Ludwig Feuerbach

Ludwig Feuerbach was a German philosopher and anthropologist who was best known for his book The Essence of Christianity, which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced generations of later thinkers, including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Engels, Richard Wagner, and Friedrich Nietzsche. He was a student of Hegel and a member of the Young Hegelian circles, but he later developed his own philosophy of anthropological materialism and secular humanism. He argued that all theological concepts are projections of human attributes and needs, and that religion is an alienation of human essence. He also advocated for a naturalistic ethics based on human love and sensuality. He wrote many other works on philosophy, religion, history, and anthropology, such as The Essence of Religion, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, Theogony, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, and Thoughts on Death and Immortality. He died of heart failure at the age of 68 in Rechenberg near Nuremberg.