Metaphysics of Ákos Pauler

This article continues the author’s series of publications on the philosophical legacy of the Hungarian thinker Ákos Pauler (1876–1933). It focuses on his metaphysical doctrine as expounded in Introduction to Philosophy (1920) and the posthumously published Metaphysics (1938). The author reconstructs the key concepts of Paulerian metaphysics: hylomorphism as the mode of connection between «validity» (the world of ideas) and «reality» (the world of things), the theory of substance, and the relation between the physical and the psychical, and between the finite and the infinite. Special attention is paid to his conception of the Absolute, which is understood as one, simple, transcendent, eternal, and infinitely perfect, serving both as the source and the goal of cognition for individual substances. The author concludes that Ákos Pauler’s metaphysics, owing to his consistent refusal to resort to mythological epistemes, encounters the insoluble problem of theodicy.