Bruno Bauer 1809 – 1882
Bruno Bauer was a German theologian, philosopher, and historian of the early Christian church and one of the leading figures of the Young Hegelian movement in the 1830s and 1840s. Initially a right-wing Hegelian biblical scholar at Bonn, he moved into a radical critical position from which the Gospels appeared as imaginative literary constructions rather than historical reports, a thesis for which he lost his theological teaching license in 1842. His briefly close engagement with the young Marx ended in a celebrated polemical break in The Holy Family, and his later writings turned increasingly toward conservative political and historical themes.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Continental, German Idealism
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Bruno Bauer:
“The Gospels are works of literature, not of history.”
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Attributed to Bruno Bauer:
“Religion is the consciousness of self projected as another.”
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Attributed to Bruno Bauer:
“Self-consciousness is the principle of all true criticism.”
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Attributed to Bruno Bauer:
“What once seemed substance dissolves under careful inquiry.”
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Attributed to Bruno Bauer:
“Critique is the laboratory of every emerging epoch.”