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Gaston Bachelard: The Philosopher as Dreamer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 1968
Extract
Gaston Bachelard began his academic career as a teacher of physics and chemistry, turning eventually to the history and philosophy of science: a personal evolution not uncommon in France, which since the turn of the century has also offered the examples of Duhem, Poincaré and Meyerson. Unlike these older contemporaries, however, Bachelard took as his special province not the logical structure of scientific theory, or the norms of theory construction, but the inventive spontaneity or “dynamism” of scientific thought. While celebrating science as the ultimate expression of reason, he paid as much attention to its imaginative false starts as to the rational explanations it adopts. By 1938, moreover, he had turned explicitly to the activity of imagination: this became the general theme of a number of works that revolve freely about the four elements of an earlier and more poetic “science,” and the philosopher's field eventually was to become nothing less than his total experience, whether reasoned, lived or dreamed.
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- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , December 1968 , pp. 430 - 448
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- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1968
References
1 Bachelard was born at Bar-sur-Aube on June 27, 1884. He died in Paris on October 16, 1962. He began his advanced academic training after many years in the postal service and in the armed forces, receiving the degree of docteur és lettres in 1927. From 1919 to 1930 he taught physics and chemistry at the College of Bar-sur-Aube. From 1930 to 1940 he was professor of philosophy at Dijon, after 1940 professor at the Sorbonne.
2 Works analyzing the imagery of the “four elements” are the following: La psychanalyse du feu (Paris, 1938); L'eau et les rêves(Paris, 1942); L'air et les songes (Paris, 1943); La terre et les rêveries de la volonté (Paris, 1948); La terre les rêveries du repos (Paris, 1948). La poétique de l'espace (Paris, 1958) inaugurates what Bachelard refers to as his “phenomenological” studies. Briefly, this means that earth, air, fire and water are no longer regarded as privileged; they join an indefinite number of image-objects that await the philosopher's attention.
3 La formation de I'esprit scientifique (Paris, 1938) bears the subtitle «Contribution á une psychanalyse de la connaissance objective » La psychanalyse dufeu has appeared in a translation by Ross, Alan C. M. as The Psychoanalysis of Fire (Boston, 1964Google Scholar). That Bachelard wrote the two books during the same period is attested to by Pierre Quillet in the introduction to his selection of excerpts, Bachelard (Paris, 1964), pp. 20–21. Unanimously sympathetic French commentators are untroubled by Bachelard's dual tendencies; for example, Francois Dagognet suggests that the philosopher's aesthetic approach serves to unify his thought, as if value conflicts may be resolved stylistically. See Gaston Bachelard sa vie son osuvre (Paris 1965).
4 Paris, 1953. The translations that follow are my own, except where quotations are taken from The Psychoanalysis of Fire or from The Poetics of Space, trans, by Maria Jolas (New York, 1964).
5 Le materialism* rationnel, p. 19.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., pp. 3, 59.
8 La formation de l'esprit scientifigue, p. 38.
9 Ibid., p. 81.
10 Ibid., pp. 74ff.
11 Ibid., p. 237.
12 The Poetics of Space, p. 153.
13 La formation de l'esprit scientifique, p. 105 (Bachelard's italics).
14 Ibid. Here Bachelard appears to reflect the attitude of Pierre Duhem. According to Duhem, models have no intrinsic place in theory construction but are merely mechanical representations useful to those who cannot think abstractly, i.e. mathematically. See The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans, by Philip P. Wiener (Princeton, 1954).
15 The Psychoanalysis of Fire, p. 4.
16 Ibid., p. 37.
17 Ibid., p. 70.
18 The Poetics of Space, p. 47.
19 L'air et les songes, p. 8. Although material things do not determine particular images, the four “elements” each inspire specific types of imagery. Thus the poet is said to establish a kind of equilibrium between mind (imagination) and matter.
20 The Poetics of Space, p. xii.
21 Ibid., pp. 151–52.
22 Albert Béguin, L'âme romantique et le rêve (Marseille, 1937).
23 Ibid., p. xii.
24 Ibid., p. xv.
25 Science and the Modem World (New York, 1964), p. 122.Google Scholar
26 Lautréamont (Paris, 1939). Wilson's relevant work is Axel's Castle (New York, 1935).
27 Everyman edition, ed. by George Watson (London and New York, 1956). p. 167.
28 The famous genesis of Kubla Khan as a dream is not typical. In fact, Coleridge's drug-induced dreamlife precluded the writing of poetry. Peter Quennell's comments on this and other romantic “failures” are useful: see Byron in Italy (New York, 1957), pp. 248–50.
29 The Poetics of Space, p. xx.
30 The Mirror and the Lamp (New York, 1958), p. 117.Google Scholar
31 Coleridge, op. cit., pp. 173–74.
32 Frank Kermode's phrase serves Bachelard very well. See Romantic Image (New York, 1964), p. 2.Google Scholar
33 The Poetics of Space, p. 117. Subjective as such an approach may seem, Bachelard insists that he wrote his “psychoanalytic” works “without attempting personal interpretation.” (Ibid., p. xiv.)
34 The Psychoanalysis of Fire, p. 2.
35 Ibid., p. 3.
36 Ibid., p. 4. For purposes of exposition, I have not taken into account Bachelard's distinction between dreams and reverie. Reveries are said to originate in “a psychic layer that is less deep, more intellectualized” and are “always more or less centered upon one object.” (Ibid., p. 14.) Moreover, different kinds of fire inspire different image-dreams or reveries: see, for example, La flamme d'tine chandelle (Paris, 1961).
37 The Psychoanalysis of Fire, p. 7.
38 Ibid., pp. 11–12 (Bachelard's italics). A more credible analysis in the light of the Oedipus myth and its Freudian interpretation is not that a child wishes to know more than his father but that he wishes to do more. He would overcome his father through the power of knowledge.
39 Ibid., p. 55 (Bachelard's italics).
40 Ibid., pp. 23–24.
41 Ibid., p. 29.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., p. 38.
44 Ibid., pp. 70, 78.
45 Ibid., p. 57.
46 The New York Review of Books, II, 6 (April 30, 1964), p. 11.
47 The former, trans, by Joan Riviere, appears in Vol. XXI of the Standard Edition of Freud's works (London, 1961); the latter, also trans, by Riviere, appears in Vol. XXII of the Standard Edition (London, 1964).
48 Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 9 0 (footnote).
49 “The Acquisition and Control of Fire,” p. 187.
50 The Psychoanalysis of Fire, p. 21.
51 The Basic Writings of C. G. Jung, ed. by de Laszlo, V. S. (New York, 1959Google Scholar), pp. 65, 427, 501. This Modern Library volume draws on the Collected Works published through the Bollingen Foundation.
52 Ibid., p. 30.
53 Ibid., p. 84. Jung goes on to suggest that archetypal images are analogous to models employed by physicists. Although this late statement (1954) would seem conclusive, it must be mentioned that he had also considered the possibility of a biological coordinate to the archetype—an inherited mode or principle of representation similar to the instinctual patterns inherited by animals. See Jacobi, Jolande, Complex Archetype Symbol in the Psychology of C. G. Jung, trans, by Manheim, R. (London, 1959Google Scholar), particularly pp. 35–49.
54 Roland Barthes appears to be the most important.