The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that
man is the highest essence for man – hence, with the
categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs:
Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!
- Karl Marx,
Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
