'It is the product of over a decade of sustained research and has been built, not only upon a familiarity with the current concerns of political theory, but also upon an important archival discovery which significantly alters our conception of the foundations of Bauer's thought … It will undoubtedly establish itself as the standard work in this field and should attract a readership beyond German and Hegel/Marx specialists since it is one of the few studies to apply new questions about republican thought to Hegelianism and nineteenth-century German thought.' Gareth Stedman Jones, King's College, Cambridge

• Preface; Introduction: 'the friend of freedom'; Part I. Foundations: Aesthetics, Ethics and Republicanism: 1. 'The idea is life': Bauer's aesthetics and political thought; 2. 'Free means ethical': idealism, history and critical theory; Part II. Judging the Old Order: 3. 'The other of itself': the critique of the religious consciousness; 4. 'Revolution and the Republic': the state and self-consciousness; Part III. The Emancipatory Project: 5. 'Only the ought is true': Hegel, self-consciousness and revolution; 6. 'To the people belongs the future': universal right and history; Part IV. Judging the Revolutionary Movement: 7. 'The fire of criticism': revolutionary dynamics, 1843–8; 8. 'The republic of self-consciousness': revolutionary politics in 1848; Epilogue: after the revolution: the conclusion of the Christian-Germanic age; Appendix: Bruno Bauer, 'On the Principles of the Beautiful' (1829); Notes; Bibliography; Index.

'It is the product of over a decade of sustained research and has been built, not only upon a familiarity with the current concerns of political theory, but also upon an important archival discovery which significantly alters our conception of the foundations of Bauer's thought … It will undoubtedly establish itself as the standard work in this field and should attract a readership beyond German and Hegel/Marx specialists since it is one of the few studies to apply new questions about republican thought to Hegelianism and nineteenth-century German thought.' Gareth Stedman Jones, King's College, Cambridge

• Preface; Introduction: 'the friend of freedom'; Part I. Foundations: Aesthetics, Ethics and Republicanism: 1. 'The idea is life': Bauer's aesthetics and political thought; 2. 'Free means ethical': idealism, history and critical theory; Part II. Judging the Old Order: 3. 'The other of itself': the critique of the religious consciousness; 4. 'Revolution and the Republic': the state and self-consciousness; Part III. The Emancipatory Project: 5. 'Only the ought is true': Hegel, self-consciousness and revolution; 6. 'To the people belongs the future': universal right and history; Part IV. Judging the Revolutionary Movement: 7. 'The fire of criticism': revolutionary dynamics, 1843–8; 8. 'The republic of self-consciousness': revolutionary politics in 1848; Epilogue: after the revolution: the conclusion of the Christian-Germanic age; Appendix: Bruno Bauer, 'On the Principles of the Beautiful' (1829); Notes; Bibliography; Index.