Ludwig Feuerbach
1804-1872 · German Idealism · Known
Feuerbach was a Young Hegelian who read God as humanity looking into a mirror and failing to recognise itself. Love, wisdom and power are the best of what people are. He held that we strip them off the species that owns them and hang them on a being in the sky, who is then worshipped for holding them. Theology read right is anthropology. What looks like the study of God turns out to be the study of us.
Signature
The position Feuerbach is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Immanence
- Theology
- Atheism
Positions on the 9 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Mechanistic (25 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- mildly leans Collectivism (35 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Mind
- leans Brain Only (20 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Meaning
- leans Constructed (15 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Multiplicity (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Immanence (6 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Nature
- mildly between Mastery and Harmony (55 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage (12 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Allegiance
- leans Global (75 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
11 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Feuerbach refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Love
What is the highest good? - Perception
- Direct Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Relational
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Beginning of Things
- Eternal Cosmos
What is the origin of reality? - Death
- Annihilation / Living Memory
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Cognitive Theory of Emotion
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Evolved Animal
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?