I such, than the effort in making the image real, which may be

frustrated.

However, Feuerbach does not totally enfold his concept of

practice within the imagination, for despite its priority, there is an indispensable human quality in the joy of creation. Compare:

The idea of activity, of making, of creation, is in itself a divine idea; it is therefore unhesitatingly applied to God. In activity, man feels himself free, unlimited, happy; in passivity, limited, oppressed, unhappy. Activity is the positive sense of one's personality. That is positive which in man is accompanied with joy...We succeed only in what we like to do; joyful effort conquers all things. But that is joyful ! activity which is in accordance with our nature, which we do not feel as a limitation, and consequently not as a constraint. And the happiest^ the most blissful acti­ vity is that which is productive.

I am not sure that the two extracts above may be reconciled, and to this degree, Marx's critique of Feuerbach's idea of practice may

be justified. However, the repeated assertion by Marxists that

Feuerbach has no notion of 'praxis', or practice, is inadmissible, unless they simply mean that Marx disagreed with it.

Interpreting the idea of 'praxis' in Marxist terms, Wartofsky says :

...Feuerbach trembles on the brink of a notion of praxis. For "to make nature practically compliant in the service of human needs" by actual means derived from nature seems , to describe the actual work process itself, the transforma­ tion of nature by purposive, need-satisfying labor. The terms Feuerbach uses for this capacity to meet needs remain, however, Bildung and Kultur, but never Arbeit. Thus the union of nature and human nature is formulated by him in terms of conceptions of both nature and the human that remain abstract, somewhat romantic, prescientific, and prepolitical.

Wartofsky, it seems, has ignored the reference quoted penultimately above: "And the happiest, the most blissful activity is that which is productive." Nevertheless, it is unfair to force Feuerbach's concept of essential human creativity too quickly into the mould of actual productivity. Although the creativity arising from the 'work' of the imagination, and belief resulting from it, have an implicit function in the transformation of nature, as well as in the formation of a genuinely human community, Feuerbach stresses

1. ibid. p. 217

2. Wartofsky, Feuerbach, op. cit. pp. 393-394,397.

that the latent activity in belief, expressed through religious cons­ ciousness or otherwise, is closer to the source of the human ability to change the world than the actual work involved in the transforma­

tion. Without imagination, there can hardly be any "purposive, need-

satisfying labor". Without beliefs about the world, and interpreta­ tions of the characteristics of nature, there can hardly be any transformation of it.

It is only a short conceptual leap from the activity of making things to the activity of building communities. But the 'tools' required, and the frustrations encountered, may be somewhat incommen­ surable. For this reason, perhaps, Feuerbach hesitated to associate his idea of human activity too closely with actual matter, tools, and economic or productive forces. Perhaps he retained some of the theologian's fear that as soon as the kingdom of God is objectified, removed from the 'infinite' possibilities in the imagination, it may be lost. In any case, I do not think Feuerbach can be accused of having ignored the material and social conditions which limit but also make possible human production, nor to have remained wholly within a theoretical framework. The imagination is the catalyst for human making, human creativity, and human community. Its object­ ification or artificial delimitation would be antithetical to his whole philosophy.

7, Feuerbach's Implicit Critique of Theology (1) Feuerbach as Theologian?

Properly speaking, Ludwig Feuerbach's writings cannot be taken as theological in character or intention. His project, as he repeat­ edly asserted, was to convert theology into "anthropology". What theology purportedly says about God is invalid because it is an attempt to make rational the images of religion. Similarly, philosophy conceived as the formulation of absolute concepts is no better than theology, because rational method alone cannot understand the feeling nature of humanity. "The philosophy of the future", he suggested,

must be an attempt to understand the whole of human being, on this earth, grounded upon an analysis of the 'head, heart, and stomach' of actual persons existing in a community of others like them.^

Nevertheless, talk about the exaltation of man into God, about

love being "divine", "infinite", and "God himself", is tantamount

to throwing down the gauntlet in the theological arena; or perhaps even more aptly, it is like nailing one's theses to the door of the church. Thus it may not be surprising that Feuerbach has been called

2

the "thorn in the flesh" of modern theologians. Karl Barth took Feuerbach's theological contribution seriously, describing him as

3

"more theological than many theologians." Much of Barth's critique of Schleiermacher, Rttschl and Harnack, and of the central issues of nineteenth century liberal theology, is encapsulated in Barth's introduction to the re-edition of The Essence of Christianity, (1957),

4

which gave rise to a major theological debate. Although Barth appre­ ciated Feuerbach's acute analysis of Luther, his contribution to the 19th century struggle for liberation in Germany, and his revelation of the inherent anthropocentrism of Schleiermacherian liberal theology, Barth concluded that talk about "God in man" must be excised at the roots. Feuerbach's concept of anthropology could never take the place of a theology which is based: on God's supreme creativity and grace. Nevertheless, Barth suggested, God cannot be 'defined' in rational "hypostases" remote from the human condition and human responsibility. "The Church will recover from the sting of Feuerbach's question only when her ethics is fundamentally separated from the worship of old and new hypostases and ideologies. Only then will people again accept

1. Feuerbach, Grundsatze der Philosophie der Zukunft, Bolin-Jodl II, (1843).

2. Karl Barth, Introduction to The Essence of Christianity, (trans. Marian Evans) op. cit. (cf. Karl Barth, Theology and Ch u r c h , Shorter writings 1920-1928, E.T. L.P. Smith, Intro, by T.F. Torrance, SCM Press, London 1962, Chapter VII.)

3. ibid

4. cf. John Glasse, "Barth on Feuerbach", Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 57, pp. 69 ff.; Manfred Vogel, "The Barth-Feuerbach Confrontation" Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 59, pp. 27 ff.; Hans Frei, "Feuerbach and Theology", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 35, pp 250 ff.

the^^urch's word that her God is not merely an illusion."^

The theology which Feuerbach considered and criticized had yet to be conditioned by many of the anthropological interests which he himself helped to arouse. (His own era witnessed, for example, the increasing popularity of Schleiermacher, the beginnings of modern biblical criticism in Bruno Bauer and D.F. Strauss, the publications of Kierkegaard, and the first works of Ritschl.) Talk about God was divine; as such it presupposed the doctrines of God's immutability, omnipotence, omniscience, and impassibility. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas had set an example for thinking about God which was followed not only in Catholic, but also in Protestant theology. God must be above and beyond human feeling because human passions are capricious; God must not suffer because he must not be subject to evil; God must be omnipotent and omniscient, transcending time and space. As Manfred Vogel said in assessing the effect of Feuerbach upon Barth, "Feuerbach is the great anti-theologian only if we equate

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