·
, .\
60
PARTISAN REVIEW
there is an inescapable reference to man in
all
his
works, from
art
to astronomy and religion. The fact that astronomy is a human en–
terprise does not preclude our achieving objective knowledge of the
behavior of heavenly bodies. But certainly this element of subjectivity
is not a sufficient condition of knowledge, else there would be no
difference between veridical and hallucinatory experience on any
level. The only way objectivity can be established on the basis of
human experience is by empirical evidence and/or reasoning, both
of which are rejected out of hand by the existentialists of this school.
This leaves the only way open to them the unmediated "leap" of
faith, the reliance upon "paradox, inaccessible to thought," the glor–
ification of "the absurd," the refusal to apply any categories of
reason or logic to "the revealed." Since it disdains human reason, not
in the light of a higher Reason, for this, too, is infected with man's
imperfect nature, it is impervious to rational criticism. Nonetheless
it is not beyond the reach of psychological analysis and social
criticism.
The existentialism of Feuerbach denies that human projection
in religion distorts "reality" because projections are not literal re–
ports of antecedent existence but a mode of experiencing things. For
something to be distorted requires that it have .a normal or natural ap–
pearance. But if all appearances are essentially related to the finite
eye and mind of men, it makes no sense to counterpose what human
beings experience to some allegedly objective transcendent entity. The
eternal can only be grasped in a temporal frame. The "absurd" for
Feuerbach always consists in the negation of human sense and under–
standing and is therefore rejected by him as a negation of the true
nature of religion as he conceives
it.
Of the two thinkers, it is apparent that although Feuerbach's
development took
him
further away from the Hegelian philosophy of
religion than did Kierkegaard, the latter made the more radical break
with the Hegelian tradition of reason and the systematic unity of
the concrete universal. Feuerbach is closer to Hegel because like Hegel
he rejects all dualisms, epistemological, metaphysical or theological.
For Hegel, Spirit, divine or human, is one, and it develops by alienat–
ing itself into objective forms which become both temporary obstacles
and stimuli to its further advance. Feuerbach interprets the process
of human alienation as consisting in
this
unconscious worship
of
its
