which “freedom comes into its supreme right,” a “final end” (that) has supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State” (Hegel, p. 258). The Prussian state in which this concept was introduced was held by many to be an expression of the rational absolute, and Hegel’s writings on the subject were seen as apologia for an often repressive political system. Feuerbach’s adaption of Hegel led him to a belief that God was a manifestation of man’s essential nature, a position which requires that man find himself in God (Schleiermacher, p. 13). As dissatisfaction with the old political order grew (an order which the Prussians seemed to have inherited from the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Feuerbach’s humanist /anthropological message struck a chord among revolutionaries who sought a voice in politics for the people and an overall improvement in conditions within the greater state. Those who had used Hegel to promote the ultimate authority of church and state came up against a new, more radical interpretation. The Young Hegelians were a collection of academics who held that reason and freedom were the logical outcome and extension of human experience. They rejected the “orthodox” Hegelian view that the subsuming of individuality within the state, as a paragon of absolute reason, was the supreme duty of the citizen. The Prussian state, which gradually aggrandized its political power throughout the confederation of German states in the 19th century, was irreconcilable with the Young Hegelians’ notion that reason and freedom describe the true nature of man’s existence. Feuerbach and his fellow philosophers and academics came to understand that all symbols of absolutism only have their authority “on loan” from the human mind, from his rational nature. Feuerbach showed that “God, state, and king, indeed ‘sacred’ institutions in general, were human constructions. The divine becomes the human in a simple, emancipatory reversal. Now the human world may begin; now myth should no longer be necessary” (Caldwell, p. 96). As a citizen of an increasingly restrictive political authority, in which the right of free speech was severely restrained, Feuerbach’s Hegelianism was bound to take this line of reasoning. It may be speculative to presume, but it seems reasonable that had Feuerbach lived in a thoroughly enlightened state, the one the orthodox Hegelians envisioned and promoted, his concept would likely have been different. As a product of his environment - a philosophically and morally objective edifice - Feuerbach was reacting to what he saw as a non-intuitive and anti-rational reality, an artificial construct that flowed from God/State to man rather than in the opposite direction. As a philosopher who sought to supplant theology with anthropology, such a state of affairs couldn’t have been acceptable. It is fitting that the publication which caused Feuerbach to “break” with Hegel should have been published in Zurich, so as to avoid censorship by the Prussian government. In 1839, Arnold Ruge, one of the leaders of the Young Hegelian movement, published an article entitled “Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy,” which caused Feuerbach to reassess his relationship to Hegel (Harvey, 2007). The article made him realize that Hegel had misrepresented nature as well as “culture and religion, because (he) ignores all their variety and particularities. It is in this way…that Christianity is determined as the Absolute religion” (2007). Feuerbach did not come to this realization based on a purely theoretical understanding; he was a firsthand witness to the depredations of an autocratic government and its presumption of moral and temporal superiority. As such, Feuerbach’s position was the product of both external stimuli and intellectual rumination. It was Hegel’s misrepresentation of nature that led Feuerbach to the conclusion that nature must be the primary concern of human knowledge, and that any philosophical contemplation which attempts to look past nature is folly (Harvey, 2007). This was a subversive viewpoint that accurately reflected the political tumult of the era, though it was not unusual given the course of events and the role that the Young Hegelians would come to play in the coming Revolutionary drama. The Young Hegelians, “confronted by censorship, the police, and reprisals against them in the universities…turned against Hegel’s philosophy altogether. Expelled from the faculties for which they were trained, many of them became pamphleteers, journalists, revolutionaries, and independent scholars” (Harvey, 2007). Revolutionary doctrine, then, issued forth from revolutionaries whose interest was much more than just hypothetical. Feuerbach’s revolutionary doctrine proceeds from a cogent and natural intellectual source, if one accepts his theories. According to this model, revolution is a predictable outcome when human beings are at odds with their own nature, which is the case when man denies his own role in the establishment of authority. “For Feuerbach, people alienate their essential being by attributing their human qualities to a god who is then worshipped on account of these qualities. In worshipping god, therefore, people are unconsciously worshipping themselves” (Alienation