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Notes
1 L. Feuerbach, Gesammelte Werke, edited by W. Schuffenhauer, 20 vols (Berlin: Akademie‐Verlag, 1966ff.), GW, vol. 18 [= Briefwechsel, vol. 2] 33. Henceforth cited as GW followed by a volume number and page reference.
2 GW, vol. 18, 33.
3 Traditionally, ‘hedonism’ is defined as an ethical system that places sensuous pleasure as the goal of ethical behaviour, whereas ‘eudaimonism’ identifies virtue with ‘happiness’, but Feuerbach’s philosophy, as we shall see, problematizes this distinction. The German philosopher David Baumgardt, who emigrated to the USA at the outbreak of the Second World War, offers an extended defence of hedonism and distinguishes it in detail from eudaimonism in Jenseits von Machtmoral und Masochismus: Hedonistische Ethik als kritische Alternative (Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, 1977), and more recently the French philosopher Michel Onfray has refocused attention on hedonism as a persistent counter‐current in western thought. See La puissance d’exister: Manifeste hédoniste (Paris: Grasset, 2006).
4 E. Kamenka, The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970) viii; cf. 150–1.
5 M. W. Wartofsky, Feuerbach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 1–7, 360–65: ‘I take Feuerbach seriously. This is not always easy to do’ (1).
6 A. Schmidt, Emanzipatorische Sinnlichkeit: Ludwig Feuerbachs anthropologischer Materialismus (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1973).
7 V. A. Harvey, Feuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 229–80, 7, 8. Harvey turns to Richard Rorty’s work on historiography in order to offer a ‘rational reconstruction’ of Feuerbach (14–21); see R. Rorty, ‘The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres’, in Philosophy in History, edited by R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind and Q. Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 49–79.
8 J. Winiger, Ludwig Feuerbach: Denker der Menschlichkeit (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2004), 174–6, 243–5, 277–81.
9 J. Salem, Une lecture frivole des écritures: “L’Essence du christianisme” de Ludwig Feuerbach (Fougères: encre marine, 2003).
11 GW, vol. 10, 144.
10 GW, vol. 5, 206. For further discussion, see J‐F. Dwars, “Äesthetik als prima philosophia : Äesthetische Impulse Feuerbachscher Anthroplogie”, in Sinnlichkeit und Rationalität: Der Umbruch in der Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts: Ludwig Feuerbach, edited by W. Jaeschke (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992), 68–80.
12 GW, vol. 5, 546.
13 See GW, vol. 9, 264–341; L. Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future [1843], translated by M. H. Vogel (Indianapolis, IN and New York: Bobbs‐Merrill, 1966).
14 In a letter to his student friend Eduard Silberstein (1857–1925), of 15 March 1875, Freud wrote approvingly of Ludwig Feuerbach as ‘someone whom I revere and admire above all other philosophers’, and paid tribute to him as ‘so steadfast a champion of “our truths”’ (The Letters of Sigmund Freud to Eduard Silberstein 1871–1881, translated by A. J. Pomerans, edited by W. Boehlich (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1990), 96) – a phrase which, as Wilhelm Hemecker has argued, should be understood as a reference to materialism (Vor Freud: Philosophiegeschichtliche Voraussetzungen der Psychoanalyse (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1991), 52–61).
15 GW, vol. 5, 293–4. The treatment of sexuality in The Essence of Christianity is philosophical and anthropological, but its emphasis betrays Feuerbach’s humanism (Winiger, Ludwig Feuerbach, 167).
16 GW, vol. 5, 177–8.
17 GW, vol. 5, 178.
18 GW, vol. 5, 178.
19 Page references for this work are to L. Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, edited by W. Bolin and F. Jodl, 10 vols (Stuttgart: Frommann Verlag, 1902–1922); re‐edited by H.‐M. Sass (Stuttgart: Frommann; Holzboog, 1964), vol. 10, 230–89. For a critical edition of the text, introduced and annotated by Werner Schuffenhauer, which will appear in vol. 16 of the Gesammelte Werke, see ‘Zur Moralphilosophie’, in Solidarität oder Egoismus: Studien zu einer Ethik bei und nach Ludwig Feuerbach, edited by H‐J. Braun (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), 353–430.
20 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 261.
21 See GW, vol. 1, 492–3.
22 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 231.
23 G. W. F. Hegel, Foundations of the Philosophy of Right (1821), §4, Zusatz in Werke, edited by E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel, 20 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), vol. 7, 46.
24 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 232.
