Ernst Laas

Laas during his time in Strasbourg

Ernst Laas (born June 16, 1837 in Fürstenwalde/Spree; died July 25, 1885 in Strasbourg) was a high school teacher, philosopher of positivism and education, and chair of philosophy and pedagogy at the University of Strasbourg. The insights he found in the history of philosophy and philosophies based on sensualism are key aspects of his scholarly work.

Biography

Laas grew up as the son of the master tailor Johann Peter Laas (1807–57) and his wife Berta Ida Flora (1818–52), née Beil, in economically limited circumstances in Fürstenwalde, Brandenburg, Prussia. Ernst’s childhood was marked by various hardships, especially during the difficult years of 1846 and 1847 and the revolutionary period that followed. His father loyally supported the royalists, which led to retribution from the opposing party; they boycotted his work. During this time as a young boy, Ernst and his younger brother had to collect firewood from the heath after school each day to help their parents, who struggled just to provide the most basic food through their hard work. When Ernst completed his education at the local school and was ready to choose a career, he faced the bleak prospect of becoming a waiter, an errand boy, or a tailor’s apprentice. But thanks to the support of the school principal Rector Gaedke, and General von Massow who admired his father’s loyalty to the crown, he was able to attend the Joachimsthal Gymnasium. From 1854 to 1856, he worked as a private tutor. He then enrolled at the University of Berlin and studied theology and philosophy under Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg. Trendelenburg was known for his knowledge of the history of philosophy and taught in his lectures that a philosopher could learn much for his own thinking and about the thinking of others from the history of philosophy. Laas received his doctorate in philosophy in 1859 with a dissertation on On the Moral Principle of Aristotle (Eudaimonia Aristotelis in ethicis principium quid velit et valeat).

In 1860, he became a teacher of German, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew at the renowned Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Berlin and, in 1868, at the Berlin Wilhelm-Gymnasium. In 1861, he married Martha (1839–1919), née Vogeler and had five sons. His first major publication emerged from his teaching experiences—a guide on teaching German essay writing in the first class of the gymnasium which was published in 1868. Around the same time, he was appointed as a senior teacher with the title of professor at Wilhelms-Gymnasium. He published further studies on German instruction in 1870 and 1871, which led to plans for a thorough revision of his first book. However, his appointment as a full professor at the University of Strasbourg in 1872, advocated by Trendelenburg, somewhat disrupted these plans. Nonetheless, he published German Instruction at Higher Educational Institutions in the same year and revised his earlier work on essay writing in 1876. Additionally, he published The Pedagogy of Johannes Sturm in 1872 and a small treatise on Gymnasium and Realschule in 1875. In 1872, he received a full professorship in philosophy at the newly re-established Kaiser Wilhelm University of Strasbourg, a position he held until his death.

In his lectures, he initially dealt with literary and cultural-historical topics (including Luther, Lessing, Herder, and Goethe) and educational themes. He lectured on pedagogy during the time of Humanism and the Reformation and on educational theories in ancient and modern times. His lectures always included philosophical elements. From 1878 onwards, he lectured exclusively on philosophy and further educated himself in mathematics and the natural sciences. His main philosophical works include Kant’s Analogies of Experience in 1876 and Idealism and Positivism, a three-volume series published between 1879 and 1884, among other publications and reviews.

