Bruno Bauer

Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) drove negative dialectic to its logical end. At first a Right Hegelian and de facto editor of the second edition of Hegel’s philosophy of religion, he later developed the conception of “pure criticism”: everything positive is estranged from free self-consciousness and is therefore to be negated. “Everything is posited only in order to be negated; as soon as it is acknowledged, it ceases to be true.”

The difference from Hegel is decisive. Hegel’s negativity is determinate negation, which brings forth something positive; Bauer’s negativity admits no synthesis. This is not laid out in Hegel but is its inversion — and it anticipates postmodern deconstruction: criticism without a constructive alternative.

The legitimate insight lies in the fact that every positivisation can turn into domination and therefore requires criticism — a thought with a rational core at a time when Hegelian philosophy had hardened into state ideology. The aporia is that pure criticism becomes void of content: in the end Bauer criticised his own earlier positions as well.

His academic career ended with his turn to Left Hegelianism. In Bonn he taught, lived and wrote for a time together with Karl Marx, whom he supported.