The Essence of Christianity. Feuerbach Ludwig

is a man without will. He who has no understanding allows himself to be deceived, imposed upon, used as an instrument by others. How shall he whose understanding is the tool of another have an independent will? Only he who thinks is free and independent. It is only by the understanding that man reduces the things around and beneath him to mere means of his own existence. In general, that only is self-subsistent and independent which is an end to itself, an object to itself. That which is an end and object to itself is for that very reason – in so far as it is an object to itself – no longer a means and object for another being. To be without understanding is, in one word, to exist for another, – to be an object: to have understanding is to exist for oneself, – to be a subject. But that which no longer exists for another, but for itself, rejects all dependence on another being. It is true we, as physical beings, depend on the beings external to us, even as to the modifications of thought; but in so far as we think, in the activity of the understanding as such, we are dependent on no other being. Activity of thought is spontaneous activity. “When I think, I am conscious that my ego in me thinks, and not some other thing. I conclude, therefore, that this thinking in me does not inhere in another thing outside of me, but in myself, consequently that I am a substance, i. e., that I exist by myself, without being a predicate of another being.”22 Although we always need the air, yet as natural philosophers we convert the air from an object of our physical need into an object of the self-sufficing activity of thought, i. e., into a mere thing for us. In breathing I am the object of the air, the air the subject; but when I make the air an object of thought, of investigation, when I analyse it, I reverse this relation, – I make myself the subject, the air an object. But that which is the object of another being is dependent. Thus the plant is dependent on air and light, that is, it is an object for air, and light, not for itself. It is true that air and light are reciprocally an object for the plant. Physical life in general is nothing else than this perpetual interchange of the objective and subjective relation. We consume the air and are consumed by it; we enjoy and are enjoyed. The understanding alone enjoys all things without being itself enjoyed; it is the self-enjoying, self-sufficing existence – the absolute subject – the subject which cannot be reduced to the object of another being, because it makes all things objects, predicates of itself, – which comprehends all things in itself, because it is itself not a thing, because it is free from all things.

      That is dependent the possibility of whose existence lies out of itself; that is independent which has the possibility of its existence in itself. Life therefore involves the contradiction of an existence at once dependent and independent, – the contradiction that its possibility lies both in itself and out of itself. The understanding alone is free from this and other contradictions of life; it is the essence perfectly self-subsistent, perfectly at one with itself, perfectly self-existent.23 Thinking is existence in self; life, as differenced from thought, existence out of self: life is to give from oneself; thought is to take into oneself. Existence out of self is the world; existence in self is God. To think is to be God. The act of thought, as such, is the freedom of the immortal gods from all external limitations and necessities of life.

      The unity of the understanding is the unity of God. To the understanding the consciousness of its unity and universality is essential; the understanding is itself nothing else than the consciousness of itself as absolute identity, i. e., that which is accordant with the understanding is to it an absolute, universally valid, law; it is impossible to the understanding to think that what is self-contradictory, false, irrational, can anywhere be true, and, conversely, that what is true, rational, can anywhere be false and irrational. “There may be intelligent beings who are not like me, and yet I am certain that there are no intelligent beings who know laws and truths different from those which I recognise; for every mind necessarily sees that two and two make four, and that one must prefer one’s friend to one’s dog.”24 Of an essentially different understanding from that which affirms itself in man, I have not the remotest conception, the faintest adumbration. On the contrary, every understanding which I posit as different from my own, is only a position of my own understanding, i. e., an idea of my own, a conception which falls within my power of thought, and thus expresses my understanding. What I think, that I myself do, of course only in purely intellectual matters; what I think of as united, I unite; what I think of as distinct, I distinguish; what I think of as abolished, as negatived, that I myself abolish and negative. For example, if I conceive an understanding in which the intuition or reality of the object is immediately united with the thought of it, I actually unite it; my understanding or my imagination is itself the power of uniting these distinct or opposite ideas. How would it be possible for me to conceive them united – whether this conception be clear or confused – if I did not unite them in myself? But whatever may be the conditions of the understanding which a given human individual may suppose as distinguished from his own, this other understanding is only the understanding which exists in man in general – the understanding conceived apart from the limits of this particular individual. Unity is involved in the idea of the understanding. The impossibility for the understanding to think two supreme beings, two infinite substances, two Gods, is the impossibility for the understanding to contradict itself, to deny its own nature, to think of itself as divided.

      The understanding is the infinite being. Infinitude is immediately involved in unity, and finiteness in plurality. Finiteness – in the metaphysical sense – rests on the distinction of the existence from the essence, of the individual from the species; infinitude, on the unity of existence and essence. Hence, that is finite which can be compared with other beings of the same species; that is infinite which has nothing like itself, which consequently does not stand as an individual under a species, but is species and individual in one, essence and existence in one. But such is the understanding; it has its essence in itself, consequently it has nothing, together with or external to itself, which can be ranged beside it; it is incapable of being compared, because it is itself the source of all combinations and comparisons; immeasurable, because it is the measure of all measures, – we measure all things by the understanding alone; it can be circumscribed by no higher generalisation, it can be ranged under no species, because it is itself the principle of all generalising, of all classification, because it circumscribes all things and beings. The definitions which the speculative philosophers and theologians give of God, as the being in whom existence and essence are not separable, who himself is all the attributes which he has, so that predicate and subject are with him identical, – all these definitions are thus ideas drawn solely from the nature of the understanding.

      Lastly, the understanding or the reason is the necessary being. Reason exists because only the existence of the reason is reason; because, if there were no reason, no consciousness, all would be nothing; existence would be equivalent to non-existence. Consciousness first founds the distinction between existence and non-existence. In consciousness is first revealed the value of existence, the value of nature. Why, in general, does something exist? why does the world exist? on the simple ground that if something did not exist, nothing would exist; if reason did not exist, there would be only unreason; thus the world exists because it is an absurdity that the world should not exist. In the absurdity of its non-existence is found the true reason of its existence, in the groundlessness of the supposition that it were not the reason that it is. Nothing, non-existence, is aimless, nonsensical, irrational. Existence alone has an aim, a foundation, rationality; existence is, because only existence is reason and truth; existence is the absolute necessity. What is the cause of conscious existence, of life? The need of life. But to whom is it a need? To that which does not live. It is not a being who saw that made the eye: to one who saw already, to what purpose would be the eye? No! only the being who saw not needed the eye. We are all come into the world without the operation of knowledge and will; but we are come that knowledge and will may exist. Whence, then, came the world? Out of necessity; not out of a necessity which lies in another being distinct from itself – that is a pure contradiction, – but out of its own inherent necessity; out of the necessity of necessity; because without the world there would be no necessity; without necessity, no reason, no understanding. The nothing, out of which the world came, is nothing without the world. It is true that thus, negativity, as the speculative philosophers express themselves —nothing is the cause of the world; – but

22

Kant, l. c., p. 80.

23

To guard against mistake, I observe that I do not apply to the understanding the expression self-subsistent essence, and other terms of a like character, in my own sense, but that I am here placing myself on the standpoint of onto-theology, of metaphysical theology in general, in order to show that metaphysics is resolvable into psychology, that the onto-theological predicates are merely predicates of the understanding.

24

Malebranche. (See the author’s Geschichte der Philos., 1 Bd. p. 322.) “Exstaretne alibi diversa ab hac ratio? censereturque injustum aut scelestum in Jove aut Marte, quod apud nos justum ac præclarum habetur? Certe nec verisimile nec omnino possibile.” – Chr. Hugenii (Cosmotheoros, lib. i.).