in Capitalist Society, 1979). The same may be said of tacit obedience to the state, and the assumption that the state possesses an intrinsic moral authority. Nationalism, which may be said to exist as a secular “quasi-religion,” encourages an ecstatic adoration that approximates religious fervor. Feuerbach’s break with the Hegelian concept of the individual’s existence within the state was, in part, a consequence of those depredations that assured the state’s moral unworthiness. Feuerbach’s rejection of theology, of superstition and myth, can be seen in a wider context which incorporates a rejection of statism. Just as he argued that man finds in God the satisfaction of some need within himself, man finds self-validation by identifying with the state to which he belongs. If, as Feuerbach contends, God is nothing more than human (Feuerbach, p. 11), then the authority of the state, too, can be no more than a human projection. When the state, by its actions, obliterates its moral standing its status must be reassessed based on man’s free nature. Man exists in a state of nature, in which all are equal, and from which he creates the state as well as God. The nation in which Feuerbach, Ruge and the other Young Hegelians were educated showed, by its increasingly overbearing and reactionary position, that man’s nature is, by comparison to the state, inherently virtuous. A product of his environment Feuerbach’s philosophy is strongly reminiscent of the precepts of the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions that it helped produce. Indeed, it is difficult to read Feuerbach without feeling the presence of Montesquieu and Paine, whose espousal of the natural rights of man were, in their way, products of their environments. Marx, however, criticized Feuerbach for what he saw as materialism in his hypothesis, arguing in favor of “the clear and emphatic insistence that man is not wholly the creature of his environment, but is likewise superior to and master of his environment” (Spargo, p. 43). Superior to, perhaps, but not necessarily its master. Ultimately, man creates and is created (or re-created) by the environment that he creates. Philosophically speaking, man is superior to his environment, which has the effect of altering him both physically and intellectually. That he should be master of his environment is an idealistic extension of his inherent moral superiority. However, seen from a practical standpoint, man and his environment interact in a perpetual and mutual re-invention. Thus, man is a sensual being exposed to a bewildering array of experience through his multiple perceptive “tools.” In The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach explains that “I found my ideas on materials, which can be appropriated only through the activity of the senses. I do not generate the object from the thought, but the thought from the object” (Feuerbach, p. vi). By inverting Hegel, by holding that “mind is the highest product of matter rather than matter being a product of mind,” Feuerbach argues that knowledge comes from material experience (Fien, MacLean and Park, p. 126). It is experience that changes man and re-shapes his consciousness. We may see this at work in the life and consequent works of Feuerbach, both of which were materially impacted by the events that led to revolution throughout mid-19th century Europe. The Marxian critique of Feuerbach overlooks the experiential “two-way street” that exists between man and environment. Marx argues that Feuerbach saw man as too “passive and contemplative, restricting (himself) to receiving or reflecting reality” (Fien, McLean and Park, p. 126). In so doing, Marx contends that man can change his environment without realizing that Feuerbach and his fellow Hegelians have done just that (Seligman, p. 32). Feuerbach, as a product of his environment, helped to erode old ideas and create a new reality that would gradually alter the political nature of Europe. Since, as Feuerbach argued, mind is the highest achievement of matter, then the mind is capable of being changed and of changing its environment. In this way, Feuerbach refuted Marx’s charge by having already proven the symbiotic causal relationship between man/mind and environment. The proposition that God is a creation of man arises from this relationship. The “mind over matter” argument shows that man’s cognitive abilities, his reason, enable him to dispense with theology, or mysticism. Mind, as the supreme achievement of matter, can be utilized to show that God is the supreme achievement of mind. Accommodating disparate doctrines Environment and experience had led Feuerbach to the conclusion that God was a human creation, an idealized image of man. Mind and experience were also essential to the philosophy of Friedrich Schleiermacher, who sought an accommodation between reason and theology. Like Feuerbach, Schleiermacher realized that faith alone, as the unquestioning acceptance of the miraculous, was an insufficient defense of the existence of God. As such, Schleiermacher was a product of that particular Enlightenment predilection for reason-based faith. Like Feuerbach, Schleiermacher was a product of academia. A man of faith, Schleiermacher was deeply influenced by the intellectual challenges of the