OLLE-LAPRUNE, LÉON. – Philosopher, born in Paris on 25 July 1839, died there on 13 February 1898. A student at the École normale supérieure, he began teaching at the Lycée de Nice, moving in 1864 to the Lycée de Douai. In that same year he obtained the agrégation in philosophy.
He then moved to Versailles and in 1871 to the Lycée Henri IV in Paris, which he left to take up teaching at the École normale supérieure (1875). From this period date the notable study La philosophie de Malebranche (Paris 1870) and the doctoral works, De la certitude morale (there 1880), De Aristoteleae ethicesi fundamento (there 1880). At the École normale, where among others M. Blondel was his student, he remained for the rest of his life, producing his other works: Essai sur la morale d'Aristote (there 1881); La philosophie et le temps présent (there 1890); Les sources de la paix intellectuelle (there 1892); Le prix de la vie (there 1894, Italian translation by A. Codignola, Florence 1924); Ce qu'on va chercher à Rome (Paris 1895); La raison et le rationalisme (posthumous, there 1906). Because he adopted a protesting attitude at the time of the expulsion of religious men, he was suspended from teaching for one year (1880). In 1897 he was called to succeed Vacherot at the Institute.
The thought of O.-L. is directly connected with Cousin’s spiritualist current through his teacher E. Caro. Yet, while remaining faithful to the introspective method and to its metaphysical positions, he differs from it by placing himself in the line of that Christian philosophy then illustrated by Gratry. From this thinker O.-L. also draws a number of themes, foremost among them the idea that one must approach the truth “with one’s whole being,” developing them with a clear personal stamp. O.-L.’s philosophy does not, in fact, arise from a crisis—he never doubted his faith—but from a need to deepen and clarify the fundamental truths of humanity. Proprie communia dicere is the philosopher’s task, and to accomplish it one need not begin from doubt. “To examine is not to doubt,” but to deepen the data of common sense and grasp in consciousness the certainties of the existence of the self, the world, and God, as the cause and reason of the universe within which one moves. And God is above all loving Providence, which assists and guides: in opposition to the Jansenist concept of a Providence governed by iron laws, such as Malebranche would have it (and this is one of the criticisms on which O.-L. most insists in La philosophie de Malebranche).
The living consciousness of God’s love for humanity, and therefore of human worth, is characteristic of O.-L. For this reason his investigations, despite their scientific rigor, turn toward subjects capable of enlightening minds and opening them to Christian truth. A purpose of rigorous clarification is accompanied by a need to affirm and disseminate his own faith, which does not close off research but stimulates and crowns it without encroaching upon its proper field. Along these lines proceeds the study of the conditions of “moral certainty,” intended to shed light on the role belonging to reason and will in the knowledge of moral truths.
Far from rationalism, but without yielding to fideism either, O.-L. explains that the will does not posit truth but helps one to see it through a presence that begins with attention and culminates in adherence to the truth; without this act, moral truths are not known in their nature and value. “In the order of moral truths, the adherence of the will is required as a condition of the spirit’s complete and definitive assent; complete certainty is personal. To recognize moral truth in its proper manner, one must in some way resemble one’s object, according to the definition of the ancient philosophers; one must do the truth, in the admirable words of the Gospel” (De la certitude morale, ed. cit., p. 79): even though one must admit that “the reasons for affirming, the duty to affirm, exist for everyone and are visible to everyone, once certain preliminary conditions have been met, and therefore the affirmation itself has a principle that is objectively sufficient and valid for anyone endowed with reason” (ibid., p. 345). This sound voluntarist motif is taken up again in La philosophie et le temps présent. Philosophy can arise and avoid the degenerations of aestheticism and positivism only where a high and full life broadens the knowledge of reality acquired through science and sustains thought.
But philosophy cannot give everything. Human beings seek not merely knowledge but possession of the truth. “Could what lives be illuminated, guided, restrained, or overturned by what does not live? This is inadmissible. Life alone gives the final word to life. Let love be posited, and then everything becomes animated without any wrong being done to the ideal” (Il valore della vita, ed. cit., p. 162). And whoever says love says person, the relationship of persons—in a word, Christianity. Only in this doctrine, awaited by the whole being and guaranteed by solid historical proofs (classical apologetics, even though greater emphasis is placed on interior dispositions, is in no way denied by O.-L.), does humanity find the word and the means that save, and find the value of life. Those who have not reached this certainty wear themselves out in vain (as O.-L. shows in the essay on Th. Jouffroy) in trying to find a substitute for