Judging it to be "of all my writings incomparably the best," Hume accurately assessed this groundbreaking classic, which continues to influence philosophical thinking on ethics to this day through the force of its ideas and its clarity of expression. Among the many insights that Hume expounds in this work is that morality is grounded in feelings, not in knowledge. Based on moral sentiment, people naturally value agreeable qualities and shun disagreeable ones. On closer analysis, Hume concludes that the feeling of agreeableness comes from an innate perception of the utility of a particular...

Originally published in 1845, this concise critique formed the basis of thirty later lectures delivered in 1848 by Ludwig Feuerbach, one of Germany s most influential humanist philosophers. In The Essence of Religion Feuerbach applied the analysis expounded in The Essence of Christianity (1841) to religion as a whole. The main thrust of Feuerbach s argument is aptly summed up in the original subtitle to this work: "God the Image of Man. Man s Dependence upon Nature the Last and Only Source of Religion." Feuerbach reviews key aspects of religious belief and in each case explains them as...