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Kant’s mourning letter or necrology for his student Johann Friedrich von Funk (1760) has hardly been received. This study attempts to change this by explaining the contexts of the short missive. In the first part this concerns in particular the influence that Gottsched exerted on the style of such printed speeches or necrolo­gies. Kant’s references therefore to the ‘Royal German Society’ in Königsberg and its founder Flottwell, a friend of Gottsched’s, are described. The influence of the Roman Stoa then becomes much clearer through the influence of Gottsched’s rhetoric textbook. All in all, Kant attempts to present rational arguments for dealing with death, which can suddenly strike human life; he writes under the obvious influence of a Stoic mindset (see the second part). Most of the comments by Kant scholars on the little work to date have been negative or vague. Here, the text is to be made fruitful for the development of Kant’s thought by shedding light on its historical contexts. On this basis, the little treatise appears as an important link for Kant’s early thinking. It shows how he makes ancient tradition fruitful again for the Enlightenment as a substitute for rapturous and irrational mysticism as we know it from Jacob Böhme, for example.

Modern formal logic, which is based on Kant’s logical project, interprets logical consequence as formal, which leads to substantive paradoxes that combine any thoughts at all and so to the loss of consequence as such. Beginning with A. Tarski, modern history of logic brings the problem of logical consequence into the realmof search for the relation of consequence, or grounding. In his doctoral dissertation on the nature of logical formality J. MacFarlane claims that the paradoxes of formal theories of logical consequence stem from the loss of grounding by the transcendental system of logic in the post­Kantian logical tradition. Arguably, analysis of logical terminology of consequence in Kant’s seminal works — Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of the Power of Judgment — in comparison with the terminology of earlier works, Prolegomena and lectures on logic attributed to him will clarify the question of the relation oflogical consequence in the  formal and non­formal sense. The key concept of consequence in Kant’s terminology is Folgerung, which denotes ‘following’ in logical and non­logical contexts. I have also analysed related concepts: Folge, Abfolge, folglich etc., established dif- ferences between logical terms with similar meaning ‘inference’ (Schluss) and ‘conclusion’ (Konklusion). Finally, I make an attempt to formulate the problem of logical consequence in formal logic through the logical terms Schlussfolge, Folgerung and Konsequenz. On the strength of my analysis I propose to consider Kant’s consequence (Folgerung) to be a concept of transcendental logic that reflects the relation of consequence and grounds formal consequence.

This paper deals with the “Table of the Categories of Freedom” in the second main chapter of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. It provides an account of the role these categories are supposed to play and also of their conceptual content. The key to a proper understanding lies in the realisation that they are derived from the so­called table of judgements in the Critique of Pure Reason and the functions of thinking, which it compiles by means of a metaphysical deduction. I therefore interpret the categories of freedom consistently from the table of judgements and reconstruct their conceptual content from the functions of thinking underlying each category. Furthermore, Kant justifies by means of a transcendental deduction the fact that the categories of freedom necessarily relate to all objects of the will. I argue that the categories are concepts constitutive for the object of the will: the role they play is that of the functions of willing an object. Finally, I show that the categories of freedom reach beyond Kant’s foundation of moral philosophy. They point to the later Metaphysics of Morals in that Kant associates an ambitious system­building claim with them. The idea is therefore that the table of the categories organises the system of moral philosophy.

The key thesis of natural teleology is that the products of nature should be judged by the goal of their existence or they should be explained as if such a goal existed. The prevailing view in the literature is that there are two main stages in the development of teleology in the framework of philosophical knowledge: the classicaland the non­classical. The isolation of these stages is based on the conviction that at a certain period of time finalism is supplanted by the notion of the goal engendered by the developing whole. I submit that we can talk about non­classical teleology in yet another sense.The interest of Aristotle and Kant in the foundations that warrant the existence of purpose of the products of nature is replaced by the attention to the fact that what exists in nature is not sufficiently purposive. The change of perspective is accompanied by a revision of the notions of what exactly purposiveness is, as well as by calls for practical activity in the course of which nature should be the subject of some tweaking. To bolster this hypothesis I turn to the teaching of Nikolay Fyodorov, the father of Russian cosmism, who puts the emergenceof teleological thought in the context of the project of nature regulation. I focus on three of the philosopher’s assertions which show that he departs from the canon of classical teleology to determine a new context of development of teleological thought. First, Fyodorov points to the destructive processes in the organism, namely towards disease and death, which make it impossibleto consider the organism to be  purposive. Second, the founder of Russian cosmism understands reason as the instrument that is capable of ridding nature of destructiveness. Thirdly and finally, the Russian philosopher maintains that an indispensable condition of human virtue and the attainment of happiness is the regulation of nature by the human being through prescribing for it an external goal as its own.

Using the Kant jubilee in 1924 as a pretext, Sergey Hessen, a Russian émigré neo­Kantian, draws no direct political conclusions but sets forth a view of the great philosopher’s legacy from the position of a “legal socialist”, selecting from his heritage those parts of German socialist doctrines that to his mind experienced a departure from a recent flowering of Kantian ideas in Neo­Kantianism and the collapse of traditional liberalism in the wake of the First World War. The fact that the text was first published in the Berlin­based Russian liberal newspaper “Rul’”, gives us reason to see it not just as a formal jubilee tribute, but as an act addressed to the qualified liberal audience which witnessed  thecollapse of liberalism in Russia.

The review covers scholarly publications devoted to the philosophy of Hermann Cohen, the head of the Marburg School of Neo­Kantianism, written by Russ­ ian researchers in the period between 2000 and 2023. Although Cohen commanded unquestioned authorityamong Russian  philosophers of his time — among them some followers and pupils — there was no systematic and substantive study of his work in pre­revolutionary Russia. The review below attempts to show the evidentgrowth of interest in Cohen’s philosophy in the last quarter of the century. The teaching of the German philosopher who lived and worked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries still attracts lively in- terest among Russian philosophers today. Witness the multiple monographs, articles and reports focusing on Cohen’s theory of cognition, his ethics and aesthetics, the search for convergences between the Christian religion and the Judaic tradition, the concept of the philosophy of culture, the relationship between morality and law and many other issues. The review pays particular attention to the works on the reception of Cohen’s philosophy in Russia, as well as previously unpublished translations and archive materials which were part of the scholarly discourse of his time but remained unpublished and then forgotten. The interest of modern Russ­ ian scholars in the work of Cohen does not only point to his importance for the history of philosophy, but attests to the relevance of his ideas whose potential has yet to be fully revealed. The review may serve as a guide to the published literature on Cohen for the students of his philosophy and for all those interested in Neo­Kantianism in general, thereby contributing to the development of such a field in philosophy as Cohen studies.