Maurizio, this Hegel-Feuerbach-Marx business is reminiscent of something I
read elsewhere over the past six months. Regardless, there's just one
problem I have with your post. I understand the argument that without
Hegel you don't have Feuerbach and thus not Marx, and that post-Hegel
conceptions of religious and cultural phenomenology add explanatory value
not found in the French Enlightenment, but are you arguing for the
consonance of Hegel's view of religion with Feuerbach's and Marx's? I find
your argument strained here.

At 07:13 AM 5/30/2003 +0800, Maurizio Canfora wrote:

>Paul Trejo wrote:
>
> >>
>For Karl Marx, God does not create man but rather man creates God. Hegel
>has already stated that such a view is "foolish and perverted," (LECTURES ON
>THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, 1827) and I quoted that [...]
>
>«Human Reason, human spiritual consciousness or consciousness of its own
>Essence, *is*
>Reason generally, *is* the Divine within humanity. Spirit, insofar as it is
>called Divine Spirit, is not a spirit beyond the stars or beyond the world,
>for God is Present, is Omnipresent, and strictly *as* Spirit is God present
>in Spirit. Religion is a begetting of the Divine Spirit, not an invention of
>human beings." (Hegel, LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, 1827, trans.
>Hodgson, 1989, U. of California Press, vol. 1, p. 130)»
><<
>
>I believe that Hegel is here referring explicitly to the Enlightenment
>treatment of religion, as a mere superstition and as a "devilish" invention
>by corrupt priests. However, it would be incorrect, in my opinion, to
>analyse Feuerbach's (and Marx') treatment of religion as a side-effect of
>Enlightenment.
>
>Feuerbach and Marx came (biographically, historically and philosophically
>speaking) AFTER Hegel, therefore their analysis of religion could not do
>without Hegel's insight. I believe that their treatment of religion may be
>considered as a side-effect of Hegelianism. This might sound provocative to
>Paul -- but here I am not discussing the rather sterile and abstract issue
>whether Hegel would have approved of Marx: what I am trying to say is that
>Hegel's very analysis of religion made Feuerbach's atheism possible.
>
>Both Feuerbach and Marx do not consider religion as an "invention". They
>would actually agree with Hegel's affirmation that «*Human* Reason, *human*
>spiritual consciousness or consciousness of its own Essence, is Reason
>generally, is the Divine within humanity» [emphasis added]. What Hegel is
>actually stating here is the notion that there is a dialectical unity
>between *human* reason and *divinity*, that divinity *is* (or becomes) the
>*human* reason and vice-versa.
>
>Apart from being the pivotal message from Christianity -- for this very
>reason considered by Hegel the highest form of Religion -- this is also the
>core of Hegel's philosophy:
>humanity is God, the God that is «not a spirit beyond the stars or beyond
>the world, for God is Present, is Omnipresent, and strictly *as* Spirit is
>God present in Spirit».
>
>When Hegel mention the "Spirit" he is not dealing with a ghost which would
>be "beyond the stars" or in a haunted house. Recently Beat Greuter cited a
>wonderful passage from the Phenomenology, where it is clear that this
>"Spirit", this "we" which is an "I" is deeply human.
>
>It is bearing in mind this discovery from Christianity, that it is possible
>to abandon the viewpoint of Religion to reach the highness of Philosophy.
>Philosophy -- which contains and develops this truth from Christianity (that
>Man is God) -- is the truth of Religion.
>
>** ** **
>
>It is in this sense that I mean that Feuerbach's later philosophy develops
>(probably without understanding it) an already present feature in Hegel's
>philosophy of religion. Far from naively considering religion as a simple
>invention by priests, Feuerbach too considers it as the «begetting of the
>Divine Spirit». What he also thinks, consistently with Hegel, is that this
>Divine Spirit is nothing else but Human Reason. Subsequently, he goes on
>analysing the reason why humanity needs to project its major "divine"
>attribute (Reason) in the varying and fallacious images of different
>personal Gods.
>
>But without Hegel, without the very content of the passage from the
>philosophy of religion that Paul quoted, no Feuerbach (and no Marx) could
>have approached the subject.
>
>All the best,
>Maurizio