118118 said:
I really think that philosophy in the 1840's was a very different to philosophy now. When M&E were describing contemplative philosophy as masturbation, I think they were entirely justified.
Reading snippets of Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity its what I would call speculative, but that's being overly generous. There is no attempt to look at the history of Christianity. There is no attempt to look at what an ordinary Christian believes. There is virtually no empirical study at all, but even worse than that there is no hint of intention to undertake an empirical study.
A few random (literally) quotes:
"RELIGION is the disuniting of man from himself; he sets God before him as the antithesis of himself God is not what man is – man is not what God is. God is the infinite, man the finite being; God is perfect, man imperfect; God eternal, man temporal; God almighty, man weak; God holy, man sinful. God and man are extremes: God is the absolutely positive, the sum of all realities; man the absolutely negative, comprehending all negations."
"The standpoint of theory is the standpoint of harmony with the world. The subjective activity, that in which man contents himself, allows himself free play, is here the sensuous imagination alone. Satisfied with this, he lets Nature subsist in peace, and constructs his castles in the air, his poetical cosmogonies, only out of natural materials."
"Virginity in itself is to him the highest moral idea, the cornu copiae of his supra-naturalistic feelings and ideas, his personified sense of honour and of shame before common nature."
Its more of a puzzle to me why M&E were bothering with this nonsense. I think they were trying to rescue Hegelian insight by showing that Feuerbach was not even being true to the contemplative tradition of German idealism. Hegel's strength is that his idealism is open and consistent. Feuerbach is idealistically materialist, which is just plain weird.
