Criticism of Religion
Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche
Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity
p Religion presupposes discrimination between
n divine and non-divine
p In Eliade’s terms?
n what is worthy of adoration and what is not
p Projection theory
n God is the manifested inward nature, the expressed self of a man—religion the solemn unveiling of a man’s hidden treasures (40).
n Man … projects his being into objectivity, and then again makes himself an object of this projected image of himself. (41)
Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity
p Religion is a childlike condition of humanity.
n In childlike religion, God is regarded as objective.
p Through criticism, humanity recognizes that God is a reflection of something human.
n The attributes of the divine are all human attributes (purified and perfected, freed of their limitations).
n The highest good of religion (salvation) is a human interest; “thus man has in fact no other aim than himself.” (42)
n God’s activities are human activities…loving, working, rewarding, punishing, etc.
Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity
p What is the “essence of Christianity”?
n Religion becomes implicitly humanized.
p God becoming man in Christ symbolizes the “God” within all humanity.
p Value (what is worthy of love and adoration) is therefore within the human world, rather than being alienated from it.
§ E.g., what matters is within us (purity of heart) rather than just external actions.
§ Moral worth is within us, and we are the creators of it.
n Making this explicit is the goal of “criticism of religion.”
p It brings us out of childlike “false consciousness” and alienation.
Is Feuerbach simply an anti-Christian atheist?
p What is his goal?
n Revitalize the valuing of each other in the world, care for the concrete
p Inspire human-directed love (John 13:34: A New Commandment)
p “The Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)
Marx: Criticism of religion becomes criticism of material life
p Alienation as the problem
n In “childlike” religion, we are alienated from God by seeing Him as separate from ourselves. Thus, the more we value this projection of ourselves as God, the less we value our actual selves.
n Through criticism of this projection, we come to see that we are really alienated from ourselves.
p Once we have disillusioned ourselves, we are ready to see what was really true about religion: that religious suffering is the expression of real suffering.
p So criticism of religion turns to criticism of alienated forms of life.
Marx: criticism of alienated life
p Criticism of alienated forms of life (especially economic life):
n Money is the alienated essence of man’s work and his being. This alien being rules over him and he worships it.
p Money as externalized value of humanity
§ Proletariat as the “complete loss of man”
§ “The less you eat, drink, and read books; the less you go to the theater, the dance hall, the public-house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save—the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour—your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less your own life, the greater is your externalized life—the greater is the store of your alienated being.”
§ “All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in greed.”
n Marx’s hope is to regain ourselves by a “complete resurrection of man” through re-internalization of this value
p How? Overcome the “alien force” of greed and thereby liberate us from the sway of money. Become creators of value again, rather than worshippers of it.
Marx’s “religious” vision
p Goal: ultimate human emancipation (liberation, salvation?)
p Means: Criticism and action
n Changing dehumanizing social institutions
p Forms of exploitation and oppression
§ E.g., slavery, “wage slavery” (capitalism)
p Compare Marx with the Hebrew prophet Amos
§ Amos: Therefore, because you trample on the poor
and take from them levies of grain,
you have built houses of hewn stone,
but you shall not live in them;
you have planted pleasant vineyards,
but you shall not drink their wine.
For I know how many are your transgressions,
and how great are your sins—
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,
and push aside the needy in the gate. (5:11-12)
n Note: criticism is a function of religion
Nietzsche’s madman
p Irony of “madman”
p Two audiences
n Atheists in the marketplace
n Theists in the church
Message to the Atheists
p Atheists’ childish misunderstanding of God
p Madman’s claim: atheists have not taken responsibility for the deed (deicide)
n But God is not so easily removed.
n Atheists are not ready for the radical “falling” and disorientation.
To the theists
p Remember Holy Saturday: between the cross and the resurrection lies the grave
n The death of God and God’s absence are integral to the faith.
n Hence, the church as tomb and crypt represents recognition of this aspect of the tradition.
Nietzsche Background and Early Thought
p Nietzsche’s first book: The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
n Thesis: society decays without a religious mythology to unite culture and answer the fundamental questions of human life. The hope for redemption in modern life lies in the rebirth of Greek tragedy (especially that of Richard Wagner in the Bayreuth Festival).
p Key features of his early thought:
n 1. communitarianism: highest object of concern is the flourishing of the community as a whole.
n 2. religious mythology: a flourishing community (a “people” or Volk) is impossible without such a unifying ideal.
Background: Schopenhauer
p Religion is “popular metaphysics,” i.e., an allegorical way of dealing with life’s key metaphysical problems. The key functions of religion and philosophy deal with these problems:
n 1. Dealing with death: somehow to deny its finality
n 2. Dealing with “nausea” or “despair” (which result from the recognition of death’s inevitability)
n 3. Providing social cohesion by supporting morality: sanctioning (literally, making sacred) and illustrating moral injunctions
n 4. Providing a sense of mystery: adding to the authority of the religion (i.e., a failure of metaphysics to explain or “demythologize” everything)
Modern Life, according to Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy
p Modern life is now myth-deprived. We have demythologized and disenchanted the world. There is no mystery left. Everything, in principle, is calculable and intelligible. This is the reality for the “intelligentsia.”
n Of course, the “herd” cannot really live in a world without myth and so we have fragments of myth without any focus: superstar athletes and tabloid stars, this week’s pop star or “reality” show winner. We have too many things that “shine” with the glory of appearances, but without any point of orientation to put them all in their proper place. The panoply of Greek gods and heroes provided a unified, comprehensive, and consistent myth. We have a “disorderly heap,” a fickle flickering of celebrity.
p The symptoms of this condition are the following:
n 1. Loss of unity: we are homeless, wandering through a wilderness of thought, morals, and action without any purpose, direction, or meaning.
n 2. Greedy retrieval of past: we grasp for meaning from the supermarket of foreign religions and cultures, showing the emptiness of our own.
n 3. Frenzy of thrill-seeking: we restlessly lurch from one cheap thrill to the next, seeking another frivolous distraction to stave off boredom.
p Thus, what we need is revival of a kind of unifying myth that could provide us with an identity-defining ideal and thereby give our lives a focus.
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