Transcription
Welcome to the philosophy podcast. I am Octav Eugen Popa. Today we will tackle a question that is as interesting and apparently simple as it is thorny and stinging, namely, what is religion? And I am not referring here to religion as a social institution, with its rules and conventions, and vestments and vocabulary and dogmas and so on. I am referring to religion as mental material, I am referring to religion as a subject of thought, if you will. More precisely, when you think of God, when you think about God, or when you believe in God, or when you pray to God, what exactly happens? Into what kind of thinking or what kind of discourse do we place ourselves? We will therefore talk about the idea of God. And to approach this subject, we will discuss a 19th-century German philosopher named Ludwig Feuerbach. The other great one, this being the other great Ludwig in the history of philosophy, the first and certainly the most well-known being Ludwig Wittgenstein. Well, this joke didn't quite work out, but anyway. >> To those who believe that this world will be saved by love. We move on, we delete, we delete, we delete. I deleted with space, you didn't realize. We move on. I didn't mean that the other one, there are two Ludwigs in the history of philosophy. One is Feuerbach, the other is Wittgenstein. Of course, is religion as mental material rather close to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU, meaning just a little story, meaning just sci-fi, meaning something to put children and parents to sleep, or is it something else? This is what I want to talk about, and because I am not insensitive to the fact that this subject can be irritating, I want to say that my goal in this episode is not to convince you about something about religion or about God, but I just want to present you with Feuerbach's arguments and leave you to think with your little head. So don't attack the messenger, don't shoot the pianist, because this is the score we will play to determine its value in one way or another. How can you know that Feuerbach was an idiot if you don't first look at what he wrote? I just wanted to mention that. This podcast is brought to you by its sponsors, people like you and like you. You didn't know that, well, namely those who donate at www.patreon.com/octavpopa patreon.com/octavpopa, to whom I say thank you, and thanks to whom this podcast is 100% free and has been 100% free for over five years. See how quickly time flies, without ads and ships and other nonsense. I thank them for supporting this channel. I raise my invisible hat. Live long and let's get to work. We are still in the 19th century, as I think I already mentioned, which means we are in the period when we have a newly formed German Confederation that realizes it is a bit behind and tries to catch up politically and socially with the modernizations towards liberalism that had taken place in France and England, of course, more than 50 years ago, but also technological modernizations. Yes, hyper-technologized Germany, but that is the image of the end of the century, because Germany missed the first industrial revolution a bit, as we discussed in the episode about the industrial revolution. And Germany was not only backward and retrograde, it was reactionary. We have the period of Emperor Frederick William, who, as I have also discussed when talking about Hegel and Marx, in fact, the whole period, tries to actually turn back time, tries to restore a noble system, yes, with a fairly open market, a kind of capitalism plus feudalism plus or rather, castes, nobility and so on, plus religion, church, clericalism, equals. Love. Something dubious came out, but anyway, we are in a period when the state tries to seize different areas of civil society. Something totally dysfunctional, but typical for the kind of censorship that was taking place, and we will see how it will affect Feuerbach. Intellectually, at the social and political level, to sketch the context a bit, from an intellectual point of view, the German states find refuge in romanticism. We have also talked about romanticism. It is an anti-Enlightenment, anti-authoritarian movement, towards nature, towards feeling and so on. It is an attempt by the German peoples or states to do what Isaiah Berlin said, when you don't get what you want, learn to want what you can get. Perhaps it should be said that we are already in the final period of this romantic movement, after 1850, a post-Hegelian period. The 19th century is marked by the figure of G.W.F. Hegel. And well, these chronologies should not be taken too seriously, but let's move on. What are the post-Hegelians? We have talked a bit about them in the episodes about Marx. Actually, actually, actually, Feuerbach should have been discussed before Marx, but I read them in this order, so we will have to survive. What are the post-Hegelians? Post-Hegelians are a group of thinkers of all kinds, theologians, philosophers, researchers, scholars, whatever, yes, linguists and so on. They are a group of thinkers who tried to separate themselves more or less, to break away, I think I should have said, from the figure and philosophy of Hegel. But this separation could not have been without its ups and downs, because Hegel was by then the state philosopher of Prussia, and I just said that it is a very authoritarian Prussia that tries to put its foot down, including at the cultural level. So, well, all sorts of detours and small variations and dimensions must be found in which you can rebel against the daddy, against this Big Daddy H, and not go against the law. We know of different situations where people who wrote in this post-Hegelian vein, I have talked