Ludwig Feuerbach

The son of a distinguished jurist, Feuerbach studied theology at Heidelberg before moving to Berlin to study under Hegel. His academic career ended in 1830 when his anonymously published Thoughts on Death and Immortality was condemned for attacking personal immortality, barring him from university posts. He spent the rest of his life in rural isolation, supported by his wife's share in a porcelain factory, and there produced his major works. His philosophy developed as a critique of Hegel's speculative idealism, which he saw as theology in its most abstract form, inverting the true relationship between thought and being. In The Essence of Christianity, he contended that religion is self-alienation: humanity projects its own species-essence - its unlimited capacity for reason, love, and will - onto a divine being, then worships it. Marx adopted the materialist inversion and the theory of alienation, but later faulted Feuerbach for a materialism too contemplative, too fixed on static essence rather than social practice.