11 Facts About Edvard Westermarck

Edvard Alexander Westermarck was a Finnish philosopher and sociologist.

Edvard Westermarck's father worked at the University of Helsinki as a bursar, and his maternal grandfather was a professor at the same university.

In 1892, Edvard Westermarck became a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Helsinki.

Edvard Westermarck was promoted to professor of Moral Philosophy in 1906 and occupied that chair until 1918, when he moved to the Abo Akademi University in Turku.

Edvard Westermarck had served for some years, between 1918 and 1921, as Rector of the Abo Akademi University.

Edvard Westermarck was a scholar of Morocco and offered a positivist view of how its folk religion was formed in his two-volume work Ritual and Belief in Morocco.

Edvard Westermarck had started his fieldwork in Morocco as early as 1898, and visited the country 21 times in the next thirty years, spending in total seven years in the country.

Edvard Westermarck studied his favorite subject, marriage, there, publishing in 1914 Marriage Ceremonies of Morocco.

Edvard Westermarck critiqued Christian institutions and Christian ideas on the grounds that they lacked foundation.

Edvard Westermarck was a moral relativist and in his two-volume The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas he argued that moral judgements are not rational but are based on emotions and on social approval or disapproval.

Edvard Westermarck's sister, Helena Westermarck, was a writer and artist.