Concept
Quentin Lauer, S.J. (April 1, 1917 – March 9, 1997) was an American Jesuit priest, philosopher and Hegel scholar. Lauer’s academic work helped introduce Hegel's thought to the American philosophical community. He was President of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division from 1985–1986, and a President of the Hegel Society of America. Quentin Lauer was also a scholar of Edmund Husserl. He was a professor of philosophy at Fordham University from 1954 to 1990. Important works by Lauer which helped disseminate the ideas of Hegel and Husserl in the United States include: A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1977), The Triumph of Subjectivity (1958) and Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy (1965). Quentin Lauer was born in Brooklyn on April 1, 1917. At the age of 18, Lauer joined the Jesuit novitiate, entering the seminary of the Society of Jesus in Poughkeepsie, New York. This began his lifelong journey with the Society of Jesus, the order through which, after attaining his and AB and MA (1943) from St. Louis University, he would be ordained in 1948. During his time at St. Louis, Lauer became exposed to the ongoing debates within Thomism centering around interpretation of the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas. The interpretation of St. Thomas's metaphysics presented by Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain had become prevalent at St. Louis University at this time. Gilson and Maritain emphasized the "existential" aspect of Thomistic metaphysics and the distinctly philosophical significance of his thought. This conception of Thomism challenged earlier, more strictly theological forms of Thomism. Lauer had sympathies with this new presentation of St. Thomas's thought, though he would distance himself from St. Thomas when he began studying at the Sorbonne, where he would attain a doctorate and the prestigious Docteur ès lettres. Lauer became known in Paris as the "motorcycle philosopher” because of his habit of soaring through the streets of Paris on his motorcycle during the four year period in which he wrote his dissertation, La genèse de l'intentionnalité dans la philosophie de Husserl.