Feuerbach’s conviction that Christian faith is inimical to reason and philosophy was strengthened by his own studies of the history of modern philosophy, especially his studies of Leibniz and Bayle. His monographs on these figures were written during the period of controversy following the appearance of Strauss’s Life of Jesus. Toward the end of the 1830s the Young Hegelians were increasingly opposed on two fronts, by right-wing Hegelians such as Friedrich Göschel, who insisted upon the compatib