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Edvard (Alexander) Westermarck (1862-1939) |
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Finnish social anthropologist, philosopher,
and sociologist, whose area of specialization was the history of
marriage, morality, and religious institutions. Edvard Westermarck gained
international fame with his doctoral thesis, The History of Human Marriage,
which was inspired by the ideas of Darwin
and Herbert Spencer. Westermatck attacked on the theory of primitive
promiscuity, and sought to demonstrate that the matriarchate was not a
stage of human development and that universal promiscuity was a myth.
The study appeared first in 1891, and later in three volumes in 1922. "Long ago I sat one day in a library where I had come upon the three volumes of E.A. Westermarck's The History of Human Marriage. Browsing through its pages, I kept chuckling and I know some other denizens of the library must have thought me off my rocker to be finding something at which to laugh in what was a dusty tome. Yet there is nothing more amusing than man and his customs, and in that case it was some studies of marriage by capture." (the Western writer Louis L'Amour in Education of a Wandering Man, Bantam Books, 1990, p. 213) Edvard Westermarck was born in Helsinki (Helsingfors), the son of Nils Christian Westermarck, who taught Latin at the University of Helsinki, and the former Constance Gustava Maria Blomqvist, the daughter of the University librarian and professor of the History of Learning. As a child Westermarck suffered from chronic catarrh. Although he could not take part in games and sports at school, he later showed physical toughness in his strenuous expedition journeys in North Africa. From early on, he had two great passions in his life – science and nature. Westermarck was educated at the Swedish lyceum. After graduating in 1881, he entered the University of Helsinki, receiving his doctor's degree (Ph.D.) in 1890. He also worked as a teacher at the university. At the age of 25 he learned English in order to study the works of Darwin, Morgan, Lubbock, and McLennan in the original language. This was exceptional, because academic circles in Finland were oriented toward Germany and toward idealism, not Anglo-Saxon empiricism and naturalism. Westermarck felt an antipathy to German methaphysics which, as he said, "gave the impression of depth because it was so muddy." (Memories of My Life by Edward Westermarck, Macaulay, 1929, p. 30) As a result of a visit to England in 1887 and studies at the
library of the British
Museum, Westermarck wrote his dissertation, the first six chapters of The
History of Human Marriage. The British Museum was for him an island of bliss and a "very temple as well." (The Life and Work of Edward Westermarck by Morris Ginsbderg, in The Sociological Review, Vol. XXXII, Nos. 1 & 2, January-April 1940, p. 3) The whole book, published in 1891 with a foreword by Alfred Russel
Wallace, was an immediate scientific success. It launched his life's
work to investigate the institution of marriage. Westermarck himself
never married or had a family, stating in his autobiography that he had
no practical interest in the subject. Partly because Westermarck advocated for the rights of sexual homosexuals, it was claimed that Westermarck's own sexual orientation was well-known in London. No proof has been found to confirm rumors about his private life. As a scientist, Westermarck was considered the enfant terrible of European social science at the turn of the century, but he was able to stay away from public scandals and he never had to experience a public ostracism like Oscar Wilde. While
in England, Westermarck spent much of his time in
Surrey, where he
was well acquainted with English men of letters, such as Edmund Gosse
and
the philosopher and psychologist James Sully. Westermarck met him in
Norway by chance when walking in the
mountains. "In spite of the difference in age—Sully was twenty years
older that I—our acquaintance shortly became a friendship that grew in
intimacy wioth the passage of years." (Memories of My Life by Edward Westermarck, Macaulay, 1929, p. 76) The Future of Marriage in Western Civilization (1936), published when Westermarck was seventy-three, was decicated to the British sexologist and social reformer Havelock Ellis. Their correspondce had begun in 1902. Ellis send Westermarck his controversial study Sexual Inversion (1897). He also knew well Edward Carpenter, who had acknowledged his homosexuality publicly and had founded in 1913 with Ellis the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (BSSSP). With the poet George Ives, a member of the BSSSP and campaigner for homosexual law reform, Westermarck corresponded for decades. The period between 1900 and 1902 Westermarck lived mostly in
Morocco
but he also constantly moved between Finland and Britain. Originally
had had planned to acquire first-hand knowledge of other cultures for
his comparative study of morals by traveling first to South America,
and then continue to Polynesia and Australia, and return to Europe via
Malaya and India. On his first journey to Morocco in 1898 Westermarck abandoned the plan. From 1907 to
1931 Westermarck acted as professor of sociology at the London School
of Economics and Political
Science. At the same time he was professor of practical philosophy at
the University of Helsinki (1906-1918). For a number of years he
