A. M. Schweigaard’s pragmatism: a Nordic glove against German idealistic philosophy

Abstract

A.M. Schweigaard featured the attempt of approaching the Law with the society by setting the legal framework free of the chains which linked an empty conceptual universe of real referents. In doing so, he criticized those methods that embraced the juridical fact within an airtight logic system through challenging the previous and well-known theories such as idealism. That doctrine headed the course of the German philosophy in the first half of the nineteenth century. His contributions were key for theories such as pragmatism, empiricism, and utilitarianism which were addressing the future development of the Norwegian Juridical Science.