Feuerbach's Essence

Ludwig Feuerbach

The Essence Of Christianity is merely a footnote to Metaphysics. When Feuerbach states that he differs from those philosophers "who pluck out their eyes that they may see better; for my thought I require the senses, especially sight," he is echoing Aristotle: "All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is in the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight." 

To therefore claim with Feuerbach that theology is anthropology is simply another way of saying with Aristotle that the essence of a thing is found within the thing itself: the soul of the eye is seeing. Not all philosophy is but footnotes to Plato. Feuerbach’s Essence is the exceptional exception.

This exception is the reason why Heidegger states that you cannot have Being without human beings. It is also why Rahner echos Heidegger by arguing that to carry out Feuerbach's program of reformulating dogmatic theology into theological anthropology does not necessarily mean that God gets reduced to man,  because "to turn toward man is to discover the place where mystery is inscribed in the world." Ecce Homo is the means to become more than just human-all-too-human. 

Sources

Aristotle. Metaphysics. Princeton University Press. 1991.

Friedrich Nietzsche. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is. Penguin Classics. 2004.
Karl Rahner. Foundations Of Christian Faith. Crossroad. 1982.

Ludwig Feuerbach. The Essence Of Christianity. Dover. 2008.

Martin Heidegger. Being And Time. Blackwell Publishers. 1962.
Thomas Sheehan. The Dream Of Karl Rahner. The New York Review Of Books. February 4, 1982.