Religion between Rationalistic Critique and Posmodernist Currents

Abstract

Rationalistic critique of religious phenomena was born in classical Antiquity and afterwards in the Age of Enlightenment. It was continued till to present postmodernism. To this purpose the contributions of Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche proved to be decisive. These analyses of religion, based on systematic disillusionment, are concisely reconstructed and criticized. The essay argues the necessity of an intellectual religiousness, but rejects prime protestantism (Martin Luther) and its sociopolitical consequences. The essay argues the lasting necessity of a first principle which bestows sense to all other phenomena and helps to avoid total relativism.