Abstract

Feuerbach would be the first to recognize the importance of Hegel’s philosophy for the development of his own. He would, indeed, readily acknowledge Hegel as his teacher. It was, for example, to attend the lectures of Hegel that Feuerbach first begged his father to allow him to move from Heidelberg University to Berlin University in 1824. It was at Berlin that Feuerbach became a disciple of Hegel, hearing by 1826 all Hegel’s lectures “with the exception of the Aesthetic” and “his Logic twice even.” We have Feuerbach’s word that those lectures made a great impression on him. He says, in a letter to his brother, that he has “already got to the bottom of what was still dark and not understood” with his former teacher, Daub. Daub, who had introduced him to Hegel in his theology lectures at Heidelberg, was but a pale shadow in comparison with the real thing; for, Feuerbach continues, what had previously “smouldered” in his mind had, after hearing Hegel lecture, “flared up” into an exceptionally bright flame. In short, Feuerbach would readily acknowledge that it was the genius of Hegel that first led him to philosophy.