MODERN SYSTEM-BUILDERS

From Classics in the Philosophy of Religion, by James Fieser

© 2026, updated 6/1/2026, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

 

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CONTENTS

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Reality as the Emerging Absolute Spirit (from Encyclopedia and Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion)

• Ludwig Feuerbach: God as a Human Projection (from The Essence of Christianity)

• Arthur Schopenhauer: Religious Belief as a Harmful Metaphysical Allegory (from The World as Will, and "Religion: A Dialogue")

• Søren Kierkegaard: Religious Belief as a Leap of Faith (from Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Philosophical Fragments)

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By the early nineteenth century, the philosophy of religion had passed through a major transformation. Enlightenment religious critics, particularly Hume, had shaken confidence in the traditional proofs of God's existence. Kant agreed with Hume that we cannot know God as an object of theoretical knowledge, since God belongs to the noumenal realm which is beyond the limits of human cognition. But he argued that our moral consciousness requires us to postulate God. Thus, for Kant, religion is necessary for morality, yet metaphysically unknowable. This being so, any meaningful discussion of religion must come from a different vantage. We must look instead at how religious ideas arise, what they express, and how they guide human life. The thinkers in this chapter take up that task as system-builders. That is, the are philosophers who construct comprehensive, grand-scale frameworks to explain all of human experience, history, and culture within a single unified vision. Hegel treats religion as a symbolic expression of our attempt to understand ourselves and our world. Feuerbach argues that religious concepts reflect human ideals projected outward. Schopenhauer sees religious teachings as responses to the pervasive suffering of life. Kierkegaard focuses on the individual's inward struggle to live with commitment and passion. What unites them is a shift in purpose. They are not trying to prove God's existence or defend traditional doctrines. Instead, they explore what religious life reveals about human aspirations, limitations, and needs. Religion becomes a way of understanding ourselves, not a set of metaphysical claims to be demonstrated.

 

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GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL:

REALITY AS THE EMERGING ABSOLUTE SPIRIT

 

 

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was born in Stuttgart, in what is now Germany, to a civil‑service family. Hewas educated at the Tübinger Stift, where he studied theology and developed an early interest in classical culture and the emerging trend of post‑Kantian philosophy. After several years as a private tutor in Bern and Frankfurt, he began teaching at the University of Jena. Following the disruptions of the Napoleonic wars, he held positions at several universities, then in 1818 settled at the University of Berlin, where he produced the major works of his mature system. During his time there he became one of the most influential academic figures of his generation. He died in Berlin in 1831 during a cholera outbreak at the age of 61.

          Imagine a science fiction alternate universe that comes into being without any physical matter at all. The only thing existing is a single, vast entity composed of a metaphysical, spirit-like substance, holding infinite potential but completely lacking self-knowledge. It exists in a state of primal unconsciousness, as though it has just awakened with no memory of what it is. Nevertheless, this entity possesses an innate, unconscious urge to learn its own identity and the power to transform itself to achieve it. Because nothing exists outside this entity, it cannot look into a mirror or examine an external object to understand its own nature. To gain self-awareness, it must use its internal drive to project itself outward into concrete form, transforming its hidden potential into physical matter, such as stars, planets, oceans, and living organisms. Yet because a rock or a plant cannot think, the entity remains asleep within them. To truly know itself, it must evolve creatures endowed with mind and reason: human beings. As humans build civilizations, create art, construct religions, and contemplate philosophy, the cosmic mind is actually using human thought to piece together its own identity. Human history becomes the step-by-step diary of this entity waking up to full self-awareness.

          According to Hegel, this hypothetical scenario is not science fiction: it is the true story of our own universe. His entire philosophy is a religious one that reshapes the idea of God in two major ways. First, Hegel's God is not a separate, supernatural creator standing outside the world. Instead, God is identical with the whole of reality, including nature, history, and human life. Every part of the cosmos, from a rock to a person, is an expression of the divine. This is why Hegel is often described as a pantheist, though he prefers to say that the world is the self‑unfolding of Spirit. Second, Hegel believes that God develops over time. The divine begins as something unconscious and only gradually becomes self‑aware. This growth happens within human history. As cultures advance in art, religion, and philosophy, Spirit becomes clearer to itself. Humanity's intellectual progress is therefore God's own progress toward full self‑knowledge. This development follows a dialectical pattern. Ideas and forms of life move through conflict: a position is challenged by its opposite, and the tension between them produces a higher unity. He often presents this pattern as one of thesis–antithesis–synthesis, that is, contradiction, negation, and reconciliation. His famous example compares the stages of a plant: the bud gives way to the blossom, the blossom to the fruit, where each stage replaces the previous one while preserving its essential content. In this view, God is not a distant being, but instead the living, developing structure of the world itself, as revealed in nature, embodied in human history, and finally understood in philosophy. His system is called "absolute Idealism": everything that exists is a manifestation of Spirit coming to know itself through its developing ideas. The selections below are from his Encyclopedia (1817) and his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.

          In the first set of selections, Hegel describes three stages of Spirit that begin with (1) subjective Spirit, the individual mind as it develops through soul, consciousness, and psychology; this moves to (2) objective Spirit, the shared life of communities expressed in law, morality, and social ethics; and culminate in (3) absolute Spirit, the highest sphere in which art, religion, and philosophy express spirit's full self‑understanding. For Hegel, these are not three separate compartments, but instead three stages the spirit must pass through in order to realize its freedom. Spirit first encounters a world already given, then shapes a world of its own making, and finally gains freedom both from and within that world. In the final stage of this developmental process, absolute spirit becomes fully conscious. More specifically, it is human creative and intellectual life that reveals the infinite mind of the cosmos.

          In the second set of selections, Hegel examines five components of the modern relation between religion and secular life. He first describes the ordinary conception of religion as the place where people withdraw from daily pressures. They orient themselves toward what they take to be the ultimate center of existence, the sphere in which life's contradictions seem resolved. He second explains that this religious sphere gradually separates from everyday life, producing two regions of consciousness. One is tied to work, needs, and social roles, and the other is tied to devotion and the infinite. He third shows how modernity intensifies this split: secular knowledge takes possession of all determinate content, while religion retreats into vague feeling, leaving each side distrustful of the other. He fourth argues that this hardened opposition makes the sacred and secular appear as enemies, which reveals the need for a reconciliation in which the finite and infinite are understood not as rival realms but as belonging to a single rational order. He fifth presents this reconciliation as taking concrete form in moral and political life—especially in the rational state—where freedom becomes actual and the divine will is embodied in law, ethical institutions, and communal life. This culminates in a philosophical standpoint that unifies naïve faith, Enlightenment critique, and conceptual understanding, showing how religion and reason ultimately belong together.

 

THREE STAGES OF SPIRIT: SUBJECTIVE, OBJECTIVE, ABSOLUTE (Encyclopedia, 1817, "Spirit")

385. The development of Spirit is in three stages:

1. In the form of self-relation: within it, it has the ideal totality of the Idea, i.e., it has before it all that its notion contains: its being is to be self-contained and free. This is Spirit Subjective [i.e., the minds of individual people].

2. In the form of reality: realized, i.e. in a world produced and to be produced by it: in this world freedom presents itself under the shape of necessity. This is Spirit Objective [i.e., the group minds of particular communities].

3. In that unity of spirit as objectivity and, of spirit as ideality and concept, which essentially and actually is and forever produces itself, spirit in its absolute truth. This is Spirit Absolute [i.e., the infinite mind of the cosmos].

386. The first two parts of the doctrine of Spirit embrace the finite spirit. Spirit is the infinite Idea; thus finitude here means the disproportion between the concept and the reality—but with the qualification that it is a shadow cast by the spirit's own light—a show or illusion which the spirit implicitly imposes as a barrier to itself, in order, by its removal, actually to realize and become conscious of freedom as its very being, i.e. to be fully manifested. The several steps of this activity, on each of which, with their appearance of being, it is the function of the finite spirit to linger, and through which it has to pass, are steps in its liberation. In the full truth of that liberation is given the identification of the three stages: [1] finding a world presupposed before us, [2] generating a world as our own creation, and [3] gaining freedom from it and in it. To the infinite form of this truth the show purifies itself till it becomes a consciousness of it.

Subjective (Individual) Spirit: Develops through Anthropology, Phenomenology, Psychology

387. Spirit, on the ideal stage of its development, is spirit as cognitive: Cognition, however, being taken here not as a merely logical category of the Idea (§ 223), but in the sense appropriate to the concrete spirit. Subjective spirit is:

a. Immediate or implicit: a soul (the Spirit in Nature)—the object treated by Anthropology.

b. Mediate or explicit: still as identical reflection into itself and into other things: spirit in correlation or particularization: consciousness—the object treated by the Phenomenology of Spirit.

c. Spirit defining itself in itself, as an independent subject—the object treated by Psychology.

In the Soul is the awaking of Consciousness: Consciousness sets itself up as Reason, awaking at one bound to the sense of its rationality: and this Reason by its activity emancipates itself to objectivity and the consciousness of its intelligent unity.

          For an intelligible unity or principle of comprehension, each modification it presents is an advance of development: thus, in spirit, every character under which it appears, is a stage in a process of specification and development, a step forward towards its goal, in order to make itself into, and to realize in itself, what it implicitly is. Each step, again, is itself such a process, and its product is that what the spirit was implicitly at the beginning (and so for the observer) it is for itself—for the special form, viz. which the spirit has in that step. The ordinary method of psychology is to narrate what the spirit or soul is, what happens to it, what it does. The soul is presupposed as a ready-made agent, which displays such features as its acts and utterances, from which we can learn what it is, what sort of faculties and powers it possesses—all without being aware that the act and utterance of what the soul is really invests it with that character in our conception and makes it reach a higher stage of being than it explicitly had before.

          We must, however, distinguish and keep apart from the progress here studied what we call education and instruction. The sphere of education is the individual's only: and its aim is to bring the universal spirit to exist in them. But in the philosophic theory of spirit, spirit is studied as self-instruction and self-education in very essence; and its acts and utterances are stages in the process which brings it forward to itself, links it in unity with itself, and so makes it actual spirit. . . .

Objective (Community) Spirit: Develops through Laws, Morality, Social Ethics

483. The objective Spirit is the absolute Idea, but only existing in potential (in posse): and as it is thus on the territory of finitude, its actual rationality retains the aspect of external appearance. The free will finds itself immediately confronted by differences which arise from the circumstance that freedom is its inward function and aim, and is in relation to an external and already subsisting objectivity, which splits up into different heads: that is, anthropological data (i.e., private and personal needs), external things of nature which exist for consciousness, and the ties of relation between individual wills which are conscious of their own diversity and particularity. These aspects constitute the external material for the embodiment of the will.

The Context for Freedom is Created by Imposing Limitations

          484. But the purposive action of this will is to realize its concept, Liberty, in these externally-objective aspects, making the latter a world molded by the former, which in it is thus at home with itself, locked together with it: the concept accordingly perfected to the Idea. Liberty, shaped into the actuality of a world, receives the form of Necessity, the deeper substantial nexus [i.e., causal web] of which is the system or organization of the principles of liberty, while its phenomenal nexus is power or authority, and the sentiment of obedience awakened in consciousness.

