Deus sive hominis: Approaches between Holbach and Feuerbach

Abstract

 Since the System of Nature is the maximum work in which Holbach tries to demystify the religious background that has always tried to attribute to all natural phenomena, under his pen the Baron initially points out several “defeaters” of a deified conception of nature, and later underlies a conception of the system of nature which requires, at the very least, the purification of everything that is foreign to that system. In this sense, divinized representations of nature are in absolute asymmetry with what, in philosophical terms, would be exactly the antithesis of the assimilation of the type deus sive natura spinozist. Feuerbach also, in The Essence of Christianity, questions the notion of the god created by men, starting from an anthropological conception of what a divinity is. Understanding it as a human projection that in many cases enslaves men, the German philosopher examines justly how subjectivity operates, showing how the divine originates in the human, ends up submitting to his own creation. More than this, practices are made precisely from certain images projected by men, culminating in what we call here deus sive hominis.