Ludwig Feuerbach

Ludwig Feuerbach was a student of Hegel who turned Hegel’s philosophy upside down: not Spirit realising itself in man, but man projecting his own nature onto a God he then worships. The Essence of Christianity of 1841, translated into English by George Eliot, argues that theology is anthropology, and that the attributes of God, love, wisdom, justice, are human attributes alienated and returned as commands. Marx and Engels read it, took the notion of alienation, and then, in the Theses on Feuerbach, complained that he had only interpreted the world. He lived in retirement and died poor.