A realisation of this ideal, Feuerbach says, was Christianity, where Christ symbolised the awareness of humanity being divine and of reason becoming flesh – that is, each human having a universal reason. While Christ as such was still an individual, his death enabled anyone to understand their own divinity. Still, in the Christian religion, this new truth appeared only as an immediate belief to Christ as the road to salvation and to God as the father of all humanity. Furthermore, this belief was still only spiritual and the church denied that it had any relation to the world.
This antiworldly attitude, Feuerbach thinks, led to the dismissal of sciences and to the fall of the Roman empire. Nature was especially ignored, except as a means for God’s purposes. Thus, light of natural reason was replaced with light of devotion or only faintly reached the minds of mediaeval thinkers through the lens of Aristotelian philosophy, which was adapted to the needs of religion. Some philosophers did study nature, but it was clearly a distraction from more important matters. Hence, the only science left was theology, which studied the content of Christian faith. Still, even in scholasticism, thought became its own object and theology turned so into philosophy, but only stiltedly, as formal logic. The church also literally conquered the world by becoming a worldly power battling with states and repressing sciences. Yet, Feuerbach thinks, the scholastic endeavours at least led to a certain autonomy of reason or thinking, which even in its most fruitless controversies showed an interest to rationally test the tenets of faith. Similarly art, which at first served church, became autonomous endeavour interested in beauty as such. The religious spirit that acted negatively toward the world thus led naturally to modern universal and scientific spirit.
This new spirit awakened at first, Feuerbach suggests, as protestantism, which affected a liberation from external authorities and hierarchies to free communal life. Luther endorsed the principle, Feuerbach thinks, that what I believe in exists and also initiated a scepticism toward dogmas of Catholicism. In protestantism, Logos became truly flesh, not just within the mind of a believer, but as the world spirit. By simplifying religion and removing historical additions from it, protestantism freed room for thinking to move to scientific endeavours.
At first this new scientific spirit appeared, Feuerbach recounts, as a study of external material, that is, the arts and sciences of the ancient world. Thus, only through reproduction it could step toward spontaneous production. Nature was then once more taken as an essential object of study, with experience of the whole of humanity as the key method of research. Only with the start of the modern age begins the interest in natural or experiential sciences, which are an expression of the freedom of thinking. Experience is not just naive perception, but an interest in nature, generated from sceptical distrust of all presuppositions. While Descartes with his doubt of everything, Feuerbach says, was then the spiritual father for the standpoint of experience, Francis Bacon was the immediate or sensuous father, who gave the experiential sciences their method, and from him Feuerbach begins the tale of the modern philosophy.
The importance of Bacon’s philosophy, for Feuerbach, lies in taking experience as the primary object of study, while earlier it was just of random interest, although he managed to merely explicate the experiential method, but not really apply it to any topic. Experience for Bacon meant a combination of thinking and perception and it was to be used as means for the goal of philosophical knowledge, that is, finding forms of each thing: Bacon’s example of such a form was warmth as expansive movement. Through the idea of such materialised forms, Bacon managed to liberate philosophy from scholastic abstractions, and for this reason he was taken solely as an empiricist, although his notion of experience also included the use of thinking.
Although Bacon was more of a traditionalist when it came to notions like soul and God, Feuerbach considers his philosophy as a route from mediaeval scholasticism to Hobbesian materialism. Just like a student coming from school to real life, he says Bacon opposed mediaeval philosophy, which went beyond nature and sensuous reality to mystical intuition of divinity and to scholastic consideration of abstractions, and took material and sensuous as the proper object. It was just natural, Feuerbach thinks, that entranced by sensuous reality humanity would be interested in materialism. This materialism was then embodied in Hobbesian philosophy, which had nothing self-moving and was thus no real system. Indeed, Feuerbach says, it was just a mechanistic, lifeless machine, where everything was finite, relative and conditioned, but although it was lifeless, it was still a necessary step in the development of philosophy.
This mechanistic nature of Hobbesian philosophy can be seen, Feuerbach thinks, in his understanding of thinking as a mere mechanical operation. Similarly, nature for Hobbes was not living and his philosophy of nature was mere philosophy of moving bodies and especially their quantities: movement of bodies was not immanent to them, but only caused by movement of other bodies, while sensuous qualities were just phantasms caused by bodies having an effect on subject. On Feuerbach’s opinion, Hobbes was right in thinking that motion was the principle of nature – even Aristotle knew that – but his fault was to restrict nature only to one type of movement, namely, mechanical movement, where mathematics prevails, but quality and life are missing.