about it before, insist, were expelled from university, including Feuerbach, who was denied a position at the university and so on. We are in a period where writing against Hegel, especially against his mystical-religious dimension, was an act not so much of philosophy as an act of revolution. Yes, revolution in philosophy, but also social revolution in the streets. So, and it will not surprise us that in these conditions, the young Hegelians, these most rebellious ones, borrow theories and concepts and, ultimately, attitudes from French materialism, which was atheistic and critical and so on. Well, from a century ago. So it was already old in France, but our young Hegelians look over the fence and say, "That would be good back home." I have finished the quote. So we are in a period when all sorts of critical books against religion appear, somehow supported, as will be Feuerbach's book, which we will discuss, somehow supported at a philosophical level by French materialism. We have in this period a few examples that I have not read, but about which I know the titles that must be known. We have in this period "The Life of Jesus" by David Strauss, famous because it explains the Bible in a metaphorical key and makes this distinction between the historical Jesus and the Jesus of the parables, the allegorical Jesus, as presented by the Gospels, the Gospels, I guess. In the same period, Bruno Bauer, who was a kind of leader of the young Hegelians, writes "The Critique of the History of the Gospels," in which the Bible is presented as a kind of way to control the masses, yes, the opium of the people, consciously. So it is a book of conspiracy, consciously for, what can I say, manipulating the population and crowds of uncritical people against this cultural phenomenon. Even Engels writes on this topic. Engels writes, I haven't noted the title, but I think he writes a history of Christianity in which he explains how the materiality, the material situation of the Roman Empire was responsible for the success of Christianity. In short, you get it. So we are in a period when the Germans find a voice to be critical of Hegel and, by ricochet, indirectly, critical of religion. Feuerbach, whom we are talking about now, is part of this group. He is a left-Hegelian, which means he also borrows the premises of this materialism. Materialism, meaning he insists, crudely, that the appearance of spirit, human reason, and ultimately what we create, the institutions we create, our acts, our acts of speech, our acts of behavior and so on, are the result of material conditions. They are ultimately part of nature. They are nothing more than molecules in thermodynamic motion. Not, God forbid, any ambition? I said, God forbid, that was a joke from high school. Someone said, instead of "God forbid," "God, see." So, not any appearance of spirit with a capital S, of the absolute idea and so on. Here, that's what it means to be a materialist, that's what it means to be a scoundrel and to no longer like Hegel. Well, now it's a bit strange that I took notes to say that Marx will adopt this materialism and write the famous theses on Feuerbach, but we haven't even talked about Feuerbach yet, but we have talked about the theses on Feuerbach in the episode with Marx. Whatever, whatever. Look at the timeline, Marx's critique, remember very briefly, Marx's critique is that, yes, Feuerbach goes in the right direction, he goes in the direction of materialism, but he sees religion as a projection of this man with a capital M, which, Marx says, is a remnant of Hegelianism. The human essence, the expression of man's being, human being, our being and so on, appears about 400 times in "The Essence of Christianity," and Marx taps him on the fingers and says, "No, there is no man as such, there is only man in his material determinations. There is the bourgeois man, there is the slave man, there is the proletarian man, there is the emperor man, there is man in a certain sociological determination." Well, now that we have sketched the context, let's see what's up with Feuerbach and "The Essence of Christianity," the book we will talk about. Who was Ludwig Feuerbach? By the way, I don't know exactly if that's the best pronunciation. L. Let's see how Google Translate pronounces it. Feuerbach. Fuck. Ah, so not H, but C, Feuerbach. Okay. Ah, I wasn't far off. Good. Ludwig Feuerbach was born in 1804 in Bavaria, into a family of intellectuals. His father, Anselm Feuerbach, was very well-known and respected in the field of philosophy of law. Ludwig studied theology at Heidelberg and then at Berlin, where he even attended a few semesters with the great Hegel and was very impressed, blah blah blah. In his doctoral thesis, he is found to be a fairly orthodox Hegelian, through the application of the dialectical method, and then in an essay, his critical reaction to what he had learned, let's say, in theology faculty, is glimpsed. In an essay on death and immortality, and the immortality of the soul, and hell and heaven and so on, he is discovered with a new voice as a critic of Christian morality, especially of the idea that, sir, only God can judge you, "Only God can judge me," as the great philosopher Tupac Shakur said, meaning divine punishment, which he saw as, in fact, a method of replacing and undermining morality among people. Because, well, if what you do in this life is wrong according to earthly morality, but right according to God's morality, you can calmly go to war, make a mess of all your enemies, if it is in the name of God and in the name of Christian morality. The idea that what you do here is not truly judged until after you die gives rise to an ethic of resignation, says