FEUERBACH, fei'erbäh, LUDWIG ANDREAS: German philosopher; b. at Landshut (39 m. n.e. of Munich), Bavaria, July 28, 1804; d. at Rechenberg, near Nuremberg, Sept. 13,1872. He attended the Gymnasium at Ansbach, and in 1822 entered the University of Heidelberg as a student of theology. Through the lectures of Karl Daub he became interested in Hegelianism, and in 1824 went to Berlin to hear Hegel. He soon gave up theology for philosophy, and in 1828 became docent in philosophy at Erlangen. Promotion to a professorship having been .made next to impossible by his Gedanken über Tod and Unsterblichkes (Nuremberg, 1830), in which he disposed of immortality on psychological grounds, he withdrew from the university to devote himself to literary work. He lived in Ansbach till 1836, then at the Castle at Bruckberg till 1860, when he moved to Rechenberg. His radical views made his name a watchword in the late forties, and in 1848-19, by special petition of the students, he lectured in Heidelberg. Accepting the view of Hegel that the Absolute attains consciousness in the human mind, he went one step further and denied the existence of an absolute mind, explaining God as a subjective product of our conscious life. He regarded religion as psychological illusion, a purely subjective process; and God, heaven, and eternal life as desires of the heart realized by the imagination. In short, according to his naturalistic view, God did not make us after his own image at all; rather, we made God after ours; and thus theology becomes a matter of anthropology. Although Feuerbach is the author of that extremely materialistic formula, Der Mensch ist, tons er isst, °' man is what he eats," yet he can scarcely be called a materialist, since he approaches the problem from the psychological side. His principal works are: Das Weaen des Christ-du- (Leipsic, 1841; Eng. transl., The
Essence of Chrid~ariity, by George Eliot, London, 1854); Das Wesen den Religion (1845); Dan Theogenie, oder van dem Ursprung den Glitter (1857); Gott, Freiheit, and Unsterblichkeit vom Standpunkt der Anthropologie (1866). His collected works in ten volumes appeared at Leipsic 1846-86.
Bibliography: O. Beyer, Leben and (laid: LuduaO Fauer back, Leipsic. 1873: W. Maccall, The Newest Materialism. London, 1873; K. Grfn, Ludwig Feuerbach in sasnesn Bria/weehaet and Nadlaas, Leipsic, 1874; W. Bolin, Lud wig Peuerbach, eein Wirken und seine Zeitpenossen, Stutt-
gart, 1891. Consult also the works on the History of Philosophy by Windelband, Ueberweg, and Erdmann.