          485. This unity of the rational will with the single will (this being the unique and immediate medium in which the former is actualized) constitutes the simple actuality of liberty. As it (and its content) belongs to thought, and is the virtual universal, the content has its right and true character only in the form of universality. When invested with this character for the intelligent consciousness, or instituted as an authoritative power, it is a Law. When, on the other hand, the content is freed from the mixedness and fortuitousness, attaching to it in the practical feeling and in impulse, and is set and grafted in the individual will, not in the form of impulse, but in its universality, so as to become its habit, temper and character, it exists as manner and custom, or Usage.

          486. This "reality," in general, where free will has existence, is the Law (Right), the term being taken in a comprehensive sense not merely as the limited juristic law, but as the actual body of all the conditions of freedom. These conditions, in relation to the subjective will, where they, being universal, ought to have and can only have their existence, are its Duties; whereas as its temper and habit they are Manners. What is a right is also a duty, and what is a duty, is also a right. For a mode of existence is a right, only as a consequence of the free substantial will: and the same content of fact, when referred to the will distinguished as subjective and individual, is a duty. It is the same content which the subjective consciousness recognizes as a duty, and brings into existence in these several wills. The finitude of the objective will thus creates the appearance of a distinction between rights and duties. . . .

          487. The free will is

a. itself at first immediate, and hence as a single being—the person: the existence which the person gives to its liberty is property. The Right as right (law) is formal, abstract right.

b. When the will is reflected into self, so as to have its existence inside it, and to be thus at the same time characterized as a particular, it is the right of the subjective will, morality of the individual conscience.

c. When the free will is the substantial will, made actual in the subject and conformable to its concept and rendered a totality of necessity,—it is the ethics of actual life in family, civil society, and state.

          488. Spirit, in the immediacy of its self-secured liberty, is an individual, but one that knows its individuality as an absolutely free will. It is a person, in whom the inward sense of this freedom, as in itself still abstract and empty, has its particularity and fulfilment not yet on its own part, but on an external thing. This thing, as something devoid of will, has no rights against the subjectivity of intelligence and volition, and is by that subjectivity made adjectival to it, the external sphere of its liberty: possession. . . .

Absolute (Infinite) Spirit: Develops through Art, Religion and Philosophy

553. The notion of spirit has its reality in the spirit. If this reality in identity with that notion is to exist as the consciousness of the absolute Idea, then the necessary aspect is that the implicitly free intelligence be in its actuality liberated to its notion, if that actuality is to be a vehicle worthy of it. The subjective and the objective spirit are to be looked on as the road on which this aspect of reality or existence rises to maturity.

          554. The absolute spirit, while it is self-centered identity, is always also identity returning and ever returned into itself. If it is the one and universal substance it is so as a spirit, discerning itself into a self and a consciousness, for which it is as substance. Religion, as this supreme sphere may be in general designated, if it has on one hand to be studied as issuing from the subject and having its home in the subject, must no less be regarded as objectively issuing from the absolute spirit which as spirit is in its community. . . .

          556. As this consciousness of the Absolute first takes shape, its immediacy produces the factor of finitude in Art. On one hand that is, it breaks up into a work of external common existence, into the subject which produces that work, and the subject which contemplates and worships it. But, on the other hand, it is the concrete contemplation and mental picture of implicitly absolute spirit as the Ideal. In this ideal, or the concrete shape born of the subjective spirit, its natural immediacy, which is only a sign of the Idea, is so transfigured by the informing spirit in order to express the Idea, that the figure shows it and it alone: the shape or form of Beauty. . . .

          564. It lies essentially in the notion of religion (the religion i.e., whose content is absolute spirit) that it be revealed, and, what is more, revealed by God. Knowledge (the principle by which the substance is spirit) is a self-determining principle, as infinite self-realizing form; it therefore is manifestation out and out. The spirit is only spirit in so far as it is for the spirit, and in the absolute religion it is the absolute spirit which manifests no longer abstract elements of its being but itself. . . .

          572. This [philosophical] science is the unity of Art and Religion. Whereas the vision-method of Art, external in point of form, is but subjective production and shivers the substantial content into many separate shapes, and whereas Religion, with its separation into parts, opens it out in mental picture, and mediates what is thus opened out. Philosophy not merely keeps them together to make a total, but even unifies them into the simple spiritual vision, and then in that raises them to self-conscious thought. Such consciousness is thus the intelligible unity (cognized by thought) of art and religion, in which the diverse elements in the content are cognized as necessary, and this necessary as free.

RELIGION: RECONCILING THE SACRED AND SECULAR THROUGH PHILOSOPHY (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 1832)

Ordinary Conception of Religion: The Center of Existence, Solves all Problems (Introduction)

To begin with, it is necessary to remember generally what object we have before us in the Philosophy of Religion, and what is our ordinary idea of religion. We know that in religion we withdraw ourselves from what is temporal, and that religion is for our consciousness that region in which all the enigmas of the world are solved, all the contradictions of deeper-reaching thought have their meaning unveiled, and where the voice of the heart's pain is silenced—the region of eternal truth, of eternal rest, of eternal peace. Speaking generally, it is through thought, concrete thought, or, to put it more definitely, it is by reason of his being Spirit, that man is man; and from man as Spirit proceed all the many developments of the sciences and arts, the interests of political life, and all those conditions which have reference to man's freedom and will. But all these manifold forms of human relations, activities, and pleasures, and all the ways in which these are intertwined; all that has worth and dignity for man, all wherein he seeks his happiness, his glory, and his pride, finds its ultimate center in religion, in the thought, the consciousness, and the feeling of God. Thus, God is the beginning of all things, and the end of all things. As all things proceed from this point, so all return back to it again. He is the center which gives life and quickening to all things, and which animates and preserves in existence all the various forms of being. In religion man places himself in a relation to this center, in which all other relations concentrate themselves, and in so doing he rises up to the highest level of consciousness and to the region which is free from relation to what is other than itself, to something which is absolutely self-sufficient, the unconditioned, what is free, and is its own object and end. . . . Such is the general perception, sensation, consciousness, or however we may designate it, of religion. To consider, to examine, and to comprehend its nature is the object of the present lectures. . . .

Conflict between the Sacred and Secular (Introduction, A. 1.a)

In the relation in which religion, even in its immediacy, stands to the other forms of the consciousness of man, there already lie germs of division, since both sides are conceived of as in a condition of separation relatively to each other. In their simple relation they already constitute two kinds of pursuits, two different regions of consciousness, and we pass to and fro from the one to the other alternately only. Thus man has in his actual worldly life a number of working days during which he occupies himself with his own special interests, with worldly aims in general, and with the satisfaction of his needs; and then he has a Sunday, when he lays all this aside, collects his thoughts, and, released from absorption in finite occupations, lives to himself and to the higher nature which is in him, to his true essential being. But into this separateness of the two sides there directly enters a double modification. . . .

The Secular takes Possession of Knowledge, the Sacred Reduces to Simple Feeling (Introduction, A.1.b)

Thus both sides have developed themselves completely in their opposition. On the side of religion the heart is filled with what is Divine, but without freedom, or self-consciousness, and without consistency in regard to what is determinate, this latter having, on the contrary, the form of contingency. Consistent connection of what is determinate belongs to the side of knowledge, which is at home in the finite, and moves freely in the thought-determinations of the manifold connections of things, but can only create a system which is without absolute substantiality—without God. The religious side gets the absolute material and purpose, but only as something abstractly positive. Knowledge has taken possession of all finite material and drawn it into its territory, all determinate content has fallen to its share; but although it gives it a necessary connection, it is still unable to give it the absolute connection. Since finally science has taken possession of knowledge, and is the consciousness of the necessity of the finite, religion has become devoid of knowledge, and has shriveled up into simple feeling, into the contentless or empty elevation of the spiritual to the Eternal. It can, however, affirm nothing regarding the Eternal, for all that could be regarded as knowledge would be a drawing down of the Eternal into the sphere of the finite, and of finite connections of things.

          Now when two aspects of thought, which are so developed in this way, enter into relation with one another, their attitude is one of mutual distrust. Religious feeling distrusts the finiteness which lies in knowledge, and it brings against science the charge of futility, because in it the subject clings to itself, is in itself, and the "I" as the knowing subject is independent in relation to all that is external. On the other hand, knowledge has a distrust of the totality in which feeling entrenches itself, and in which it confounds together all extension and development. It is afraid to lose its freedom should it comply with the demand of feeling, and unconditionally recognize a truth which it does not definitely understand. When religious feeling comes out of its universality, sets ends before itself, and passes over to the determinate, knowledge can see nothing but arbitrariness in this, and if it were to pass in a similar way to anything definite, would feel itself given over to mere contingency. When, accordingly, reflection is fully developed, and has to pass over into the domain of religion, it is unable to hold out in that region, and becomes impatient with regard to all that uniquely belongs to it.

Sacred and Secular see each other as Enemies (Introduction, A.1.c)

Now that the opposition has arrived at this stage of development, where the one side, whenever it is approached by the other, invariably thrusts it away from it as an enemy, the necessity for an adjustment comes in, of such a kind that the infinite shall appear in the finite, and the finite in the infinite, and each no longer form a separate realm. This would be the reconciliation of religious, genuine simple feeling, with knowledge and intelligence. This reconciliation must correspond with the highest demands of knowledge, and of the Notion, for these can surrender nothing of their dignity. But just as little can anything of the absolute content be given up, and that content be brought down into the region of finiteness; and when face to face with it knowledge must give up its finite form. . . .

          So far we have considered the progressive growth of the antitheses only in the form in which they have not yet developed into actual philosophy, or in which they still stand outside of it. . . .

Reconciliation between the Sacred and Secular through Morality (Part 3.C.3.c)

[T]his contradiction cancels itself in Morality, that the principle of freedom has forced its way into secular life; and since secular life so constructed is itself in conformity with the Notion, reason, truth, eternal truth, it is a freedom which has become concrete, the rational will.

          It is in the organization of the State that the Divine has passed into the sphere of reality; the latter is penetrated by the former, and the existence of the secular element is justified in-and-for-itself [i.e., known to itself], for its basis is the Divine Will, the law of right and freedom. The true reconciliation whereby the Divine realizes itself in the region of reality is found in moral and legal life in the State; this is the true disciplining of the secular life.

          The institutions of morality are divine, are holy, not in the sense in which what is holy is opposed to what is moral, as when it is held that celibacy represents what is holy as opposed to family life, or voluntary poverty as opposed to active acquisition by one's own efforts, to what is lawful. In the same way blind obedience passes for being something holy; while, on the contrary, what makes morality is obedience in freedom, free, rational will, the obedience of the subject in respect of what is moral. In morality the reconciliation of religion with reality, with the secular life, is an actual and accomplished fact.

Three Stages of Religious Development: Naive Religion, Secular Enlightenment, Philosophy

But, in so far as thought begins to place itself in opposition to the concrete, the process of thought then consists in carrying through this opposition until it reaches reconciliation. This reconciliation is philosophy; so far philosophy is theology, it sets forth the reconciliation of God with Himself and with Nature, and shows that Nature, Other-Being is divine, that it partly belongs to the very nature of finite Spirit to rise into the state of reconciliation, and that it partly reaches this state of reconciliation in the history of the world.

