The subject of the article is the assessment of the way of presentation of the issue of realism and idealism in the Controversy over the Existence of the World by R. Ingarden. First, the author of this paper offers his own systematization of the issue of ‘realism – idealism’, then he goes on to show Ingarden’s position. The modern opposition ‘realism – idealism’ can be divided into three main areas: (1) the problem of the existence of the so‑called ‘constitutive a priori’, (2) the problem of the argumentative transgression of the immanence of consciousness (the so‑called ‘bridge problem’), (3) the problem of the causal genesis of the image of the world at the disposal of human cognitive subjects (skeptical hypotheses). The author undertakes to show that the Controversy over the Existence of the World takes as a starting point only a specific interpretation of the issue of realism and idealism: the interpretation contained in the writings of E. Husserl, while omitting the fundamental issue of the nature of time and space, and is limited thereby to the interpretation of realism and idealism from the point of view of the question of the existence qualified as constitutive a priori.

In the first part, ‘Visions’, a pattern of interpreting Western philosophical thought, as an attempt to deal with the problem of axiological catastrophe, is outlined. In the second part, ‘Vastness’, the author tries to show how far human speculative thinking (metaphysical thinking) can be extended, regardless of whether the ‘vastness’ that human metaphysics aims at is realized one way or another. The third part, ‘God’, deals with the relationship between the concept of God and the concept of metaphysical vastness. The fourth part is called ‘Cradle’ and its intention is to show that in comparison with real or only possible metaphysical vastness, the world in which we live is a kind of beginning of an infinite life, and therefore serves as a cradle. In the last part, entitled ‘Fullness’, some ideas are proffered to show how the eternal life of such entities as human persons may appear against the background of metaphysical vastness.