German university system (he was involved in the founding of the University of Berlin). One may argue that, as a product of his environment, Schleiermacher, more than any other, embodied a resolution of the conflict between intellect and faith. The elevation of science, which was occasioned by the Enlightenment, gave Schleiermacher’s faith an intellectual grounding. That this was so is all the more remarkable for the fact that he came from a pietistic Moravian background and remained rooted in an essentially Calvinist orientation. The influence of his intellectual awakening and growth was strong enough to temper a theological background that demanded an unswerving devotion to an angry God. As Schleiermacher grew to maturity, his intellect drew him to “Germany’s highest intellectual circles (where he) encountered other formative elements – science, the scientific study of the Bible, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism” (Sanders, 2002). Schleiermacher is a uniquely spiritual and intellectual product of his environment in a way that exceeds Marx’s limiting materialist definition. As mentioned, mind and experience were key to Schleiermacher’s philosophical convictions about God, and man’s ability, or inability, to know him. It is the limits of the human mind, the ability of which to “know” is bounded by experience, that bring God into the picture. As Kant argued, even if God made his presence known in the world, even if he intervened directly in some way, the human mind would be incapable of grasping and internalizing the experience because God himself exceeds man’s ability to understand, which is restricted by the finite, by space and time. “God is not a finite object like a tree, a thought, or an object. Therefore, God cannot be known directly by the mind” (Sanders, 2002). Thus, the mind places its own interpretation on events based on its experience, the sum of which gives human beings perspective, and a means of understanding the world on a visceral level. Therefore, whereas Feuerbach contends that the mind is the natural instrument that creates, or projects, God, the philosophical view to which Schleiermacher subscribed held that the mind is merely a product of its own limited experience. On that basis, then, one cannot presume to comprehend reality beyond the restrictions of one’s own experience. And yet where Schleiermacher would have rejected the idea that man created or could deny the existence of God, his experience and environment led him to constantly seek intellectually supportable ways in which to defend faith. He was a theist, but his belief required some form of intellectual rationale. The 18th century opened new vistas of diversity and understanding to a society accustomed to intellectual stagnation and centuries of enforcement by a Church that required nothing other than belief and obedience. The intellectual awakening that swept through Europe during Schleiermacher’s time brought him to a more holistic acceptance of phenomena than could be offered by theology or science, on their own. The influence of the Romantic period caused Schleiermacher to see things as “individual wholes. In this view, each individual thing, from the person to the society, was a unique expression of culture, history, and self, a uniqueness that could not be reduced to the ‘dead facts’ of science” (Sanders, 2002). For Schleiermacher, a product of the Enlightenment as well as the Romantic era, theology and science needed to work in tandem. Schleiermacher worked out a kind of rational-theological common ground in concluding that man can and does experience God, a theory he arrived at through what he called “the consciousness of being absolutely dependent” on God (Schleiermacher, p. 12). Schleiermacher explains that the sense of a God who looms somewhere off in the distance represents the kind of objective imposition which denies the presence of reason and intellect, a contradiction of everything the Enlightenment stood for and of the environment that produced Schleiermacher. Instead, absolute dependence is man’s relation to God, a relationship that he experiences “in words and deeds, prayer and praise, witness and action” (Sanders, 2002). Put simply, Schleiermacher is saying that one’s relation to God is this feeling of absolute dependence, which is manifested and experienced through various outward expressions. This notion that God cannot be regarded as an object has deep roots, but its synthesis and presentation as a theological-rational paradigm is very much a product of the 18th century and the emerging prestige of scientific inquiry. As Schleiermacher notes, an “object” is subject to the influence of external forces, which to him is anomalous. “…any possibility of God being in any way given is entirely excluded, because anything that is outwardly given must be given as an object exposed to our counter influence, however slight this may be” (Schleiermacher, p. 18). In this, Schleiermacher acknowledges the pietistic influence of his environment, the concept of man’s “smallness” in a world created and animated by God. Piety is an expression of this belief, but it is also a means for experiencing, for “knowing,” God. Thus, “piety is the knowing or doing that results when the feeling of absolute dependence is