devoted the summer term to the School of Economics and the rest of the
year to his investigations in Morocco and his work in Helsinki. In 1918
he moved to Turku, where he had been appointed professor of philosophy
and rector at Åbo Akademi. A famous Swedish-speaking Finn, Westermarck also participated in the negotiations concerning Åland in the League of Nations and published an article on the issue. "If . . . Finland in some way or other were compelled to cede Aaland to Sweden, there is the danger that Finland may in the future look for the assistance of some mighty ally on the Baltic to regain the territory torn from her. As a native of Finland and a sincere friend of Sweden, I hope that such a danger will never arise." (The Aaland Question', in Contemporary Review 118, 1920) The two-volume The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas (1906-08) was an attempt to "scientificize" moral philosophy. His conclusion Westermarck based on anthropological, ethnological and historical data: there is no absolute standard in morality. The Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright considered it the most important philosophical work ever written by a Finn. Westermarck thought that morality is a social phenomenon and can be traced to altruistic and objective feelings of approval and disapproval, according to social rewards. Westermarck argued against the view that moral judgments are universal facts or common to all people. They are a product of a long period of development, and ultimately based upon emotions and vary in different individuals. G.E. Moore criticized Westermarck's subjectivism. ". . . it seems to me extremely difficult to believe that when we judge things to be wrong, each of us is merely making judgement about his own psychology." ('The Nature of Moral Philosophy', in Philosophical Studies by G.E. Moore, Harcourt, Brace & Co, 1922, p. 335) Also Émile Durkheim criticized The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas after the appearance of its first part, but Westermack did not notice the essay, published in L'Année sociologique. "He is chiefly concerned with the accumulation of facts, not with selecting those which are conclusive and cannot be contested. . . . One would think it was his aim to create an impression of quantity rather than leave the reader with distict, definite ideas." (Durkheim: Essays on Morals and Education, edited and with Introduction by W.S.F. Pickering, translations by H.L. Sutcliffe, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979p. 43) Westermarck was one of the first sociologist to examine, why family members rarely find one another sexually appealing. He proposed biological explanation of this
disinclination. In the essay The Origins of Sexual Modesty
(1921) he saw that sexual shame is only a by-product of a Darwinian
adaptation. He had suggested already
in his doctoral thesis, that men are disposed to find their their
mothers and sisters sexually unattractive. An innate aversion to later
close sexual attraction and bonding develops between individuals living
together from early childhood. Today Westemarck is perhaps best known for his theory of incest avoidance, the so-called Westermarck effect. Freud's Oedipal theory about inherent incestuous desires is in direct contrast to his explanation. In reviewing the 1922 edition of The History of Human Marriage, the famous anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski said: "Prof. Westermarck's explanation of exogamy, and of the prohibition of incest — which I think will come to be considered as a model of sociological construction, and which remarkably enough seems to find favour with no one." (Sex, Culture, and Myth by Bronisław Malinowski, 1962 p. 122) Malinowski had attended in the early 1910s Westermarck's lectures on 'Social institutions and 'Social rights and duties'. He later held the chair in anthropology at the London School of Economics. When Malinowski lectured in the Unites States in 1926-27, Westermarck wrote to him: "But please come back again to London, we cannot do without you. I missed you terribly during the summer term." (Ihmisen sosiaalisuuden alkulähteillä: westermarckilainen sosiologia ja sosiaaliantropologia by Otto Pipatti, Vastapaino, 2023, p. 275) In his youth Westermarck had read John Stuar Mill's essays on
religion, which influenced deeply his thinking. The rest of his life, he
remained an agnostic. Westermarck was a founding member of the Finnish
Prometheus Society, which advocated freedom of thought. He served its
chairman
for some time. "Religious toleration certainly does not mean passive indifference with regard to dissenting religious ideas. The tolerant man may be a great propagandist. He may do his utmost to suppress by arguments what he considers to be a false belief. He may even favour stronger measures against those who do mischief in the name of religion. But he does not persecute anubody for the sake of his faith. Nor does he believe in the intolerant and persecuting god." (Christianity and Morals by Edward Westermarck, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1939, p. 324) Christianity and Morals
(1939), Westermack's final philosophical work, was born partly as a
reaction against views that the "modern world owes its scientific
spirit to the extreme importance which Christianity assigned to the
possession of truth, of the truth." (Ibid., p. 323) The credit for progress,
according to Westermarck, should be attributed to the Enlightenment.
