The course aims to provide a concise but sufficiently comprehensive sketch of the appearance in contemporary thought of what has been called "the disturbing guest " - nihilism - from its first emergence in the philosophy of German Romanticism, through the Russian culture, to Nietzsche's proclamation of the "death of God".The course aims at analyzing Feuerbach's critique of religion, through reading and commentary of his most organic and ripe work, in which his fundamental conception of God as the unconscious projection of human desires outside of himself is investigated through a fascinating discussion of the classical sources and the Scripture.