 Three lines of interpretation of Bauer can be distinguished. These focus on his early work; his later writings have attracted little critical attention. The first sees Bauer as a radical subjectivist, whose social and religious criticism was closer to Enlightenment rationalism than to Hegel (Sass, 1978; Brudney, 1998). The second, largely influenced by Marx, insists on Bauer’s abandonment of the Hegelian left after 1843 (Rossi, 1974; Pepperle, 1978). The third emphasizes the continuity throughout the Vormärz of Bauer’s thought and of his republicanism, based on the Hegelian idea of the unity of thought and being (Moggach, 2003, 2006, 2011).