ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on 19th-century philosopher – Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach. The revolutions of 1848 changed Feuerbach's fortunes. Radical students at Heidelberg demanded he be given a chair of philosophy. Religion, then, is a kind of fantasy—a fantasy that expresses our dependent situation as humans, yet also includes the means for overcoming our limitations. So religion has the practical purpose of allowing us to overcome ourselves—though it does so through story and through wish-projection. In our selection from The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach begins by arguing that religion is identical with the self-consciousness of our own nature. Religion being identical with the distinctive characteristic of man, is then identical with self-consciousness–with the consciousness which man has of his nature.