Just as little as about life, Hobbesian philosophy knew about soul and spirit, Feuerbach insists. Thus, instead of psychology, Hobbes could speak only of anthropology and the only basis of his ethics could be a sensuous individual. Hence, when Hobbes spoke of will, he meant only sensuous desire and even this as something determined and dependent and object of this will or good could be only individual and relative.
Feuerbach continues that similarly, state could be for Hobbes only something generated either by oppression of individuals or by their free contract. The Hobbesian state presupposed a free state of nature, while the state itself was violent oppression and external combination. Thus, although individuals became citizens in the state, they still in a sense remained outside and independent of it and merely forced to submission – while in the condition of nature everyone had been free, in a state, the natural freedom lied only with the ruler. For Hobbes, right meant only natural freedom, while the state merely restricted this freedom. The supposed aim of the Hobbesian state was the wellbeing of people, but it did not improve the quality of humans, who essentially remained similar animals as in the state of nature.
In other words, Feuerbach concludes, Hobbesian state did make good and bad absolute by making one will universal, but this universalisation was based on mere arbitrary choice. State truly is a unity and morality and reason exist only in state, Feuerbach says, but with Hobbes this unity was not organic, but merely based on exclusive will. Hobbesian universal will was just formal and its content or morality was completely arbitrary. Hobbesian state did nothing to the individuals or did not educate them to be true citizens, but merely preserved them, as they were in the state of nature.
After Hobbes, Feuerbach next considers Pierre Gassendi, whom he regards important mostly as a restorer of Epicurean philosophy, but not as an independent thinker. In his methodology, Feuerbach thinks, Gassendi fell to the mistake of all empiricists that true universality cannot be really discovered through individual instances. Instead, Feuerbach insists, we as individuals can jump to universality only through reason. Thus, as an empiricist Gassendi couldn’t even explain where humans received the ability to make deductions.
Feuerbach also sees Gassendi’s theory of atoms as full of contradictions. Gassendian atom should have been simple and independent, but according to Feuerbach, we can only think of a group of atoms. As simple, the Gassendian atoms could be distinguished only through their movement, which should thus be implicit to them, but Gassendi thought they needed God to move them. Feuerbach notes that combinations of atoms should be accidental, while atoms should be eternal, but Gassendi still suggested that God had created and ordered them. Feuerbach makes the colourful analogy that Gassendi’s philosophy also externally combined in the void of Gassendi’s head independent and even contradictory things: physical system of atoms and theological notions like God and immortal soul.
Gassendi’s philosophy was, in Feuerbach’s opinion, an example of how unsatisfactory empiricism ultimately is. From this dedication of the external, he continues, philosophy moves to the internal with Jacob Böhme, who mystically saw God as a conscious, living spirit. One might think that this idea had been common to all Christian thinkers, but Feuerbach insists they had not really understood what that means, except implicitly in the idea of a trinity. In other words, they had not understood that God themselves also contained negativity and self-differentiation and was not just negative to nature. Although Feuerbach admits Böhme to be a muddled thinker, he is clear about Böhme’s basic idea: spirit, consciousness, life and sensation are born through self-doubling and opposition, where the opposite is still essentially identical with what it opposes. Purified from mysticism, Feuerbarch says, Böhme is seen to simply describe the nature of self-consciousness, which is the basic idea of Cartesian philosophy.
Descartes famously began his philosophy with doubt, and while this doubt may seem a mere subjective beginning, Feuerbach thinks there is an important reason why Descartes had to choose that beginning: the self-conscious I could find itself only through doubting and by separating itself from e.g. sensuousness. Descartes saw that even if I doubted everything, I could not doubt my own existence, because I was the one thinking these doubts. Existence of mind was then the principle of Cartesian philosophy, while everything distinguishable from mind or object was doubtful and less real. Cartesian doubt, Feuerbach concludes, was then not just doubt, but distinguishing oneself from objects. Mind at this point in history meant just this self-distinguishing from objects and denial of their reality, while existence of self did not mean sensuous existence that would have made it doubtful, but just thinking or consciousness. Feuerbach points out that for Descartes, cogito ergo cum was no deduction, and that therefore Gassendi missed the point when he insisted that our existence could be deduced even from our sensuous existence: in cogito ergo sum, Descartes was describing the essence of self-consciousness.
