SOURCE: Christensen, Kit R. “Individuation and Commonality in Feuerbach's ‘Philosophy of Man.’” Interpretation 13, no. 3 (September 1985): 335-57.

In the following essay, Christensen delves into Feuerbach's fundamental assertion that human essence is found in community, and his depiction of “the dialectical interplay between commonality and self-individuation.”

The place of Ludwig Feuerbach in European intellectual history is usually understood, appropriately, in light of his concomitant aims of critically reformulating Hegelian philosophy on a materialistic basis, and exposing the “anthropological essence” of religious belief. Feuerbach himself intended the chief product of this dual project to be a “new philosophy” grounded in the affirmation of, and a more concrete understanding of “man” as such. At least after 1839, Feuerbach came to believe that such a new “philosophy of man” was needed to combat and overcome the alleged oppressiveness (for the “human spirit”) of both Hegelian speculative philosophy and especially Christian religious doctrine.¹ Since he...