          This religious knowledge thus reached through the Notion is not universal in its nature, and it is further only knowledge in the Spiritual Community, and thus we get in reference to the Kingdom of God three stages or positions: the first position is that of immediate naive religion and faith; the second, the position of the Understanding, of the so-called cultured, of reflection and Enlightenment; and finally, the third position, the stage of philosophy. . . .

          For us philosophical knowledge has harmonized this discord, and the aim of these lectures has just been to reconcile reason and religion, to show how we know this latter to be in all its manifold forms necessary, and to rediscover in revealed religion the truth and the Idea.

          But this reconciliation is itself merely a partial one without outward universality. Philosophy forms in this connection a sanctuary apart, and those who serve in it constitute an isolated order of priests, who must not mix with the world, and whose work is to protect the possessions of Truth. How the actual present-day world is to find its way out of this state of disruption, and what form it is to take, are questions which must be left to itself to settle, and to deal with them is not the immediate practical business and concern of philosophy.

Source: G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia. (1817/1827/1830), translated by William Wallace, adapted; Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. (delivered 1821–1831), translated by E.B. Speirs and J. Burdon Sanderson, adapted.

 

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LUDWIG FEUERBACH:

GOD AS A HUMAN PROJECTION

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) was born in the Bavarian town of Landshut, the fourth of seven children in a distinguished intellectual family, his father a noted jurist and his older brother a prominent scientist. He studied theology at Heidelberg but soon abandoned the ministry for philosophy, moving to Berlin in 1824 to study under Hegel. Although initially drawn to Hegelian idealism, he gradually broke with the system and became associated with the Young Hegelians, a circle of radical thinkers critical of traditional religion and the Prussian state. His early writings attracted controversy and cost him academic prospects, forcing him into a largely independent life of scholarship supported by modest family resources. In 1841 he published The Essence of Christianity, the book that made him famous and in which he argued that religious belief is a projection of human nature, a thesis that influenced later thinkers such as Marx and Freud. During the revolutionary period of 1848 he lectured briefly in Heidelberg, but political reaction soon ended these opportunities, and he spent his remaining years in relative obscurity in the village of Rechenberg near Nuremberg. He died in 1872 at the age of 68. The selections below are from the introduction to his Essence of Christianity. In this he lays out his famous projection theory, that God is that God is simply human nature stripped of its limits, projected outward, and worshipped as a separate divine being.

          There are five key discussions. Feuerbach first argues that religion begins when human beings encounter their own essence as if it were something outside them. The religious object of God is not a distant supernatural being but the human essence projected outward and then misrecognized as "another." Because the religious object is inward, intimate, and tied to conscience, the believer experiences God as closer than any physical thing. Religion is therefore the earliest, indirect form of self‑consciousness: before people understand themselves directly, they imagine their own nature in the form of a divine being. What a person calls "God" reveals what that person values most deeply, namely, love, wisdom, goodness, or dignity. Thus, the consciousness of God is the self‑consciousness of the human species in a disguised form.

          Second, theology often claims that God has a hidden "true nature" beyond human concepts. Feuerbach rejects this distinction. We only know God through the predicates we attribute to him: wise, just, merciful. But these predicates arise from human nature. To say that God is "different in himself" adds nothing, because we have no access to such a being. Religion treats its predicates not as metaphors but as realities; it insists that God truly is Father, Lawgiver, Holy One. If these predicates come from human nature, then the supposed divine "subject" behind them is also human in origin. The idea of a God "in himself" is therefore an empty abstraction, while the God "for us" is the only meaningful one, and that God is a projection of human essence.

          Third, Feuerbach's analytic move is to reverse the usual order of subject and predicate. We normally think a being exists first and then has qualities. Feuerbach argues the opposite: the qualities come first, and the "being" is only their imagined bearer. People believe God exists because they believe the predicates of love, wisdom, and goodness are real and necessary. The certainty of God's existence depends entirely on the certainty of these qualities. A pagan was sure Jupiter existed because Jupiter's traits matched what that culture already regarded as divine. Thus, divine existence is not an independent fact, but the projection of human qualities treated as absolute. Remove the predicates, and the divine subject disappears; the subject is nothing more than the personified predicate.

          Fourth, Feuerbach turns to history to show that cultures make gods in the image of their own ideals. Greek temples reflect the Greek love of beauty. Their gods embody dignity, calm, and proportion because those were the highest Greek virtues. Homer's gods feast and fight because physical pleasure and strength were honored. The ancient Germans worshipped Odin because they saw warlike courage as the supreme excellence. In every case, the divine attribute is simply a human value elevated to sacred status. What theology calls "God" is not a supernatural essence but the deification of qualities a culture already admires. The gods change as human ideals change, revealing that the divine is rooted in human self‑interpretation.

          Fifth, Feuerbach concludes that the heart of religion lies in its personal predicates, such as Father, Lawgiver, Holy, Just, Merciful. These are not abstract metaphysical terms but instead emotionally charged qualities. They express how humans want to be related to, such as being protected, guided, forgiven, loved. Religion treats these predicates as literal truths, not symbolic images. For the believer, God is a real person with real feelings, including righteous anger. These traits are unmistakably human, and their emotional force shows that religion is grounded in human feeling. When people relate to God, they are relating to their own emotional nature projected outward and experienced as a living presence. The personal God is therefore the clearest expression of humanity encountering itself in divine form.

RELIGION AS SELF‑CONSCIOUSNESS

In our relation to sensible objects, consciousness of the object is clearly distinguishable from self‑consciousness; but with the religious object, consciousness and self‑consciousness coincide directly. A sensible object exists outside the human being; the religious object exists within him, an inward object—and therefore one that never leaves him any more than his self‑consciousness or his conscience leaves him—an intimate object, indeed the most intimate, the closest of all objects. "God," says Augustine, for example, "is nearer to us, more closely related to us, and therefore more easily known by us than sensible, corporeal things." The sensible object is in itself indifferent, independent of one's disposition or judgment; but the object of religion is a chosen object: the most excellent, the first, the highest being. It necessarily presupposes a critical judgment, a distinction between the divine and the non‑divine, between what is worthy of worship and what is not. And here the following proposition holds without any limitation: the object of a human being is nothing other than his own essential nature taken as an object. As a person thinks, as he is disposed, so is his God; the worth a person has is the worth—and no more—that his God has. Consciousness of God is the self‑consciousness of the human being; knowledge of God is the human being's knowledge of himself. From a person's God you know the person, and from the person you know his God; the two are one. Whatever God is to a person—that is his spirit, his soul; and whatever a person's spirit, soul, and heart are—that is his God. God is the revealed inner being, the expressed self of the human being; religion is the solemn unveiling of a person's hidden treasures, the confession of his inmost thoughts, the public avowal of his love‑secrets.

          But when religion—consciousness of God—is described as the self‑consciousness of the human being, this is not to be understood as if the religious person were directly aware that his consciousness of God is the self‑consciousness of his own nature. On the contrary, the absence of this awareness is precisely what constitutes the distinctive character of religion. To avoid this misunderstanding, it is better to say: religion is the earliest, and indeed an indirect, form of human self‑consciousness. Religion therefore everywhere precedes philosophy—both in the history of humanity and in the history of the individual. A human being first places his own nature outside himself before he finds it within himself. His own nature is at first an object to him only in the form of another being. Religion is the childlike condition of humanity; and just as the child sees its own nature—the human being—outside itself, so the human being, as a child, is an object to himself only in the form of another human being. The historical development of religion therefore consists in this: that what an earlier religion regarded as something objective is now recognized as something subjective—that is, what was formerly contemplated and worshipped as God is now understood to be something human. The earlier religion becomes, for the later one, idolatry; the human being has worshipped his own nature. He has objectified himself, but has not recognized the object as his own nature; the later religion takes this step. Every advance in religion is therefore a deeper self‑knowledge. Yet every particular religion, while it brands its older sisters as idolaters, exempts itself—and necessarily so, for otherwise it would cease to be religion—from the fate that belongs to the essence of religion as such. It imputes to other religions what—if it is a fault—is the fault of religion in general. Because it has a different object, a different content, because it has risen above the content of earlier religions, it imagines itself raised above the necessary and eternal laws that constitute the essence of religion; it imagines that its object, its content, is something superhuman.

          Religion—at least the Christian religion—is the relation of the human being to himself, or more precisely, to his own essence, but a relation to this essence as if it were another being. The divine being is nothing other than the human being, or better: the essence of the human being, separated from the limits of the individual—that is, the actual, bodily human—and made into an object, that is, contemplated and revered as another, distinct, independent being. All the determinations of the divine being are therefore determinations of the human being. . . .

THE COLLAPSE OF "GOD IN HIMSELF" AND "GOD FOR US"

There is, however, a milder way of denying the divine predicates than the direct one just described. One concedes that the predicates of the divine being are finite, and in particular human determinations; but one rejects their rejection, even defends them, because it is necessary for human beings to form definite conceptions of God, and since they are human, they can form no other than human conceptions of him. With respect to God, it is said, these determinations admittedly have no objective validity; but for me—if he is to exist for me—he cannot appear otherwise than as he appears to me, namely, as a human or at least a human‑like being.

          But this distinction between what God is in himself and what he is for me destroys the peace of religion and is, moreover, in itself a groundless and untenable distinction. I cannot possibly know whether God is something different in himself or for himself than he is for me; as he is for me, so he is everything for me. For me, his being‑in‑himself, his very essence, lies precisely in the determinations under which he exists for me; he is for me only what he can ever be for me. The religious person is completely satisfied with what God is in relation to him—for of any other relation he knows nothing—for God is to him what he can be to human beings in general.

          In making the above distinction, the human being sets himself above himself—that is, above his own nature, his absolute measure—but this supposed transcendence is only an illusion. I can make the distinction between an object as it is in itself and as it is for me only where an object can truly appear to me otherwise than it does; but not where it appears to me as it must appear according to my absolute measure, as it must appear to me. My conception may indeed be subjective—that is, one not binding on the species. But if my conception corresponds to the measure of the species, then the distinction between being‑in‑itself and being‑for‑me disappears; for this conception is itself an absolute one. The measure of the species is the absolute measure, law, and criterion of the human being.

          But religion is precisely convinced that its conceptions, its determinations of God, are such as every human being ought to have and must have if he is to have the true ones—that they are the necessary conceptions of human nature, indeed the objective, the God‑appropriate conceptions. To every religion, the gods of other religions are merely notions about God; but the conception it has of God is its God himself—God as it conceives him, the genuine, true God, God as he is in himself. Religion is satisfied only with a whole, unreserved God; it will not have a mere appearance of God; it wants God himself, God in person. Religion gives itself up when it gives up the nature of God; it is no longer truth when it renounces possession of the true God. Skepticism is the arch‑enemy of religion. But the distinction between object and conception—between God in himself and God for me—is a skeptical, and therefore irreligious, distinction. . . .

SUBJECT AND PREDICATE: THE HUMAN ORIGIN OF DIVINE EXISTENCE

You believe in love as a divine attribute because you yourself love; you believe that God is a wise and benevolent being because you know nothing better in yourself than benevolence and understanding; and you believe that God exists—that he is therefore a subject or being (for whatever exists is a being, whether defined as substance, person, or in some other way)—because you yourself exist, because you yourself are a being. You know no higher human good than to love, to be good and wise; and likewise you know no higher happiness than simply to exist, to be a being at all; for your consciousness of all good, of all happiness, is bound up with your consciousness of being, of existence. God is an existent being to you for the same reason that he is to you a wise, blessed, and good being.