Cartesian mind was then a self or I as a self-relation distinguishing itself from body, Feuerbach states, and although Descartes himself did not understand it, doubt and cogito ergo sum formed the essence of the mind: living distinguishing oneself from bodies and the resulting self-certainty. Immateriality is then not the essence of mind, but only the result of this distinguishing, that is, we are immaterial, because we distinguish ourselves from bodies. The fault of Descartes, Feuerbach suggests, was to think that mind is only such self-relating subjectivity, which makes the opposition of mind and body permanent.
Feuerbach continues the exposition of Cartesian philosophy by recounting how the mind knows itself certainly and has in clarity and distinctness a criterion for certainty. Yet, as Descartes added, this was a criterion only for certainty and not for knowledge and truth. In other words, the Cartesian mind or soul could not know whether bodies exist, except through the medium of certainty of absolute reality or infinite being without any opposition. Feuerbach suggests that Descartes confused this infinite being with the popular idea of God: without showing how self-consciousness could be developed into objective thinking of ideas he just found an inborn concept of God that he thought had been implanted by God himself.
Descartes used here the ontological proof of God’s existence. He began from the idea of God, which should not have been just a necessary and universal idea, but also the most real and thus distinguished from all other ideas. Idea of God, Descartes said, contained only necessary existence, so that in thinking God we were necessarily thinking of their existence, while with other things, ideas were distinct from their existence. Feuerbach notes that this Cartesian proof of God is not really a proof, but an immediate grasping of God’s existence. Furthermore, God is not the starting point for the certainty of our cognition – this is our own self-thinking – but its perfection or objective authorisation. In other words, Cartesian God merely authorised as true what we as subjects already had regarded as certain.
Feuerbach notes that nature was the most interesting object for the Cartesian mind, because it was distinguished from the mind as being a mere object. Thus, it was inevitable, Feuerbach thinks, that Descartes regarded nature as mere matter. Certain in this Cartesian notion of matter was not what we sensed or qualities, but extension or intuition of externality, which as an abstraction from sense qualities was a further affirmation of our self-certainty. Indeed, Descartes allowed in physics only geometry, where bodies were not regarded through senses or imagination, but through intelligence. The main defect of Cartesian philosophy of nature, in Feuerbach's opinion, was that he made matter completely inert and thus was unable to show how movement could develop from it: that is, he thought God had imparted motion to matter, although matter itself should have had an urge to move. Still, Feuerbach admits, Descartes at least managed to start modern physics, which in its fundamentals still follows Cartesian ideas.
With God, Descartes found the opposition of mind and body removed. Yet, Feuerbach insists, Descartes failed to show their unity without the help of God and therefore mind and body remained in his philosophy completely separate. Thus, they could form no organic unity, although he inconsistently accepted their unification from experience. This fault in Cartesian philosophy was caused, Feuerbach suggests, by his seeing mind as mere distinction from body, and following old metaphysics, as a mere simple, immaterial unity. Since Descartes regarded only mind as living, he saw animals as mere machines and also human bodies as mere automatons.
After Descartes, Feuerbach turns briefly to Arnold Geulincx, who, he thinks, developed Cartesian philosophy into its logical, but one-sided conclusion. Geulincx, as the founder of the so-called occasionalism, suggested that the interaction of the mind and the body was reliant on God doing continuous miracles. Relying on wonder as an explanation, Feuerbach says, means really that there is something definitely wrong in one’s fundamental concepts. With Geulincx, like with Descartes, this basic fault was the assumption that mind was just a knowing self in separation from matter.
Feuerbach sees Nikolaus Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza as the true fulfillers of Cartesian philosophy. Mind as simple self, distinct from matter, was the principle of Cartesian philosophy, and the opposition of the mind and matter was resolved only through infinite being, which provided for Descartes the only certainty of the existence of things and truth of representations, but ideas as immaterial objects could not really have any connection with material things. Malebranche, Feuerbach suggests, took the next necessary step that because the mind as just an affirmation of oneself could not develop any ideas of external things and even less matter could make itself visible to mind, we could perceive things only in God and our ideas were really ideas of God. While Descartes contradictorily thought that spirit could move its body through pineal gland, Malebranche understood that only an omnipotent infinite being could achieve this. Like Descartes, Malebranche immediately confused this solution with theological notions, although implicitly God with him was the unification of all minds and the true cause of all individual material movements.
