Kant’s Philosophy of Chemistry and Nietzsche’s Cosmology. Part II: Chemistry as a Science, the Alchemy of Economics, and Spiritual Gold

Continuing from Part One (see “Kantian Journal”, vol. 44, no. 3), this article reviews Kant’s dismissal of chemistry as a ‘proper’ science in light of his specific examples (instancing Stahl’s spagyric experiments, cinnabar, and gold) to argue that understanding Kant requires an historical hermeneutical approach to science. Close textual analysis of Kant’s writings is compared with an historically-informed reading of early modern chemistry and alchemy, which looks at Stahl, Boyle, Paneth, discussions by historians and philosophers of science, Goethe (in connection with his business enterprise), and, on a theological level, Reiner Schürmann, among others. A “material hermeneutics” of exemplary substances — cinnabar, in particular — in addition to Kant’s use of chemical examples, can illustrate gradations in science, the distinction between analysis and synthesis, and the conditions for possible experience, as well as the later reception of these themes in the philosophy of chemistry and the history of alchemy. The main findings show, first, that Kant’s treatment of chemistry is more complex than a simple exclusion from “proper science” suggests. Secondly, Kant’s example of cinnabar “now red, now black,” presupposes empirical instability. Lastly, the article argues that the continued marginalisation of alchemy in historical writing perpetuates a Whiggish scientistic bias, and that a hermeneutic approach can reveal deeper continuities between alchemy, chemistry, and Kant’s critical philosophy.