Feuerbach. A resignation that, generalized, diminishes you, makes you confirm the idea that man is small and crooked and sinful, and that the final judgment is the only one that matters. Because, let's say, let's say our morality or our laws are in accordance with what God wants. But if they are not, because no one goes with a binder to check if our laws are Christian. And then Christian morality comes to replace and to be used to undermine earthly morality through this idea of the afterlife and the final judgment. But attention, I want to emphasize something here because it seems to me that this is Feuerbach's point of originality. He doesn't say that religion, Christianity, creates these conditions, in our example, moral conditions in which earthly morality is undermined and supplanted by divine morality. He says the opposite, he says that these conditions already existed, conditions in which you are small and a slave and powerless and so on. And then Christianity comes to repair, to console, to entice, and thus the success of religion is explained. When you are brought to your knees, when you are a slave, when you are a serf and so on, the kingdom of heaven sounds amazing, says Feuerbach suddenly in English. And as I have anticipated, with this, Feuerbach signs the end of his career, because at that time, writing against the church meant writing against the state. So bye-bye, university career, which gave him a lot of time. It is a period when, so we are in the early 1830s, 1840s or so. Time during which Feuerbach deals with some very popular books at the time on the history of philosophy. He writes about Spinoza, he writes about Leibniz, he writes about Pierre Bayle and so on. I think he is French, so I think it is pronounced Bayle. B A Y L E. Look it up on Google. Well, before we get to "The Essence of Christianity," I just want to mention the work "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy," because it is, I believe, typical of this voice, the philosophical attitude of all post-Hegelians, namely a constant denunciation of obscurantism. I think some books have come to me. A constant denunciation of obscurantism and mysticism and vague concepts and vague writing and this kind of philosophy that is somehow ineffable, that is hard to grasp. Feuerbach writes quite militantly and quite loudly, but he writes very clearly. "The Essence of Christianity" is a book you can read without any preparation. He explains his ideas. It is a paradigm shift, well, at a conceptual and philosophical level, but it is also a paradigm shift at the level of writing voice, narrative. The moment Feuerbach wants to say the cat is on the mat, he picks up his pen and writes the cat is on the mat. He doesn't start with 700,000 digressions and parallels and tangents. This is very important because we will see in this kind of writing a kind of ancestor of analytical philosophy. Analytical philosophy via John Stuart Mill, and it criticized Hegel, and it rejected this kind of mystical writing. But we see this first in the post-Hegelians, let's say 40 years ago. So let's move on to the little book we want to talk about, namely "The Essence of Christianity." "The Essence of Christianity" is a terribly long book, clearly written, well-written, but terribly long, which I don't think you need to read page by page. Why? Because he basically takes certain themes from Christianity and discusses them in a materialistic and anthropological vein, and then takes certain ideas from theology and, let's say, demonstrates their contradictory nature. And so, from the first part, if you have read "God as the Essence of Intellect," "God as Moral Essence," and "The Mystery of the Suffering God," you have pretty much got it. Then you can move on to "The Mystery of the Logos," "The Mystery of the Principle." That is, he explains all these in an anthropological vein, but it's pretty much the same explanation every time. The same. In the second part, he talks about the theology behind religion. We have already talked about this when we discussed Blaga. And he says: "Contradiction in the existence of God, contradiction in the revelation of God." Okay, you've read three, but the fourth, the fifth are already the same. So, I recommend first an exact reading of a few chapters from each part, after which it can be skimmed because it is more of the same, as they say in Arabic. Feuerbach's main thesis is that God is a projection of man. God is an instrument, a narrative instrument, if you will, a narrative instrument, but of course, it is a projection of ourselves outward, because we have nothing else to project outward except what we feel our being to be, and we will discuss some feelings. This is the main thesis. I would like to give you two key moments where this idea is formulated. But if someone asks you at a party, "Hey, what's up with Feuerbach?" you can calmly tell them. Feuerbach's main idea is that God is a projection of our qualities, a projection of the ideal of man. God is a fiction, therefore, about an ideal man. Let's see. Well, things are a bit more subtle, but that's the essence, the main idea. Let's look at a quote. I have two quotes that I hope capture this idea. Man's knowledge of God is man's knowledge of himself, of his own being. So, we alienate, we objectify what we know subjectively, namely our own reality, material reality, moral reality, and so on. We will go into details immediately. God is therefore the projection outside of us, the alienation from ourselves, of our absolute being, of what we perceive as our essence, of our own nature. The second quote, look, I didn't note the page number for the first one, it was from page 295. For this