Feuerbach thinks that Malebranche’s philosophy did not just bridge the opposition of mind and body through God, but also saw finite minds as aspects of God. Then again, because of his theological leanings, Malebranche did not understand this and spoke only of individual minds as different from God. Thus, when Malebranche insisted that we cannot know, but only feel ourselves, he was speaking merely of individual humans. God was then for Malebranche just the universal reason which went beyond mere individual humanity and where we could see universal ideas. Extension, particularly, was a universal idea common to all humanity, while sensations filling it belonged only to individual humans. Both individual soul and material objects were in Malebranche’s philosophy dark and obscure objects that we saw only in the light of universal reason. Feuerbach concludes that while God is the spirit or reason in us, Malebranche confused this with theological notions, for instance, by saying that God let us see things because of his goodness. Furthermore, because Malebranche’s God was immaterial, nature remained outside them as a negation of God: true, nature was seen in God, but only in an idealised manner.
Malebranche was already on his way from Descartes to Spinoza, since he emphasised the still just subjective middle point of Cartesian philosophy or God. While with Malebranche the mind and the matter still had objective reality, he at least raised the importance of God as the unity of minds. Yet, Feuerbach notes, beyond Malebranche’s God still remained the material world, although it already was under the power of God. The next step is then to make nature into a mere modification of God, which was achieved in Spinoza’s philosophy: last system dealt in Feuerbach’s book.
Feuerbach returns for a moment to Descartes, who already admitted that God was really the true substance, because other things were dependent on them. Still, Descartes had regarded matter and mind as substances in the sense of having distinct attributes or extension and thinking. Thus, Cartesian matter and mind could be thought independently of God’s concept, although they were in their existence dependent on God: Feuerbach thinks Descartes the philosopher and Descartes the theologian contradicted here one another. Instead of relying on such external notions like creation, Feuerbach suggests Spinoza improved the equation by showing that God was internally necessary for matter and mind by making the two mere attributes of God. Spinoza also saw matter and mind as independent of one another, but just by this independence they showed themselves to be mere aspects of one substance: what was positive in them was not their opposition, but substance. Spinoza’s substance thus solved all the contradictions involved in Cartesian dualism of matter and mind. Individual bodies and spirits were then mere limitations of matter and mind as such, which were the only positive thing in these individuals. Spinozan substance was so the necessary consequence of the notion of God as the highest reality, which could have no personal existence in addition to it.
Like Descartes, Feuerbach notes, Spinoza used the ontological proof to show the existence of his substance. Feuerbach notes that Kant would not have accepted Spinoza’s conclusions, because according to Kant, through mere thought one cannot arrive at existence, which would have required sensations to confirm it. For Spinoza, Feuerbach adds, this objection would have been beside the point, because sensuous existence was for him just unreal, finite and ultimately negative existence and substance as mere object of thought still had more reality than determinate things. Feuerbach notes that again the form of argument is misleading and describes just how we individual minds can come to know the true reality behind finite entities.
Feuerbach explains that matter was necessarily an attribute of Spinozan God, because both were infinite. Individual bodies were then mere limitations of extension, which as such had no negativity and was thus a cause of itself. Sensuous extended bodies were divisible, but matter as such was simple and thus indivisible, unified and unique existence. Matter expressed thus the essence of God, but was still only one attribute of God, since God expressed itself also as thinking. Indeed, Feuerbach notes, Spinoza spoke of an infinity of attributes, although we humans knew only of two of them. Thinking and extension differed and thus in their difference were unreal, but this duality seemed arbitrary to Spinoza and thus in need of increase to infinity. Yet, Feuerbach thinks, this arbitrary nature of their opposition was just a defect in Spinoza’s philosophy, since determination should be more than just negation.
Feuerbach thinks that it would be an inappropriate, theological question to ask how finite things were generated from Spinozan infinity. Indeed, Feuerbach says, really true for Spinoza was only infinite existence and finite things had only a negative existence or existed as mere modes of substance: substance did not temporally precede finite entities, but was their internal power holding the finite chains of causation together, while time was just a finite mode of understanding the true reality or God. For Spinoza, all finite things were modes of God, which had thinking and extension as their attributes. Thus Feuerbach explains, Spinoza could conclude that finite things all had body and soul, which were just two aspects of the same finite thing: extended body thought and thinking soul extended itself.
