Kant Between Chemistry and Alchemy: Cinnabar, ‘Now Red, Now Black’
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Babette Babich
Babette Babich is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University in New York City. She writes hermeneutic and phenomenological philosophy of science/technology (including AI) as well as on aesthetics and ancient philosophy. In addition to editing New Nietzsche Studies, she has published 11 monographs and edited 14 collective volumes. She also edited Patrick Aidan Heelan’s last book on phenomenology and quantum mechanics in Einstein/Bohr/Heisenberg, The Observable (2016).
Abstract
This essay takes its point of departure from a post-Nietzschean reading of Kant and the limits of logic and critique. The focus is on science, particularly chemistry and alchemy via mercurial cinnabar (HgS), to this day the primary source of elemental mercury. Seeking to raise the question of science as Nietzsche names it along with the question of truth, this essay undertakes to raise the question of historiography in science, using the illustration of alchemy.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Babette Babich is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University in New York City. She writes hermeneutic and phenomenological philosophy of science/technology (including AI) as well as on aesthetics and ancient philosophy. In addition to editing New Nietzsche Studies, she has published 11 monographs and edited 14 collective volumes. She also edited Patrick Aidan Heelan’s last book on phenomenology and quantum mechanics in Einstein/Bohr/Heisenberg, The Observable (2016).
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of the current essay for their comments. Portions of this text, here substantially expanded, were originally published in “On the ‘Very Idea of a Philosophy of Science’: Chemistry and Cosmology in Nietzsche and Kant,” Axiomathes (December 2021), 1–24. I am also grateful for correspondence with Marco Buzzoni, Emilio Mazza, John Warwick Montgomery, Howard Caygill, Kenneth Westphal, and Lawrence Principe. I am grateful to Professor Annabelle Dufourq for discussion and for the opportunity to present elements of this essay as an online lecture for her students at Radboud University, Nijmegen in November of 2021. This essay is dedicated to Tracy Burr Strong (1943–2022).
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Abhandlungen
- Praxis, Diagramm, Körper. Die epistemologischen turns und die Rehabilitation von Kants Euklidizitätsthese
- Ein Konflikt in der Maxime. Kants Auffassung des moralischen Konflikts im Kontext seiner Zeit
- Kant on Lying in Extreme Situations
- Was versteht Kant unter einer „Ausnahme“?
- Reflection 6593: Kant’s Rousseau and the Vocation of the Human Being
- Bibliographie
- Kant-Bibliographie 2021
- Berichte und Diskussionen
- Kant Between Chemistry and Alchemy: Cinnabar, ‘Now Red, Now Black’
- Buchbesprechungen
- Karin de Boer: Kant’s Reform of Metaphysics: The Critique of Pure Reason Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 273 p. ISBN 978-1-108-84217-4.
- Kant and the Possibility of Progress. From Modern Hopes to Postmodern Anxieties. Hrsg. von Paul T. Wilford und Samuel A. Stoner. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021; 294 Seiten. ISBN 978-0-81-225282-8.
- Anja Jauernig: The World according to Kant. Appearances and Things in Themselves in Critical Idealism. Oxford 2021. 384 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-969538-6.
- Stefano Bacin: Kant e l’autonomia della volontà. Una tesi filosofica e il suo contesto. Bologna: il Mulino 2021. 224 pages. ISBN 978-88-15-29295-7.
- Sabrina Maren Bauer: Der Wahrheitsbegriff in Kants Transzendentalphilosophie. Eine Untersuchung zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. XVI und 257 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-11-069777-3. [KSEH 211]
- Mitteilungen
- Jahresinhalt Kant-Studien Jg. 114, 2023
- Gutachter-Dank
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Abhandlungen
- Praxis, Diagramm, Körper. Die epistemologischen turns und die Rehabilitation von Kants Euklidizitätsthese
- Ein Konflikt in der Maxime. Kants Auffassung des moralischen Konflikts im Kontext seiner Zeit
- Kant on Lying in Extreme Situations
- Was versteht Kant unter einer „Ausnahme“?
- Reflection 6593: Kant’s Rousseau and the Vocation of the Human Being
- Bibliographie
- Kant-Bibliographie 2021
- Berichte und Diskussionen
- Kant Between Chemistry and Alchemy: Cinnabar, ‘Now Red, Now Black’
- Buchbesprechungen
- Karin de Boer: Kant’s Reform of Metaphysics: The Critique of Pure Reason Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 273 p. ISBN 978-1-108-84217-4.
- Kant and the Possibility of Progress. From Modern Hopes to Postmodern Anxieties. Hrsg. von Paul T. Wilford und Samuel A. Stoner. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021; 294 Seiten. ISBN 978-0-81-225282-8.
- Anja Jauernig: The World according to Kant. Appearances and Things in Themselves in Critical Idealism. Oxford 2021. 384 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-969538-6.
- Stefano Bacin: Kant e l’autonomia della volontà. Una tesi filosofica e il suo contesto. Bologna: il Mulino 2021. 224 pages. ISBN 978-88-15-29295-7.
- Sabrina Maren Bauer: Der Wahrheitsbegriff in Kants Transzendentalphilosophie. Eine Untersuchung zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. XVI und 257 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-11-069777-3. [KSEH 211]
- Mitteilungen
- Jahresinhalt Kant-Studien Jg. 114, 2023
- Gutachter-Dank
