2025 Vol. 44. №3

By reading Kant on chemistry as a science, including his definition of science as such, this essay reviews Kant and the history of chemistry. Kant’s Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens is read in terms of contemporary axiomatic systems, via the astrophysicist Rudolf Kurth’s 1956 account, along with Nietzsche’s account of logic and causality. Nietzsche cites Kant’s theory in the context of a sustained discussion of Anaxagoras’ pre-Platonic cosmology. The paper includes reflections on alchemy, the history and historiography of chemistry, and recent contributions to the philosophy of chemistry. Since the foundations of chemistry are essentially non-mathematical, it cannot, following Kant, fully meet the criteria of a ‘science’. The same argument holds for alchemy (‘chymistry’ or spagyric), which is likewise not regarded as a science. Hermeneutic history and philosophy of science are useful, not only for developing an understanding of Kant’s conception of chemistry as a science, but also of his invocation of Stahl’s spagyric ‘art’, and his example of the mutable properties of a specific ore of mercury, Zinnober or cinnabar (HgS). A significant property of cinnabar (HgS) in this regard is that it changes colour, turning from red to black, depending on exposure to light. This can be interpreted as a metaphor illustrating problems of metamorphosis, and calling into question the widespread application of chemical principles. Together with his criticism of chemistry, Kant’s philosophical reflections open up possibilities for further research into concepts that first arose with alchemy.

This article examines the attempts of many libertarian philosophers to justify the self-ownership principle using the second formulation of the categorical imperative. It begins by reconstructing the self-ownership principle, according to which each person has a natural property right over her body and person. There are many versions of this principle, each recognizing a different set of such property rights; but what all formulations have in common is their radical anti-paternalism and, consequently, the permissibility of self-destructive behaviour. The paper then reconstructs and analyses two Kantian arguments for self-ownership. According to the first, persons have intrinsic value and should therefore never be used as mere means for someone else’s ends, which forbids ownership of other people. According to the second, persons must own their own bodies and persons in order to realise the personal and moral autonomy needed to uphold the moral law. Next, the article describes two ways in which self-ownership can be reconciled with different theories of personal identity: internalist and externalist. Internalism holds that the body is either identical with the person or part of the person. Externalism holds that the body is external to the person, which is a nonphysical mental substance. For Kantian libertarians, these two approaches present a dilemma. If they accept internalism, then self-ownership is incompatible with the categorical imperative because it involves self-instrumentalization. Since all persons are of equal value, instrumentalizing oneself is just as impermissible as instrumentalizing other persons. However, if Kantian libertarians accept externalism, then self-ownership simply does not follow from the categorical imperative because violating property rights to external re­sources is not itself an instrumentalization of their owner. Thus, the categorical imperative and self-ownership are incompatible.

While working on the archive materials of Gustav Gustavovich Shpet, one of the authors of this article came across notebooks in black covers in which, over the years, he had made entries (ranging from self-observations to tentative formulations of his thoughts which became part in one form or another of works that were later published or prepared for publication. One such notebook was the “1913 Diary”, which contains hurried jottings belonging to the period when Shpet was in direct communication with Edmund Husserl, Lev Shestov, Natalia Guchkova and others. Understanding the meaning of these hasty notes requires hermeneutic reconstruction, including chronological comparison of the “1913 Diary” with other archive materials (dating from Shpet and his interlocutors) as well as the works of Shpet and Husserl published at that time. The article presents the results of the hermeneutic reconstruction of one entry which deals with the theme of the conversation about Kant and phenomenology that took place between Shpet and Husserl on 30 (7) June 1913. The authors sequentially uncover the possible thematic layers of their intellectual conversation, dwelling on such topics as “the Kantian dilemma”, “the reflection theory”, “psychologism”, “pure ego”, “reality” and “experience”. Each problem involves, in one way or another, their assessment of Kant’s philosophical journey (especially in the theory of cognition). The modern context is provided by the philosophy and methodology of science, since the “conversation” between Shpet and Husserl throws new light on such key problems in the theory of knowledge as “human-sizedness”, “historicity” and continuity.