Klas Pontus Arnoldson
From Philosopedia
Arnoldson, Klas Pontus (27 October 1844 - 20 February 1916)
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Arnoldson was born in Goteburg, Sweden. When 16, he left school after his father died, working for the Swedish State Railways for two decades.
He was elected to the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament, from 1882 to 1887, where he championed expansion of franchise, religious freedom, antimilitarism, and political neutrality for Sweden. He founded the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society in 1883 and edited several journals.
With Fredrik Bajer in 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his pacifist work, especially during the 1895 dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden, in which Arnoldson controversially sided with Norway.
According to his Nobel Prize biography,
- Familiar with the humanistic tenets of religious movements originating in the nineteenth century in Great Britain and in the New England section of the United States, he decried fanatic dogmatism and espoused essentially Unitarian views on truth, tolerance, freedom of the individual conscience, freedom of thought, and human perfectibility. These views he published in the Nordiska Dagbladet [Northern Daily], which he edited for a short time in the early 1870's, and in //Sanningssškaren// [The Truth Seeker]."
After concentrating on largely journalistic writing, Arnoldson wrote several major works during his last three decades, including Religion in the Light of Research (1891) and Hope for the Centuries, A Book on World Peace (1900).
Arnoldson was not a wealthy person but spent much of his money in the cause of peace. He opposed the war with Norway in 1906. In 1908, , he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Arnoldson worked energetically for freethought causes in Sweden.