25 See C. Helvétius, De l’esprit (1758), discourse 1, ch. 4; N. Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité (1674), bk 1, ch. 1; and J. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), ch. 21, §43.
26 According to Kamenka, Feuerbach derives the notion of the ‘drive‐to‐happiness’ as the essence of humankind from Baron d’Holbach’s Système de la nature (1770) (Kamenka, The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach, 130). For the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ are not only ‘inalienable rights’, but ‘self‐evident’. Interestingly, modern science tends to presuppose just such a motivational dynamic in human beings; cf. ‘without exception, men and woman of all ages, of all cultures, of all levels of education, and of all walks of economic life […] govern their lives in no small part by the pursuit of one emotion, happiness, and the avoidance of unpleasant emotions’ (A. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness (London: Vintage, 2000), 35). For further discussion by Feuerbach of the idea that the human being is so constituted as to avoid suffering and to seek satisfaction, see ‘On Spiritualism and Materialism, Particularly in Relation to the Freedom of the Will’, §3 (GW, vol. 11, 68–74).
27 See, for example, Kant’s Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).
28 Hegel, Foundations of the Philosophy of Right, §5 in Werke, vol. 7, 49.
29 Hegel, Foundations of the Philosophy of Right, §6 and §7 in Werke, vol. 7, 52–7.
30 See Hegel, ‘Introduction’ to the Foundations of the Philosophy of Right in Werke, vol. 7, 11–28. For a helpful discussion of the structure of the Hegelian will, see D. Knowles, Hegel and the “Philosophy of Right” (London: Routledge, 2002), 28–33.
31 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 234.
32 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 231.
33 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 231. This statement reflects Feuerbach’s ‘ontological sensualism’, according to which ‘human feelings have no empirical or anthropological significance in the sense of the old philosophy; they have ontological and metaphysical significance. […] [T]here is no other proof of being but love and feeling in general’ (Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, §34; GW, vol. 9, 318; translated by Vogel, 53). For further discussion, see J. Ebbinghaus, ‘Ludwig Feuerbach’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 8 (1930), 283–305 (298).
34 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 288.
35 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 231.
36 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 230.
37 The exact relation between will and desire remains unexplored in Feuerbach’s treatise, but one might compare the relation between them to what Schiller says about the relation between the will and the two drives (material drive, formal drive) in his treatise On the Aesthetic Education of Humankind (1795): in Schiller, the will can act as power vis‐à‐vis both drives, but neither can act as a power against the other (Letter 19, §10). Similarly, in Feuerbach the will acts as power vis‐à‐vis the drive, but neither the drive nor the will can act as power against the other.
38 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 230.
39 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 230. For Feuerbach, sensation (Empfindung) embraces pleasure and displeasure, the drives, the affects, and the passions – and thus the ontological function of ‘sensation’ is bound up with the ‘sensation‐of‐something’, a ‘something’ he calls ‘love’ and defines as follows: ‘Love is passion, and only passion is the hallmark of existence. Only that exists which is the object – be it real or possible – of passion […] Thus, love is the true ontological proof of the existence of an object apart from our mind […]’ (Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, §34; GW, vol. 9, 318; translated by Vogel, 52–3). See Ebbinghaus, ‘Ludwig Feuerbach’, 298.
40 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 239.
41 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 239.
42 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 236.
43 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 273.
44 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 274.
45 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 236.
46 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 235.
47 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 251.
48 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 252.
51 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 243.
49 Feuerbach’s account draws on C. F. Köppen, Die Religion des Buddha und ihre Entstehung, 2 vols (Berlin: Schneider, 1857–1859), vol. 1.
50 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 241.
52 The Hours of the Divine Office in English and Latin, 3 vols (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1963–1964), vol. 2, 1875.
53 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 245.
54 See A. Butler, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Revd H. Thurston, 13 vols (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1926–1938), vol. 6, 269–76.
55 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 245. See Butler, Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, vol. 1, 385.
56 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 245. See Butler, Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, vol. 12, 34–6.
57 Hours of the Divine Office, vol. 1, 1647.
58 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 246. Compare with Feuerbach’s observation in conclusion to the thirtieth (and last) of his Lectures on the Essence of Religion, in which he describes his task as being ‘to turn Christians – who are, according to their own confession, “half animal, half angel” – into human beings, into complete human beings’ (GW, vol. 6, 320). For the source of this expression, see J. L. Evers, Vierhundert Lieder, Nr. 369; cited in Geflügelte Worte: Der Citatenschatz des deutschen Volkes, edited by G. Büchmann, nineteenth edition (Berlin: Haude & Spener, 1898), 139. For other uses of the angel–beast distinction in the French philosophical tradition, see Montaigne, Essais, bk 3, ch. 13; and B. Pascal, Pensées, edited by Brunschvicg, no. 358; cf. no. 140.
