ETHICAL NIHILISM - IGNORED BY THE ANGLOPHONE
COMMUNITY - THE GREAT SWEDISH PHILOSOPHER
AXEL HÄGERSTRÖM - ATHENAEUM LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY
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ETHICAL NIHILISM
IGNORED BY THE ANGLOPHONE COMMUNITY
THE GREAT SWEDISH PHILOSOPHER
AXEL HÄGERSTRÖM
BY JUD EVANS
IGNORED BY THE ANGLOPHONE COMMUNITY
THE GREAT SWEDISH PHILOSOPHER AXEL HÄGERSTRÖM
Axel Hägerström Axel Anders Theodor Hägerström
(September 6, 1868 – July 7, 1939) was a
Swedish philosopher and jurist. Born in Vireda,
Jönköping County Sweden, he was the son of
a Church of Sweden pastor. As student at
Uppsala University, he gave up theology for
a career in philosophy. Teaching there from
1893 until his retirement in 1933, he attacked
the then dominant philosophical idealism
of the followers of Christopher Jacob Boström
(1797-1866). He is best known as a founder
of the (quasi-) positivistic Uppsala school
of philosophy - the Swedish counterpart of
the anglo-American Analytical Philosophy
as well as of the Logical Positivism of the
Vienna Circle - and as the founder of the
Scandinavian legal realism movement.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It goes without saying that as a eliminative
determinist and value nihilist - but compassionate
agent of concern for: sensate feeling others within my responsive, ever-expanding and
contracting circles of empathy (think ripples
from the splash of a sentimental stone) I
do not believe that morals or moralising
in general, or lies and lying in particular
(or the lack of them) exist.
That is not to say that I am amoral in the
natural language sense of the term. I believe
that the word morals is no more than another
term for feeling-based opinion or our emotional reaction with regard to the way that we think the
majority in a given social group should act
or not act, or believe or not believe. Of
course we are encouraged to believe what
the dominant strata (in their many manifestations)
within that society consider best for the
stability and continuance of the hierarchical
structure concerned, particularly as if affects
their positions of power within that structure.
I
In the end it boils down to the question
of whether we are willing (or unwilling)
to personally accept and comply with such
social mores (or reject them) in accordance
with what is our perception of the ramifications
of an acceptance (or non-acceptance) of such
agenderised opinion at the time and what
it implies for the nearest and soi-disant
occupants of our individuate expanding circles of empathy. (lover, family, neighbours, district, town,
county, state, country, continent, world
- whatever.)
Axel Hägerström was famous for his value
theory according to which moral judgements
are cognitively meaningless; they cannot
be true or false as they always involve a
feeling. While Hägerström himself, as well
as some of his ardent disciples, seemed to
believe that his value theory would lead
to a more forgiving and humane moral attitude,
which would “rise as a Phoenix bird from the ashes”, the critics coined the pejorative label “value nihilism” (värdenihilism) and argued that the theory
was responsible for the collapse of European
culture and even for the rise of totalitarian
and antidemocratic ideas.[1] (Strang.pp.
37 - 63. 2009.)
Emotivism for me is quite convincing (as
well as confirming much of the position of
Hume on the domination of reason by emotion.
Hägerström's thinking has a lot to say on
the matter, amongst other things positing
that opinion/morals is no more than a visceral
or gut reaction to the fear that what is
done to other people could happen to oneself.
So when a murderer is hanged - we make a
decision not to murder, which we rationalise
and internalise as murder is wrong (rather
than: I wouldn't like that to happen to me) or we witness some hapless political idiot
(Bush or Tony Blair and the notorious attack
on Iraq for example) being exposed as a liar
- compare Arendt's similar assessment of
the vile Nazi Heidegger as: an inveterate
liar - (speaking illeistically - a typical
emotive response by my to any mention of
the awful philosopher of Nazism) and shudder
to think what it would like for us to be
exposed to such ridicule and hatred.
Much more interesting is Hägerström's concept
of value theory, called “value nihilism” (värdenihilism) - by his critics who coined
this dyslogistic term. Hägerström bacame
famous for his theory of value judgements,
according to which moral judgements are cognitively
meaningless; they cannot be true or false
as they always involve a feeling.
While Hägerström himself, as well as some
of his ardent disciples, seemed to believe
that his value theory would lead to a more
forgiving and humane moral attitude, which
would “rise as a Phoenix bird from the ashes”, the critics argued that the theory was
responsible for the collapse of European
culture and even for the rise of totalitarian
and antidemocratic ideas.[2] (ibid)
Of course, for a macro view of the problem,
all this high falutin national and international
drama from The White house and Number 10
which de-stabilised society from within needs
to be reduced to and compared with the micro-social
interaction within the family, the peer group,
etc. Even small-scale immorality and betrayal initiates instability from within. Helen
of Troy apart - in the past intertribal warfare
(and worse) has been the result of little
more than that of the wife of a hard-working
goatherd misbehaving with the owner-farmer's
son, whilst her cuckolded spouse dutifully
tended the flock in order to put a mess of
potage on the table. So historically (kicks
against the moral (or immoral) pricks) has
proved to be just as much danger for a given
family, for a tribe and for a confederation
of tribes, as Bush's and Blair's lies had
for the American and British people, and
the onlookers of the wider world who looked
on with horror as all hell broke loose.
As for white lies - if they are motivated by a genuine desire
to shield somebody we care about from unnecessary
angst (rather than shielding ourselves from
the angst of having to deal with their angst)
I see no reason for even calling them lies
(white or otherwise) but rather as examples
of our loving concern for our fellow human
beings - but all such behaviour is circumstantial
and depends upon what our opinion is of what
the best course of action appears to be the
best one at the time.
