OLLÉ-LAPRUNE, LÉON

French philosopher, b. Paris, July 25, 1839; d. there, Dec. 13, 1898. He came of a deeply Christian family. Ollé-Laprune studied at the Lycée Condorcet and the École Normale (1858). He was honored with the degree agrégé des lettres (1861), and taught successively at the lycées of Nice (1861), Douai (1864), Versailles (1868), and Henry IV in Paris (1871). From 1875 to his death he lectured at the École Normale.

Ollé-Laprune was a fervent Catholic; the example of his life as well as the sublimity of his thought had great influence on his students, especially at the École Normale. The essential characteristic of his teaching was the inauguration of a living philosophy whose duty it was to seek concrete certitude, at once solidly moral and intellectual. The true philosopher, he would say, thinks with his whole being, and is always "attached to God as principle, support, light and rule of all thought." Some of his many works are La Philosophie de Malebranche (1870), De la Certitude morale (1880), Le Prix de la vie (1894), La Vitalité chrétienne (1901), and La Raison et le rationalisme (1906). Ollé-Laprune's greatest contribution was the inspiration he gave to a brilliant disciple, M. blondel. In his thesis on L'Action (1893), the pupil undertook to develop in a systematic manner the message of his master—a message calling for the establishment of an "integral realism" in thought, in action, and in being.

Bibliography: r. crippa, Enciclopedia filosofica, 4 v. (Venice-Rome 1957) 3:1010–13.

[r. jolivet]