Conspectus of Feuerbach’s Book Lectures on the Essence of Religion

Conspectus of Feuerbach’s book “Vorlesungen über das Wesen der Religion” (Lectures on the Essence of Religion) is contained in a separate notebook whose cover was not preserved. On the first page in abbreviated form is written L. Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, Band 8, 1851; also indicated is the press-mark—8°. R. 807. There is no indication exactly when the Conspectus was worked out by Lenin. V. Adoratsky has suggested that it was written in 1909 (Lenin Miscellany XII). The following arguments speak in favour of this hypothesis. It has been established that the press-mark on the first page of the Conspectus is that of the French National Library (Paris) in which Lenin worked from January 13 to June 30, 1909. The contents of Lectures on the Essence of Religion borders upon those works of Feuerbach that were used by Lenin in 1908 in writing his book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and some of Lenin’s remarks in the Conspectus are related to propositions formulated in his book. In the Conspectus, for example, Lenin notes: [[Feuerbach and natural science!! NB. Cf. Mach and Co. today]], and in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism he writes: “The philosophy of the scientist Mach is to science what the kiss of the Christian Judas was to Christ. Mach likewise betrays science into the hands of fideism by virtually deserting to the camp of philosophical idealism.” (V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism) Certain remarks in Lenin’s Conspectus are also related to theses in his article “On the Attitude of a Working-Class Party to Religion,” written in May 1909. Note that this document has undergone special formating to ensure that Lenin’s sidenotes fit on the page, marking as best as possible where they were located in the original manuscript.

The preface is dated 1. I. 1851.—Feu- erbach speaks here of the reasons why he did not take part in the 1848 revolu- tion, which had “such a shameful, such a barren end” (VII). The revolution of 1848 had no Orts- und Zeitsinn, the constitutionalists expected freedom from the word des Herrn, the republicans

(VII-VIII) from their desire (“it was only necessary to desire a republic for it to come into being”).... (VIII)

“If a revolution breaks out again and I take an active part in it, then you can ... be sure that this revolution will be vic- torious, that Judgment Day for the mon- archy and hierarchy has arrived.” (VII)

Sic!!

Second Lecture (12-20).

Third Lecture (21-30).

The objection was raised to my Essence of Christianity that for me man does not depend on anything, “there was opposition to this alleged deification of man by me.” (24) “The being, whom man presupposes ... is nothing other than nature, not your God.” (25)

“The unconscious being of nature is for me the eternal being, without origin, the first being, but first in point of time, and not in point of rank, the physically but not morally first being....” (27)

My denial includes also affirmation.... “It is, of course, a consequence of my doc- trine that there is no God” (29), but this follows from the conception of the essence of God (=an expression of the essence of nature, of the essence of man).

Fourth Lecture.

“The feeling of dependence is the basis of religion.” (31) (“Furcht” 33-4-5-6)

“The so-called speculative philosophers are ... those philosophers who do not con- struct their notions in accordance with things, but rather construct things accord- ing to their notions.” (31)

(Fifth Lecture).

— it is especially death that arouses fear, belief in God. (41)

“I hate the idealism that divorces man from nature; I am not ashamed of my de- pendence on nature.” (44)

“As little as I have deified man in Wesen des Christenthums, a deification with which I have been stupidly reproached ... so little do I want to deify nature in the sense of theology....” (46-47)

Sixth Lecture — The cult of animals (50 u. ff.).

“What man is dependent on is ... nature, an object of the senses ... all the impressions which nature makes on man through the senses ... can become motives of religious veneration.” (55)

(Seventh Lecture.)

By egoism I understand, not the egoism of the “philistine and bourgeois” (63), but the philosophical principle of conformity with nature, with human reason, against “theological hypocrisy, religious and spec- ulative fantasy, political despotism.” (63 i. f.) Cf. 64 very important.

Idem 68 i. f. and 69 i. f. — Egoism (in the philosophical sense) is the root of religion.

See p. 112 on the veracity (Urkunden) of the senses.

“Thus, Die Grundsätze der Philosophie is interconnected with the Wesen der Re- ligion.” (113)

“I deify nothing, consequently not even nature.” (115)

“I understand by nature the total- ity of all sensuous forces, things and beings which man distinguishes from

himself as not human.... Or, if the word is taken in practice: nature is everything that for man—indepen- dent of the supernatural whisperings

of theistic faith—proves to be imme- diate and sensuous, the basis and object of his life. Nature is light, electricity, magnetism, air, water, fire, earth, animal, plant, man, in-

sofar as he is a being acting involun- tarily and unconsciously—by the word ‘nature’ I understand nothing more than this, nothing mystical, nothing nebulous, nothing theological” (above: in contrast to Spinoza).