Despite his critical stance towards theology and romanticism, Laas acknowledged the emotional dimensions of Christianity and the moral significance of art. His commitment to intellectual freedom and rigor made him a respected figure among his students and colleagues, even as he challenged their views and fostered an environment of critical evaluation and growth. One of his most influential students was the Neo-Kantian philosopher Paul Natorp. Natorp wrote in his obituary for Laas that his approach to education – emphasizing independence over imitation – left a lasting impact on his students and the philosophical community. Natorp became a student and worked with Laas on achieving a coherent version of positivism when he went to Strasburg in 1876. But Natorp ended up eventually going against his positivism. “Just when I thought I had grasped the ‘consistency’ of positivism that we had long sought together, it then appeared to me as an illusion. And so from that point on, the historical progression from Hume to Kant now seemed justifiable to me.” In the end, despite the rigorous mentorship, differences in philosophical outlook eventually led to the cessation of a long-standing collaboration with the fellow philosopher, described by Laas in a letter to Natorp as a divergence of “natural destiny.” Laas then pointed Natorp towards the Kantians from whom he believed he would gain more support than from him. Natorp's move away from positivism struck Laas as “almost elegiac.” Nonetheless, Natorp credits Laas with inspiring his commitment for the essential integration of historical and specialized research within philosophy. In fact, Natorp views himself as both a disciple of Laas and an adherent of Hermann Cohen's perspectives, finding joy in the synthesis of these influences. For Laas's historical-philosophical method advocates for a methodical examination of the origins and development of philosophy as a science, using scientific viewpoints and philosophical principles to uncover underlying systematic principals. This approach seeks to reveal the inherent order within what might initially appear as chaotic philosophical progressions. Characterized by Natorp as a form of "constructing" history, this method is therefore based on the premise that understanding the "syntax" of a science prevents its history from appearing disjointed.

Another one of his students – the Viennese philosopher Benno Kerry (1858–1889) – published his literary remains after his death. According to Kerry, Laas published knowledgeable and detailed studies on the theoretical philosophy of his time, especially on Kant. Nonetheless, he was namely known for his three-volume chief work Idealism and Positivism in which he advocated for the supremacy of positivism over idealist thinking. For Laas, the facts (Tatsachen) of his positivism were the representations that people develop about the world through “precieving” (warnehmen, Laas’s idiosyncratic spelling, which he consistently used instead of wahrnehmen) or “feeling” (empfinden). He considered this sensualistic or positivistic approach to be philosophically superior and more productive than the idealistic approach of most of his contemporaries. In contrast to what he believed to be the problem with idealist philosophy, Laas always stressed that any fact he asserted could be verified, addressed, and developed further by anyone who wished to do so.

Laas’s positivist philosophy found much resonance in Strasbourg during his lifetime. However, it also became the source for controversial discussions on epistemology and moral philosophy. Laas, for example, asserted – similar to Hume and Mill, and in contrast to proponents of Kantian philosophy – that human reason is not capable of producing ideas and concepts that guarantee the objectivity of our knowledge and moral actions. People are always dependent on what they “perceive” and “feel.”

In 1882, the Neo-Kantian Windelband was appointed to Strasbourg. On his view, Laas’s positivist philosophy was a radical relativism or anti-philosophical sophistry that questioned philosophical values, such as objective knowledge and morality. And so, Windelband saw it – according to Klaus Köhnke’s interpretation – as his “missionary task” to reassert traditional German, particularly Kantian and idealistic, philosophy in Strasbourg against Laas. According to Köhnke, this was expressly supported by the ministry for political reasons. In 1884, Laas attacked Windelband’s Kritische oder genetische Methode? in his essay Ueber teleologischen Kriticismus.

But due to overwork, he suffered from health issues as early as 1877. Despite this, he completed his three-volume Idealism and Positivism and barely rested until he sent off the last manuscript in September of the previous year. But a ten-day stay in the Black Forest was hardly sufficient recovery for him. In November, he became seriously ill with a kidney disease, which was compounded by asthma and insomnia. After a brief resurgence in the winter, his health rapidly declined. He lost consciousness on July 23 and passed away on July 25 at 3:30 p.m.

His grave is located in the Cimetière Saint-Gall in Strasbourg-Koenigshoffen (Section 5A-2-8).

Works

His chief educational works were Der deutsche Aufsatz in den ersten Gymnasialklassen (1868), and Der deutsche Unterricht auf höhern Lehranstalten (1872; 2nd ed. 1886). He contributed largely to the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie (1880–82); the Literarischer Nachlass, a posthumous collection, was published at Vienna (1887).

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Laas, Ernst". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–2. This work in turn cites:
  • Hanisch, Der Positivismus von Ernst Laas (1902)
  • Gjurits, Die Erkenntnistheorie des Ernst Laas (1903)
  • Falckenberg, Hist. of Mod. Philos. (Eng. trans., 1895)