Harald Ofstad

Harald Frithjof Seiersted Ofstad (13 October 1920 – 5 October 1994) was a Norwegian moral philosopher. He was Professor in Applied Philosophy at Stockholm University for more than 30 years.

Born in Bergen, the youngest son of a high-ranking police officer, Ofstad passed the examen artium in 1939 and completed a degree in law in 1945 before changing to philosophy, which he studied under Arne Næss; he was part of the "Bergen group" and one of the most prominent exponents of Næss' "empirical semantics" approach. He became a cand. mag. in philosophy in 1946, studied in the United States at Yale University and other institutions as a Rockefeller Fellow in 1947–49, and was a University Fellow at the University of Oslo in 1949–54. Like many of his generation, influenced by American social scientists and such thinkers as Theodor W. Adorno, he sought the origins of authoritarianism and nationalism. with Erna Ofstad. Valg og Verdi (Choices and Values). Oslo: Aschehoug, 1961. . . Vår forakt for svakhet. En analyse av nazismens normer og vurderinger. Oslo: Pax, 1971. . . Trans. ed. Our Contempt for Weakness: Nazi Norms and Values—and Our Own. Gothenburg: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1989. . Ansvar og handling: diskusjoner av moral-, sosial- og rettsfilosofiske spørsmål (Responsibility and Action). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1980. . . Vi kan ändra världen: hur bör vi ställa frågorna? (We Can Have a New World). Stockholm: Prisma, 1987. . .