...“Nature is ... everything that you see and that is not derived from human hands and thoughts. Or if we penetrate into the anatomy of nature, nature is the being, or totality of beings and things, whose appearances, expressions or effects, in which precisely in their existence and essence are manifested and consist, have their basis not in thoughts or intentions and decisions of the will, but in astronomical, or cosmic, mechanical, chemical, physical, physiolo- gical or organic forces or causes.” (116-117)

[Here too it amounts to opposing matter to mind, the physical to the psychical.] 121 — against the argument that there must be a prime cause (= God).

“It is only man’s narrowness and love of convenience that cause him to put eternity in place of time, infinity in place of the endless progress from cause to cause, a stat- ic divinity in place of restless nature, eternal rest instead of eternal movement.” (121 i. f.)

Yet, “no objective validity and exist- ence, no existence outside ourselves” must be ascribed to these abstractions. (125)

...“Nature has no beginning and no end. Everything in it is in mutual interaction, everything is relative, everything at once effect and cause, everything in it is all- sided and reciprocal....” (129)

there is no place there for God (129-130; simple arguments against God).

...“The cause of the first and general cause of things in the sense of the theists, theologians and so-called spec- ulative philosophers is man’s under- standing....” (130) “God is ... cause in general, the concept of cause as essence personified and become independent....” (131)

“God is abstract nature, i.e., nature re- moved from sensuous perception, mentally conceived, made into an object or being

of the understanding; nature in the proper sense is sensuous, real nature, as immedi- ately manifested and presented to us by the senses.” (133)

The theists see in God the cause of the movement in nature (which they make into a dead mass or matter). (134) The power of God, however, is in reality the power of nature (Naturmacht: 135).

...“Indeed it is only through their effects that we perceive the properties of things....” (136)

Atheism (136-137) abolishes neither das moralische Über (= das Ideal) nor das natürliche Über (= die Natur.)

...“Is not time merely a form of the world, the manner in which particular beings and effects follow one another? How then can I ascribe a temporal beginning to the world?” (145)

...“God is merely the world in thought.... The distinction between God and the world is merely the distinction between spirit and sense, thought and perception....” (146)

God is presented as a being existing out-

side ourselves. But is that not precisely an admission of the truth of sensuous being? Is it not (thereby) “recognised that there is no being outside sensuous being? For, apart from sensuousness, have we any other sign, any other criterion, of an exist- ence outside ourselves, of an existence in- dependent of thought?” (148)

...“Nature ... in isolation from its mate- riality and corporeality ... is God....” (149)

“To derive nature from God is equivalent

to wanting to derive the original from the image, from the copy, to derive a thing

from the thought of the thing.” (149)

Characteristic of man is Verkehrtheit (149 i. f.) verselbständigen abstractions— for example, time (150) and space:

“Although ... man has abstracted space and time from spatial and temporal things, nevertheless he presupposes those as the primary grounds and conditions of the latter’s existence. Hence he thinks of the world, i.e., the sum-total of real things, matter, the content of the world, as having its origin in space and time. Even Hegel makes matter arise not only in, but out of,

space and time....” (150) “Also, it is really incomprehensible why time, separated from temporal things, should not be identified with God.” (151)

...“In reality, exactly the opposite holds good, ...it is not things that presuppose space and time, but space and time that presuppose things, for space or extension

presupposes something that extends, and time, movement, for time is indeed only a concept derived from movement, presup- poses something that moves. Everything is spatial and temporal....” (151-152)

“The question whether a God has created the world ... is the question of the relation of mind to sensuousness” (152—the most important and difficult question of philos-

ophy, the whole history of philosophy turns on this question (153)—the conflict between the Stoics and the Epicureans, the Platonists and the Aristotelians, the Sceptics and the Dogmatists, in ancient philosophy; between the nominalists and

realists in the Middle Ages; between the idealists and the “realists or empiricists”

(sic! 153) in modern times.

It depends in part on the nature of people (academic versus practical types) whether they incline to one or another philosophy.

“I do not deny ... wisdom, goodness, beauty; I deny only that, as such generic notions, they are beings, whether in the shape of gods or properties of God, or as Platonic ideas, or as self-posited Hegelian concepts....” (158)—they exist only as prop- erties of men.

Another cause of belief in God: man transfers to nature the idea of his own purposive creation. Nature is purposive— ergo it was created by a rational being. (160)

“That which man calls the purposiveness of nature and conceives as such is in real- ity nothing but the unity of the world, the harmony of cause and effect, the in- terconnection in general in which every- thing in nature exists and acts.” (161)

...“Nor have we any grounds for imagin- ing that if man had more senses or organs he would also cognise more properties or things of nature. There is nothing more in the external world, in inorganic nature, than in organic nature. Man has just as many senses as are necessary for him to conceive the world in its totality, in its entirety.” (163)

Where does spirit (Geist) come from?— ask the theists of the atheist. (196) They have too disdainful (despektierliche: 196)

an idea of nature, too lofty an idea of spir- it (zu hohe, zu vornehme (!!) Vorstel- lung).

