Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer: Two traces of critique of religion in the philosophy of Karl Marx

Michael Quante

University of Münster

The conceptions developed in the critique of religion and theology by Left Hegelianism are constitutive both for Karl Marx’s philosophical anthropology and for his research program of a critique of political economy. In this lecture, I will examine the structural differences between Ludwig Feuerbach's and Bruno Bauer's critique of religion (and theology). The former pursues the project of an anthropologization of religion (and theology); the figure of thought of a failure of predication is fundamental to this. The latter focuses on the incompatibility of religiosity and autonomy; for Bauer, the explication of the ideological distortion of the self-attributions of religious (and theological) consciousness is central. In Marx, there are traces of both of these forms of criticism of religion and theology, which differ both in content and systematically. To elaborate this difference between Feuerbach and Bauer is a fundamental task for an adequate reconstruction of the functioning and the burdens of justification of Marx's philosophy.