59 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 259.
60 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 259–61.
61 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 263. This remark is attributed to Pater Lechner in A. von Bucher, Die Jesuiten in Baiern vor und nach ihrer Aufhebung, 3 vols (Munich: Fleischmann, 1819–1820), vol. 1, 108; cf. GW, vol. 4, 267.
62 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 263.
63 Ludwig Feuerbach in seinem Briefwechsel und Nachlass sowie in seiner philosophischen Charakterentwicklung, edited by K. Grün, 2 vols (Leipzig and Heidelberg: C. F. Winter, 1874), vol. 1, 414–15; see Dwars, ‘Ästhetik als prima philosophia’, 79–80.
64 GW, vol. 4, 268; cf. 263–70.
65 A. Butler, Lives of the Saints, edited by B. W. Kelly, 6 vols (London: Virtue, 1936), vol. 3, 1224.
66 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 263.
67 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 264.
70 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 264.
68 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 262.
69 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 264.
71 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 264.
73 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 248.
72 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 247. See F. Schiller, Xenien aus dem “Musen‐Almanach für das Jahr 1797”, Nr. 153, in Sämtliche Gedichte und Balladen, edited by G. Kurscheidt (Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig: Insel, 2004), 462.
78 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 281.
74 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Part One, bk 1, pt 3, ‘Critical Examination of the Analytic of Pure, Practical Reason’ [Akademie‐Ausgabe, 175–7].
75 Hegel, Principles of the Philosophy of Right, §136 in Werke, vol. 7, 254.
76 See M. Luther, Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 119 vols (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883– ), 2. Abteilung, Tischreden, vol. 5, 40, Nr. 5273: ‘Conscientia est duplex: erga Deum, haec est conscientia fidei, et erga homines, ea est charitatis’; cf. Solidarität oder Egoismus, 419.
77 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 279.
79 See GW, vol. 7, 137; GW, vol. 11, 80.
80 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 280–1,
81 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 281.
82 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 282.
83 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 283.
84 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 284.
85 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 285.
86 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 286.
87 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 266.
88 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 267.
89 For Feuerbach’s biography of his father, see GW, vol. 12.
90 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 268.
91 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 268.
92 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 268.
94 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 276.
93 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 275.
95 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 276.
96 For further discussion, M. Cabada‐Castro, ‘Feuerbachs Kritik der Schopenhauerschen Konzeption der Verneinung des Lebens und der Einfluß seines Prinzipes der Lebensbejahung auf das anthropologische Denken Wagners und Nietzsches’, in Ludwig Feuerbach und die Philosophie der Zukunft, edited by H‐J. Braun, H.‐M. Sass, W. Schuffenhauer, and F. Tomasoni (Berlin: Akademie‐Verlag, 1990), 443–76 (esp. 447–57); and M. Köppe, ‘Zur Entstehung von Ludwig Feuerbachs Schrift “Über Spiritualismus und Materialismus, besonders in Beziehung auf die Willensfreiheit”’, in Materialismus und Spiritualismus: Philosophie und Wissenschaft nach 1848, edited by A. Arndt and W. Jaeschke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2000), 35–51 (esp. 46–51).
97 A. Schopenhauer, Sämtliche Werke, edited by W. von Löhneysen, 5 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1962), vol. 3, 630–815, esp. §16, 737–44. For Schopenhauer, compassion is ‘the great mystery of ethics, its primordial phenomenon [Urphänomen], and the boundary stone, beyond which only metaphysical speculation may dare to step’ (741).
98 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 277.
99 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 278.
100 Kamenka, The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach, viii; cf. 150–51.
101 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 269.
102 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 269.
103 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 273.
104 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 292.
105 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 273.
106 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 274.
107 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 275.
108 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 275.
109 Cf. ‘Le plus grand avantage public, c’est‐à‐dire, le plus grand plaisir & le plus grand bonheur du plus grand nombre des citoyens’ (C. Helvétius, De l’homme, section 1, ch. 10; Œuvres philosophiques de M. Helvétius, 4 vols (London, 1791), vol. 3, 66).
110 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 275.
111 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 287–8.
112 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 288.
113 Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, translated by H. G. Evelyn‐White (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1982), 417.
114 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 270.
