Feuerbach’s influence has been greatest upon the anti-Christian theologians such as D.F. Strauss, the author of the Leben Jesu, and Bruno Bauer, who like Feuerbach himself had passed over from Hegelianism to a form of naturalism. But many of his ideas were taken up by those who, like Arnold Ruge, had entered into the struggle between church and state in Germany, and those who, like F. Engels and Karl Marx, were leaders in the revolt of labour against the power of capital. His work was too deliberately unsystematic (“keine Philosophie ist meine Philosophie”) ever to make him a power in philosophy. He expressed in an eager, disjointed, but condensed and laboured fashion, certain deep-lying convictions—that philosophy must come back from unsubstantial metaphysics to the solid facts of human nature and natural science, that the human body was no less important than the human spirit (“Der Mensch ist was er isst”) and that Christianity was utterly out of harmony with the age. His convictions gained weight from the simplicity, uprightness and diligence of his character; but they need a more effective justification than he was able to give them.
His works appeared in 10 vols. (Leipzig, 1846-1866); his correspondence has been edited with an indifferent biography by Karl Grün (1874). See A. Lévy, La Philosophie de Feuerbach (1904); M. Meyer, L. Feuerbach’s Moralphilosophie (Berlin, 1899); E. v. Hartmann, Geschichte d. Metaphysik (Leipzig, 1899-1900), ii. 437-444: F. Engels, L. Feuerbach und d. Ausgang d. class, deutsch. Philos. (2nd ed., 1895).
(H. St.)
FEUERBACH, PAUL JOHANN ANSELM, Ritter von (1775-1833), German jurist and writer on criminal law, was born at Hainichen near Jena on the 14th of November 1775. He received his early education at Frankfort on Main, whither his family had removed soon after his birth. At the age of sixteen, however, he ran away from home, and, going to Jena, was helped by relations there to study at the university. In spite of poor health and the most desperate poverty, he made rapid progress. He attended the lectures of Karl Leonhard Reinhold and Gottlieb Hufeland, and soon published some literary essays of more than ordinary merit. In 1795 he took the degree of doctor in philosophy, and in the same year, though he only possessed 150 thalers (£22 : 10s.), he married. It was this step which led him to success and fame, by forcing him to turn from his favourite studies of philosophy and history to that of law, which was repugnant to him, but which offered a prospect of more rapid advancement. His success in this new and uncongenial sphere was soon assured. In 1796 he published Kritik des natürlichen Rechts als Propädeutik zu einer Wissenschaft der natürlichen Rechte, which was followed, in 1798, by Anti-Hobbes, oder über die Grenzen der bürgerlichen Gewalt, a dissertation on the limits of the civil power and the right of resistance on the part of subjects against their rulers, and by Philosophische, juristische Untersuchungen über das Verbrechen des Hochverraths. In 1799 he obtained the degree of doctor of laws. Feuerbach, as the founder of a new theory of penal law, the so-called “psychological-coercive or intimidation theory,” occupied a prominent place in the history of criminal science. His views, which he first made known in his Revision der Grundsätze und Grundbegriffe des positiven peinlichen Rechts (1799), were further elucidated and expounded in the Bibliothek für die peinliche Rechtswissenschaft (1800-1801), an encyclopaedic work produced in conjunction with Karl L.W.G. Grolmann and Ludwig Harscher von Almendingen, and in his famous Lehrbuch des gemeinen in Deutschland geltenden peinlichen Rechts (1801). These works were a powerful protest against vindictive punishment, and did much towards the reformation of the German criminal law. The Carolina (the penal code of the emperor Charles V.) had long since ceased to be respected. What in 1532 was an inestimable blessing, as a check upon the arbitrariness and violence of the effete German procedure, had in the course of time outlived its usefulness and become a source of evils similar to those it was enacted to combat. It availed nothing that, at the commencement of the 18th century, a freer and more scientific spirit had been breathed into Roman law; it failed to reach the criminal law. The administration of justice was, before Feuerbach’s time, especially distinguished by two characteristics: the superiority of the judge to all law, and the blending of the judicial and executive offices, with the result that the individual was practically at the mercy of his prosecutors. This state of things Feuerbach set himself to reform, and using as his chief weapon the Revision der Grundbegriffe above referred to, was successful in his task. His achievement in the struggle may be summed up as: nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege (no wrong and no punishment without a remedy). In 1801 Feuerbach was appointed extraordinary professor of law without salary, at the university of Jena, and in the following year accepted a chair at Kiel, where he remained two years. In 1804 he removed to the university of Landshut; but on being commanded by King Maximilian Joseph to draft a penal code for Bavaria (Strafgesetzbuch für das Königreich Bayern), he removed in 1805 to Munich, where he was given a high appointment in the ministry of justice and was ennobled in 1808. Meanwhile the practical reform of penal legislation in Bavaria was begun under his influence in 1806 by the abolition of torture. In 1808 appeared the first volume of his Merkwürdige Criminalfälle, completed in 1811—a work of deep interest for its application of psychological considerations to cases Of crime, and intended to illustrate the inevitable imperfection of human laws in their