transformed into thought and action. However, the essence of piety is not the thought or action, but something prior, deeper, the religious feeling itself” (Sanders, 2002). Piety, as the manifested experience of absolute dependency, is an experience that can be described and passed to others, thus constituting a shared experience. Experience, which is indispensable to scientific inquiry, and religious faith find common ground in Schleiermacher. His approach is a hybrid of science and theology, which flows from his cultural grounding in the mystery of faith and his conviction that religion is nevertheless a construct of space and time. In times past, the particulars of faith had been the sole province of the Church and the holy orders, something with which the individual had no need to concern himself. This, of course, precluded the possibility of a dialogue about the existence of God or of man’s relation to him. Schleiermacher decried this lamentable history: “From time immemorial faith has not been everyone’s affair, for at all times only a few have understood something of religion while millions have variously played with its trappings which it has willingly let itself be draped out of condescension” (Schleiermacher, p. 77). But Schleiermacher, through the intermediary influence of Emmanuel Kant and other philosophers, established a rational grounding for the existence of God. As Feuerbach’s philosophy transcends a Marxian physical materialism, Schleiermacher’s ethos exceeds religious belief and pure science. It is insufficient to claim, as some have, that Schleiermacher advocated religious belief at the expense of all else. As history is the culmination and consequence of events and experience, so was Schleiermacher’s doctrine the result of his experience, education and environment. His espousal of absolute dependency and the “experiencing” of God draws on the strengths of two disparate creeds, and is the stronger for it. Like Feuerbach, he became critical of the state, specifically, of the absolutist Hohenzollern monarchy for which he fell into disfavor, a situation that was exacerbated by his promotion of a more democratic form of government aimed at enfranchising the common people. His position remained firmly anchored in both the secular and the theological. Schleiermacher’s opposition to absolutism also extended to the church. In particular, he objected to the notion that the church could act with actual moral authority when it comes to regulating behavior, or enforcing a universal social moral code. (His lasting legacy is in hermeneutics, which, among other things seeks to understand written religious texts from the standpoint of the author.) Feuerbach and Schleiermacher proceed from a subjective point of view on the subjects of God, man, the state and the church in rejecting the arbitrary and the objective. Some observers have argued that Feuerbach’s philosophy amounts to a logical conclusion for Schleiermacher’s arguments. This argument contends that Schleiermacher’s subjective logic on the subject of God must lead to an anthropological position, such as that put forth by Feuerbach. In his 1973 article “Schleiermacher and Feuerbach on the Intentionality of Religious Consciousness,” Roger Williams contends that Schleiermacher “obviates the charge of a reduction of theology to anthropology and (contends) that Schleiermacher’s thought transcends anthropologism” (1973). Indeed, it can be difficult to “get around” Feuerbach with an argument that, as some see it, is rooted in the claim that God transcends human experience and understanding. As such, even if one asserts that “God transcends human experience, on their own grounds, does it not follow that even the concept of God and his transcendence must be construed as an expression of human experience?” (Ellingsen, p. 294). Ultimately, Schleiermacher is firmly anchored in faith, despite his adherence to a Kantian empiricism. He speaks of “feeling” as the basis of religious experience, in which religious doctrines are relegated to the status of formal descriptions of subjective states of faith (Ellingsen, p. 292). In fact, Schleiermacher criticized the church’s dependence on the atoning power of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross as essentially doctrinal, positing instead that Christ’s work and teachings inspired believers to “acquire the power of his God-consciousness,” the strength of which makes him the central figure in the Christian faith (p. 292). Schleiermacher was as rationally oriented as it is possible for a confirmed churchman to be, yet he never wavered from his grounding in correlation-based faith. As a product of Moravian piety, his personal, Christ-centered foundational beliefs colored his outlook…and gave his critics ammunition for calling into question his philosophical affirmation of God’s existence. As such, Schleiermacher remained a product of his environment and experience, helping to prove at least one aspect of Feuerbach’s ethos. ‘The Best Christian’ Feuerbach, who had been a theology student of Schleiermacher’s at Berlin, accorded with Hegel’s rejection of Schleiermacher on the basis of “feelings of dependency.” Hegel summed up his objection to this contention by explaining that, under such circumstances, “a dog would