This paper will show that Feuerbach misinterprets Augustine, ignoring the literary and philosophical context from which he pulls the passages and foists his own presuppositions about the nature of humanity and existence onto the Augustinian text. This will be accomplished by providing an understanding of the nature of Feuerbach’s arguments and subsequently, critically examining Feuerbach’s use of the Augustinian texts in light of their original context.
Mans knowledge of and relation to the Divine
Feuerbach embarks on an attempt to show that the relationship between subject and object or between the individual and that which the individual senses or perceives is really nothing more than the subject’s objectification of himself. Feuerbach says, “…the object of any subject is nothing else than the subject’s own nature taken objectively.”[1]
He begins this argument by drawing a contrast between the consciousness of object and self in terms of the senses and this same consciousness in terms of religion. He says that when dealing with consciousness in and the senses one is easily able to distinguish between the consciousness of the self and that of the object. But when speaking in terms of religion “…consciousness of the object and self-consciousness coincide.”[2] This is so because Feuerbach says that while the object of the senses is outside of the man, the religious object is within the man himself.
It is here that Feuerbach inserts Augustine to assist in making his point. He makes the claim that being within us and a part of us, our own self-consciousness is easier to know even than those things which can be observed even by sensory perception. He quotes Augustine saying, “God… is nearer, more related to us, and therefore more easily known by us than sensible, corporeal things.”[3] Then, having previously established the difference between the object of the senses and the object of religion and having marked the relation of the self to the object of religion as dually more significant and easier to cognize, Feuerbach is able to arrive at a basis for his conclusion that there is “…a discrimination between the divine and the non-divine, between that which is worthy of adoration and that which is not worthy.”[4]
Once this presupposition has been established then religion, or the consciousness of God becomes the self-consciousness of man. What we take away from this twofold. First, the groundwork is laid upon the subject/object relationship for understanding self existence in terms of the subjects predicate, that those qualities or the essence of the subject (the predicate) is the foundation for the existence of the subject. The reality of the predicate becomes the sole guarantee of existence, and it is founded upon the subject’s ability to sense and perceive. Second, the nature of the divine, being seen as the projection of mans own notions of himself is also recognized to be known strictly in terms of anthropomorphic language, a fact which Feuerbach uses to further his case that God exists in man, as man, based upon the idea that man can only conceive of a “greater being” in terms of himself.
Having grasped the anthropological thrust of Feuerbach’s argument, it can now be examined in light of the very passage that Feuerbach used to buttress his line of reasoning. The passage that Feuerbach quoted from is a passage from Augustine’s commentary On Genesis. It is a section that is only three paragraphs long, but it provides enough material to seriously inquire into Feuerbach’s treatment of it.
Feuerbach quotes Augustine as saying, “God… is nearer, more related to us, and therefore more easily known by us than sensible, corporeal things.”[5] According to Feuerbach, Augustine is saying that God is more easily understood by the human self than are sensual and corporeal things because his nature is such that it is closer to our nature than anything that can be perceived through the senses.[6] For Feuerbach this is achieved as the subject self objectifies certain desirable “attributes” such as absolute love, justice, or mercy and projects them as the essence of the conceptual religious object, thus making these qualities the religious object. Then, the religious object, the essence of which is attributed to one’s own sense of behavioral idealism becomes an extension or a projection of the self, the subject.
This seems to be a mistranslation at the very least, but it is more likely that Feuerbach was casting his new and radical ideas in language that was traditional, orthodox, and therefore acceptable. He was kicked out of his teaching post at
According to the translation put out by New City Press this same passage is translated, “God is nearer to us than are many of the things he made. For in him we live and move and are (Acts 17:28), while most of these things are remote from the human mind on account of their dissimilarity in kind, being corporeal.”[8] This passage is a part of a discussion focused upon our relationship to God as humans as compared with the rest of creation and its relationship to God; not, as Feuerbach uses it, to prove that the sensing of the “religious object” by the self, while remaining a “sensed” phenomenon does not behave as a “religious object” but instead as a “religious predicate” which is ultimately understood as the projection of the ideal self.
In fact, the context of the passage seems to imply that some of those “substances” Augustine mentions, while being “sensible or corporeal things” in that they are physical and able to be sensed seem to also include the things in the far reaches of the universe – things which are “corporeal” but not necessarily able to be sensed. Towards the end of the passage Augustine says, “…it is incomparably more satisfying and worthwhile for the devout mind to come into the slightest contact with him, then for it to comprehend the whole universe.”[9] This understanding is furthered as he makes specific reference to these “substances” as being “remote from our bodily senses… cut off from observation” and the fact that “we do not see them with the senses of the body.”[10]
Feuerbach’s use of this passage ignores the primary message Augustine is communicating. God is relationally closer to us than the rest of his creation because our existence is realized in him, as opposed to the rest of creation, which though we may be situated in close proximity to it we do not find that our existence is at all tied to it. In this way we have a special bond with God that we do not experience with the rest of his created work. This is on account, Augustine says, “of their dissimilarity in kind [to us as human beings], being corporeal;” but not only being “corporeal”, because as the human being was created in the image of God so we share in some way a nature similar to God, albeit one that has been corrupted and can only represent at best a fragmented mosaic of that divine image and nature.
As if to compound his transgression Feuerbach edited out what is the central phrase in Augustine’s statement “For in him we live and move and are”. This phrase is the crux of Augustine’s concept of existence – that we not only exist in God, but that we also subsist in him.[11] But to make the passage fit his own ontology, Feuerbach casts aside this notion of an existence dependant upon an outside entity. In its place he constructs the sentence so as to assume his own subject/predicate interplay, as he finds the individuals existence validated by his senses.
Where Feuerbach sees mans existence validated by the conscious interaction that is produced when a man (subject) perceives something as an object, Augustine looks to establish existence in God as the greatest good.[12] In doing so he does, as Feuerbach would accuse him, discriminate between the divine and the non-divine. But this distinctness between the Creator God and his created creature is for Augustine the place where the human finds existence, identity, and knowledge. In fact, according to Augustine, apart from God the human would be nothing, a non-existence. In this way God is scene as the defining factor of existence, and because of God’s status as the greatest good, the idea of existence becomes an inherently good thing.[13]
[1] Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity, Translated by George Eliot (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1989), 12.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., 12.
[6] Where God is perhaps better understood as religious object.
[7]
[8] Augustine, On Genesis, Translated by Edmund Hill, v. 13 “The Works of
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Augustine, Exposition of Psalms, Translated by Maria Boulding, v. 20“The Works of
[12] Feuerbach, xv. Feuerbach is blatant in this rejection. He says, “This philosophy has for its principle, not the Substance of Spinoza, not the ego of Kant and Fichte, not the Absolute Identity of Schelling, not the Absolute Mind of Hegel… but a real being, the true Ens realissimum – man.”
[13] Charry, Ellen T. Review of Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist, by Philip Cary, Theology Today, July, 2001.
No comments:
Post a Comment