Feuerbach’s Naturalization of Religion and the Ecological Question

Emmanuel Chaput

Johns Hopkins University

In this paper, I propose to look at the way Feuerbach’s naturalization of religion operates on Schleiermacher’s notion of feeling of dependence in particular. Feuerbach usually considers that sentimentality and subjective feeling weight heavier than reason in the heart of religious consciousness. Therefore, debunking Schleiermacher’s theology of feeling is arguably even more important to Feuerbach’s philosophical and political project than his critique of speculative (i.e. Hegelian) theology. I will thus begin by explaining Schleiermacher’s theory on the feeling of utter dependence as the essence of religion (section 1). I will then expose (section 2) how Feuerbach attempted to ‘naturalize’ this feeling as a feeling of dependence toward nature, which eventually leads the human being into postulating a form of will either into nature (as it is the case for what Feuerbach called ‘nature religion’) or beyond nature (as in Christianity and other forms of Theism). Understanding this naturalist and materialistic origin of religion allows us to see that despite the multiple distortion of reality, there is actually a legitimate origin to this feeling of dependence, namely our inscription in nature. And this is where I think Feuerbach’s philosophy may appear as relevant to us from an ecological standpoint. In the last section (section 3) of my paper, I thus want to state some of those implications, why they are interesting and how they may offer a complementary approach to a Marxian eco-critique of capitalism.