[186F-PPF: p. 65]
“Perception leaves matters in their unlimited freedom, whereas thought gives them laws, which, however, are only too often despotic. Perception enlightens the mind, but determines and decides nothing; thought determines but also often narrows the mind. (…) The rule is the concern of thought, whereas the exception to the rule is the concern of perception.” [186F-PPF: p. 65]
[187F-PPF: p. 69]
“Man does not have the sense of smell of a hunting dog or of a raven, but only because his sense of smell is a sense embracing all kinds of smell; hence it is a freer sense which, however, is indifferent to particular smells. But, wherever a sense is elevated above the limits of particularity and its bondage to needs, it is elevated to an independent and theoretical significance and dignity … .” [187F-PPF: p. 69]
[188F-PPF: p. 70]
“The new philosophy makes man – with the inclusion of nature as the foundation of man – the unique, universal and highest object of philosophy. It thus makes anthropology, with the inclusion of physiology, the universal science.” [188F-PPF: p. 70]
[189F-PPF: p. 71]
“ … man with man – the unity of I and thou – is God.” [189F-PPF: p. 71]
Ludwig Feuerbach: Lectures on the Essence of Religion (1848) An elaboration of a book entitled The Essence of Religion published evidently in the early 1840’s to fill certain voids left by his The Essence of Christianity
[190F-LER: p. 7-8]
[P. 7] “[“Spinoza”] … is the only modern philosopher to have provided the first elements of a critique and explanation of religion and theology; … the first to have stated … that the world cannot be regarded as the work or product of a personal being acting in accordance with aims and purposes; the first to have brought out [P. 8] the all-importance of nature for the philosophy of religion. … I found fault with him only for continuing, under the influence of the old theological ideas, to define this being who does not act with purpose, will, or consciousness as the most perfect being, in short, as the Godhead, and so barring himself from a development which would have led him to look upon conscious man as a mere part or … a mode of the unconscious totality, and not as its summit and fulfillment.” [190F-LER: p. 7-8]
[191F-LER: p. 12]
“… as Spinoza put it, … religion aims solely at the advantage and welfare of man, while philosophy aims at the truth … .” [191F-LER: p. 12]
