Humanism and Antisemitism

The connection between nineteenth-century humanism and antisemitism is both historical and moderately doctrinal.

Gary Gindler | July 27, 2026

Today, “humanism” usually denotes a secular ethical outlook that stresses human dignity, reason, tolerance, individual rights, and scientific inquiry.  In mid-19th-century Germany, however, the term repeatedly referred to something far more radical: a philosophical movement derived from Ludwig Feuerbach that many contemporaries regarded as a bridge to socialism and communism.  That original meaning has largely vanished from present-day usage.

An intellectual genealogy runs from Hegel through Feuerbach to socialism.  Hegel had already replaced traditional Christianity with a philosophical system centered on Reason.  Feuerbach went farther, declaring that God was simply a projection of human qualities.  As he summarized his own development: “God was my first thought, Reason my second, Man my third and last.”  Human beings, not God, came to be the center of philosophy, and Feuerbach’s circle concluded that every sociopolitical institution should be “humanized.” 

Friedrich Engels observed in 1845 that virtually all German communists were Feuerbach’s followers, while most Feuerbachians turned communists.  Thus, humanism grew principally from German idealism, and socialism crystallized from humanism.  In that perplexing climate, the term did not signify individual liberty in the current sense; it meant subordinating individual interests to humanity conceived collectively.  Humanism was understood as the vehicle for dissolving the individual into the community and converting private property into collective property.

Feuerbachians considered religion, monarchy, and private property as forms of alienation: Human beings projected their powers onto external authorities and then found themselves dominated by them.  From the outset, this humanism was an openly anti-Christian current.

Leading German socialists such as Karl Marx and Wilhelm Marr framed the conflict as one between Christendom and Marxistdom.  To be fair, their........

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