          The difference between the divine attributes and the divine being is only this: existence, being, does not appear to you as an anthropomorphism, because in your own being‑a‑being lies the necessity that God must be an existent being for you; whereas the attributes appear to you as anthropomorphisms because their necessity—the necessity that God be wise, good, just, and so on—is not an immediate necessity identical with human existence, but a necessity mediated by self‑consciousness, by the activity of thought. I am a subject, a being; I exist, whether I am wise or unwise, good or bad. To exist is, for the human being, the first and fundamental element in his conception of himself, the presupposition of all predicates. Hence he freely relinquishes the predicates, but the existence of God is for him a settled, inviolable, absolutely certain, objective truth.

          Yet this distinction is only an apparent one. The necessity of the subject lies solely in the necessity of the predicate. You are a being only as a human being; the certainty and reality of your existence lie only in the certainty and reality of your human attributes. What the subject is lies entirely in the predicate; the predicate is the truth of the subject; the subject is only the personified, existing predicate. Subject and predicate differ only as existence and essence. The negation of the predicates is therefore the negation of the subject. What remains of the human being if you take away his human attributes? Even in ordinary language, the divine attributes—Providence, wisdom, omnipotence—are put in place of the divine being.

          The certainty of God's existence—of which it has been said that it is as certain to human beings as, indeed even more certain than, their own existence—depends solely on the certainty of God's qualities; it is not an immediate certainty. For the Christian, only the existence of the Christian God is certain; for the pagan, only the existence of the pagan god is certain. The pagan did not doubt the existence of Jupiter because he took no offense at Jupiter's nature, because he could conceive of God under no other qualities, because these qualities were for him a certainty, a divine truth. The truth of the predicate is the sole guarantee of existence. . . .

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE: HUMAN VALUES BECOME DIVINE ATTRIBUTES

The identity of subject and predicate is shown most clearly in the historical development of religion, which is identical with the development of human culture. As long as the human being still bears the predicate of a mere child of nature, his god is likewise a mere nature‑god. Where human beings live in houses, they also enclose their gods in temples. The temple is only an expression of the value human beings place on beautiful buildings. Temples erected in honor of religion are in truth temples erected in honor of architecture. With the rise of human beings from a state of savagery and wildness to culture—with the distinction between what is fitting for human beings and what is not—there simultaneously arises the distinction between what is fitting and not fitting for God. God is the concept of majesty, of the highest dignity; the religious feeling is the feeling of supreme propriety.

          Only the later, more cultivated Greek artists embodied in their statues of the gods the ideas of dignity, spiritual greatness, untroubled repose, and serenity. But why were these qualities attributes, predicates of God for them? Because these qualities were, in themselves, regarded by the Greeks as divine. Why did they exclude all base and ignoble passions? Precisely because they recognized such passions as unfitting, unworthy, unhuman, and therefore ungodlike. The Homeric gods eat and drink—that is to say: eating and drinking is a divine enjoyment. Physical strength is an attribute of the Homeric gods: Zeus is the strongest of the gods. Why? Because physical strength, in and for itself, was regarded as something glorious, divine. The warrior's virtue was the highest virtue for the ancient Germans; therefore their highest god was the god of war, Odin—war being "the primal law or oldest law."

          Not the attribute of the deity, but the divinity or godhood of the attribute, is the first true divine being. Thus what theology and philosophy have hitherto regarded as God, as the Absolute, the essential being, is not God; but what they have not regarded as God—that precisely is God: namely, the attribute, the quality, determinateness, reality itself. A true atheist—an atheist in the ordinary sense—is therefore only the person for whom the predicates of the divine being, such as love, wisdom, justice, are nothing; not the one for whom only the subject of these predicates is nothing. And by no means does the negation of the subject necessarily entail the negation of the predicates themselves. The predicates have their own independent significance; by their very content they compel human recognition; they show themselves directly to human beings as true; they assert and attest themselves.

          Goodness, justice, wisdom are not chimeras because the existence of God is a chimera, nor are they truths because that existence is a truth. The concept of God depends on the concept of justice, goodness, wisdom—for a god who is not good, not just, not wise is no god—but not the reverse. A quality is not divine because God possesses it; rather, God possesses it because it is in itself divine, because without it God would be a defective being. Justice, wisdom, indeed every determination that constitutes the deity of God, is determined and known by itself; but God is determined by the determination, by the quality. Only when I identify God and justice, when I think of God directly as the reality of the idea of justice or of any other quality, do I determine God through himself. But if God as subject is the determined, while the quality, the predicate, is the determining, then in truth the rank of the divine belongs not to the subject but to the predicate. . . .

PERSONAL PREDICATES AND THE EMOTIONAL CORE OF RELIGION

If it is now established that what the subject or being is lies entirely in its determinations—that is, that the predicate is the true subject—then it is also proved that if the divine predicates are determinations of human nature, the subject to which they belong is likewise of human nature. The divine predicates are, on the one hand, general, and on the other, personal. The general ones are the metaphysical predicates, but these serve religion only as the outermost point of attachment or as a foundation; they are not the characteristic determinations of religion. It is the personal predicates alone that constitute the essence of religion, in which the divine being is the object of religion. Such predicates are, for example, that God is a person, that he is the moral lawgiver, the father of humankind, the holy one, the just, the good, the merciful.

          But it is immediately evident from these and other determinations—or will at least become evident in the course of the argument—that they are, especially as personal determinations, purely human determinations, and that consequently the human being, in religion, in his relation to God, is relating to his own nature. For to religion these predicates are not mere conceptions, not images that human beings form of God, distinct from what God is in himself, but truths, realities, actualities. Religion knows nothing of anthropomorphisms; anthropomorphisms are not anthropomorphisms for religion. The very essence of religion is that these determinations express the nature of God.

          Only the understanding, which reflects upon religion and, in defending it, denies it before its own tribunal, declares them to be images. But for religion, God is a real father, real love and mercy, for he is to it a real, living, personal being; and therefore his true determinations are also living, personal determinations. Indeed, the very determinations that correspond to religious feeling are precisely those that most offend the understanding, those that it denies in its reflection on religion. Religion is subjectively emotion; therefore, it necessarily requires the emotion of the divine being as its objective counterpart. Even anger is not, for religion, an emotion unworthy of God, provided only that nothing evil lies at the root of this anger.

Source: Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity. (1841/1848), machine translation from the German, not based on previous translations.

 

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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER:

RELIGIOUS BELIEF AS A HARMFUL METAPHYSICAL ALLEGORY

 

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was born in what is now Gdańsk, Poland to a wealthy merchant family. He spent part of his adolescence being groomed for a business career, including an extended tour of Europe meant to prepare him for commercial life. Upon the death of his father, likely by suicide, he was freed him to pursue philosophy instead. He studied under Fichte in Berlin and grew to despise both Fichte and Hegel. He considered German Idealism nonsense dressed up as profundity, a contempt he happily expressed throughout his life. In 1820 he arranged his own university lectures at Berlin to run at the exact same hour as Hegel's, then wildly popular. Almost no students came to Schopenhauer's, and he abandoned academic teaching not long after, bitter about the episode for years. He published his major work, The World as Will and Representation, in 1818, arguing that reality is ultimately driven by a blind, insatiable force he called "Will". This Will fills life with suffering, and that the closest approach to relief lies in aesthetic contemplation, compassion, and an ascetic denial of one's own desires. His book sold almost no copies and was largely ignored for decades. He lived a solitary, irritable life in Frankfurt with a series of poodles all named Atma or Butz. He was notoriously pessimistic in his writing about people generally and women in particular. He once reportedly pushed a neighbor down a flight of stairs after she loudly bothered him near his door, resulting in a court judgment against him. Recognition finally arrived in his last decade. He died in Frankfurt in 1860 at the age of 72. The selections below are from The World as Will and Representation (1818) and "Religion: A Dialogue" (1851).

          In the first selection, Schopenhauer argues that human beings turn to metaphysics because our capacity for reason exposes us to anxieties, especially death and suffering. No other creature confronts these, and this makes us seek explanations that go beyond the world of experience. He makes six main points. First, humans alone experience metaphysical wonder: once reason awakens, we become conscious of death, finitude, and the vanity of striving, and this produces an inescapable need for metaphysical explanation. Second, the deepest psychological impulse behind metaphysics is the recognition of suffering and mortality. If life were painless and endless, no one would ask why the world exists or why it is the way it is. Third, this is why doctrines of immortality dominate both philosophical and religious systems: people care about gods mainly because they link them to hopes for continued existence after death. Fourth, Schopenhauer argues that there are two kinds of metaphysics: one for the few, grounded in rational reflection, and one for the many, grounded in authority. Religion is the "metaphysics of the people," suited to those who cannot engage in sustained philosophical thought. Fifth, religion necessarily speaks in allegory rather than literal truth; its contradictions and mysteries are intentional devices that communicate moral and existential insights to minds incapable of grasping abstract metaphysics. Because these allegories guide action and console suffering, religion fulfills the practical role of metaphysics for the majority. Sixth, Schopenhauer concludes that religion is valuable and even necessary, but only when it remains within its proper sphere. When religion claims literal truth or intrudes into philosophy, it obstructs genuine knowledge. Its worth depends on how much real insight it conveys beneath its symbolic form, and on how transparently that truth shines through its allegorical veil.

          In the second selection, Schopenhauer argues that religion becomes harmful when it presents symbolic truths as literal doctrines. It does so by using early indoctrination to secure uncritical belief, thereby obstructing the free pursuit of genuine knowledge. First, he argues, childhood religious training implants fixed metaphysical assumptions before independent judgment can develop, paralyzing the mind's ability to question inherited doctrines. Because these ideas are taught with solemnity and without the possibility of doubt, most people never acquire the intellectual elasticity needed to examine them critically. Second, religion functions as an allegory that must pretend to be literal truth in order to retain authority, but this pretense turns a symbolic vehicle of insight into a system of deception. Once religious myths claim factual status, they inevitably conflict with philosophy, which seeks truth through argument rather than revelation. This tension produces intolerance, suppresses intellectual progress, and distorts moral life by encouraging ritual observance over genuine ethical conduct. Third, Schopenhauer insists that even if religion aims at noble ends (comforting suffering, guiding conduct, restraining vice) its reliance on falsehood cannot be justified. A "pious fraud" remains a fraud, and deception cannot serve as a stable foundation for virtue. True consolation and moral clarity come only from truth itself, not from myths enforced by fear, authority, or habit.

WHY HUMANS SEEK METAPHYSICAL EXPLANATIONS (The World as Will and Representation, 2. 17)

Human Uniqueness and the Origin of Metaphysical Wonder

With the exception of man, no being wonders at its own existence; but it is to them all so much a matter of course that they do not observe it. The wisdom of nature speaks out of the peaceful glance of the brutes; for in them the will and the intellect are not yet so widely separated that they can be astonished at each other when they meet again. Thus here the whole phenomenon is still firmly attached to the stem of nature from which it has come, and is partaker of the unconscious omniscience of the great mother. Only after the inner being of nature (the will to live in its objectification) has ascended, vigorous and cheerful, through the two series of unconscious existences, and then through the long and broad series of animals, does it attain at last to reflection for the first time on the entrance of reason, thus in man. Then it marvels at its own works, and asks itself what it itself is. Its wonder however is the more serious, as it here stands for the first time consciously in the presence of death, and besides the finiteness of all existence, the vanity of all effort forces itself more or less upon it. With this reflection and this wonder there arises therefore for man alone, the need for a metaphysic; he is accordingly a metaphysical animal. . . .

