Bachelard’s Silence:
The refusal of the political as a political act
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-6746.2025.1.46177Keywords:
Bachelard, Politics, Epistemology., Poetics, Phenomenology.Abstract
Gaston Bachelard spent World War I in the trenches and World War II at the Sorbonne. However, unlike many other French philosophers of his time, he wrote nothing about the political situation of his circumstances. The objective of this article is to explain Bachelard's surprising political silence. First, I demonstrate that his thought engages in two fields: epistemology and poetic imagination. Then, following Jean Libis and Michel Fabre, I show that it is possible to explain the reason for his epistemological silence: the political dimension of his philosophy of science would be inscribed in his reflections on the scientific city and the role of school in society. Finally, I propose an original hypothesis about the political dimension of his work dedicated to poetic imagination: his political silence is, itself, a political act – and the path to freedom is not found in the world of action between men, but in the path of poetry.
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