George Eliot on God and the Good
George Eliot on God and the Good
Well known for her atheism, Eliot maintained a serious concern with morality and community throughout her life, evidenced in her novels and personal letters. She was persistently concerned with how to live a moral life outside organised religion, and how to maintain a sense of personal and community responsibility. First I’ll look at some influences on the development of her atheism, (and the limits of their influence), then at the kind of religion she rejected.
Eliot existed in a society where knowledge of the world was expanding at a startling pace. Scientific discoveries offered an understanding of how species evolved, and how man emerged. Early psychology and sociology offered insights into the workings of the mind and development of the individual, and attempted to view human society and behaviour from the outside. Feuerbach’s work was translated by Eliot , and he was an important influence on the development of her thought.
Feuerbach saw religion as deriving from human consciousness. Chrisitan doctrines were, for him, a projection of human aspirations, needs and fears. In creating God, man objectified aspects humanness and made them into a supreme other being. In religion, man ‘contemplates his own latent nature’. This leads to alienation of man from his species and potential; focus on the divine leads to a loss of ‘species consciousness’ (McDade 3) Theology was understood as mis-directed anthropology. For Feuerbach, religion ‘is the childlike condition of humanity…What was formerly contemplated and worshipped as God is now perceived to be something human..The divine being is human nature purified, freed from the limits of the individual man, made objective – ie, contemplated as another..All the attributes of the divine nature are..attributes of the human nature (McDade, 2) With this objectification of the best of human nature, religion had set up a false division of humanness, apportioning only negative attributes
Well known for her atheism, Eliot maintained a serious concern with morality and community throughout her life, evidenced in her novels and personal letters. She was persistently concerned with how to live a moral life outside organised religion, and how to maintain a sense of personal and community responsibility. First I’ll look at some influences on the development of her atheism, (and the limits of their influence), then at the kind of religion she rejected.
Eliot existed in a society where knowledge of the world was expanding at a startling pace. Scientific discoveries offered an understanding of how species evolved, and how man emerged. Early psychology and sociology offered insights into the workings of the mind and development of the individual, and attempted to view human society and behaviour from the outside. Feuerbach’s work was translated by Eliot , and he was an important influence on the development of her thought.
Feuerbach saw religion as deriving from human consciousness. Chrisitan doctrines were, for him, a projection of human aspirations, needs and fears. In creating God, man objectified aspects humanness and made them into a supreme other being. In religion, man ‘contemplates his own latent nature’. This leads to alienation of man from his species and potential; focus on the divine leads to a loss of ‘species consciousness’ (McDade 3) Theology was understood as mis-directed anthropology. For Feuerbach, religion ‘is the childlike condition of humanity…What was formerly contemplated and worshipped as God is now perceived to be something human..The divine being is human nature purified, freed from the limits of the individual man, made objective – ie, contemplated as another..All the attributes of the divine nature are..attributes of the human nature (McDade, 2) With this objectification of the best of human nature, religion had set up a false division of humanness, apportioning only negative attributes