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This major volume of studies of Axel Hägerström (1868–1939) presents contributions by leading international scholars to a 2011 symposium on the only Swedish philosopher of international significance for social thought. Axel Hägerström, in contrast to his contemporaries, rejected the reality of values, and then applied this rejection by reinterpreting legal theory. His influence was enormous for the school of “Scandinavian legal realism” which includes Gunnar Myrdal, Karl Olivecrona and Alf Ross, and had a formative influence upon Swedish political culture, and Scandinavian social science.

Contents:

Acknowledgements
Introduction - Sven Eliaeson, Patricia Mindus, Stephen P. Turner

Part I - Knowledge, Language and Morals

Chapter 1 - Methodological Reflections on Hägerström’s Meta-ethics - Folke Tersman
Chapter 2 - Axel Hägerström on Moral Language - Bo Petersson
Chapter 3 - Two Kinds of Anti-Objectivism - Thomas Mautner

Part II - Metaphysics, Neo-Kantianism, Religion

Chapter 4 - Hägerström and the Project of De-Ideologization - Stephen P. Turner & George Mazur
Chapter 5 - Axel Hägerström: Illuminating the Dark Years (1902-1908) - Carl-Göran Heidegren
Chapter 6 - Axel Hägerström and Analytic Philosophy - Johan Strang
Chapter 7 - Hägerström, Nietzsche and Swedish Nihilism - Hans Ruin

Part III - Scandinavian Legal Realism

Chapter 8 - Axel Hägerström’s Influence on Legal Thinking in Sweden: All Mod Cons in the Valley Between What Is and What Ought To Be - Torbjörn Andersson
Chapter 9 - Naturalism and Non-Naturalism in Legal Philosophy: Hägerström on Kelsen - Torben Spaak
Chapter 10 - Social Tools and Legal Gears: Hägerström on the Nature of Law - Patricia Mindus
Chapter 11 - Hägerström’s Philosophy of Right - Enrico Pattaro
Chapter 12 - Comments on Mindus and Pattaro - Jes Bjarup

Part IV - Hägerström’s Legacy

Chapter 13 -On the Political Impact of the Uppsala School - Svante Nycander
Chapter 14 - Axel Hägerström’s “Ontology of the Present”: Axel Hägerström, Max Weber and Michel Foucault - Jan-Erik Lane
Chapter 15 - Myrdal and the Diffusion of Scandinavian Legal Realism - Sven Eliaeson
Chapter 16: Incommensurability in Ethics and Science: Philosophical and Cultural Perspectives - Finn Collin
Chapter 17 - Balancing the Accounts - Svante Nordin

Appendix: Translations of Two Texts by Axel Hägerström

On the Truth of Moral Ideas - Axel Hägerström
The Powers of Magistrates in Ancient Rome - Axel Hägerström

Axel Hägerström’s Published Works: Select Bibliography - Thomas Mautner
Swedish Figures Relating to Hägerström and his Context - Sven Eliaeson
About the Authors
Index

About the Editors:

Sven Eliaeson has a Ph.D. in political science from Uppsala University, awarded in 1982. He is a researcher at UCRS (Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies) and he is also Recurrent Visiting Professor in Sociology at CSS (Centre for Social Studies) at IFiS PAN (Institute for Philosophy and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw). His most significant monograph is Max Weber’s Methodologies (Polity Press, 2002). He has also published several edited volumes on East of the Elbe a airs and problems of the post-1989 transformations.

Patricia Mindus received a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Turin in 2006 and is Associate Professor in Practical Philosophy at Uppsala University. She is the author of A Real Mind.
The Life and Work of Axel Hägerström (Springer, 2009), which was awarded the Luisa Guzzo Foundation prize.

Stephen P. Turner is Graduate Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida. He is the co-author of Max Weber: The Lawyer as Social Thinker, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Weber, as well as more than twenty other books in the history and philosophy of social science, political theory, and methodology; most recently Explaining the Normative (Polity Press, 2010).