SOURCE: Wartofsky, Marx W. “Early Hegelian Epistemology: The Dissertation.” In Feuerbach, pp. 28-48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

In the following excerpt from his full-length study of Feuerbach's philosophy, Wartofsky asserts that Feuerbach's dissertation De ratione, una, universali, infinita defines the initial position of his thought while foreshadowing later developments, including a future break with the rationalist-idealist mode of Hegel.

Feuerbach's Dissertation,¹ though it is a thoroughly Hegelian exercise, is significant in the suggestions it already bears of themes he is to develop later. Two readings of the Dissertation are possible: first, one may read it as a continuation of Hegel's dialectical phenomenology, as it is fully developed in the Phenomenology of Mind. In this case, one reads the Dissertation historically from its present, relating it to what preceded it in Hegel's work. Second, one may read it retrospectively, from its future or from our present, so to speak...