Considered too radical, the book was not published in Finnish until
1984, although it had already been translated during the Continuation
war (1941-44). Westermarck
represented tolerant views towards homosexuality. "Among mammals the
male possesses useless nipples, which occasionally even develop into
breasts, and the female possesses a clitoris, which is merely a
rudimentary penis, and may also develop. So, too, a homosexual tendency
may be regarded as simply the psychical manifestation of special
characters of the other sex, susceptible of being evolved under certain
circumstances, such as may occur about the age of puberty. Thus the
sexual instinct of boys and girls shows plain signs of a homosexual
tendency, and is often more or less undifferentiated. When facts of
this kind become more commonly known, they can scarcely fail to
influence public opinion about homosexuality." (Ibid., p. 376) Some of Westermarck's views on human sexuality have remained
controversial, even by modern standards – he questioned the
criminalization of bestiality and he throroughly approved Francis
Galton's eugenics program. At one eugenic meeting he said, "We cannot
wait till biology has said its last word on heredity. We do not allow
lunatics to walk freely about even though there may be merely a
suspicion that they may be dangerous. I think that the doctor ought to
have a voice in every marriage which is contracted . . . men are not
generally allowed to do mischief in order to gratify their own
appetites." (Eugenics
and the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century by Aaron
Gillette, 2007, p. 176) Between 1898 and 1913, Westermarck spent in total six years in Morocco. After an absence of ten years, he returned in 1923, and eventually bought a house on the outskirts of Tangier. The last visit he made to Morocco was in 1938-39. Among his most important Moroccan informants was Abdessalam El-Baqqali, whose family belonged to the Andrja tribe. He followed Westermarck to London and visited also Sweden and Finland. With a Swedish woman, whom El-Baqqali had met in his youth, he corresponded for decades. In Sex år i Marocco: reseskildringar (1918) Westermarck devoted one chapted to his friend. Westermarck's field study methods in social anthropology were
based on primary research, field work and and comparative approach. He
learned Arabic and many Berber dialects, and summarized, along with a
proverb, that "Honey is not fat, sorghum is not food and Berber is not
a language." The observations of his studies were recorded in Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco
(1914), Ritual and Belief in Morocco
(1926), Wit and Wisdom in Morocco,
and other now classical books. Ethical
Relativity (1932) was Westermarck's main philosophical work and a reply to his critics. He attacked the idea that moral
principles express objective value. Moral judgments can
be taken as arguments about the speaker's feelings, but this relativism
does not lead to subjectivism, because moral feelings must be
altruistic. Tapojen historia (1913), Westermarck's six lectures on the history of customs, were translated into Finnish by the writer Joel Lehtonen. This book introduced first time Westermarck's ideas to the Finnish speaking public. The news of the German invasion of Poland in 1939 shattered
Westermarck's
confidence in human progress. He had a severe asthma
atttack and died two days later, on September 3, 1939, in Tenhola. His
travels in
Morocco preindicated the rising interest
of the literary expatriates in the country, among others Paul Bowles.
The Westermarck Society was founded in 1943. Its publications include
the journal Sosiologia (Sociology), Acta Sociologica,
and Transactions of the Westermarck Society
series. In Finland Westermarck's work influenced a number of scholars,
among them Rafael Karsten, who studied Inca culture in Peru, Gunnar
Landtman, who studied Papuans in New Guinea, Hilma Granqvist, Yrjö
Hirn, and Rolf Lagerborg, a relentless critic of Christianity. Bernard Shaw introduced in his philosophical play Man and Superman (1903)
the new Don Juan, who is inspired by the "politics of the sex
question": "Instead of pretending to read Ovid he does actually read
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, studies Westermarck, and is concerned
for the future of the race instead of for the freedom of his own instinctions." (Ibid., Archibald Constable & Co, 1903, p. xiii) For further reading: Edvard Westermarck och verken från hans verkstad under hans tolv sista år 1927-39 by Rolf Lagerborg (1951); Sex and Society by Martin Seymour-Smith (1976); Westermarck's Ethics by Timothy Stroup (1982); Edvard Westermarck: Essays on his Life and Works, edited Timothy Strouop (1982); 'Westermarck, Edvard (Alexander)' by Martin Rouse, in Thinkers of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical, Bibliographical and Critical Dictionary , edited by Elizabeth Devine, Michael Hels, James Vinson, George Walsh (1983); Kadonneet alkuperät: Edvad Westermarckin sosiopsykologinen ajattelu by Juhani Ihanus (1990); Suomalaisen kulttuurifilosofian vuosisata by Mikko Salmela (1998); Suomen tieteen historia 2, edited by Päiviö Tommila (2000); Ajatuksen kulku =Tankens vägar =Trains of Thought, edited by Inkeri Pitkäranta (2004); Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo: The State of Knowledge at the Turn of the Century by Arthur P. Wolf, William H. Durham (2005); Edward Westermarck: totuuden etsijä by Niina Tuomisaari (2017); Morality Made Visible: Edward Westermarck's Moral and Social Theory by Otto Pipatti (2019); Animals in the Sociologies of Westermarck and Durkheim by Salla Tuomivaara (2019); Perheen synty: Edvard Westermarckin ja ihmisluonnon jäljillä by Heikki Sarmaja (2020); Moral, evolution och samhälle: Edvard Westermarck och hans närmaste krets by Otto Pipatti (2021); Ihmisen sosiaalisuuden alkulähteillä: westermarckilainen sosiologia ja sosiaaliantropologia by Otto Pipatti (2023) Selected works:
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