The autonomy of nature in Ludwig Feuerbach

Abstract

This article tries to delineate the proposition that to Feuerbach nature is an autonomous and independent being that comes first in comparison to the spirit.  To him, material nature, that exists in its qualitative differentness, independent from thinking, is the original source, the immediate, not deductible, uncreated  fundament of all real existence, that exists and consists in itself,  when put vis-a-vis the spirit.  Feuerbach sets nature against the spirit, for it is his understanding that nature is not a pure other that only through the spirit was set as nature, but as the first source, the objective material reality that exists outside reason and is given to man by means of his senses as fundament and essence of his life. Therefore, one is dealing first with that essence (light, air, water, fire, plants, animals etc) without which  man does not exist or could be thought of as existing. To Feuerbach nature is all objects and essences put together. Under this condition it is possible to conceive nature as guarantor of externality itself as if it could exist independently from us, an entity that is unaware of itself and which exists in itself and by itself;  for this reason it shall not be seen as something which it is not, i.e., neither divine nor human. Nature always existed, i.e., it exists in itself and has only meaning in itself; it is itself, i.e., it has no mystical essence, it does not hide behind it any absolute being whether human, divine, transcendental or ideal.