A Good Life for Human Beings: Anthropology and Materialism in Feuerbach and Marx

Nadine Mooren

University of Münster

Within the philosophical development after Hegel, the anthropology of Ludwig Feuerbach occupies a significant place as it helped to depart from idealistic system philosophies and establish a new, materialistic self-conception. Feuerbach’s decidedly materialistic anthropology, which was put forward in his Essence of Christianity (1841) and writings such as his “Principles of the Philosophy of the Future” (1843), was formative for the anthropology of Karl Marx as well as for Left Hegelianism as a whole. Although Feuerbach's importance for the development of Left Hegelianism is hardly ever disputed, it is a question in its own right as to what exactly Feuerbach's materialism entails beyond the articulation of a polemical break with previously influential thinkers of German Idealism. My aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the anthropologies of Feuerbach and Marx by investigating four dimensions of materialism and discussing in what way they enable a more differentiated classification of Feuerbach's and Marx’ anthropology as a kind of materialist thinking.

I will proceed in the following steps: In section 1, I start with a historical contextualization of Feuerbach’s philosophy, depict him as a transitory figure between Hegel and Left Hegelian writers like Karl Marx, and propose that besides Feuerbach’s relationship to Hegel we need to take account of his relationship to the scientific materialists of the 19th century (especially his interest in the writings of the physiologist and physician Jakob Moleschott). In section 2, I expand on the idea of a materialist anthropology by distinguishing four contexts in which Feuerbach makes use of the concept of materialism and argue that we can better understand the materialist turn brought about by his writings if we distinguish (i) an epistemic dimension, (ii) an anthropological dimension, (iii) a metaphilosophical and (iv) an ethical dimension of his thought. I close with some remarks about what follows from this more detailed consideration of the materialist turn for the plausibility of the anthropological conceptions of Feuerbach and the young Marx.