Critical Dissection of Fuerbarh Essence of Christianity

Introduction

Background of the Study

The question of Religious dogmatism and inclination to the seemingly and domineering authority of Christian tradition in world ideologies has always pervaded across the centuries in the moment of intellectual and rationalistic developments. Religion has very often been involved in a conflict between the religious beliefs and critical and rational claims of certain individual thinkers and various schools of thought. Christianity seems to be at the forefront of these critical reviews regarding the purpose and essence of religion

With the era of the scholastics over and the subsequent dominance of scholastic theistic philosophy, many critics arose so as to dismantle the traditional doctrine which the Christian religion held as authentic. Some philosophers of enlightenment period were more or less, dissatisfied with the reign of Christian dogmatic as indubitable and indisputable doctrines. Later on, religion was then seen as an element of weakness, as instrument of oppression and a means of deprivation and exploitations of the ignorance of masses

The French enlightenment critique of religion was more diverse, and it is possible to argue that Catholicism rather than Christianity was often the object of attack. Other European thinkers such as David Hume in Scotland arose with their own critique of the phenomenon of region. The enlightenment critique of religion got to its peak in the critical philosophy of Germany philosopher Immanuel Kant(1724-1804). In the words of Wayne Hudson

"Kant' critical philosophy set aside all traditional metaphysical

Philosophy, but preserve a transcendental philosophy base on moral

Faith, for which God and immortality were necessary postulates of Practical reason."

However, the German philosopher G.W.F . Hegel made a crucial advance beyond the enlightenment critique of religion, because he assumed that religion was substantially historical. He made God, in the sense of the Absolute, the object of philosophical inquiry while integrating this transcendental philosophy with historical change and with the emergence of socio-political and legal organizational forms and institutions. He also deployed a highly sophisticated conception of religion and defined religion in speculative terms.

Hegel infers that religion was not merely the relationship of the infinite consciousness to the infinite, but the self-consciousness of the absolute spirit mediated in and through finit consciousness

In any case a very strong and provocative reply to Hegel's philosophy came from Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, a former student of Hegel. The 'surgical blade' of hard critique of religion finally got into the hand of Feuerbach, whose influence on religious