Feuerbach

This 1977 text establishes Feuerbach as much more than a transitional figure between Hegel and Marx or an influence on important later developments.

Marx W. Wartofsky (Author)

9780521289290, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 31 August 1982

482 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.7 kg

Feuerbach is now recognized as a central figure in the history of nineteenth-century thought. He was one of Hegel's most influential pupils: he dominated German radical philosophy in the 1840s and was the leader of the Young Hegelians; his 'anthropological' critique of Hegel's idealism decisively influences the materialism and humanism of Marx and Engels; his critique of religion pointed the way for the philosophers of religion; and his psychological analyses found a place in Freudian thought and the existential and phenomenological traditions. In this 1977 text, Professor Wartofsky wishes to go beyond this conventional view to establish Feuerbach as much more than a transitional figure between Hegel and Marx or an influence on important later developments. He seriously considers Feuerbach's philosophy on its own terms and seeks to demonstrate its continuing importance. He therefore traces Feuerbach's development in detail, emphasizing its dialectical character, and finds fundamental originality in his epistemology.

Preface
Author's note
Feuerbach's life: a brief sketch
1. Prefaratory reflections by way of an introduction
2. Early Hegelian epistemology: the dissertation
3. History of philosophy: genetic analysis as the critique of concepts
4. Leibniz: the history of philosophy as immanent critique
5. Critique of belief: Leibniz and Bayle
6. The critique of Hegelian philosophy: part I
7. The critique of Hegelian philosophy
part II
8. The philosophical context of Feuerbach's critique of religion
9. Religion as self-alienation of human consciousness: the phenomenology of religious and theological concept formation
10. Reason, existence, and creation: God as an ontological principle
11. The critique of philosophy and the development of a materialist humanism - part I: empiricism, sensationalism, and realism in Feuerbach's later works
12. The critique of philosophy and the development of a materialist humanism - part II: anthropologism and materialism: nature and human nature in Feuerbach's later works
Notes
Selected bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & political philosophy [HPS]