Abstract

The psychological conception of norm was the route taken by the «Uppsala school» of legal-philosophical thinking, which specifically disclaimed the ambition of creating a practical rationality. The essay raises some issues about the psychology of norms within the Scandinavian legal realism tradition and draws the attention to the originality of Nils Kristian Sundby's contribution. Sundby's moral and legal philosophy takes a line reminiscent of the Swedish legal realism. It makes appeal to the ethical non-cognitivism and to the deeply irrational conception of internalization by using the lenses of linguistic philosophy and social psychology. Particularly, the essay will take up the question how far and in what sense internalization, language and law interact.