Feuerbach opposes the common idea that Spinoza’s philosophy would be identical with naive pantheism or atheism, where finite is just identified with infinite, because Spinoza has ascribed to God more power and reality than anyone. Feuerbach notes that Spinoza is also attacked for destroying morality, but while he did show that good was mere utility, his morality was still very sublime by making intelligence the highest good. Feuerbach admits that Spinoza did deny freedom of will, but thinks he was no fatalist, since Spinozan God was not determined by anything outside itself. The main fault Feuerbach sees in Spinoza’s philosophy is the one he has already mentioned: Spinoza did not really determine God, that is, he did not explain the difference of thinking and extension, just like Descartes did not explain their identity. True, Spinoza’s God did think, but he did not understood thinking God as a self-developing spirit, which, Feuerbach thinks, would have given Spinoza a principle of differentiation for his substance.
Feuerbach notes that nature was the most interesting object for the Cartesian mind, because it was distinguished from the mind as being a mere object. Thus, it was inevitable, Feuerbach thinks, that Descartes regarded nature as mere matter. Certain in this Cartesian notion of matter was not what we sensed or qualities, but extension or intuition of externality, which as an abstraction from sense qualities was a further affirmation of our self-certainty. Indeed, Descartes allowed in physics only geometry, where bodies were not regarded through senses or imagination, but through intelligence. The main defect of Cartesian philosophy of nature, in Feuerbach's opinion, was that he made matter completely inert and thus was unable to show how movement could develop from it: that is, he thought God had imparted motion to matter, although matter itself should have had an urge to move. Still, Feuerbach admits, Descartes at least managed to start modern physics, which in its fundamentals still follows Cartesian ideas.
With God, Descartes found the opposition of mind and body removed. Yet, Feuerbach insists, Descartes failed to show their unity without the help of God and therefore mind and body remained in his philosophy completely separate. Thus, they could form no organic unity, although he inconsistently accepted their unification from experience. This fault in Cartesian philosophy was caused, Feuerbach suggests, by his seeing mind as mere distinction from body, and following old metaphysics, as a mere simple, immaterial unity. Since Descartes regarded only mind as living, he saw animals as mere machines and also human bodies as mere automatons.
After Descartes, Feuerbach turns briefly to Arnold Geulincx, who, he thinks, developed Cartesian philosophy into its logical, but one-sided conclusion. Geulincx, as the founder of the so-called occasionalism, suggested that the interaction of the mind and the body was reliant on God doing continuous miracles. Relying on wonder as an explanation, Feuerbach says, means really that there is something definitely wrong in one’s fundamental concepts. With Geulincx, like with Descartes, this basic fault was the assumption that mind was just a knowing self in separation from matter.
Feuerbach sees Nikolaus Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza as the true fulfillers of Cartesian philosophy. Mind as simple self, distinct from matter, was the principle of Cartesian philosophy, and the opposition of the mind and matter was resolved only through infinite being, which provided for Descartes the only certainty of the existence of things and truth of representations, but ideas as immaterial objects could not really have any connection with material things. Malebranche, Feuerbach suggests, took the next necessary step that because the mind as just an affirmation of oneself could not develop any ideas of external things and even less matter could make itself visible to mind, we could perceive things only in God and our ideas were really ideas of God. While Descartes contradictorily thought that spirit could move its body through pineal gland, Malebranche understood that only an omnipotent infinite being could achieve this. Like Descartes, Malebranche immediately confused this solution with theological notions, although implicitly God with him was the unification of all minds and the true cause of all individual material movements.
Feuerbach thinks that Malebranche’s philosophy did not just bridge the opposition of mind and body through God, but also saw finite minds as aspects of God. Then again, because of his theological leanings, Malebranche did not understand this and spoke only of individual minds as different from God. Thus, when Malebranche insisted that we cannot know, but only feel ourselves, he was speaking merely of individual humans. God was then for Malebranche just the universal reason which went beyond mere individual humanity and where we could see universal ideas. Extension, particularly, was a universal idea common to all humanity, while sensations filling it belonged only to individual humans. Both individual soul and material objects were in Malebranche’s philosophy dark and obscure objects that we saw only in the light of universal reason. Feuerbach concludes that while God is the spirit or reason in us, Malebranche confused this with theological notions, for instance, by saying that God let us see things because of his goodness. Furthermore, because Malebranche’s God was immaterial, nature remained outside them as a negation of God: true, nature was seen in God, but only in an idealised manner.
