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- Title
'Bruno Reincarnate'The Early Feuerbach on God, Love and Death.
- Authors
Gooch, Todd
- Abstract
This essay analyzes the central role played by the concept of love in Feuerbach's early pantheistic idealism as articulated principally in his first book, Thoughts on Death and Immortality (1830). After contextualizing this work in relation to the pantheism controversy inaugurated by the publication in 1785 of Jacobi's famous letters to Moses Mendelssohn On the Doctrine of Spinoza, the author goes on to argue 1) that the position developed by Feuerbach here is far more coherent than has been recognized by previous commentators; 2) that the historical importance of this work consists in the effort undertaken in it to produce a philosophical account of the divinity as One and All ( Hen kai Pan), and thereby to provide an avenue for the religious aspirations of those members of Feuerbach's generation who found themselves unable to 'stomach' more orthodox conceptions of the divinity like the ones that Lessing was scandalously reported by Jacobi in his Spinoza-letters to have rejected in favor of pantheism; and 3) that appreciation of these circumstances is crucial for understanding Feuerbach's role in the history of modern European thought, as well as a number of otherwise baffling claims he makes about the human species-essence ( Gattungswesen) in the opening chapters of The Essence of Christianity (1841).
- Subjects
GERMANY; FEUERBACH, Ludwig, 1804-1872; THOUGHTS on Death &; Immortality (Book); PANTHEISM; LOVE; ESSENCE of Christianity, The (Book); ESSENCE of Christianity; 19TH century German philosophy; NINETEENTH century; INTELLECTUAL life
- Publication
Journal for the History of Modern Theology / Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte, 2013, Vol 20, Issue 1, p21
- ISSN
0943-7592
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.1515/znth-2013-0005