Though Hägerström considered Das Prinzip der Wissenschaft to be his most important work, he chose not to mention it, nor any other work published before 1908, as being of any particular importance for the conception of his moral or legal philosophy131 - in fact he only refers to those of his works published during the two decades following the publication of Das Prinzip derWissenschaft.132 This fact is remarkable since Hägerström during his early career wrote several extensive studies dealing with issues such as ethics, morality, and law.133 The most plausible explanation for this omission is that it was not until after 1908-1910 that he actually formulated his noncognitive moral theory, albeit without giving it the name värdenihilism(Eng. axiological nihilism), which was the name that it later went by.134 Consequently, it is not unwarranted to infer that one can more readily detect a manifest break between the meta-ethical ideas harbored by Hägerström in his youth and those of his maturity, than the difference between the ideas of his youthful and mature epistemology and ontology. It is, for instance, inDas a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 289 Transition from Moral Philosophy to Legal Philosophy and Theory chap te r 6 131 Hägerström, “Hägerström.”; “The Philosophy of Axel Hägerström.” 132 Hägerström, “Hägerström.”; “The Philosophy of Axel Hägerström.”; Selbstdarstellungen, pp. 42-48. 133 Prior to 1908 Hägerström published several works about moral and legal philosophy, among themAristoteles etiska grundtankar (1893),Undersökning af den empirisitiska etikens möjlighet (1895), Om den moraliska känslan och driften (1895), Kants Ethik imVerhältnis zu seinen Erkenntnistheoretischen Grundgedanken (1902) and Stat och rätt (1904). 134 Petersson, Värdeteori, p. 187.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=