Critique of Reason in Gaston Bachelard’s Philosophy of the Imagination

Abstract

A tension runs through the whole of Gaston Bachelard’s philosophy: between science and poetry, and between reason and imagination. One facet of the tension is the critique of reason Bachelard’s works on imagination engage in. This paper examines the critique in comparison with the ideas and arguments presented by Theodor Adorno, one of the foremost critics of reason in the 20^th century. Bachelard’s study of the imagination is not a romantic, unreflective flight from the rigor and objectivity of sciences into the realm of the subjective. Imagination to Bachelard is a distinctly human activity with which reason’s limitations and excesses can be counterbalanced. All eight books by Bachelard on imagination, from The Psychoanalysis of Fire through The Poetics of Reverie, are considered together with Adorno’s works such as Dialectic of Enlightenment and Negative Dialectics. The affinity between Frankfurt School and French history and philosophy of science has been underscored by Michel Foucault but remains a topic that hasn’t attracted much attention from students of modern European intellectual history. Hoping to make a contribution on this topic, this paper explores the intersections between Adorno and Bachelard surrounding the question of reason.

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