Death, Suffering, and the Psychological Roots of Metaphysics

On the other hand, the philosophical wonder which springs from this is conditioned in the individual by higher development of the intellect, yet in general not by this alone; but without doubt it is the knowledge of death, and along with this the consideration of the suffering and misery of life, which gives the strongest impulse to philosophical reflection and metaphysical explanation of the world. If our life were endless and painless, it would perhaps occur to no one to ask why the world exists, and is just the kind of world it is; but everything would just be taken as a matter of course. In accordance with this we find that the interest which philosophical and also religious systems inspire has always its strongest hold in the dogma of some kind of existence after death; and although the most recent systems seem to make the existence of their gods the main point, and to defend this most zealously, yet in reality this is only because they have connected their special dogma of immortality with this, and regard the one as inseparable from the other: only on this account is it of importance to them. For if one could establish their doctrine of immortality for them in some other way, their lively zeal for their gods would at once cool, and it would give place almost to complete indifference if, conversely, the absolute impossibility of immortality were proved to them. For the interest in the existence of the gods would vanish with the hope of a closer acquaintance with them, to the residuum which might connect itself with their possible influence on the events of this present life. But if one could prove that continued existence after death is incompatible with the existence of gods, because, let us say, it pre-supposes originality of being, they would soon sacrifice the gods to their own immortality and become zealous for Atheism. The fact that the materialistic systems, properly so-called, and also absolute skepticism, have never been able to obtain a general or lasting influence, depends upon the same grounds.

          Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all lands and in all ages, in splendor and vastness, testify to the metaphysical need of man, which, strong and ineradicable, follows close upon his physical need. Certainly whoever is satirically inclined might add that this metaphysical need is a modest fellow who is content with poor fare. It sometimes allows itself to be satisfied with clumsy fables and insipid tales. If only imprinted early enough, they are for a man adequate explanations of his existence and supports of his morality. . . .

Two Kinds of Metaphysics: Philosophical vs. Popular (Religion)

By metaphysics I understand all knowledge that pretends to transcend the possibility of experience, thus to transcend nature or the given phenomenal appearance of things, in order to give an explanation of that by which, in some sense or other, this experience or nature is conditioned; or, to speak in popular language, of that which is behind nature, and makes it possible. But the great original diversity in the power of understanding, besides the cultivation of it, which demands much leisure, makes so great a difference between men, that as soon as a people has emerged from the state of savages, no one metaphysic can serve for them all. Therefore, among civilized nations we find throughout two different kinds of metaphysics, which are distinguished by the fact that the one has its evidence in itself, the other outside itself. Since the metaphysical systems of the first kind require reflection, culture, and leisure for the recognition of their evidence, they can be accessible only to a very small number of men; and, moreover, they can only arise and maintain their existence in the case of advanced civilization. On the other hand, the systems of the second kind exclusively are for the great majority of men who are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and who are not accessible to reasons, but only to authority. These systems may therefore be called metaphysics of the people, after the analogy of poetry of the people, and also wisdom of the people, by which is understood proverbs. These systems, however, are known under the name of religions, and are found among all nations, not excepting even the most savage. . . .

The Allegorical Nature of Religion and Its Social Function

To the distinction established above between metaphysics of the first and of the second kind, we have yet to add the following:—A system of the first kind, thus a philosophy, makes the claim, and has therefore the obligation, in everything that it says, in the strict and proper sense, to be true, for it appeals to thought and conviction. A religion, on the other hand, being intended for the innumerable multitude who, since they are incapable of examination and thought, would never comprehend the profoundest and most difficult truths, in the proper sense, has only the obligation to be true in the allegorical sense. Truth cannot appear naked before the people. A symptom of this allegorical nature of religions is the mysteries which are to be found perhaps in them all, certain dogmas which cannot even be distinctly thought, not to speak of being literally true. Indeed, perhaps it might be asserted that some absolute contradictions, some actual absurdities, are an essential ingredient in a complete religion, for these are just the stamp of its allegorical nature, and the only adequate means of making the ordinary mind and the uncultured understanding feel what would be incomprehensible to it, that religion has ultimately to do with quite a different order of things, with an order of things in themselves, in the presence of which the laws of this phenomenal world, in conformity with which it must speak, vanish; and that therefore not only the contradictory but also the comprehensible dogmas are really only allegories and accommodations to the human power of comprehension.

          It seems to me that it was in this spirit that Augustine and even Luther adhered to the mysteries of Christianity in opposition to Pelagianism, which sought to reduce everything to the dull level of comprehensibility. From this point of view it is also conceivable how Tertullian could say in all seriousness: "It is completely believable because it is absurd; … it is certain because it is impossible" (The Body of Christ, Ch. 5). This allegorical nature of religions makes them independent of the proofs which are incumbent on philosophy, and in general withdraws them from investigation. Instead of this they require faith, that is, a voluntary admission that such is the state of the case. Since, then, faith guides action, and the allegory is always so framed that, as regards the practical, it leads precisely to that which the truth, in the proper sense, would also lead to, religion is justified in promising to those who believe eternal salvation.

          Thus we see that in the main, and for the great majority, who cannot apply themselves to thought, religions very well supply the place of metaphysics in general, the need of which man feels to be imperative. They do this partly in a practical interest, as the guiding star of their action, the unfurled standard of integrity and virtue, as Kant admirably expresses it; partly as the indispensable comfort in the heavy sorrows of life, in which capacity they fully supply the place of an objectively true metaphysic, because they lift man above himself and his existence in time, as well perhaps as such a metaphysic ever could. In this their great value and indeed necessity shows itself very clearly. For Plato says, and says rightly, "It is impossible for the crowd to be philosophical" (Republic, 6). On the other hand, the only stumbling-stone is this, that religions never dare to confess their allegorical nature, but have to assert that they are true in the proper sense. They thereby encroach on the province of metaphysics proper, and call forth the antagonism of the latter, which has therefore expressed itself at all times when it was not chained up.

Conflict Between Religion and Philosophy

The controversy which is so perseveringly carried on in our own day between supernaturalists and rationalists also rests on the failure to recognize the allegorical nature of all religion. Both wish to have Christianity true sensu proprio; in this sense the former wish to maintain it without deduction, as it were with skin and hair; and thus they have a hard stand to make against the knowledge and general culture of the age. The latter wish to explain away all that is properly Christian; whereupon they retain something which is true neither in the proper sense nor in the allegorical sense, but rather a mere platitude, little better than Judaism, or at the most a shallow Pelagianism, and, what is worst, an abject optimism, absolutely foreign to Christianity proper. Moreover, the attempt to found a religion upon reason removes it into the other class of metaphysics, that which has its authentication in itself, thus to the foreign ground of the philosophical systems, and into the conflict which these wage against each other in their own arena, and consequently exposes it to the light fire of skepticism and the heavy artillery of the "Critique of Pure Reason;" but for it to venture there would be clear presumption.

Practical Value and Limits of Religion

It would be most beneficial to both kinds of metaphysics that each of them should remain clearly separated from the other and confine itself to its own province, that it may there be able to develop its nature fully. Instead of which, through the whole Christian era, the endeavor has been to bring about a fusion of the two, for the dogmas and conceptions of the one have been carried over into the other, whereby both are spoiled. This has taken place in the most open manner in our own day in that strange hermaphrodite or centaur, the so-called philosophy of religion, which, as a kind of gnosis, endeavors to interpret the given religion, and to explain what is true in the allegorical sense through something which is true in the proper sense. But for this we would have to know and possess the truth in the proper sense already; and in that case such an interpretation would be superfluous. For to seek first to find metaphysics, i.e., the truth in the proper sense, merely out of religion by explanation and interpretation would be a doubtful and dangerous undertaking, to which one would only make up one's mind if it were proved that truth, like iron and other base metals, could only be found in a mixed, not in a pure form, and therefore one could only obtain it by reduction from the mixed ore.

          Religions are necessary for the people, and an inestimable benefit to them. But if they oppose themselves to the progress of mankind in the knowledge of the truth, they must with the utmost possible forbearance be set aside. And to require that a great mind—a Shakespeare; a Goethe—should make the dogmas of any religion implicitly, in the bona fide and proper sense, his conviction is to require that a giant should put on the shoe of a dwarf.

          Religions, being calculated with reference to the power of comprehension of the great mass of men, can only have indirect, not immediate truth. To require of them the latter is as if one wished to read the letters set up in the form-chase, instead of their impression. The value of a religion will accordingly depend upon the greater or less content of truth which it contains under the veil of allegory, and then upon the greater or less distinctness with which it becomes visible through this veil, thus upon the transparency of the latter. It almost seems that, as the oldest languages are the most perfect, so also are the oldest religions. If I were to take the results of my philosophy as the standard of truth, I would be obliged to concede to Buddhism the pre-eminence over the rest. . . .

          I cannot place, as is always done, the fundamental difference of all religions in the question whether they are monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, or atheistic, but only in the question whether they are optimistic or pessimistic, that is, whether they present the existence of the world as justified by itself, and therefore praise and value it, or regard it as something that can only be conceived as the consequence of our guilt, and therefore properly ought not to be, because they recognize that pain and death cannot lie in the eternal, original, and immutable order of things, in that which in every respect ought to be. The power by virtue of which Christianity was able to overcome first Judaism, and then the heathenism of Greece and Rome, lies solely in its pessimism, in the confession that our state is both exceedingly wretched and sinful, while Judaism and heathenism were optimistic. That truth, profoundly and painfully felt by all, penetrated, and bore in its train the need of redemption.

AGAINST RELIGIOUS DECEPTION (From "Religion: A Dialogue")

Childhood Religious Indoctrination

[It is] shallow and unjust to demand that there shall be no other system of metaphysics but this [religious] one, cut out as it is to suit the requirements and comprehension of the masses? that its doctrine shall be the limit of human speculation, the standard of all thought, so that the metaphysics of the few, the emancipated, as you call them, must be devoted only to confirming, strengthening, and explaining the metaphysics of the masses? that the highest powers of human intelligence shall remain unused and undeveloped, even be nipped in the bud, in order that their activity may not thwart the popular metaphysics? And isn't this just the very claim which religion sets up? Isn't it a little too much to have tolerance and delicate forbearance preached by what is intolerance and cruelty itself? Think of the heretical tribunals, inquisitions, religious wars, crusades, Socrates' cup of poison, Bruno's and Vanini's death in the flames! Is all this today quite a thing of the past? How can genuine philosophical effort, sincere search after truth, the noblest calling of the noblest men, be let and hindered more completely than by a conventional system of metaphysics enjoying a State monopoly, the principles of which are impressed into every head in earliest youth, so earnestly, so deeply, and so firmly, that, unless the mind is miraculously elastic, they remain indelible. In this way the groundwork of all healthy reason is once for all deranged; that is to say, the capacity for original thought and unbiased judgment, which is weak enough in itself, is, in regard to those subjects to which it might be applied, for ever paralyzed and ruined. . . .