application to individuals. In his Betrachtungen über das Geschworenengericht (1811) Feuerbach declared against trial by jury, maintaining that the verdict of a jury was not adequate legal proof of a crime. Much controversy was aroused on the subject, and the author’s view was subsequently to some extent modified. The result of his labours was promulgated in 1813 as the Bavarian penal code. The influence of this code, the embodiment of Feuerbach’s enlightened views, was immense. It was at once made the basis for new codes in Württemberg and Saxe-Weimar; it was adopted in its entirety in the grand-duchy of Oldenburg; and it was translated into Swedish by order of the king. Several of the Swiss cantons reformed their codes in conformity with it. Feuerbach had also undertaken to prepare a civil code for Bavaria, to be founded on the Code Napoléon. This was afterwards set aside, and the Codex Maximilianus adopted as a basis. But the project did not become law. During the war of liberation (1813-1814) Feuerbach showed himself an ardent patriot, and published several political brochures which, from the writer’s position, had almost the weight of state manifestoes. One of these is entitled Über deutsche Freiheit und Vertretung deutsche Volker durch Landstände (1514). In 1814 Feuerbach was appointed second president of the court of appeal at Bamberg, and three years later he became first president of the court of appeal at Anspach. In 1821 he was deputed by the government to visit France, Belgium, and the Rhine provinces for the purpose of investigating their juridical institutions. As the fruit of this visit, he published his treatises Betrachtungen über Öffentlichkeit und Mündigkeit der Gerechtigkeitspflege (1821) and Über die Gerichtsverfassung und das gerichtliche Verfahren Frankreichs (1825). In these he pleaded unconditionally for publicity in all legal proceedings. In his later years he took a deep interest in the fate of the strange foundling Kaspar Hauser (q.v.), which had excited so much attention in Europe; and he was the first to publish a critical summary of the ascertained facts, under the title of Kaspar Hauser, ein Beispiel eines Verbrechens am Seelenleben (1832). Shortly before his death appeared a collection of his Kleine Schriften (1833). Feuerbach, still in the full enjoyment of his intellectual powers, died suddenly at Frankfort, while on his way to the baths of Schwalbach, on the 29th of May 1833. In 1853 was published the Leben und Wirken Ans. von Feuerbachs, 2 vols., consisting of a selection of his letters and journals, with occasional notes by his fourth son Ludwig, the distinguished philosopher.
See also, for an estimate of Feuerbach’s life and work, Marquardtsen, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. vi.; and an “in memoriam” notice in Die allgemeine Zeitung (Augsburg), 15th Nov. 1875, by Professor Dr Karl Binding of Leipzig University.
FEUILLANTS, CLUB OF THE, a political association which played a prominent part during the French Revolution. It was founded on the 16th of July 1791 by several members of the Jacobin Club, who refused to sign a petition presented by this body, demanding the deposition of Louis XVI. Among the dissident members were B. Barère; and E.J. Sieyès, who were later joined by other politicians, among them being Dupont de Nemours. The name of Feuillants was popularly given to this group of men, because they met in the fine buildings which had been occupied by the religious order bearing this name, in the rue Saint-Honoré, near the Place Vendôme, in Paris. The members of the club preserved the title of Amis de la Constitution, as being a sufficient indication of the line they intended to pursue. This consisted in opposing everything not contained in the Constitution; in their opinion, the latter was in need of no modification, and they hated alike all those who were opposed to it, whether émigrés or Jacobins; they affected to avoid all political discussion, and called themselves merely a “conservative assembly.”
This attitude they maintained after the Constituent Assembly had been succeeded by the Legislative, but not many of the new deputies became members of the club. With the rapid growth of extreme democratic ideas the Feuillants soon began to be looked upon as reactionaries, and to be classed with “aristocrats.” They did, indeed, represent the aristocracy of wealth, for they had to pay a subscription of four louis, a large sum at that time, besides six livres for attendance. Moreover, the luxury with which they surrounded themselves, and the restaurant which they had annexed to their club, seemed to mock the misery of the half-starved proletariat, and added to the suspicion with which they were viewed, especially after the popular triumphs of the 20th of June and the 10th of August 1792 (see [French Revolution]). A few days after the insurrection of the 10th of August, the papers of the Feuillants were seized, and a list was published containing the names of 841 members proclaimed as suspects. This was the death-blow of the club. It had made an attempt, though a weak one, to oppose the forward march of the Revolution, but, unlike the Jacobins, had never sent out branches into the provinces. The name of Feuillants, as a party designation, survived the club. It was applied to those who advocated a policy of “cowardly moderation,” and feuillantisme was associated with aristocratie in the mouths of the sansculottes.
The act of separation of the Feuillants from the Jacobins was published in a pamphlet dated the 16th of July 1791, beginning with the words, Les Membres de l’assemblée nationale ... (Paris, 1791). The statutes of the club were also published in Paris. See also A. Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution française (Paris, 1903), 2nd ed., p. 153.