Axel Anders Theodor Hägerström (6 September 1868, Vireda – 7 July 1939,

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Located north of the ca ...

) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

. Born in Vireda,

Jönköping County Jönköping County ( sv, Jönköpings län) is a county or '' län'' in southern Sweden. It borders the counties of Halland, Västra Götaland, Östergötland, Kalmar and Kronoberg. The total county population was 356,291 inhabitants in ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

, he was the son of a

Church of Sweden The Church of Sweden ( sv, Svenska kyrkan) is an Evangelical Lutheran national church in Sweden. A former state church, headquartered in Uppsala, with around 5.6 million members at year end 2021, it is the largest Christian denomination in Sw ...

pastor. As student at

Uppsala University Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. The university rose to significance during ...

, he gave up theology for a career in philosophy. Teaching there from 1893 until his retirement in 1933, he attacked the then dominant philosophical

idealism In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ...

of the followers of

Christopher Jacob Boström Christopher Jacob Boström (1 January 1797 in Piteå, Norrbotten – 22 March 1866 in Uppsala) was a Swedish philosopher. His ideas dominated Swedish philosophy until the beginning of the twentieth century.

(1797-1866). He is best known as a founder of the (quasi-) positivistic Uppsala school of philosophy—the Swedish counterpart of the Anglo-American Analytical Philosophy as well as of the Logical Positivism of the

Vienna Circle The Vienna Circle (german: Wiener Kreis) of Logical Empiricism was a group of elite philosophers and scientists drawn from the natural and social sciences, logic and mathematics who met regularly from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna, ch ...

—and as the founder of the Scandinavian

legal realism Legal realism is a naturalistic approach to law. It is the view that jurisprudence should emulate the methods of natural science, i.e., rely on empirical evidence. Hypotheses must be tested against observations of the world. Legal realists ...

movement. Some of his work was published by the

Muirhead Library of Philosophy The Muirhead Library of Philosophy was an influential series which published some of the best writings of twentieth century philosophy. The original programme was drawn up by John Muirhead and published in Erdmann's ''History of Philosophy'' in 189 ...

. He was

Inspektor Inspektor or inspehtori, Swedish and Finnish for inspector, is the largely honorary chairman of student nations in Lund and Uppsala universities in Sweden and University of Helsinki in Finland. The inspektor has a supervisory role in their nat ...

of the Östgöta nation from 1925 to his retirement in 1933.

Contribution to legal understanding

The jurisprudential camp of

, broadly speaking, consists of those scholars who strictly reject the concept of natural law and who believe that legal concepts, terminology and values should be based on experience, observation and experimentation and are thus, ‘real’. Hägerström is considered to be the founding father of the Scandinavian school of legal realism. His disciples

Karl Olivecrona Karl Olivecrona (25 October 1897, in Norrbärke – 1980) was a Swedish lawyer and legal philosopher. He studied law at Uppsala from 1915 to 1920 and was a pupil of Axel Hägerström, the spiritual father of Scandinavian legal realism. One of the ...

Alf Ross Alf Niels Christian Ross (10 June 1899 – 17 August 1979) was a Danish jurist, legal philosopher and judge of the European Court of Human Rights (1959–1971). He is best known as one of the leading figures of Scandinavian legal realism. His de ...

and

Anders Vilhelm Lundstedt Anders Vilhelm Lundstedt (11 September 1882 – 20 August 1955) was a Swedish jurist and legislator, particularly known as a proponent of Scandinavian Legal Realism, having been strongly influenced by his compatriot, the charismatic philosopher Ax ...

all take a similar basic view to Hägerström in their opinions on the language of Western law. Due to their verdict on natural law, they also reject the concept of

human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

. Hägerström, who had been influenced by the Neo-Kantianism of the

Marburg Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approximat ...

school, rejected

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

in their entirety. His motto was: "Praeterea censeo metaphysicam esse delendam",

paraphrasing A paraphrase () is a restatement of the meaning of a text or passage using other words. The term itself is derived via Latin ', . The act of paraphrasing is also called ''paraphrasis''. History Although paraphrases likely abounded in oral tra ...

Cato's famous " delenda Carthago". His opinion was that words such as ‘right’ and ‘duty’ were basically meaningless as they could not be scientifically verified or proven. They may have influence or be able to direct a person who obtains such a right or duty but ultimately, if they could not stand up to a factual test, they were mere fantasies. Similarly, Hägerström regarded all value judgements as mere emotional expressions using the form of judgements without being judgments in the proper sense of the word. This position caused Hägerström's critics to characterize his philosophy as "value nihilism" - a label that was invented by journalists and later endorsed by some of Hägerström's less orthodox followers, namely

Ingemar Hedenius Per Arvid Ingemar Hedenius (5 April 1908 – 30 April 1982) was a Swedish philosopher. He was Professor of Practical Philosophy at Uppsala University (1947–1973). He was a famous opponent of organised Christianity. The Swedish Humanist Associ ...

. Hägerström attacked various words and legal concepts in his writings so as to prove they could not stand up to scientific application.

Publications

* ''Aristoteles etiska grundtankar och deras teoretiska förutsättningar'', Uppsala, Akamemiska boktrykeriet, E. Berling, 1893 * 'Axel Hägerström', ''Filosofiskt lexikon, ed Alfred Ahlberg,

Natur & Kultur Natur & Kultur is a Swedish publishing foundation with head office in Stockholm known for an extensive series of teaching materials. Its logotype is an apple tree. Overview The publishing house was founded in 1922 by Johan Hansson and his wi ...

, Third edition, 1951 * ''Philosophy and Religion'', (1964), English translation by Robert T. Sandin * ''Inquiries into the Nature of Law and Morals'', Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, ed.

, transl.

C. D. Broad Charlie Dunbar Broad (30 December 1887 – 11 March 1971), usually cited as C. D. Broad, was an English people, English epistemology, epistemologist, history of philosophy, historian of philosophy, philosophy of science, philosopher of sc ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hagerstrom, Axel 1868 births 1939 deaths 20th-century Swedish philosophers Analytic philosophers Philosophers of language Swedish philosophers Swedish jurists Burials at Uppsala old cemetery