Even a Regierungsrath cannot be directly explained from nature. (197)

“The spirit develops together with the body, with the senses ... it is connected with the senses ... whence the skull, whence the brain, thence also the spirit; whence an organ, thence also its functioning” ((197): cf. above (197) “the spirit is in the head”).

“Mental activity is also a bodily activi- ty.” (197-198)

The origin of the corporeal world from the

spirit, from God, leads to the creation of the world from nothing—“for whence does the spirit get the matter, corporeal sub- stances, if not from nothing?” (199)

...“Nature is corporeal, material, sen- suous....” (201)

Jakob Boehme = a “materialistic theist” (202): he deifies not only the mind but also matter. For him God is ma- terial—therein lies his mysticism. (202)

...“Where the eyes and hands begin, there the gods end.” (203)

(The theists) have “blamed matter or the inevitable necessity of na- ture ... for the evil in nature” (212)

I abolish (aufhebe) religion “only in- sofar” (Feuerbach’s italics) “as it is not poetry, but ordinary prose.” (233)

Art does not require the recognition of its works as reality. (233)

Besides fantasy, of great importance in religion are das Gemüth (261), the prac- tical aspect (258), the search for the better, for protection, help, etc.

(263)—In religion one seeks consolation (atheism is alleged to be trostlos).— — —

“A concept, however, congenial to man’s self-love, is that nature does not act with immutable necessity, but that above the necessity of nature is ... a being that loves mankind.” (264) And in the next sentence “Naturnotwendigkeit” of the falling of a stone. (264)

Religion = childishness, the childhood of mankind (269), Christianity has made a god of morality, it has created a moral God. (274)

Religion is rudimentary education—one

can say: “education is true religion....” (275) “However, this is ... a misuse of words, for superstitious and inhuman ideas are always linked with the word religion.” (275)

Eulogy of education—(277).

“Superficial view and assertion ... that religion is absolutely of no concern to life, namely to public, political life.” (281)

I would not give a farthing for a political freedom that allows man to be a slave of religion. (281)

Religion is innate in man (“this state- ment ... simply means”) = superstition is innate in man. (283)

“The Christian has a free cause of nature, a lord of nature, whose will, whose word, nature obeys, a God who is not bound by the so-called causal nexus, by necessity, by the chain which links effect to cause and cause

to cause, whereas the heathen god is bound by the necessity of nature and cannot save even his favourites from the fatal necessity of dying.” (301) (Thus Feuerbach says sys-

tematically: Notwendigkeit der Natur.)

“The Christian, however, has a free cause because in his wishes he is not bound by the interconnection of nature, nor by the necessity of nature.” (301) ((And three times more on this page. Notwendig-

keit der Natur.))

And p. 302: “...all the laws or natural necessities to which human existence is subjected....” (302)

“To make nature dependent on God, means to make the world order, the necessity of nature, dependent on the will.” (312) And

p. 313 (above)—“Naturnotwendigkeit”!!

In religious ideas “we have ... examples- how in general man converts the subject- ive into the objective, that is to say, he makes that which exists only in his thought only in his thought, conception, imagination into something existing outside thought,

conception, imagination....” (328)

“So Christians tear the spirit, the soul, of man out of his body and make this torn-out, disembodied spirit into their God.” (332)

Religion gives (332) man an ideal. Man needs an ideal, but a human ideal corres- ponding to nature and not a supernatural ideal:

“Let our ideal be no castrated, disem- bodied, abstract being, let our ideal be the whole, real, all-sided, perfect, developed man.” (334)

“Man has no idea, no conception, of any other reality, of any other existence, than sensuous, physical existence....” (334)

“If one is not ashamed to allow the sen- suous, corporeal world to arise from the thought and will of a spirit, if one is not

ashamed to assert that things are not thought of because they exist, but that they exist because they are thought of;

then let one also not be ashamed to allow things to arise from the word; then let one also not be ashamed to assert that words exist not because things exist, but that things exist only because words exist.” (341-342)

A God without the immortality of the soul of man is only a God in name:

...“Such a God is ... the God of some rationalist natural scientists, who is noth- ing but personified nature or natural necessity, the universe, with which of course the idea of immortality is incompatible.”

