This brought them into conflict with the system of their school. At all events, thinking and its thought-product, the idea, is here the primary, nature the derivative, which only exists at all by the condescension of the idea. And in this contradiction they floundered as well or as ill as they could. Then came Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity . With one blow it pulverised the contradiction, in that without circumlocutions it placed materialism on the throne again.
Nature exists independently of all philosophy.
It is the foundation upon which we human beings, ourselves products of nature, have grown up. Nothing exists outside nature and man, and the higher beings our religious fantasies have created are only the fantastic reflection of our own essence. One must oneself have experienced the liberating effect of this book to get an idea of it. In the Principles of the Philosophy of the Future , Feuerbach puts his philosophical position concisely and comprehensively into one work. The first section includes Feuerbach's interpretation of the history of philosophy up to Hegel.