Westermarck, Edward Alexander(1862–1939)
Edward Alexander Westermarck is best known as an anthropologist and sociologist; he is important in philosophy, however, as an exponent of a subjectivist theory of ethics, which he illustrated and supported by a survey of the actual variations in moral ideas. He himself made it clear in Memories of My Life that his interest in the sociology of morals arose from a concern with the philosophical question of the status of moral judgments and not vice versa.
Westermarck was born in Helsinki, Finland, of Swedish ancestry and was educated at the University of Helsinki. After 1887 he lived partly in England and partly in Finland, but he also made lengthy visits to Morocco from 1897 on. He was lecturer in sociology at the University of London from 1903 and professor of sociology there from 1907 to 1930; professor of practical philosophy at the University of Helsinki from 1906 to 1918; and professor of philosophy at the Academy of Abo from 1918. Westermarck did not marry, and his life was spent mainly in research, writing, and university teaching. On occasion, however, he joined other Finnish intellectuals in defense of their country's national interests, and he took a leading part in the founding of people's high schools for the Swedish-speaking population of Finland and of the Swedish university at Abo in Finland, of which he became the first rector in 1918.
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