Feuerbach, Anselm von, 1829-80, German painter. He studied in Germany, Paris, and Rome, spending much of his life in Italy. He sought to produce works of pure classicism that were both didactic and idealistic. Most of his famous works belong to his Roman period (1856-73), including Battle of the Amazons (Nuremberg), Iphigenia (Stuttgart), and Medea (Munich). His portraits have withstood critical opinion better than his history paintings. His autobiography (1882) emphasizes his misunderstood genius.

Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas, 1804-72, German philosopher, educated at Heidelberg and Berlin; son of Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach. At first a Hegelian, he abandoned absolute idealism for naturalistic materialism. He asserted that religious feeling is simply a product of man's yearnings and maintained that the proper study of philosophy is not what transcends experience but man himself and nature, on which humanity rests. Although Feuerbach approaches materialism in his later works, man for him is not to be regarded as simply a product of matter. Feuerbach's most important works were Das Wesen des Christentums (1841, tr. by George Eliot, The Essence of Christianity, 1957 ed.); Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (2 vol., 1833-37); and Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit (1866).

Feuerbach, Paul Johann Anselm von, 1775-1833, German jurist; father of Ludwig Feuerbach. His work was in the field of criminal law. In Kritik des natürlichen Rechts [critique of natural law] (1796) he argued that law was the positive mandate of the state and was not to be confused with natural morality. His Revision der Grundsätze und Grundbegriffe des positiven peinlichen Rechts [revision of the principles and rules of positive criminal law] (1799) ascribed a dual role to the penal law: it should protect society by deterring crime through the threat of finely adjusted penalties and should protect individual liberties by punishing only those crimes that had been exactly defined by statute. Feuerbach's writings earned him teaching positions at the universities of Jena (1799), Kiel (1802), and Landshut (1804), and in 1805 he joined the ministry of justice of Bavaria with the task of preparing a criminal code. He secured the abolition of torture in Bavaria in 1806. The liberal criminal code that he drafted (1813) had an important influence throughout Germany and was adopted by several German states and Swiss cantons. Feuerbach served as an appellate judge from 1814 to his death. Besides his systematic treatises he wrote vivid psychological studies, including Narratives of Remarkable Criminal Trials (1828-29, tr. 1846).

(born July 28, 1804, Landshut, Bavaria—died Sept. 13, 1872, Rechenberg, Ger.) German philosopher. The son of an eminent jurist, he studied under G.W.F. Hegel in Berlin but later abandoned Hegelian idealism for a naturalistic materialism. In Thoughts on Death and Immortality (1830), he attacked the concept of personal immortality. His Abelard and Heloise (1834) and Pierre Bayle (1838) were followed by On Philosophy and Christianity (1839), in which he claimed that “Christianity has in fact long vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind.” In The Essence of Christianity (1841), he proposed that God is merely the outward projection of mankind's inward nature. Some of his views were later endorsed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

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(born July 28, 1804, Landshut, Bavaria—died Sept. 13, 1872, Rechenberg, Ger.) German philosopher. The son of an eminent jurist, he studied under G.W.F. Hegel in Berlin but later abandoned Hegelian idealism for a naturalistic materialism. In Thoughts on Death and Immortality (1830), he attacked the concept of personal immortality. His Abelard and Heloise (1834) and Pierre Bayle (1838) were followed by On Philosophy and Christianity (1839), in which he claimed that “Christianity has in fact long vanished not only from the reason but from the life of mankind.” In The Essence of Christianity (1841), he proposed that God is merely the outward projection of mankind's inward nature. Some of his views were later endorsed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Learn more about Feuerbach, Ludwig (Andreas) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Feuerbach may refer to:a surname

• Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach (d. 1833), German legal scholar
• Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach (d. 1834), German mathematician
• Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (d. 1872), German philosopher and anthropologist
• Anselm Feuerbach (d. 1880), classicist painter
• Al Feuerbach (b. 1948), American shot putter
• Lawrence Feuerbach, American shot-put Olympiana toponym
• Stuttgart-Feuerbach, a district of the city of Stuttgart