Background
Hägerström, Axel Anders Theodor was born on September 6, 1868 in Vireda, Sweden.
Hägerström, Axel Anders Theodor was born on September 6, 1868 in Vireda, Sweden.
1911 33, Professor of Practical Philosophy, Uppsala University. 1917, Jur. Dr honoris causa.
Kant's Ethik (1902) is a classic of Kant research: a comprehensive and penetrating exegetical treatise on Kant’s ethics. In this work Hagerstrom does not criticize the fundamental ideas of Kant’s ethics, and hardly anything in it anticipates the very radical opinions in moral philosophy and legal philosophy developed by him during the years 1907-1939. These radical opinions are partly inspired by Westermack's moral relativism, Meinong's emotionalist theory of value, the criticism of the doctrine of natural law in British philosophy and jurisprudence, Frazer’s theory of magic, and to some extent by Marx and Nietzsche. However, many of the arguments and theses are original, and Hagerstrom often criticizes on essential points the authors who have influenced him. In the inaugural lecture Hagerstrom formulates the thesis that moral valuations are neither true nor false: there is no intersubjective criterion for the deciding of ethical questions, and moral philosophy cannot be normative, only descriptive. He represents a special version of the emotive theory in metaethics. In the same work Hagerström explicitly rejects some fundamental doctrines of Kant’s ethics, for example the principle of personality and the idea of Reich der Zwecke. In the Inquiries (1953) he maintains that moral valuations are very often combined with false, even absurd ideas: the ideas of objective values and duties, of free will, of rights. According to this analysis, our ideas of rights are ideas of spiritual forces, and the existence of such metaphysical forces is incompatible with an empirical view of reality. That the absurd ideas mentioned often lead to fanaticism and aggression is frequently pointed out. In law and jurisprudence, both ancient and modern, ideas of rights in the sense of metaphysical forces are of great importance. The idea that certain rights can be transferred from one person to another is an idea of transferring spiritual forces and, thus, of a magical nature. Many metaphysical and magical ideas of Roman law are analysed in the works of 1927-1941 and 1965. In his discussion of modern jurisprudence, for example in the Inquiries, Hägerström sharply criticizes not only doctrines of natural law but also, inter alia, the will theory and Kelsen’s reine Rechtslehre. Several Scandinavian jurists were influenced by Hägerström, for example V. Lundstedt, K. Olivecrona, Alf Ross and P. O. Ekelöt. The anti-metaphysical view of law he inspired is often called Scandinavian legal realism. In Philosophy and Religion (1964) Hägerström provides contributions to the philosophy of religion. In the final stage of his philosophical development there is an essential analogy between his philosophy of religion and his philosophy ot morals: like moral valuations, genuine religious experiences are neither true nor false, but just as moral valuations are often combined with absurd ideas so genuine religious experiences are often combined with dogmatic beliefs or other absurd conceptions. The psychological mechanisms which result in such combinations are analysed in an original way. In addition the connections between religion and magic are considered. Hägerström rejects all metaphysical ideas 0° the sense of ideas implying the existence of things not belonging to the context of space and time)- His ontology is marked by this anti-metaphysical attitude. Further, it is determinist: the principle ot causality is a necessary presupposition of all empirical knowledge and. Hägerström urges, a corollary of the logical principle of identity. He examines many of the fundamental concepts ot our view of reality, for example the concept of the self and the concept of motion. I n epistemology he rejects subjectivism, the thesis that what is •ntmediately given is the subject. His final standpoints in ontology and epistemology are Presented in Axel Hagerstrdm, his Selhstdarstellung of 1929. The relation between these standpoints and the views in his first work on ontological and epistemological matters of 1908 has been a subject of controversy. The group of Swedish philosophers directly influenced by Hagerstrom or by his independent disciple and colleague Phalen is often called the Uppsala school of philosophy or the Uppsala school of conceptual analysis.