Feuerbachian imagination and the reversal of Hegelian ontology in The essence of Christianity (1841)

Abstract

This thesis considers the way in which Ludwig Feuerbach, in The Essence of Christianity (1841), attempts a reversal of Hegelian ontology. Principally, it attempts to define the role of the imagination in this reversal. Chapter 1 isolates the forms proper to religious and speculative knowledge in Hegel's philosophy of religion, which supposes the necessity of an ontological concept for thought. Chapter 2 isolates three modes of Feuerbachian epistemology - emotion, imagination, and reason - and contextualizes each with respect to Hegel. The second chapter suggests that The Essence of Christianity is simultaneously a critique of speculative ontology, and marks the way in which the Feuerbachian species-concept attempts a retrieval of the unity that is lost with the annulment of the God-concept of theological-speculative ontology. Chapter 3 considers the ambiguous place of the imagination in Feuerbach's critique, and points to the slippery nature of his claim to have retrieved a pre-reflective concept which preexists the "necessary" concept of theological-speculative ontology. This last chapter shows the way in which Feuerbach esteems the imagination as an essential mode of human self-knowing.