Abstract

The depiction of the relation of God and man is one of the most difficult challenges of religious philosophy and even more the understanding of God and the human self-conception are deeply entwined. Trying an access to both questions starting from subjectivity, the idea of God is investigated in Descartes, Feuerbach and Husserl. After a discussion of the idea of God in Descartes and its consequences for human aspiration, the opposite standpoint of Feuerbach and his so-called theory of projection will be examined. Finally, aspects from both thinkers are brought together in Husserl’s phenomenological ethics. The idea of God is the entelechy of reason and self-realizing goodness, in which the searching person can realize its own potentials as much as its own abyss, yet is always called to advance beyond herself and toward the ever-beyond God within.