Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelardwas a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break. He influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among them Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Dominique Lecourt and Jacques Derrida, as well as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 June 1884
CountryFrance
views psychics light
In our view any awareness is an increment to consciousness, an added light, a reinforcement of psychic coherence. Its swiftness or instantaneity can hide this growth from us. But there is a growth of being in every instance of awareness. Consciousness is in itself an act, the human act.
metaphor
The metaphor is~ an origin, the origin of an image which acts directly, immediately.
philosophy two half
Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make.
running dream imagination
The image can only be studied through the image, by dreaming images as they gather in reverie. It is a non-sense to claim to study imagination objectively since one really receives the image only if he admires it. Already in comparing one image to another, one runs the risk of losing participation in its individuality.
miscellaneous resisting
We understand nature by resisting it.
names vocabulary psychology
The psychology of the alchemist is that of reveries trying to constitute themselves in experiments on the exterior world. A double vocabulary must be established between reverie and experiment. The exaltation of the names of substances is the preamble to experiments on the "exalted" substances.
knowledge cutting exercise
In scientific thought, the concept functions all the better for being cut off from all background images. In its full exercise, the scientific concept is free from all the delays of its genetic evolution, an evolution which is consequently explained by simple psychology. The virility of knowledge increases with each conquest of the constructive abstraction.
inspiration sight documentation
Of course, a psychologist would find it more direct to study the inspired poet. He would make concrete studies of inspiration in individual geniuses. But for all that, would he experience the phenomena of inspiration? His human documentation gathered from inspired poets could hardly be related, except from the exterior, in an ideal of objective observations. Comparison of inspired poets would soon make us lose sight of inspiration.
thinking poetry thinking-of-others
One doesn't read poetry while thinking of other things.
truth listening murmuring
The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears its truth.
sleep naps doe
It is a poor reverie which invites a nap. One must even wonder whether, in this "failing asleep", the subconscious itself does not undergo a decline in being.
water mind purity
The human mind has claimed for water one of its highest values-the value of purity.
imagination soul common
It is through the intentionality of poetic imagination that the poet's soul discovers the opening of consciousness common to all true poetry.
two choices wish
This word "description" may be disconcerting when used to refer to what is generally called a translation. But when one wishes to render a verbal creation (as opposed to a didactic statement) from one language to another, he is confronted with two equally unsatisfactory choices. He may, according to his talents, elaborate a similar, but never identical creation, or he may describe that creation as completely as possible in his own language.