116 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 270–1.
115 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 270.
117 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 249.
118 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 249.
119 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 251.
120 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 271.
121 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 289.
122 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 289.
124 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 291.
123 Goethes Gespräche: Gesamtausgabe, edited by F. von Biedermann, 5 vols (Leipzig: Biedermann, 1909–1911), vol. 4, 469. For further discussion, see P. Hadot, ‘“The Present Alone is our Joy”: The Meaning of the Present Instant in Goethe and in Ancient Philosophy’, Diogenes, 133 (1986), 60–82 (76–7).
125 For Spinoza, ‘good’ is ‘everything which we are certain is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature we set before us’, and ‘evil’ is ‘everything which we are certain hinders us from reaching that model’ (Ethics, pt 4, preface; Spinoza, Selections, edited by J. Wild (London: Scribner, 1928), 286). Because ‘every person should love himself, should seek his own profit’, ‘every one should endeavour, as far as in him lies, to preserve his own being’, and ‘virtue means nothing but acting according to the laws of our own being’, from which, Spinoza argues, it follows that, first, ‘the foundation of virtue is that endeavour itself to preserve our own being’; and, second, ‘happiness consists in this – that a man can preserve his own being’ (Ethics, pt 4, proposition 18, demonstration; Selections, 301–2). Accordingly, ‘joy’ is defined by Spinoza as ‘man’s passage from a less to a greater perfection’ (and ‘sorrow’, from ‘a greater to a less’) (Ethics, pt 3, ‘The Affects’, definitions 1 and 2; Selections, 267).
126 See F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §12: ‘The Stoics […] were consistent when they desired as little pleasure as possible, in order to get as little displeasure as possible out of life’, which means that ‘when they kept saying “the virtuous man is the happiest man”, this was both the school’s eye‐catching sign for the great mass and a casuistic subtlety for the subtle’ (F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, translated by W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974), 85–6).
127 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 231.
128 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 288.
129 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 261.
130 Kamenka, The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach, 132–3. For further discussion, see P. H. Nowell‐Smith, Ethics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954), 133–44; und G. Ryle, ‘Pleasure’, in Dilemmas: The Tarner Lectures 1953 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 54–67.
131 For further discussion of the Stirner–Feuerbach relationship, see L. S. Stepelevich, ‘Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 39:3 (1978), 451–63.
132 Feuerbach, ‘On the “Essence of Christianity” in Relation to the “Ego and His Own”’ in GW, vol. 9, 433–4.
133 Salem, Une lecture frivole des écritures, 88.
134 ‘On Spiritualism and Materialism’, §4 in GW, vol. 11, 76 and 80.
135 ‘On Spiritualism and Materialism’, §4 in GW, vol. 11, 80.
136 ‘On Spiritualism and Materialism’, §4 in GW, vol. 11, 77.
137 Salem, Une lecture frivole des écritures, 91–2.
138 Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 270.
139 Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der neueren Philosophie: Von G. Bruno bis G. W. F. Hegel: Erlangen 1835/1836, edited by C. Ascheri and E. Thies (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974), 41.
140 See Feuerbach, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 10, 235, 288. Compare with the notion of ‘tragic hedonism’, according to which what matters is less ‘the‐fact‐of‐having‐to‐die’ and more ‘the‐task‐of‐having‐to‐live’ – and ‘the‐task‐of‐having‐to‐live‐well’ (M. Onfray, ‘[Agrave] ceux qui ne veulent pas jouir: Comment peut‐on ne pas être hédoniste?’, in L’Archipel des comètes: Journal hédoniste III (Paris: Grasset, 2001), 267–82 [279]).
141 I. Overbeck, ‘Erinnerungen von Frau Ida Overbeck’, in C. A. Bernoulli, Franz Overbeck und Friedrich Nietzsche: Eine Freundschaft, 2 vols (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1908), vol. 1, 239–41. For further discussion, see M. Cabada‐Castro, ‘Feuerbachs Kritik der Schopenhauerschen Konzeption der Verneinung des Lebens’, 443–76; and W. Wahl, Feuerbach und Nietzsche: Die Rehabilitierung der Sinnlichkeit und des Leibes in der deutschen Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Würzburg: Ergon, 1998); and M. Onfray, La Sagesse tragique: Du bon usage de Nietzsche (Paris: Le Livre de poche, 2006), 54–5.
142 GW, vol. 10, 144.
143 M. Onfray, L’Art de jouir: Pour un matérialisme hédoniste (Paris: Grasset, 1991), 191.