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Rating: 
Summary: An Overlooked Giant
Review: Feuerbach's thoughts are as exciting as Nietzsche's and his style is almost as electric. Whether it was his retro-Marxist aura or simply a lack of readers, somehow this great thinker has been overlooked. Harvey wonders if the lack of Feuerbach appreciation is due to people focusing too much on his work The Essence of Christianity and not enough on his Lectures on the Essence of Religion.While The Essence of Christianity is a fine read and a thorough critique of that faith, it is his Lectures that provide insights jarring even in the 21st century. While recognition for Ernest Becker is just building steam (he insightfully traced a great deal of human behavior to our evasion of death anxiety), Feuerbach remains a footnote in Marxian studies despite having developed a thesis similar to Becker's 120 years earlier. Feuerbach found religion rooted in a few core drives including the fear of death. He also noted that many of our sacred cows came from the sanctification of those things that our lives and cultures depended upon (like the cow). In short, he defined theology as anthropology. The things we worship are the very things that support human life. Feuerbach is the Xenophanes of the 19th century. Harvey's book, grounded in careful scholarship, teases out the best of Feuerbach and considers his ideas in the context of our own time.
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