Abstract
<jats:p>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.</jats:p>