The last (30th) lecture, pp. (358-370), could be put forward almost in its entirety as a typical example of an enlightening atheism with a socialist tint (concerning the mass that suffers want, etc., p. 365 middle), etc. Final words: it was my task to make you, my hearers,

“from friends of God into friends of man, from men of faith into thinkers, from men of prayer into workers, from candidates for the beyond into students of this world,

from Christians, who, as they themselves acknowledge and confess, are ‘half- beast, half-angel,’ into men, whole men” (370 end).

Here there are many details, quotations, which contain repetitions. I pass over all that. I note only the most important of that which affords some interest: the basis of morality is egoism (392). (“Love of life, interest, egoism”)... “there is

not only a singular or personal, but also a social egoism, a family egoism, a corporation egoism, a community egoism, a patriotic egoism.” (393)

...“The good is nothing but that which corresponds to the egoism of all men....” (397)

“One has only to cast a glance at history!

Where does a new epoch in history begin? Only wherever an oppressed mass or major- ity makes its well-justified egoism effec- tive against the exclusive egoism of a na- tion or caste, wherever classes of men (sic!) or whole nations, by gaining victory over

the arrogant self-conceit of a patrician mi- nority, emerge into the light of historical glory out of the miserable obscurity of

the proletariat. So, too, the egoism of the now oppressed majority of mankind must and will obtain its rights and found a new epoch in history. It is not that the aristoc-

racy of culture, of the spirit, must be abol- ished; no indeed! it is merely that not just a handful should be aristocrats and all others plebeians, but that all should— at least should—be cultured; it is not that property in general should be abolished; no indeed! it is merely that not just a hand- ful should have property, and all others nothing; all should have property.” (398)

Examples from the classics of the use of the words God and nature without dis- tinction. (398-399)

Pp. 402-411—an excellent, phi- losophical (and at the same time simple and clear) explanation of the essence of religion.

“In the final analysis, the secret of reli- gion is only the secret of the combination in one and the same being of consciousness with the unconscious, of the will with the involuntary.” (402). The Ego and the non-

Ego are inseparably connected in man. “Man does not grasp or endure the depths of his own being and therefore splits it into an 'Ego’ without a ‘non-Ego,’ which he

calls God, and a ‘non-Ego’ without an ‘Ego,’ which he calls nature.” (406)

P. 408—an excellent quotation from Sen- eca (against the atheists) that they make nature into a god. Pray!—Work! (p. 411)

Nature is God in religion, but nature

as Gedankenwesen. “The secret of re- ligion is ‘the identity of the subjective and objective,’ i. e., the unity of the being

of man and nature, but as distinct from the real being of nature and mankind.” (411)

“Human ignorance is bottomless and the human force of imagination is boundless; the power of nature deprived of its foun- dation by ignorance, and of its bounds by fantasy, is divine omnipotence.” (414)

...“Objective essence as subjective, the essence of nature as different from nature, as human essence, the essence of man as

different from man, as non-human essence—

that is the divine being, that is the essence of religion, that is the secret of mysticism and speculation....” (415)

“Man separates in thought the adjective

from the substantive, the property from the essence.... And the metaphysical God is nothing but the compendium, the total- ity of the most general properties extracted from nature, which, however, man by means of the force of imagination—and indeed in just this separation from sen- suous being, matter, nature—reconverts into an independent subject or being.”

The same role is played by Logic ((418)— obviously Hegel is meant)—which converts das Sein, das Wesen into a special real- ity—“how stupid it is to want to make

metaphysical existence into a physical one, subjective existence into an objective one, and again logical or abstract existence into an illogical real existence!” (418)

...“‘Is there, therefore, an eternal gulf and contradiction between being and think- ing?’ Yes, but only in the mind; however in reality the contradiction has long been resolved, to be sure only in a way corres- ponding to reality and not to your school notions, and, indeed, resolved by not fewer than five senses.” (418)

“The head is the house of representa-

tives of the universe”—and if our

heads are stuffed with abstractions, Gattungsbegriffen, then of course we derive (ableiten) “the individual from the universal, i.e., ... nature from God.”

Interesting is the answer to (Feuerbach’s) critic Professor von Schaden (448- 449) and to Schaller. (449-450-463)

...“I do indeed expressly put nature in place of being, and man in place of think- ing,” i.e., not an abstraction, but something concrete— — —die dramatische Psycholo- gie. (449)

“Jesuitism, the unconscious original and ideal of our speculative philosophers.” (455)

“Thinking posits the discreteness of real- ity as a continuum, the infinite multiplic- ity of life as an identical singularity. Knowledge of the essential, inextinguishable difference between thought and life (or reality) is the beginning of all wisdom in thinking and living. Only the distinc- tion is here the true connection.” (458)

End of Volume 8