ABSTRACT
Ludwig Feuerbach generally appears in intellectual history as a footnote to Karl Marx. Feuerbach’s most important idea, as simple as it is ingenuous, is that “the true sense of Theology is Anthropology”. This chapter focuses on The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach’s central work, and the place where his interaction with biblical ideas is most systematically carried out. Feuerbach’s subtle relation to the related disciplines of philosophical anthropology, theology and philosophy lead him to be an incredibly important, if not the most important, thinker of “anthropotheism,” as Speshnev described it in a letter to Chojecki. In some ways, the ground had been laid out for Feuerbach’s systematic critique of Christianity, 1841’s The Essence of Christianity. David Strauss’ The Life of Jesus had scandalously argued that Christian miracles operated as myths rather than as truths. Following the failure of the 1848 revolutions, and despite his previous popularity, Feuerbach’s fame came quite quickly to an end.
