Ludwig Feuerbach

Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804 to 1872) was a German philosopher and anthropologist and a leading figure among the Young Hegelians. He is best known for The Essence of Christianity (1841), which argued that God is a projection of the essential attributes of humanity; his critique of religion formed the basis of his advocacy of atheism, materialism and sensualism. The son of a jurist, he studied theology at Heidelberg and then studied under Hegel in Berlin. His academic career was cut short in 1830 when his anonymously published Thoughts on Death and Immortality was condemned for its attack on personal immortality, and he lived much of his life in rural isolation. He viewed Hegel's idealism as the last, most abstract form of theology and held that philosophy's proper subject is the concrete, sensuous human being. He argued that religion is a form of self-alienation in which humanity projects its own species-essence onto a divine being. His thought was a critical bridge between Hegel and Marx and a major influence on Marx and Friedrich Engels, although Marx later criticized him in the Theses on Feuerbach for a materialism that was too contemplative.