Editing Bruno Bauer (section)

== Political ideology ==
The first English-language rendering of Bauer's career was published in March 2003 by Douglas Moggach, a professor at the [[University of Ottawa]]. His book is entitled, ''The Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer''. Moggach develops a republican interpretation of Bauer, in which Bauer is portrayed as reaching atheist conclusions because of his political commitments to free self-consciousness and autonomy, and his criticisms of the Restoration union of church and state. Other scholars continue to dispute that portrait.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

Bauer was very hard to classify politically, being claimed by both the left and right-wing Hegelians.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

During Bauer's direct studies under Hegel, he was awarded an academic prize when he was about 20 years old. [[Hegel]] died when Bauer was 22 years old. Perhaps this affected Bauer's personality; he may have seen himself as sitting quite close to the highest academic post in Prussia, and that might have gone to his head.{{cn|date=July 2024}}

When [[Hegel]] unexpectedly died in 1831, possibly of cholera, Bauer's official connections were drastically reduced. Bauer had few powerful friends during the fallout of Hegel's death, as shown by the fact that Bauer and many Hegelians lost their beloved University positions during that decade. The struggle with [[David Strauss]] and especially with the Prussian monarchy had set Bauer back quite a bit. This also affected Bauer's personality.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

Bauer went underground and began to write Hegelian newspapers here and there. In this journey he met some socialists, including [[Karl Marx]], his former student, and Marx's new friends, [[Friedrich Engels]] and [[Arnold Ruge]]. They were all left-wing radicals. Bauer was not a left-wing radical, but he was happy to be their leader if it could lead them back to a Hegelian understanding of the dialectic. Another member of those Young Hegelians, [[Max Stirner]], became Bauer's lifelong friend. Although Bauer was not a radical egoist, he preferred the company of Stirner to that of Marx, Engels and Ruge, whom he abandoned -- and who abandoned him.{{cn|date=July 2024}}

The two new works by Marx and Engels that were critical of several Young Hegelians, including Bauer, were ''[[The Holy Family (book)|The Holy Family]]'', and ''[[The German Ideology]]''.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

Bauer met with Marx again in London in the mid-1850s, while visiting his exiled brother [[Edgar Bauer|Edgar]] there. According to Marx's correspondence with Engels, Bauer presented him with a copy of Hegel's Science of Logic. Marx referred to this volume while completing his drafts of 'Capital'.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

Bauer had already turned away from the socialism and communism of Marx and Engels, so he was immune to the barbs they wrote in ''The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Company'' by his pupils, Marx and Engels. Nevertheless, he had fallen quite far - from a favourite son of Hegel himself down to an enemy of both the right-wing and the left-wing as well. He found very few friends in this intellectual position aside from Max Stirner.

Condemned by both the right-wing and the left-wing, Bauer settled into his family's tobacco shop to earn his living, though he continued to write. He never married, but he wrote many books, all the way to 1879. He died in 1883.