Career
After completing his philosophical education at the Freiburg, Lask was made lecturer at Heidelberg in 1905, and he was elected professor there just before the outbreak of The First World War. When war began in 1914 Lask immediately volunteered. Since, as a Heidelberg professor, he would have been regarded as indispensable on the home front, he did not have to enlist.
But, conscientious and idealistic, Lask believed that he had an obligation to serve his country.
Lask was made a sergeant and sent to Galicia on the Eastern front, despite a frail constitution and severe myopia — which also meant that he could not shoot, but he still felt obliged to remain at the front. Lask died during the war, not far from the city of his birth, in the Galician Campaign.
Wilhelm Windelband refused to request his return to Heidelberg as indispensable to philosophy. Emil Lask is of interest to philosophers because of his uncompromising attitude and to historians of philosophy because of his influence on the young Martin Heidegger, and also on Georg Lukács.
His ideas were also influential in Japan, due to Eugen Herrigel, who lived and taught there for several years.