          [If religious belief] were only a conviction based on insight. Then one could bring arguments to bear, and the battle would be fought with equal weapons. But religions admittedly appeal, not to conviction as the result of argument, but to belief as demanded by revelation. And as the capacity for believing is strongest in childhood, special care is taken to make sure of this tender age. This has much more to do with the doctrines of belief taking root than threats and reports of miracles. If, in early childhood, certain fundamental views and doctrines are paraded with unusual solemnity, and an air of the greatest earnestness never before visible in anything else; if, at the same time, the possibility of a doubt about them be completely passed over, or touched upon only to indicate that doubt is the first step to eternal perdition, the resulting impression will be so deep that, as a rule, that is, in almost every case, doubt about them will be almost as impossible as doubt about one's own existence. Hardly one in ten thousand will have the strength of mind to ask himself seriously and earnestly—is that true? . . .

          [I]t is a terrible thing that, wherever a man is born, certain propositions are inculcated in him in earliest youth, and he is assured that he may never have any doubts about them, under penalty of thereby forfeiting eternal salvation; propositions, I mean, which affect the foundation of all our other knowledge and accordingly determine forever, and, if they are false, distort forever, the point of view from which our knowledge starts; and as, further, the corollaries of these propositions touch the entire system of our intellectual attainments at every point, the whole of human knowledge is thoroughly adulterated by them. . . .

          [If] anyone possessed the rare quality of an elastic mind, which alone could burst the bonds, his writings and he himself with them were burnt; as happened to Bruno and Vanini. How completely an ordinary mind is paralyzed by that early preparation in metaphysics is seen in the most vivid way and on its most ridiculous side, where such a one undertakes to criticize the doctrines of an alien creed. The efforts of the ordinary man are generally found to be directed to a careful exhibition of the incongruity of its dogmas with those of his own belief: he is at great pains to show that not only do they not say, but certainly do not mean, the same thing; and with that he thinks, in his simplicity, that he has demonstrated the falsehood of the alien creed. He really never dreams of putting the question which of the two may be right; his own articles of belief he looks upon as a priori true and certain principles. . . .

Religion as a Harmful Allegory

I understand [that truth can only come to the masses symbolically]. It comes, in short, to truth wearing the garment of falsehood. But in doing so it enters on a fatal alliance. What a dangerous weapon is put into the hands of those who are authorized to employ falsehood as the vehicle of truth! If it is as you say, I fear the damage caused by the falsehood will be greater than any advantage the truth could ever produce. Of course, if the allegory were admitted to be such, I should raise no objection; but with the admission it would rob itself of all respect, and consequently, of all utility. The allegory must, therefore, put in a claim to be true in the proper sense of the word, and maintain the claim; while, at the most, it is true only in an allegorical sense. Here lies the irreparable mischief, the permanent evil; and this is why religion has always been and always will be in conflict with the noble endeavor after pure truth. . . .

          Philalethes. That is certainly the strong point of religion [i.e., that "religion affords an inexhaustible source of consolation and comfort in the innumerable trials of life".] If it is a fraud, it is a pious fraud; that is undeniable. But this makes priests something between deceivers and teachers of morality; they dare not teach the real truth, as you have quite rightly explained, even if they knew it, which is not the case. A true philosophy, then, can always exist, but not a true religion; true, I mean, in the proper understanding of the word, not merely in that flowery or allegorical sense which you have described; a sense in which all religions would be true, only in various degrees. It is quite in keeping with the inextricable mixture of weal and woe, honesty and deceit, good and evil, nobility and baseness, which is the average characteristic of the world everywhere, that the most important, the most lofty, the most sacred truths can make their appearance only in combination with a lie, can even borrow strength from a lie as from something that works more powerfully on mankind; and, as revelation, must be ushered in by a lie. This might, indeed, be regarded as the cachet of the moral world. However, we won't give up the hope that mankind will eventually reach a point of maturity and education at which it can on the one side produce, and on the other receive, the true philosophy. Simplicity is the sign of truth: the naked truth must be so simple and intelligible that it can be imparted to all in its true form, without any admixture of myth and fable, without disguising it in the form of religion. . . .

          Philalethes. I am only expressing a hope which I can't give up. If it were fulfilled, truth in its simple and intelligible form would of course drive religion from the place it has so long occupied as its representative, and by that very means kept open for it. The time would have come when religion would have carried out her object and completed her course: the race she had brought to years of discretion she could dismiss, and herself depart in peace: that would be the euthanasia of religion. But as long as she lives, she has two faces, one of truth, one of fraud. According as you look at one or the other, you will bear her favor or ill-will. Religion must be regarded as a necessary evil, its necessity resting on the pitiful imbecility of the great majority of mankind, incapable of grasping the truth, and therefore requiring, in its pressing need, something to take its place. . . .

          Philalethes. Well, if we haven't got it, it is chiefly owing to the pressure put upon philosophy by religion at all times and in all places. People have tried to make the expression and communication of truth, even the contemplation and discovery of it, impossible, by putting children, in their earliest years, into the hands of priests to be manipulated; to have the lines, in which their fundamental thoughts are henceforth to run, laid down with such firmness as, in essential matters, to be fixed and determined for this whole life. When I take up the writings even of the best intellects of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, (more especially if I have been engaged in Oriental studies), I am sometimes shocked to see how they are paralyzed and hemmed in on all sides by Jewish ideas. How can anyone think out the true philosophy when he is prepared like this? . . . .

The Noble Ends of Religion do not justify its Deceptive Means.

A respect [towards religion] which will finally rest upon the principle that the end sanctifies the means. I don't feel in favor of a compromise on a basis like that. Religion may be an excellent means of training the perverse, obtuse and ill-disposed members of the biped race: in the eyes of the friend of truth every fraud, even though it be a pious one, is to be condemned. A system of deception, a pack of lies, would be a strange means of inculcating virtue. The flag to which I have taken the oath is truth; I shall remain faithful to it everywhere, and whether I succeed or not, I shall fight for light and truth!, if I see religion on the wrong side. . . .

          With that kind of argument you could have driven Luther from the field, when he attacked the sale of indulgences. How many a one got consolation from the letters of indulgence, a consolation which nothing else could give, a complete tranquillity; so that he joyfully departed with the fullest confidence in the packet of them which he held in his hand at the hour of death, convinced that they were so many cards of admission to all the nine heavens. What is the use of grounds of consolation and tranquillity which are constantly overshadowed by the Damocles-sword of illusion? The truth, my dear sir, is the only safe thing; the truth alone remains steadfast and trusty; it is the only solid consolation; it is the indestructible diamond. . . .

          That's what you keep on saying. To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it. Then give up deceiving people; confess ignorance of what you don't know, and leave everyone to form his own articles of faith for himself. Perhaps they won't turn out so bad, especially as they'll rub one another's corners down, and mutually rectify mistakes. The existence of many views will at any rate lay a foundation of tolerance. Those who possess knowledge and capacity may betake themselves to the study of philosophy, or even in their own persons carry the history of philosophy a step further. . . .

          Oftener still false oaths are really taken, and truth and right trampled under foot, though all witnesses of the oath know it well! Still you are quite right to quote the oath as an undeniable example of the practical efficacy of religion. But, in spite of all you've said, I doubt whether the efficacy of religion goes much beyond this. Just think; if a public proclamation were suddenly made announcing the repeal of all the criminal laws; I fancy neither you nor I would have the courage to go home from here under the protection of religious motives. If, in the same way, all religions were declared untrue, we could, under the protection of the laws alone, go on living as before, without any special addition to our apprehensions or our measures of precaution. I will go beyond this, and say that religions have very frequently exercised a decidedly demoralizing influence. One may say generally that duties towards God and duties towards humanity are in inverse ratio. . . .

          It is easy to let adulation of the Deity make amends for lack of proper behavior towards man. And so we see that in all times and in all countries the great majority of mankind find it much easier to beg their way to heaven by prayers than to deserve to go there by their actions. In every religion it soon comes to be the case that faith, ceremonies, rites and the like, are proclaimed to be more agreeable to the Divine will than moral actions; the former, especially if they are bound up with the emoluments of the clergy, gradually come to be looked upon as a substitute for the latter. Sacrifices in temples, the saying of masses, the founding of chapels, the planting of crosses by the roadside, soon come to be the most meritorious works, so that even great crimes are expiated by them, as also by penance, subjection to priestly authority, confessions, pilgrimages, donations to the temples and the clergy, the building of monasteries and the like. . . .

          Perhaps I go too far in saying all religions. For the sake of truth, I must add that the fanatical enormities perpetrated in the name of religion are only to be put down to the adherents of monotheistic creeds, that is, the Jewish faith and its two branches, Christianity and Islamism. We hear of nothing of the kind in the case of Hindoos and Buddhists. Although it is a matter of common knowledge that about the fifth century of our era Buddhism was driven out by the Brahmans from its ancient home in the southernmost part of the Indian peninsula, and afterwards spread over the whole of the rest of Asia, as far as I know, we have no definite account of any crimes of violence, or wars, or cruelties, perpetrated in the course of it. . . .

          As a matter of fact, it is only to monotheism that intolerance is essential; an only god is by his nature a jealous god, who can allow no other god to exist. Polytheistic gods, on the other hand, are naturally tolerant; they live and let live; their own colleagues are the chief objects of their sufferance, as being gods of the same religion. This toleration is afterwards extended to foreign gods, who are, accordingly, hospitably received, and later on admitted, in some cases, to an equality of rights; the chief example of which is shown by the fact, that the Romans willingly admitted and venerated Phrygian, Egyptian and other gods. Hence it is that monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples, and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun three thousand years, just because a jealous god had said, Thou shalt make no graven image.

Source: Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation. (1818/1844), translated by R.B. Haldane and J. Kemp, adapted; "Religion: A Dialogue" (1851), translated by Bailey Saunders, adapted.

 

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SØREN KIERKEGAARD:

RELIGIOUS BELIEF AS A LEAP OF FAITH

 

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was born in Copenhagen, the youngest son of a prosperous but melancholy wool merchant whose religious zeal impacted his children. Educated at the University of Copenhagen, he studied theology, philosophy, and literature. He went through personal turmoil in his early years, including the death of several siblings and the collapse of his engagement to Regine Olsen, an event that shaped much of his later writing. In the 1840s he published a series of books under various pseudonyms, works that explored the difficulties of human existence and faith. Although he lived his entire life in Copenhagen and held no academic post, he became a prominent figure in the city's intellectual life, engaging in public debates and criticizing the established Danish church. His final years experienced declining health and increasing isolation, though he continued to write until his collapse in 1855. He died later that year at the age of 42. The selections below are from Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) and Philosophical Fragments (1844).

