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...