O espelho e o critério: Feuerbach como constitutivista do valor e os limites da crítica antropológica da religião

In The Essence of Christianity, Ludwig Feuerbach interprets religion as the objectification of the human essence, understanding the divinity as a projection of humanity’s own predicates, needs, and aspirations. Two critical theses are usually drawn from this interpretation: that the anthropological explanation of religion would invalidate its content, and that the same explanation would turn against Feuerbach’s humanist alternative, producing a “mirror effect” that would undermine the asymmetry of his critique. This article argues that both theses, in the form in which they are usually presented, are either false or not new. The first rests on the confusion between genetic explanation and refutation—a fallacy that the distinction between suspicion and scepticism already dispels—and ignores that the only legitimate bridge between explaining and invalidating is the truth-insensitivity premise developed by the literature on debunking arguments. The second, in its functional-equivalence version, had already been advanced by Stirner, and it reaches not the truth of the critique but only its practical function. As an alternative, a reformulation is proposed: Feuerbach constitutes a parent form of value constitutivism—the supreme is that which the species reflexively recognizes as its own essence—and, as such, inherits the shmagency objection and the question of the ground of norms. The mirror effect then receives its exact and strong formulation: the very premise that would invalidate religious valuation equally invalidates humanist valuation, unless one admits a realism about value that Feuerbach rejects. It is concluded that the asymmetry of the Feuerbachian critique falls not because humanism “also consoles”, but because it cannot meet the normative demand it presses upon religion.

DIETRICH, Pablo; DIETRICH, Maurília Gabriela da Silva. O espelho e o critério: Feuerbach como constitutivista do valor e os limites da crítica antropológica da religião. Revista Eletrônica Amplamente, v. 5, n. 3, p. 947-960, 2026. DOI: 10.47538/RA-2026.V5N3-51.