second one, I didn't note the page number. You can search with Ctrl+F. Religion, at least Christianity, is man's attitude towards himself, or more precisely towards his being, but an attitude towards his being as towards another being. That's why I say, he extracts it. My being, as it were, and I relate to it as if it were another divinized being. The divine being is nothing else than the human being, or rather, the being of man separated from the limitations of the individual man, i.e., real, corporal, objectified, i.e., intuited and venerated as another own being distinct from him. All the determinations of the divine being are therefore determinations of the human being. This is the basic idea that, again, Feuerbach then takes and applies. Yes, I will also give an example, I will give the example of prayer immediately. He takes it and applies it to different aspects of Christian dogma. And we then have a kind of division of religion into two. Or rather, of the history of religion, I meant, into two. We have the old religions in which nature is anthropomorphized. So Jupiter is the god of thunder and so on. Poseidon is the god of the sea and so on. And we have the newer, monotheistic religions, in which man's qualities are, as I said, projected outward and anthropomorphized into this something that is the fiction of the idea of God. For Feuerbach, however, he makes this division to show that our feeling towards nature, our feelings towards nature are at the origin of both old and new religions, and of Christianity. Ultimately, the original feeling, sorry, the original feeling of religious faith is a feeling towards nature. And this feeling is a kind of dynamic, it is a double one. And this feeling, I want to give you another quote, is a combination of fear. Nature inspires fear in us, just as God will later inspire fear in us, but nature also inspires gratitude, contentment, just as nature inspires contentment in us. Quote: "Fear is the feeling of death, joy is the feeling of life. Fear is the feeling of dependence. Sorry, I opened the window. Two seconds. Fear, where was I? Fear is the feeling of death, joy is the feeling of life. Fear is the feeling of dependence on an object towards which I am nothing or which has the power to destroy me. Joy, love, gratitude is the feeling of dependence on an object through which I am something. An object that gives me the feeling, the consciousness that I live through it, that I exist. Because I live and endure through nature or God, therefore I love it. Because through nature I suffer and perish, therefore I fear it and am afraid of it. This seems to me an observation absolutely worthy of consideration. The feelings we have towards God are, alas, what a coincidence, the same as the feelings we have towards nature, towards light, towards air, towards water, and so on. And then, when we say something about God, believe in God, or God is like this and that, we must be careful how well we could say exactly the same thing about nature. This is, attention, attention. This does not mean that God is nature. No, that is Feuerbach's conclusion. That is, it does not mean that God is everywhere, is in the leaves and in the chirping of birds and so on. No. What Forbach wants to say is that if we want to explain the birth of religion in a naturalistic, materialistic way and so on, we don't have to look very far. We just need to look at these two feelings that appear, by the way, in all religions. Yes, these two feelings of gratitude on the one hand, and fear on the other, towards a daddy up there in heaven who protects us, but also punishes us. We find this in all religions. And if we opened the parenthesis, it is interesting that this double feeling is found again in all religions at the level of a polytheism from which we actually cannot escape. And he says: "But wait, Christianity is monotheistic." But it is monotheistic because in God's work there is always the serpent, there is the devil. which devil is a kind of, or there is the version of an angry God who makes decisions like that, Sodom and Gomorrah, plague everywhere. Yes, this splitting of God is the way, says Feuerbach, the way polytheism survives in a monotheistic religion like Christianity. The fact that the devil has power, the fact that the devil can lead you to sin, the fact that the devil could fool Eve with the apple and so on, is proof that, in fact, since the feeling of religion is double, religion must be polytheistic. Human religions must be polytheistic in this sense because the original feeling, the original R with R from which they start, is not one and stable. It is double and in constant struggle, in constant movement, in constant dynamics. The feeling of being loved and the feeling that, at a certain point, you can be punished. Other interesting observations, since we are on the topic of the history of religion, although I would say this is more of an observation on the rhetoric of religion, namely, to hide this feeling, i.e., to hide the true origin of religion, all religions, without any exception, all religions, I quote, categorize their sisters as idolatrous. So, to hide your belonging to the same cultural movement in which this double feeling gives rise to a religion, you categorize the others as stupid, old, idolatrous, wrong. Only your religion is the good one. There are 500 religions in the world. Only Christianity is good. And according to, I don't know, the Jews, there are 500 religions in the world. The Jews are the chosen people and so on. It seems like an interesting observation. Good. Let's give an example. Does it make sense to give an example? Good. Let me tell you something about one of these chapters