Ernst Laas


Ernst Laas was a German positivist philosopher.

Biography

Laas was born in Fürstenwalde, Brandenburg, Prussia. He studied theology and philosophy under Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg at the University of Berlin. In 1859, he completed a doctorate at Berlin with a thesis titled Das Moral-Prinzip des Aristoteles.
He became a professor of philosophy at the University of Strasbourg in 1872. In his Kants Analogien der Erfahrung he keenly criticized Immanuel Kant's transcendentalism, and in his chief work Idealismus und Positivismus, he drew a clear contrast between Platonism, from which he derived transcendentalism, and positivism, of which he considered Protagoras the founder. Laas in reality was a disciple of David Hume. Throughout his philosophy he endeavours to connect metaphysics with ethics and the theory of education.
He died in Straßburg, Germany.

Works

His chief educational works were Der deutsche Aufsatz in den ersten Gymnasialklassen, and Der deutsche Unterricht auf höhern Lehranstalten. He contributed largely to the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie ; the Literarischer Nachlass, a posthumous collection, was published at Vienna.