Sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Edward Westermarck (1862-1939) grew in an academic Swedish-speaking family in Helsinki, Finland, then an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. He studied the humanities, philosophy, and psychology at the University of Helsinki. During his student years, Westermarck became much attracted to British empiricist philosophy, Darwinian evolutionism, freethought, and liberal social criticism, which continued to inspire his work for the rest of his life. Westermarck's doctoral thesis from 1889 is included in his first major work, The History of Human Marriage (1891), published in England. The book became a critical success and a bestseller, and it was quickly translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Japanese. In 1890, Westermarck was appointed Docent (lecturer) in Sociology at the University of Helsinki and he spent much time conducting research in London. In 1898, he began his ethnographic fieldwork in Morocco, which lasted in total more than six years. The completion of Westermarck's second book, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, two volumes (1906; 1908) won him professorships both in Finland and England. Between 1906 and 1918, he served as Professor of Practical (i.e., moral and social) Philosophy in Helsinki, and from then on as Professor of Philosophy at Abo Akademi University in Turku. Beginning in 1904, Westermarck also lectured at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and in 1907 he became Britain's first Professor of Sociology (Husbands 2019, xvi, 18). Westermarck spent a large part of his life dividing his time between Finland, London, and Morocco. His main ethnographic works are Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco (1914) and Ritual and Belief in Morocco (2 vols., 1926). Westermarck never married and there is no information about his intimate relationships. Through his scholarly writings and social activities, Westermarck strove to advocate legal reforms relating to the liberalization of divorce laws, the juridical equality of spouses, the position of unmarried women and adulterine children, animal rights, and the decriminalization of homosexuality (Timosaari 2021a; 2021b). In Finland, a group of disciples shared his comparative evolutionary approach and interest in anthropological fieldwork. Most of them published their main works through leading British publishers. The Westermarckian school dominated the Finnish social sciences and philosophy until the Second World War. At LSE, Westermarck's closest student and later a colleague was the prominent anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), who recognized Westermarck as his most important influence (Malinowski 1937, xvi). Westermarck retired in the early 1930s, and in 1932 he published his main philosophical work, Ethical Relativity. Westermarck died in 1939, two days after Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, an event said to have brought on Westermarck's fatal asthma attack (Lagerborg 1951, 366-367). His last major work, Christianity and Morals, appeared earlier in 1939.