where he explains. I liked it, I found the chapter on prayer interesting, the idea that we are in the middle of the analysis, practically we are in chapter 13. First, prayer is an act of selfishness, says Feuerbach, because it is the claim that God, who is this multi-billionaire of the universe, yes, this Elon Musk of the universe's determinations, God has time for me and attention for me. Not only does he have time and attention, but I can also change him through short, small, and very indirect acts. In other words, God is everywhere and has a plan. Okay? But the power of my prayer, the power of my heart, ultimately my subjectivity can influence the world. That is, the plan was made for you not to pass your baccalaureate. Yes. By many from the beginning of the Big Bang, from the beginning of the universe. Yes, the plan was made for you not to pass your baccalaureate. You are a believer and you pray, and maybe you will pass. This is an act of selfishness and comes from that fear. It comes from the fear that you are nothing, that nature is a kind of immense machine that can crush you, it comes from that fear and it comes to create a kind of dopamine, a kind of happiness that maybe you will influence this process. Here is a quote. Prayer is the unconditional hope of the human soul in the absolute identity of the subject, of the subjective and the objective. That is, the objective, what happens in reality, reality, the laws of nature and so on, is nothing else than what happens in my soul, my subjectivity, my consciousness. It is the certainty that the power of the heart, that is, what I really, really, really want, the power of the heart is greater than the power of nature, that the needs of the heart are the supreme necessity, that they are the destiny of the world. Prayer changes the course of nature, as we were talking about. It determines God to produce an effect that is in contradiction with the laws of nature. That is, if the plan was made, it means to change it. It is a change of nature. Prayer is the attitude of the human heart towards itself, towards its own being. In prayer, man forgets that there is a limit to his desires and is happy in this forgetfulness. Well, and this expression, happy in this forgetfulness, has stayed with me and I would like to conclude with it. Okay, let's summarize. Feuerbach attempts an anthropological analysis of Christianity and asks what historical conditions, what psychological conditions, what conditions of social organization, anthropology, and so on lead to the success of Christianity among many other religions that were flying left and right at the time and end up creating what we know today as Christian dogmas. And he answers this question, and you can agree, you can disagree, and so on. But it is extraordinarily relevant that in order to take part in this cultural movement, in this event, in this cultural phenomenon called religion, you must be happy in forgetfulness, as they say, meaning as he says, meaning you must have a kind of putting aside, a kind of denial of the social, historical, anthropological conditions that led to the emergence of Christianity, not to the emergence of religion. He will later write a book about religion in general, "The Essence of Religion," finally, which led to the emergence, the emergence of Christianity. So, practically, to be a believer, to be a believer, you must forget the origin and history of the cultural phenomenon you are participating in, for a bit of happiness, for that little moment when you believe, I remember the lady who told me in an interview that she is God's messenger, for that little moment when you believe you have a certain contact. Because, as I said in the quote earlier, the subjective and the objective may be identical, that the world is yours. This little moment of happiness is, in my opinion, happiness in forgetfulness, yes, it is, in my opinion, very interesting because we know that happiness causes dependence. Yes, dopamine causes dependence. It can be a good dependence, I'm not saying. It can be a good dependence. You can be dependent on a very healthy routine. You can be dependent on going to the gym, well, not on steroids and so on, but there are good habits and dependencies, but there are also addictions. And then I think the question, especially after reading, unfortunately this passage is quite late, but especially after reading the chapter on prayer, you wonder, aren't people who are terribly devout somehow dependent? Aren't they somehow dependent on that universal, cosmic dopamine that participation in religion gives you? And if they are, I'm not saying they are, think for yourself, but if they are dependent, is it okay to teach religion in schools? Why don't we teach chess or another cultural phenomenon that can create, although, honestly, there were moments when I got incredibly angry at chess, something indescribable, but you can also get angry at God. You stumble and fall. So if everything is just, in the end, just a cultural phenomenon, a game, in the end, to refer to the other Ludwig, a game that can create dependence, yes, you can be dependent on lemon water, it can be a wonderful dependence, but you can be dependent on those lemons at the slot machines, and then I think all of this raises a question about the role of religion as a discipline, the role of religion as a form of education. That is, yes, when you are 25 years old and someone comes and says, "Hey, come with me to church," that's one thing, but when a five-year-old child starts to experience the dopamine of prayer, aren't we creating a kind of addiction from which he can no longer escape? Maybe yes, maybe no. I'll leave you to think about it.