Background
Schweigaard was born on 11 April 1808 in Kragerø.
Schweigaard was born on 11 April 1808 in Kragerø.
He is widely credited in helping bring about Norway"s change to a capitalist economy. He died on 1 February 1870 in Christiania. Schweigaard was radically opposed to the German jurisprudence and legal philosophy that had dominated Europe during the Enlightenment, including natural law.
He believed that the stark dichotomies of conceptualism (mathematical logic) were misleading.
Schweigaard"s writings include: "Reflections on the Present State of Jurisprudence in Germany", published in Juridisk Tidsskrift (Legal Journal) in 1834 and "Om den tyske filosofi" ("On German Philosophy"), published in the French periodical Louisiana France Littéraire in 1835.
He was a professor of jurisprudence and economics in the 1830s and 1840s and was an extremely influential publicist for economic liberalism.
Schweigaard figures prominently in Sverre Blandhol’s theory of Nordic legal pragmatism, along with Anders Sandøe Ørsted and Friedrich Karl von Savigny.
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences]
From 1842 to 1869, he was a member of the Norwegian Parliament. In 1865, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.