Meta-ethics

Abstract

In this chapter, I argue that Olivecrona’s meta-ethics plays an important role in Olivecona’s legal philosophy, and that Olivecrona (and the other Scandinavian realists) differ in this regard from other prominent legal philosophers, such as Kelsen and Hart, who have been careful to develop their legal philosophies in a way that does not depend on controversial meta-ethical assumptions. I also argue that while Olivecrona preferred to speak in a general way of values, rights, or obligations, etc., it is clear from the context that he usually had in mind also moral values, rights or obligations. However, he rarely went further than to assert that there are no objective values and that there is no objective ‘ought.’ But this claim, or these claims, could be accepted not only by non-cognitivists, but also by meta-ethical relativists and error-theorists, and as a result the precise nature of his meta-ethical position is somewhat unclear. I suggest, however, that in his early writings he vacillated between an error theory and a non-cognitivist theory in regard to rights statements and judgments about duty, while accepting non-cognitivism in regard to value judgments proper, and that in his later writings he embraced a non-cognitivist theory across the board. The chapter also includes a discussion of the important distinction between (what I refer to as) first-order and second-order legal statements, the intriguing notion of a legal statement with a fused modality, and the question whether, if non-cognitivism is true, a second-order normative or evaluative statement can correctly render the content of the corresponding first-order normative or evaluative statement.