The philosophical basis of Feuerbach's religious view is his humanistic world view, from which Marx pointed out that Feuerbach's main defect is to isolate people from society, regard people as "abstract things living outside the world", and only regard people as biological people without realizing their social attributes.

Marx said: Feuerbach attributed the essence of religion to the essence of man, but the essence of man is not an abstract thing inherent in a single person. In fact, it is the sum of all social relations. "Feuerbach has put aside the historical process, investigated religion in isolation, assumed an abstract person, and understood human nature as an abstract class of homosexuality.

Feuerbach stopped after restoring the essence of religion to the essence of human beings, and he did not further reveal the profound social and historical reasons for the emergence of religion. Marx pointed out: "The basis of anti-religious criticism is that man created religion, not that religion created man. In other words, religion is the self-awareness and self-feeling of those who have not gained themselves or lost themselves again.

But man is not something that lives abstractly outside the world. Man is man's world, that is, country and society. The country and society have produced a religious upside-down world view, because it is an upside-down world in itself. "

Here, Marx not only affirmed Feuerbach's contribution to man's creation of religion, but also pointed out that he did not understand man's sociality, so he did not understand the social roots of religion, and then reached a new conclusion. Because Marx correctly solved the problem of human nature, found the profound social reasons for the emergence of religion, and laid a solid foundation for his religious thought, which far surpassed Feuerbach.

2. The origin of religion.

Marx also made further exploration on the origin of religion. He believes that the real origin of religion is not people's ignorance, but the social and material living conditions that produce ignorance and ignorance. Different from Feuerbach's emphasis on "perceptual man", Marx always regards perceptual activities as the basis of human nature. Only when people freely engage in production activities according to their own wishes can they fully enjoy their "quasi-life".

But in fact, since the emergence of private ownership, people can't freely engage in production activities according to their own purposes, and the production process is mandatory. Therefore, labor and people are alienated, and private property is the product of this alienation. The alien nature of this kind of labor is completely manifested in that as long as the physical compulsion or other compulsion stops, people will escape from labor like a plague.

Marx agrees with Feuerbach's definition that "religion is essential alienation", but his understanding of "alienation" is quite different. Marx believes that the root of religion is alienation, but this alienation does not occur in the field of human spirit as Feuerbach thought, but in the field of production. ?

Although religion is not directly produced by the production process like labor products, it is a necessary guarantee for the normal production of private property and a by-product of alienated production. Marx specifically discussed the relationship between religion and alienated labor in 1844' s Economic Philosophy Manuscript. "Religion, family, country, law, morality, science, art, etc. Just some special modes of production, which are governed by the universal laws of production.

Therefore, the real social reason of religion is alienation, but its premise is that alienation has taken place in the field of real production activities, that is, quasi-production activities have been alienated into private property production activities. Therefore, Marx believes that the root of religion can only be found in people themselves and must be explained by the self-division and self-contradiction of the secular world composed of people. It is impossible to rely solely on pure theoretical criticism. ?

Only by criticizing the real society, that is, carrying out proletarian revolution and overthrowing the old exploitation system, can we fundamentally eradicate the social roots of the emergence and existence of religion. It can be seen that Feuerbach can't reach the distinctive revolutionary conclusion drawn by Marx through religious criticism.

Extended data:

The Outline of Feuerbach is one of the programmatic documents of Marxist philosophy, which marks the formation of the basic ideas of Marxist philosophy. Marx was deeply influenced by Hegel's philosophy in his early years, and later turned to materialism under the influence of Feuerbach, but he was dissatisfied with Feuerbach's materialism of human nature, which ignored social practice and talked about human nature and "love" abstractly.

This article is an outline written to deeply criticize Feuerbach's philosophy and draw a clear line with it. The outline is concise and profound, which Engels called "the first document containing the budding genius of the new world outlook". ?

Baidu Encyclopedia-Feuerbach Outline