          In the first selection, Kierkegaard argues that all objective approaches to Scripture fail because religious truth depends on the individual's inward, passionate subjectivity, not on scholarly certainty. He first argues that even if scholars succeeded in proving that Scripture was authentic and inspired, such objectivity would not bring the unbeliever one step closer to faith. In fact, it endanger the believer by replacing inward passion with external certainty. He second argues that even if critics proved that Scripture is inauthentic, Christianity would remain untouched. For, faith does not rest on historical demonstration, and believers who seek proof merely betray a loss of passion. He third argues that objective inquiry destroys the subject's infinite interest, because objective results are always approximations, and approximations cannot sustain the passionate inwardness on which faith depends. If Christianity were ever fully "proven," it would become a historical artifact rather than a living truth. He fourth argues that neither objective scholarship nor modest semi‑objectivity can produce religious truth, since both postpone decision indefinitely and leave the individual waiting for evidence rather than committing inwardly to eternal happiness. He finally argues that religious truth is subjectivity itself, for truth becomes paradoxical only for an existing subject who relates to it with infinite passion. For, the decisive question is not whether the object is true but whether the individual's relationship to it is in truth.

          In the second selection, Kierkegaard argues that attempts to prove God's existence misunderstand both the nature of God and the nature of religious commitment. He first holds that that any proof of God's existence is impossible in principle, because the moment we begin a proof we have already presupposed the very existence we claims to demonstrate. For, proofs can only develop conceptual determinations, never establish existence, which always lies outside logical inference. He second holds that arguments from God's "deeds" fail, whether drawn from nature, design, or idealized conceptions. For, they either assume in advance that the deeds are divine, or they collapse into purely ideal constructions that merely express what the believer has already presupposed. Unlike Napoleon's deeds, which cannot prove Napoleon's existence, God's supposed deeds do not even appear immediately and thus cannot ground a conclusion. He third argues that existence enters only through a "leap," the moment when the individual lets go of the proof and commits inwardly. This leap is the individual's own contribution, which no amount of reasoning can replace. Thus, for Kierkegaard, God's existence cannot be proven but only embraced through the passionate inwardness of faith.

 

THE FAILURE OF OBJECTIVE APPROACHES TO SCRIPTURE (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1846)

Problems with the Objective Theological Analysis of Scripture ("Holy Scripture")

Even if the Scholar Proves the Authenticity of Scripture, this has no Bearing on Faith

Let's assume that it will be successful to prove from the Bible what a learned theologian could ever wish to prove from the Bible in his happy moment. That is, that these books belong to the canon, not others, they are authentic, they are complete, the authors are credible, and you can say that it is as if every letter was inspired. (There is nothing more one can say, because inspiration is the subject of faith, it is qualitatively dialectical, it cannot be achieved through quantitative means.) Furthermore, there is no trace of contradiction in the scriptures. Because let's be careful in our hypothesis, otherwise once again the Parentheses will appear [i.e., comments of clarification by theologians] and the philological-critical restlessness leads us astray. In general, what is necessary here to make things easy and extremely simple is just a dietary precaution, the rejection of any inserted scholarly remark, where, one, two, three, could become a hundred-year parenthesis [of theological commentary]. So suppose that everything about the scriptures is in order. What happens then? Has the faithless person come one step closer to faith? No, not a single step. For, faith does not result directly from a scientific consideration, on the contrary, through this objectivity one loses the infinite personal interest of passion, which is the condition of faith, the "everywhere and nowhere" in which faith can arise.

          Did he who does believe gain some power and strength? No, he did not. In this extensive knowledge, in this certainty that lies at the door of faith and desires it, that he will need a lot of effort, a lot of fear and trembling, so as not to be challenged and confuse knowledge with faith. Until now, faith had a beneficial master of discipline, it would have its most dangerous enemy in certainty. If passion is taken away, then faith is no longer there, and certainty and passion are incompatible. Let a parallel illuminate this. Whoever believes that there is a God and providence has it easier to keep the faith (and easier to believe and not just imagine), if he is in an imperfect world where passion is kept alive, rather than in an absolutely perfect world. In a perfect world, faith is unthinkable. Therefore, it is also taught that in eternity faith is abolished.

          How fortunate that this desired hypothesis, the most beautiful wish of critical theology, is an impossibility, because even the most perfect realization can only be an approximation. Again how fortunate for scholars that the mistake is by no means their fault. If all the angels joined forces, they could only bring about an approximation, because with historical knowledge an approximation is the only certainty; but this is also not enough to build an eternal happiness on it.

Even if the Scholar Disproves the Authenticity of Scripture, this also has no Bearing on Faith

So, I now assume the opposite, that the enemies have succeeded in proving from Scripture what they want [i.e., the inauthenticity of scripture], with a certainty that surpasses the strongest desire of the most poisonous enemy. What then? Did the enemy do away with Christianity? Not at all. Did he harm the believer? Not at all, not the least. Has he won himself the right to be liberated from responsibility for not believing? Not at all. Simply because these books were not written by these authors, not authentic, incomplete, not inspired (even though this cannot be proven because it is the subject of faith), it does not follow that these authors [of the Bible] have not been there and, above all, that Christ was not there. In this respect the believer is just as free to accept it, just as free. Let us well consider this, because if he accepted it on the basis of evidence, he would be about to give up his faith. If it ever comes to this, the believer will always have some guilt, since he himself made the first move by playing into the hands of unbelief by trying to prove itself. Here is the difficulty, and I am brought back to the situation with scholarly theology. For whose benefit is the evidence given? Faith does not need it, and must see it as its enemy.

          On the other hand, when faith begins to be ashamed of itself (like when a mistress who is not content with her love life, and inwardly ashamed of her lover, then must show that there is something excellent about him), that is, when faith begins to lose passion, that is, when faith ceases to be faith, then proof is needed to have overall respect for the unbeliever. What, at this point, in the confusion of the categories of created by spiritual speakers [i.e., pastors and theologians] is performed in rhetorical stupidity, oh, let's not talk about it. The vanity of faith (a modern substitute, "how can you believe when you receive glory from one another", John 5:44) naturally does not want and cannot carry the martyrdom of faith, and a presentation on actual faith is perhaps now the presentation most rarely heard in all of Europe. Speculative thinking has understood everything, everything, everything! The spiritual speaker does hold back a little, and confesses that he has not yet understood everything, he confesses that he strives (poor fellow, this is a mix-up of the categories!). "If there is someone who has understood everything," he says, "I confess (oh, he is ashamed and does not realize that he should be using irony towards others) that I did not understand everything, cannot prove everything, and we lesser ones (alas, he feels his inferiority in a very incorrect place) we have to be satisfied with the faith." (Poor, misunderstood, ultimate passion: faith, that you must to be content with such a defender; poor spiritual speaker, you do not even know what you are saying. Poor intellectual indigent Homeless Joe, who does not really succeed in scholarship, but has faith, because faith indeed he has, that made fishermen into apostles, the faith that can move mountains, that is, when you have it!)

An Objective approach Prevents the Subject from having an Infinite Interest in Passion

When the matter is dealt with objectively, the subject cannot passionately relate to the decision, at least not have an infinite interest in passion. It is a self-contradiction and thus comical, to be infinitely interested in relation to what in its maximum always becomes only an approximation. However, if passion is added, zealousness emerges. With the infinitely passionate passion, every dot will be of infinite value. The error lies not in the infinitely passionate passion, but in the fact that its object has become an object of approximation.

          Objective observation has existed from generation to generation precisely because people become more and more objective, less and less interested in passion. Assuming that in this way the search for proof of the truth of Christianity was continued, the strange thing would happen at last, that if one had finished proving its truth, it would have ceased to be something present; it would have become something historical, it would be something of the past, the truth of which (that is, the historical truth) would now be made reliable. In this way the anxious prophecy in Luke 18:8, comes true: but when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

Religious Truth Obtained through Subjectivity, not Objectivity ("Holy Scripture")

Objective Scholarship's Quest for Truth is Unending

The more the observer becomes objective, the less he builds an eternal happiness (that is, his eternal happiness) upon his relationship to his contemplation, because eternal happiness is only available to the person who is infinitely interested in passion. Objectively, the viewer (whether he is a research scholar or an amateur church goer) understands himself objectively in the following farewell speech at the end of life: since I was young, book after book was doubted, and now their authenticity has been proven. But now, of course, one has again recently raised doubts about some books that have never been doubted before. But someday a scholar will certainly come [who will prove their authenticity], etc.

Even a Modest "Objective Subjectivity" never Obtains Religious Truth

The modest, objective subjectivity, to the hero's praise, keeps itself at a distance; it is at the service of accepting the truth as soon as the truth is provided. However, it is a distant goal to which one strives (undeniably, for an approximation can last as long as one wishes) and while the grass grows, the viewer dies, peacefully, for he was objective. Oh, objectivity! You are not prized for nothing, you shape everything, not even the most earnest believer has been so convinced about his eternal happiness, and more importantly, so sure not to lose it, as someone who is objective! It could be that this objectivity and modesty were misplaced, that it was unchristian. If so, then, it is a questionable way to enter the truth of Christianity.

Religious Truth Obtained through Subjectivity's Infinitely Personal Passion

Christianity is spirit, spirit is subtlety, subtlety is subjectivity. This subjectivity, in its essential passion and at its maximum, is an infinite and personally-interested passion for one's eternal happiness.

          As soon as one takes away subjectivity, and passion from subjectivity, and infinite interest from passion, there is no decision at all, neither in this problem nor in any other. All decision, all essential decision, rests in subjectivity. An observer (and this is the objective subjectivity) has no infinite urge for a decision, and sees it at no point. This is the deception of objectivity and the significance of mediation [i.e., synthesis] as a review in the continuing process, in which nothing exists and in which nothing is infinitely settled. This is because movement [i.e., perceived progress] returns to itself, and returns yet again, and thus this movement itself is a chimera, of which speculation is always wise afterwards. Objectively understood there is enough [progressive] result everywhere, but no final result anywhere, which is quite proper precisely because the decision rests in subjectivity, which is to say in passion, the maxim in the infinitely personal passion of one's eternal happiness.

Religious Truth is Subjectivity ("The Subjective Truth, Inwardness")

To show the distinction between the ways of objective and subjective reflection, I must now explain how the subjective reflection seeks back inwardly into inwardness. Inwardness at its fullest in an existing subject is passion, and truth as a paradox corresponds to passion. The fact that truth becomes the paradox, is based precisely in its relation to an existing subject. Thus, the one corresponds to the other. By forgetting that one is an existing subject, passion dies out and, in return, the truth is no longer paradoxical. However, the knowing subject, as a human being, becomes a more fantastic something and, truth becomes a fantastic object of its knowledge.

          When truth is inquired into objectively, reflection is directed towards the truth as an object to which the knower is related. Reflection is not directed towards the relationship itself, but instead towards the fact that it is the truth, the truth he relates to. If it is only the truth to which he relates, then the subject is the truth. If the truth is subjectively asked about, reflection is directed subjectively on the individual's relationship. If only the "how" of this relationship is in truth, then the individual is in truth, even if the "what" to which he is related is untrue.

          Let's take as an example knowledge of God. Objectively, reflection is directed toward the problem of whether it is the true God. Subjectively, though, the individual is directed toward the question of whether the individual is related to a something in such a way that this relationship is in truth is a God-relationship. In which of these approaches is the truth found? Well, might we resort to a mediation [i.e., a synthesis] here and say: it is on neither side, but in the mediation of the two? Well said, if only someone could explain how an existing individual manages to be in that state of mediation; for to be in a state of mediation is to be finished, but to exist is to become. Also, an existing being cannot be two places at once, being subject-object. When he is the nearest to being in two places at once, he is in passion, but passion is only momentary, and passion is also the highest of expression of subjectivity.

