“Only in the misery of man lies the birthplace of God…God is what man desires to be; namely, his own essence and goal imagined as an actual being” (Feuerbach 2012, p. 221).
Feuerbach incorporates Hegel’s application of the emergence of the divided subject and its concurrent self-externalisation, however, he does not view this as a mere transitional phase in the phenomenological development of consciousness, as something bound to overcome itself given its inherent positive content. Whereas Hegel views the divided subject as something that arises prior to and is partly overcome by an assimilation into a religious community, Feuerbach argues that a religious community, far from ameliorating the existential angst of the divided subject, actually functions to sustain and naturalise the predicament. According to
Feuerbach, all historical conceptions of a theistic God, and it will be shown that his notion of God is closely connected to Hegel’s conception of Geist, can be read as instances of the deification of human ideals. He maintains that the divine attributes predicated in the figure of God are essentially the objectification of the most revered attributes common to humanity in general:
Hegel’s conception of Geist was thus transformed into something more like empirical social theory with a supposedly “emancipatory” potential to itself, a way of
demystifying ourselves about what we were really trying to achieve. Even more contentiously, Feuerbach interpreted God to be only a human projection, a fiction “we” inserted into reality to make up for the deficiencies in the existing world5
(Pinkard 2002, p. 311).
The ideological function behind the objectification of human ideals in a
transcendental subject would then be to disassociate humanity from its essential characteristics, and thereby displace any expectation that these characteristics ought to be manifested in a given society. What is attributed to God cannot be attributed to the individual, and if it is true that the attributes of God are essentially human ideals then humanity can be said to have cut itself off from its ideal aspects. This shift of
perspective in Feuerbach could allow for the possibility to talk viably about the existence of ideology as false consciousness, to identify false consciousness in a specific case by case sense rather than the general sense discernible in Hegel; for if it can be convincingly demonstrated that theism represents a mystification of
empirically identifiable human traits, then it no longer seems necessary to first establish a pure and undistorted epistemological perspective from which to juxtapose ‘false’ derivations. Although the identification of false consciousness in this context
5 The structural role of ‘fiction’ in our actual social relations will prove to be a decisive feature in the reformulated conception of ideology I outline in chapters 5 and 6.
does not entail a simultaneous attainment of ‘true’ or ‘authentic’ consciousness, it does not necessarily follow that the only other option is to revert to a form of
epistemic relativism – for here false consciousness is not related to knowledge in any objective sense, but rather to a particular mode of lived experience.
Feuerbach argues that the origin of religion can be understood as a result of the essential difference between humanity and the other species, and that that difference lies in our mode of self-consciousness. “Religion has its genesis in the essential difference between man and the animal – the animals have no religion” (Feuerbach 2012, p. 97). Feuerbach draws this distinction because he believes that animals are lacking in a certain aspect of consciousness peculiar to humanity; that although animals can be said to be conscious of themselves as individuals, as beings distinct from other beings and other perceptual objects, they are not conscious of themselves as manifestations of a particular species:
Thus understood, the animal has a simple, but man a twofold, life… Man is in himself both ‘I’ and ‘You’; he can put himself in the place of another precisely because his species, his essential mode of being – not only his individuality – is an object of thought to him (Feuerbach 2012, p. 98).
Again, this two-fold existence resonates with Hegel’s divided subject, with consciousness of individuality corresponding to the Changeable aspect and
consciousness of mode of being corresponding to the Unchangeable aspect. However, Feuerbach differs from Hegel with regards to the emphasis imputed to this two-fold state; whereas Hegel argues that such a division is ultimately untenable given the experience of Geist, Feuerbach seems to attribute much more ontological significance or permanence to this state, suggesting that the historical persistence of religious feeling is explicable given our very nature. This difference entails a shift in Feuerbach
away from the realm of abstract thought, towards the practical, social affects that such thought engenders. For Feuerbach, consciousness of our essential mode of being, our Unchangeable aspect, “…is not only the basis, but also the object of religion”
(Feuerbach 2012, p. 98). It is the basis of religion, for our identification with the individual Changeable aspect creates disunion with our essential mode of being, thus creating a need for reconciliation, a need that culminates in the inauguration of religious feeling.6 And it is the object of religion, for our externalised essential mode of being is precisely what constitutes religion as such. The argument that religion is an anthropomorphism, contentious as it may be, requires some clarification, and Feuerbach devotes a great deal of attention in pursuing this point.
