Draft:Hägerström Lectures

The Hägerström Lectures are a yearly series of talks by prominent philosophers hosted by the Department of Philosophy at Uppsala University.

The initiative for the Hägerström Lectures was taken by Stig Kanger, Chair of Theoretical Philosophy at Uppsala University, from 1968 until his death in 1988. The idea was to invite a distinguished philosopher for a week to give a series of five open lectures unified by a common theme, and provide an opportunity for teachers and students at the Department of Philosophy in Uppsala to meet the guest for informal discussions. The series was inaugurated in 1971 and named in honor of the former Chair in Practical Philosophy (1911-1933), Axel Hägerström, the founding father of the Uppsala School of ethics and the jurisprudential movement known as Scandinavian Legal Realism. The Hägerström Lectures were held annually until 2009, biannually between 2009 and 2022, and have been held annually again since 2022. From 2017 onward, the number of lectures each year has been reduced from five to three.

The first Hägerström Lecturer was Konrad Marc-Wogau, Kanger’s predecessor as Chair in Theoretical Philosophy at Uppsala University(1946-1968). The list of speakers since then includes several of the most eminent and influential philosophers of the last half century in a broad range of areas of specialization, including Julia Annas, Alonzo Church, Donald Davidson, Peter Geach, Ian Hacking, Christine Korsgaard, Saul Kripke, John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Willard Van Orman Quine, Amartya Sen, Patrick Suppes, Kendall Walton and Georg Henrik von Wright.