When human beings create and put above themselves an imagined higher being, they are alienated from themselves. Feuerbach says, What is positive, essential in the intuition of the divine being can only be human, so the intuition of man as an object of consciousness can only be negative, hostile to man. Between 1841-1844, Marx remained a true Feuerbachian, and his comments on religions during this period reflect Feuerbach s influence. However, Marx s discussion of man s self-alienation in religion was much more focused on analysis of the historical and economical factors producing such an alienated consciousness. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world.
Man is the world of man, the state, and society.
This state, this society, produces religion, a reversed world-consciousness because they are a reversed world. The religious illusions not only give a sense of the emptiness and worthlessness of human life, but also offer us comfort and consolation. Marx kept Feuerbach s ideas of projection and alienation. Indeed, they appear frequently in Marx s early writings. Because of their own fixation on metaphysics, Hegel and Feuerbach just saw the half picture of the human condition.