What are the defining attributes that constitute the essential mode of being for humanity? Feuerbach argues that they can be divided into three categories: ‘Reason, Will, and Heart’. Each and every aspect of the human condition can be classified as an instance of something thought, something willed or something felt. Moreover, regardless of the ways in which the individual person possesses, makes use of, or perceives these traits that together define his/her being, they are all essentially ends- in-themselves:
We pursue knowledge in order to know; love in order to love; will in order to will, that is, in order to be free… Only that which exists for its own sake is true, perfect, and divine. But such is love, such is reason, and such is will. The divine trinity in man, but transcending the individual man, is the unity of reason, love, and will (Feuerbach 2012, p. 99).
6 Feuerbach is solely concerned with religious phenomena. However, this existential impetus towards a form of reconciliation will be shown to inhere in all ideologies, both secular and religious; so for the sake of argument, the terms ‘religious’ and ‘ideological’ could be used interchangeably here.
So the being-of-humanity, what constitutes us, also exists in isolation from us. To demonstrate this Feuerbach goes through the ways in which we experience our mode of being. Regarding love, he asks whether we in fact possess love, or are possessed by love, affected by it from outside; and the same can be considered of the other
emotions, do we experience jealousy or anger as arising from an internal source, or do they rather have their origin in externality from us, such that we are able to talk of being affected, transformed or hindered by them? The faculties of reason and will may seem relatively innate, yet Feuerbach asks us to contemplate a state in which we are deeply immersed in thought, to the extent that we lose track of time and a sense of our surroundings, “…is it you who controls reason, or is it rather reason that controls and absorbs you” (Feuerbach 2012, p. 100)? The tools employed and developed by reason are also conferred upon us, language is acquired, and education is gradually accumulated; it may be argued that we are innately endowed with the potential to reason,7 nevertheless reason, in itself, is extrinsic. With regards to will, Feuerbach asks us to picture a scenario in which we have employed this faculty with the aim of self-improvement or advancement: is this an innate drive, “…or is it rather the energy of will, the power of morality which imposes its rule over you and fills you with indignation of yourself and your individual weaknesses” (Feuerbach 2012, p. 100)?
In short, our Unchangeable aspect or essential mode of being, that without which we are without content, is external to the individual; or rather the extent of its existence exceeds that of the individual consciousnesses in which it manifests. It follows that the conceptual distinction between the inessential and essential aspects of self- consciousness represents a quantitative but not a qualitative difference. These
7 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1. 13.
reflections allow Feuerbach to contribute an important insight into the
phenomenological development of consciousness: “Thus, man becomes conscious of himself through the object that reflects his being; man’s self-consciousness is his consciousness of the object” (Feuerbach 2012, p. 101); and it follows that the
“…power of the object over him is therefore the power of his own being” (Feuerbach 2012, p. 102). It is at this point that the concept of false consciousness is particularly relevant to Feuerbach. It would arise from a situation where, when confronted with personal limitations of character, the individual mistakenly attributes these limitations to the being-of-humanity itself; in doing so our proper relation to this mode of being would be distorted and its source would be displaced, onto the religious (or
ideological) object. But, Feuerbach argues, the fact that we are even aware of these limitations of being is ample evidence that this shift is unwarranted:
The measure of being is also the measure of the understanding. If the being concerned is limited, its feeling and understanding would be limited, too. But, to a limited being, its limited understanding is not a limitation… In keeping with this, if you therefore think the infinite, you think and confirm the infinity of the power of thought; if you feel the infinite, you feel and confirm the infinity of the power of feeling (Feuerbach 2012, pp. 104-105).
It is from a misconception, then, an identification of the individual with the whole, that the space becomes open for the deification of essences, and this could be
considered to be a form of ‘false consciousness’. False consciousness would then be, in the Hegelian sense, total identification with our finite Changeable aspect, and subsequently separation from the Unchangeable aspect. It would therefore represent the distortion of both aspects – for, as Feuerbach argues, it is the Unchangeable aspect that gives content to the Changeable. In not recognising the dual nature of
as is the case with any form of consciousness, false consciousness requires an object; the object of false consciousness can, for our purposes, be identified with the
emergence of ideology in a metaphysical sense. It is in this manner that Feuerbach undertakes his critique of religion.