Malebranche was already on his way from Descartes to Spinoza, since he emphasised the still just subjective middle point of Cartesian philosophy or God. While with Malebranche the mind and the matter still had objective reality, he at least raised the importance of God as the unity of minds. Yet, Feuerbach notes, beyond Malebranche’s God still remained the material world, although it already was under the power of God. The next step is then to make nature into a mere modification of God, which was achieved in Spinoza’s philosophy: last system dealt in Feuerbach’s book.
Feuerbach returns for a moment to Descartes, who already admitted that God was really the true substance, because other things were dependent on them. Still, Descartes had regarded matter and mind as substances in the sense of having distinct attributes or extension and thinking. Thus, Cartesian matter and mind could be thought independently of God’s concept, although they were in their existence dependent on God: Feuerbach thinks Descartes the philosopher and Descartes the theologian contradicted here one another. Instead of relying on such external notions like creation, Feuerbach suggests Spinoza improved the equation by showing that God was internally necessary for matter and mind by making the two mere attributes of God. Spinoza also saw matter and mind as independent of one another, but just by this independence they showed themselves to be mere aspects of one substance: what was positive in them was not their opposition, but substance. Spinoza’s substance thus solved all the contradictions involved in Cartesian dualism of matter and mind. Individual bodies and spirits were then mere limitations of matter and mind as such, which were the only positive thing in these individuals. Spinozan substance was so the necessary consequence of the notion of God as the highest reality, which could have no personal existence in addition to it.
Like Descartes, Feuerbach notes, Spinoza used the ontological proof to show the existence of his substance. Feuerbach notes that Kant would not have accepted Spinoza’s conclusions, because according to Kant, through mere thought one cannot arrive at existence, which would have required sensations to confirm it. For Spinoza, Feuerbach adds, this objection would have been beside the point, because sensuous existence was for him just unreal, finite and ultimately negative existence and substance as mere object of thought still had more reality than determinate things. Feuerbach notes that again the form of argument is misleading and describes just how we individual minds can come to know the true reality behind finite entities.
Feuerbach explains that matter was necessarily an attribute of Spinozan God, because both were infinite. Individual bodies were then mere limitations of extension, which as such had no negativity and was thus a cause of itself. Sensuous extended bodies were divisible, but matter as such was simple and thus indivisible, unified and unique existence. Matter expressed thus the essence of God, but was still only one attribute of God, since God expressed itself also as thinking. Indeed, Feuerbach notes, Spinoza spoke of an infinity of attributes, although we humans knew only of two of them. Thinking and extension differed and thus in their difference were unreal, but this duality seemed arbitrary to Spinoza and thus in need of increase to infinity. Yet, Feuerbach thinks, this arbitrary nature of their opposition was just a defect in Spinoza’s philosophy, since determination should be more than just negation.
Feuerbach thinks that it would be an inappropriate, theological question to ask how finite things were generated from Spinozan infinity. Indeed, Feuerbach says, really true for Spinoza was only infinite existence and finite things had only a negative existence or existed as mere modes of substance: substance did not temporally precede finite entities, but was their internal power holding the finite chains of causation together, while time was just a finite mode of understanding the true reality or God. For Spinoza, all finite things were modes of God, which had thinking and extension as their attributes. Thus Feuerbach explains, Spinoza could conclude that finite things all had body and soul, which were just two aspects of the same finite thing: extended body thought and thinking soul extended itself.
Feuerbach opposes the common idea that Spinoza’s philosophy would be identical with naive pantheism or atheism, where finite is just identified with infinite, because Spinoza has ascribed to God more power and reality than anyone. Feuerbach notes that Spinoza is also attacked for destroying morality, but while he did show that good was mere utility, his morality was still very sublime by making intelligence the highest good. Feuerbach admits that Spinoza did deny freedom of will, but thinks he was no fatalist, since Spinozan God was not determined by anything outside itself. The main fault Feuerbach sees in Spinoza’s philosophy is the one he has already mentioned: Spinoza did not really determine God, that is, he did not explain the difference of thinking and extension, just like Descartes did not explain their identity. True, Spinoza’s God did think, but he did not understood thinking God as a self-developing spirit, which, Feuerbach thinks, would have given Spinoza a principle of differentiation for his substance.
