Background
Pauler, Akos von was born in April 1876 in Budapest.
Pauler, Akos von was born in April 1876 in Budapest.
Professorships of Philosophy at the Universities of Kolozsvar (1912) and Budapest 0915-0933).
Deeply impressed by Bolzano’s arguments for the depsychologization of logic, Pauler's fundamental aim was to introduce the maximum possible °bjcctivity into philosophy. Such objectivity, he argued, is achievable by using the method he called reduction, distinct from both induction and deduction. The reductive method begins from the given and works back to its ultimate presupposili°ns, of which philosophy is the study. The subject has five major subdivisions: logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics ar|d what Pauler calls ’ideology', in effect general ontology. Pauler’s logic is generously conceived, involVlng principles others might well call metaphysial. Thus, beyond the laws of identity, contradiction and excluded middle, it involves (he ‘laws’ of connection; of classification; and correlativity. Pauler’s metaphysics has a strongly Leibnizian bias: there ls a plurality of substances, each being a centre of activity based on intention. Change is always and only from potency to act, and therefore all process is towards self-realization. The principle of selfrealization is the Absolute, at first differentiated from and then identified with god by Pauler. In ethics Pauler embraced a form of utilitarianism, resting on a libertarian analysis of the will. Sources: Edwards; Ferrater Mora; Dizionario dei Filosof dei Novecento.