Quentin Lauer

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 to 1986, and a President of the Hegel Society of America. Quentin Lauer was also a scholar of Edmund Husserl. 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, The Triumph of Subjectivity (1958) and Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy (1965).

Life and academic career 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 in which he would be ordained in 1948, after earning his AB and MA (1943) from St. Louis University. From the mid fifties to sixties, Lauer would publish several books and articles on Husserl. However, Lauer would eventually become disillusioned with this philosophical system, seeing it as failing to create a dialogue between ideas and history, ethics and religion. Lauer became briefly engaged in dialogue with Marxism, co-publishing with French Marxist Roger Garaudy in 1968 A Christian-Communist Dialogue (published in France as Marxistes et chrétiens face à face; Peuvent-ils construire ensemble l'avenir?). This work was noted for successfully presenting a frank and genuine dialogue between Christians and Marxists.

After this rather brief engagement with French Marxism, Lauer began his study of the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for which he devoted the rest of his career. He wrote four books and dozens of papers on Hegel, including Hegel's Idea of Philosophy (1976), Studies in Hegelian Dialectic (1977), and Hegel's Concept of God (1982).

After a couple years of illness, Quentin Lauer died on March 9, 1997.