IMPOSSIBILITY OF PROVING GOD'S EXISTENCE (Philosophical Fragments, Ch. 3)

The Futility of Proving God's Existence

But what, then, is this Unknown against which reason, in its paradoxical passion, collides, and which even disturbs a person's self‑knowledge? It is the Unknown. Yet it is not a human being, insofar as he knows what a human being is, nor is it any other thing he knows. So let us call this Unknown the God. That is merely a name we give it. The idea of wanting to prove that this Unknown (the God) exists scarcely occurs to reason. For if the God does not exist, then it is impossible to prove it; but if he does exist, then it is foolish to attempt a proof. At the very moment the proof begins, I have presupposed his existence—not as doubtful (for a presupposition cannot be doubtful, since it is a presupposition), but as certain; otherwise I would not begin, easily understanding that the whole attempt would be impossible if he did not exist. If, on the other hand, by the expression "to prove the God's existence" I mean that I want to prove that the Unknown which exists is the God, then I express myself less well; for in that case I prove nothing, least of all an existence, but merely develop a conceptual determination. In general, to want to prove that something exists is a difficult matter; and what is worse for the brave who venture into it, the difficulty is such that no renown awaits the one who occupies himself with it. The entire demonstration always becomes something quite different—an extended development of what follows from having assumed that the thing in question exists. Thus I never conclude to existence, but always conclude from existence, whether I move in the world of sensible tangibility or in the world of thought. I do not prove that a stone exists, but that the something which exists is a stone; the court does not prove that a criminal exists, but proves that the accused, who does exist, is a criminal. Whether one wishes to call existence an accessory or the eternal prius, it can never be proven. We may take our time; for us there is no such reason to hurry as for those who, out of concern for themselves, or for the God, or for something else, must hasten to have it proved that it exists. When that is the case, there is indeed reason to hurry—especially if the person concerned sincerely realizes the danger that he himself, or the thing in question, might not exist until he has had it proven, and does not deceitfully harbor the secret thought that it is, after all, already there, whether he proves it or not.

The Failure of Arguments from God's Deeds

If one of Napoleon's deeds were supposed to prove Napoleon's existence, would that not be exceedingly strange? His existence certainly explains the deeds, but the deeds do not prove his existence—unless I have already understood the word "his" in such a way that I have thereby assumed that he exists. Yet Napoleon is only an individual, and in that respect no absolute relation exists between him and his deeds, since another person could have performed the same deeds. Perhaps this is why I cannot conclude from the deeds to existence. If I call the deeds "Napoleon's deeds," then the proof is superfluous, since I have already named him; if I ignore this, then I can never prove from the deeds that they are Napoleon's, but only (purely ideally) that such deeds are those of a great general, and so forth. But between the God and his deeds there is an absolute relation. The God is not a name but a concept—perhaps because his essence involves existence. The God's deeds, then, can be done only by the God; quite right. But what, then, are the God's deeds? The deeds from which I would prove his existence do not exist immediately at all. Or is it perhaps right under our noses to see the wisdom in nature, the goodness, or the wisdom in governance? Do not the most terrible objections arise here, and is it not impossible to settle all these objections? From such an order of things I will certainly not prove the God's existence; and even if I began, I would never finish, and would also have to live constantly in suspense, lest something so terrible should suddenly happen that my little bit of proof would be ruined. From what deeds, then, do I prove it? From the deeds considered ideally—that is, in such a way that they do not immediately appear. But then it is not from the deeds that I prove it; I merely develop the ideality I have presupposed. In confidence in that ideality I even dare to defy all objections, even those that have not yet arisen. In beginning, then, I have presupposed the ideality, and presupposed that I will succeed in carrying it through. But what is this other than that I have presupposed that the God exists, and that it is in trust in him that I truly begin?

The Leap Beyond Proof

And how, then, does the God's existence emerge from the proof? Does this proceed in a perfectly straightforward way? Is it not here as with the Cartesian dolls? As soon as I let go of the doll, it stands on its head. As soon as I let go of it—so I must let it go. So also with the proof: as long as I hold on to the proof (that is, continue to be the one proving), existence does not appear—if for no other reason, then because I am in the very act of proving it. But the moment I let go of the proof, existence is there. Yet this act of letting go is surely also something; it is, as it were, my contribution. Must not this, too, be taken into account—this little moment, however brief it may be? It need not be long, for it is a leap. However small this moment is, even if it is the same instant, this very instant must be reckoned with. If one wishes to have it forgotten, then, to show that it nevertheless exists, I will use it to tell a little anecdote. Chrysippus [the Stoic] once experimented to stop the forward or backward progression of a sorites in its quality. Carneades [the Skeptic] could not grasp how the new quality actually emerged when it did. Then Chrysippus told him that one could pause for a moment in the counting, and then—and then—one could understand it better. But Carneades replied: "Please, do not trouble yourself on my account; you may not only pause, but even lie down to sleep—it helps just as little. When you wake up, we will begin again where you left off." And so it is: it helps no more to try to sleep oneself away from something than to try to sleep oneself into something.

Whoever therefore wishes to prove the God's existence (in any other sense than to clarify the concept of the God, and without the final reservation we have indicated—that existence itself emerges from the proof by a leap) ends up proving, for lack of anything better, something else, something that perhaps at times does not even need a proof, and in any case never anything better. For the fool says in his heart that there is no God; but the one who says in his heart, or to other people, "Just wait a little, and I will prove it"—oh, what a rare wise man he is! If, at the very moment he is to begin the proof, it is not exactly undecided whether the God exists or not, then he does not prove it; and if it is undecided in that beginning, then he never comes to begin—partly out of fear that the proof will not succeed, since the God perhaps does not exist, and partly because he has nothing with which to begin. In ancient times one hardly concerned oneself with such things. Socrates at least—who, as it is said, put forward the physico‑teleological [i.e., design] proof for the God's existence—did not conduct himself in this way. He constantly presupposes that the God exists, and under this presupposition he seeks to permeate nature with the idea of purposiveness. If one had asked him why he proceeded in this manner, he would likely have explained that he did not have the courage to venture out on such a voyage of discovery without having secured behind him that the God existed. At the God's word he casts out his net, as it were, to catch the idea of purposiveness; for nature herself devises many means of frightening the inquirer and many diversions to disturb him.

Source: Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) and Philosophical Fragments (1844), independently machine translated from the Danish, not based on previous translations.

STUDY QUESTIONS

Please answer all of the following questions.

1. According to Hegel in his Encyclopedia, what are the three stages of Spirit, and how does Spirit progress through them to achieve absolute self-understanding and freedom?

2. According to Hegel in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, how does the modern split between the sacred and the secular arise, and how is this division resolved in the rational state and philosophy?

3. According to Feuerbach in The Essence of Christianity, why is religion the earliest, indirect form of human self-consciousness, and how does his "projection theory" explain the origin of God?

4. According to Feuerbach in The Essence of Christianity, why does he reject the distinction between "God in himself" and "God for us," and how does reversing the relationship between subject and predicate reveal the human origin of divine existence?

5. According to Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation, why is the human being a "metaphysical animal," and how does his distinction between philosophical metaphysics and popular religious metaphysics explain the allegorical nature of religion?

6. According to Schopenhauer in "Religion: A Dialogue," why does early childhood religious indoctrination permanently damage human reason, and why does he reject the idea that the noble moral ends of religion justify its use of deception?

7. According to Kierkegaard in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, why do both the proof and the disproof of Scripture's historical authenticity fail to assist or undermine Christian faith?

8. According to Kierkegaard in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, why is religious truth defined as "subjectivity" and "inwardness," and how does an objective pursuit of certainty destroy the passionate commitment required for faith?

9. According to Kierkegaard in Philosophical Fragments, why is it logically impossible to prove the existence of God, and why does arguments drawn from God's deeds fail without a prior presupposition?

10. According to Kierkegaard in Philosophical Fragments, what is the "leap" beyond proof, and how does it function in the individual's commitment to God's existence?

11. According to Hegel in his Encyclopedia, how does Subjective Spirit develop through Anthropology, Phenomenology, and Psychology?

12. According to Hegel in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, how does he distinguish between naive religion, Enlightenment reflection, and philosophical understanding?

13. According to Feuerbach in The Essence of Christianity, how does the historical development of human culture and architecture reflect changing concepts of the divine?

14. According to Feuerbach in The Essence of Christianity, why are personal and emotional predicates (such as Father, Lawgiver, and Merciful) essential to the true core of religion?

15. According to Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation, why does he consider pessimism to be the fundamental truth that enabled Christianity to overcome Judaism and Greek heathenism?

16. According to Schopenhauer in "Religion: A Dialogue," why are monotheistic religions uniquely prone to fanaticism, intolerance, and religious wars compared to polytheistic ones?

17. According to Kierkegaard in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, why does an objective, historical approach to Christianity reduce religious commitment to a mere "approximation"?

18. According to Kierkegaard in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, what does he mean by asserting that when the "how" of a relationship is in truth, the individual is in truth even if the "what" is untrue?

19. According to Hegel in his Encyclopedia, how does Objective Spirit embody free will through abstract right, morality, and the ethical life of the family, civil society, and the state?

20. According to Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation, why does he argue that religions must eventually be set aside when they oppose human progress in the knowledge of truth?

21. Short Essay Options: Please select one of the following and answer it in a minimum of 100 words.

(a) Critics argue that Hegel's pantheistic identification of God with the unfolding process of human history degrades divine transcendence and turns theology into mere cultural history. How might Hegel respond?

(b) Critics argue that Hegel's dialectical synthesis of sacred faith and secular reason strips religion of its distinctive divine mystery, reducing faith to a stepping stone for human intellect. How might Hegel respond?

(c) Critics argue that Feuerbach's projection theory commits a genetic fallacy by assuming that explaining the psychological and human origin of religious beliefs proves those beliefs are false. How might Feuerbach respond?

(d) Critics argue that Feuerbach's claim that divine predicates originate entirely in human values fails to explain why different cultures hold radically opposing moral and spiritual ideals. How might Feuerbach respond?

(e) Critics argue that Feuerbach's assertion that "God in himself" is a groundless abstraction relies on a dogmatic materialism that arbitrarily rules out any supernatural reality. How might Feuerbach respond?

(f) Critics argue that Schopenhauer's demand for the total abolition of allegorical religion in favor of pure philosophy underestimates the average person's need for symbolic and emotional consolation. How might Schopenhauer respond?

(g) Critics argue that Schopenhauer's dismissal of religious doctrines as mere "pious frauds" ignores the profound spiritual and moral transformations experienced by religious believers throughout history. How might Schopenhauer respond?

(h) Critics argue that Schopenhauer's attribution of all religious impulse to the fear of death and suffering ignores the positive human feelings of wonder, gratitude, and awe toward creation. How might Schopenhauer respond?

(i) Critics argue that Kierkegaard's radical emphasis on subjective inwardness and the "leap of faith" opens the door to total irrationalism, making it impossible to distinguish genuine religious faith from dangerous fanatical delusion. How might Kierkegaard respond?

(j) Critics argue that Kierkegaard's dismissal of objective historical evidence regarding Scripture leaves believers with no rational ground to choose Christianity over any other religious tradition. How might Kierkegaard respond?