Spencerian influence on the early moral philosophy of Ákos Pauler regarding racial and gender inequality

Abstract

In this paper I argue that the early moral philosophy of Ákos Pauler was informed by eugenic and racial hygienic theories of his age. Perhaps one of the key social theorists of his time was the British philosopher Herbert Spencer who arguably had an infl uence on the moral theories of Pauler as well. Pauler became an infl uential theoretician in Hungary during the interwar period. His ideological commitments to Christinity and national values made him favorable to the authoritarian politics of the 1920s and 30s. His signifi cance lasted until the end of the 1940s; during the Socialist period from 1948 to 1989 Pauler's heritage was played down because of the idological divide between the two political eras. However, after the transition, the works of Pauler were rediscovered and my study contributes to this strand of research from an intersectional perspective. In this paper I will analyze how conceptulizations of race and gender structured their moral theories in which the responsibility of women was understood in terms of their reproductive contribution to their country's racial future. I claim that Pauler's early moral philosophy rests on racially informed principles that justify gender subordination. 1