ABSTRACT
The nineteenth century is a watershed period in the history of ideas of good and evil. Naturalistic humanisms begin to stand alongside other narratives of good and evil, offering their own radical ideas about the human good. Although Ludwig Feuerbach is less recognized than the brighter lights of the nineteenth century, he nonetheless should be counted among one of the most influential thinkers of the German intellectual scene. This chapter describes a rational reconstruction of the naturalistic humanism in the writings of Feuerbach. The spirit of Feuerbach's critiques of Christian theology can be captured in the following quotation from his anonymous pamphlet titled Thoughts on Death and Immortality. Feuerbach sought an older naturalistic interpretation of moral consciousness, where good and evil are rooted in the empirical and material realities of ordinary human experience. Feuerbach's "state of nature" story about the origin of religion starts with an anthropological observation.
