Background
WESTERMARCK, Edward Alexander was born on November 20, 1862 in Helsingfors. Youngest son of Assessor N. Chr. Westennarck and Constance Blomqvist.
WESTERMARCK, Edward Alexander was born on November 20, 1862 in Helsingfors. Youngest son of Assessor N. Chr. Westennarck and Constance Blomqvist.
Svenska Normallyceum, Helsingfors. University of Finland. Doctor of Philosophy.
1903-1907, Lecturer in Sociology, London School of Economics. 1906-1918, Professor of Practical Philosophy, University of Helsinki. 1907-1930, Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics.
Westermarck’s first major book. The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (1906-1908), took him many years to produce and in it his subjectivist view of ethics is already presupposed. He argued that, since there are no objective moral truths, the task of a scientific ethics is ‘to investigate the moral consciousness as a fact’.
Accordingly he made a comparative and historical survey of the varying attitudes and practices of different human societies on such topics as homicide, blood revenge, charity and slavery.
Westermarck’s subjectivism was criticized by G. E. Moore amongst others and he replied to his critics in his main philosophical work, Ethical Relativity (1932). He sought to show that those philosophical theories which sought to provide an underpinning for an objectivist ethics, such as utilitarianism and evolutionary ethics, failed to provide a suitable defence for their fundamental principles. Subjectivist and relativist views in ethics, though widely popular, have been extensively criticized by philosophers.
‘Nevertheless’, in the opinion of J. L. Mackie. ‘some contemporary philosophers believe that Westermarck’s views on ethics are substantially correct and that he made an important contribution to the development and defense of views of this kind’.