Axel Hägerström

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Axel Anders Theodor Hägerström (September 6, 1868 – July 7, 1939) was a Swedish philosopher and jurisprude.

Born in Vireda, Sweden, he was the son of a Church of Sweden priest. A student at Uppsala University, he taught there from 1893 until his retirement in 1933 and is best known as a founder of the Uppsala school of philosophy and as the founder of the Scandinavian legal realism movement.

Some of his work was published by the Muirhead Library of Philosophy.

[edit] Contribution to legal understanding

The jurisprudential camp of legal realism, broadly speaking, consists of those scholars who believe that legal concepts, terminology and values should be based on experience, observation and experimentation and are thus, ‘real’. This empirical, or sceptical, view taken by the ‘realists’ can be contrasted with a more rational view taken by others, such as H.L.A. Hart, the English philosopher, who took a more formulistic approach and had the opinion that such concepts can survive through the application of a priori reasoning or logic only.

Hägerström is considered to be the founding father of the Scandinavian school of legal realism. His disciples, Karl Olivecrona, Alf Ross and A.V. Lundstedt all take a similar basic view to Hägerström in their opinions on the language of Western law.

Hägerström rejected metaphysics in their entirety. 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.

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