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Per Arvid Ingemar Hedenius (5 April 1908 – 30 April 1982) was a Swedish philosopher. He was Professor of Practical Philosophy at Uppsala University (1947–1973). He was a famous opponent of organised Christianity. The Swedish Humanist Association, known in Sweden as "Humanisterna", offers the Ingemar Hedenius Award each year to support humanist ideas and critical thinking.
Hedenius' grandfather Per Hedenius (1828–1896) was a famous professor of pathology and for a while rector of Uppsala University. His father Israel Hedenius (1868–1932) was in 1900 a doctor of medicine and teacher of medical practice, and in 1927 was appointed personal physician to the King of Sweden. Hedenius' mother, born Anna Bergh, was from an upper class Norwegian family.
The two married in 1905 and had three children: Per (1905), Ingemar and Ann Marie (1909). Both parents were very religious.
Ingemar took the entrance examination for the Norra Latin school in 1927. After he completed upper secondary school, he studied at Uppsala University where he wrote his doctoral thesis, Sensationalism and theology in Berkeley's philosophy, on the philosophy of George Berkeley (1936).[1] On 8 June 1979, Hedenius received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Theology at Uppsala University, Sweden.[2]
Svante Nordin, a professor of history of science and ideas at Lund University, published a book in 2004 called Ingemar Hedenius: en filosof och hans tid (Ingemar Hedenius: a philosopher and his time). It portrays a picture of Ingemar Hedenius based on a rich collection of letters and other documents. According to the text at the back of the book, Hedenius was "a person with strong musical, artistic and literary interests. He liked to play the flute, including performing in public. [...] harsh both in writing and in speech with enemies and opponents, gentle and sensitive with his friends."
Hedenius was, from 1957 to 1960, a publisher of the bimonthly magazine Kulturkontakt, a publication of the CIA-backed Congress of Cultural Freedom and the Svenska kommittén för kulturens frihet (Swedish Committee for Cultural Freedom).[3]
Hedenius was best-known for his book, Tro och vetande (Belief and Knowledge), published in 1949 under the influence of Bertrand Russell and analytic philosophy.[4] The book started one of the most wide-ranging cultural debates in Swedish history. The debate was about the truthfulness of the teachings of Christianity and the position of the Church in society. He rejected organised Christianity, especially the established role of the Church of Sweden. In Belief and Knowledge, he described three postulates that theology does not comply with to show that it is not possible to have a rational debate about religion. According to Hedenius, this means that theology can not be classified as knowledge but as "quasi-knowledge":
Hedenius was of the opinion that Christianity violates these rules and is therefore irrational. Amongst other things, he proposed that the study of religions and their development should be separated from theology and become a non-religious academic discipline.