be the best Christian because it has this feeling (of dependence) most intensely” (Olson and Olson, p. 151). It is interesting to note that such criticism and the growing disillusionment with traditional Christianity among the rising German “intellectual elite” of the early 19th century was spurred on by such pithy criticisms. This became part of their foundational environment, their rational grounding. David Strauss, a member of the Young Hegelians, found himself profoundly influenced by Feuerbach’s substitution of anthropologism for theology. Strauss turned to science and history as a means for rejecting the literal teachings and strictures of evangelical Christianity (Olson and Olson, p. 155). He insisted that “though Jesus of Nazareth was probably a historical figure, few if any of the stories attached to his life in the Bible were likely to be factually true, and none of the miracle stories were credible, taken literally” (p. 155). Strauss, however, found common ground with Schleiermacher in that although he disputed the mystical in the absence of scientific evidence, he did not conclude that the stories which “proved” Jesus’s godhead, for instance, walking on water or turning water to wine, explained the existence of a bridge between the human and the divine (p. 155). Strauss was the first to research the traditional precepts of religion from the standpoint of geology and biology, scientific disciplines that could be used to discredit the literal interpretations of Scripture. Like Schleiermacher, Strauss offers an example of an accommodation between the religious and the rational based on his personal and educational environment. Conclusion The great intellectual awakening which inspired a conjunction of science and theology produced a furious debate over the most elemental question of existence. In the case of Feuerbach and his fellow Young Hegelians, the influence of the Enlightenment found form and expression during the revolutionary tumult that seized Europe in the mid-1800s. Influences, both rational and spiritual, provided the foundation for, and determined the course of, this debate. Feuerbach’s argument that man is a product of his environment can be said to span all sides of the issue. Those who have interpreted Feuerbach’s meaning strictly in materialistic terms, as Marx did, misinterpret the larger implications of Feuerbach’s contention. Man’s intellectual and spiritual natures are in part shaped by his environment. This creates the prism through which the likes of Feuerbach, Schleiermacher, Hegel and others perceived their world and which provided the basis for their philosophical approaches. Perception is one way in which environment may be said to create commonality between contending philosophies. Feuerbach’s understanding of the world around him, of the oppressiveness and arbitrary governance of church and state, led him to perceive that governments and the God they claim is on their side are simply man’s attempt to understand his own nature. Faith and piety animated and guided Schleiermacher’s accommodation of science/philosophy and theology. Their debate has left us a legacy of what may be called liberal theology, an interrogative faith system in which none need take anything on face value adhere to either side of the argument over God’s existence. Works Cited “Alienation in Capitalist Society.” The Socialist Standard, No. 2. 1979. Web. http://www.worldsocialism.org. Caldwell, P. Love, Death and Revolution in Central Europe: Ludwig Feuerbach, Moses Hess, Louise Dittmar, Richard Wagner. New York: MacMillan, 2009. Ellingsen, Mark. Reclaiming our Roots: Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, Jr. Brookfield, CT: Continuum International Publishing Group, 1999. Feuerbach, Ludwig F. The Essence of Christianity. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1854. Fien, John, Maclean, Rupert, Park, Man-Gon. Working, Learning and Sustainable Development: Opportunities and Challenges. New York: Springer, 2008. Harvey, Van A. “Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2007. Web. http://plato.stanford.edu. Hegel, Georg H.W. Philosophy of Right. New York: Cosimo, 2008. Olson, Richard G., Olson, Richard. Science and Religion, 1450 – 1900: From Copernicus to Darwin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2006. “Schleiermacher, 1768-1834.” Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D. February 2002. Web. http://www.rsanders.org. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. The Christian Faith. Edited by H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1928. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. On Religion, Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. Introduction, translation and notes by Richard Crouter, New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988. Seligman, Edwin R.A. The Economic Interpretation of History. New York: Columbia Univ., Press, 1902. Spargo, John. Marxian Socialism and Religion: A Study of the Relation of the Marxian Theories to the Fundamental Principles of Religion. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1915. Williams, Robert. “Schleiermacher and Feuerbach on the Intentionality of Religious Consequences.” The Journal of Religions, 53(4), Oct. 1973, pp. 424-455. Read More