In The Dialectic of Duration Gaston Bachelard addresses the nature of time in response to the writings of his great contemporary, Henri Bergson. The work is motivated by a refutation of Bergson's notion of duration - 'lived time', experienced as continuous. For Bachelard, experienced time is irreducibly fractured and interrupted, as indeed are material events. At stake is an entire conception of the physical world, an entire approach to the philosophy of science. It was in this work that Bachelard first marshalled all the components of his visionary philosophy of science, with its steady insistence on the human context and subtle encompassing of the irrational within the rational. The Dialectic of Duration reaches far beyond local arguments over the nature of the physical world to gesture toward the building of an entirely new form of philosophy.

In The Dialectic of Duration Gaston Bachelard addresses the nature of time in response to the writings of his great contemporary, Henri Bergson. The work is motivated by a refutation of Bergson's notion of duration - 'lived time', experienced as continuous. For Bachelard, experienced time is irreducibly fractured and interrupted, as indeed are material events. At stake is an entire conception of the physical world, an entire approach to the philosophy of science. It was in this work that Bachelard first marshalled all the components of his visionary philosophy of science, with its steady insistence on the human context and subtle encompassing of the irrational within the rational. The Dialectic of Duration reaches far beyond local arguments over the nature of the physical world to gesture toward the building of an entirely new form of philosophy.

A beloved multidisciplinary treatise comes to Penguin Classics
Rare is the work of philosophy that invites both the casual reader and the academic. Rare, too, is the text so universal that luminaries across an array of fields lay claim to it. Yet, that is precisely the case with Gaston Bachelard's "The Poetics of Space." A rumination on the spaces we inhabit and the dreams and memories that fill them, this seminal work continues to be studied and enjoyed by philosophers, architects, writers, and literary theorists alike.
This new edition features a foreword by Mark Z. Danielewski, whose bestselling novel "House of Leaves" drew inspiration from Bachelard's writings, and an introduction by internationally renowned philosopher Richard Kearney who explains the book's enduring importance and its role within Bachelard's remarkable career.

The famous French scientist-psychologist-literary critic provides a virtual bestiary for depth psychology and literary criticism in his study of Isidore Ducasse, known by the pen-name Lautreamont. Includes essays by James Hillman "Bachelard's Lautreamont, or Psychoanalysis without a Patient," and Robert Scott Dupree, "Bachelard as Literary Critic." Bachelard's only book devoted to a single author/poet. 152 pages, indexed. THE BACHELARD TRANSLATIONS are the inspiration of Joanne H. Stroud, Director of Publications for The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, who in 1981 contracted with Jose Corti to publish in English the untranslated works of Bachelard on the imagination. Gaston Bachelard is acclaimed as one of the most significant modern French thinkers. From 1929 to 1962 he authored twenty-three books addressing his dual concerns, the philosophy of science and the analysis of the imagination of matter. The influence of his thought can be felt in all disciplines of the humanities - art, architecture, literature, language, poetics, philosophy, and depth psychology. His teaching career included posts at the College de Bar-sur-Aube, the University of Dijon, and from 1940 to 1962 the chair of history and philosophy of science at the Sorbonne. One of the amphitheaters of the Sorbonne is called "L'Amphi Gaston Bachelard," an honor Bachelard shared with Descartes and Richelieu. He received the Grand Prix National Lettres in 1961-one of only three philosophers ever to have achieved this honor. The influence of his thought can be felt in all disciplines of the humanities-art, architecture, literature, poetics, psychology, philosophy, and language.

" Bachelard] is neither a self-confessed and tortured atheist like Satre, nor, like Chardin, a heretic combining a belief in God with a proficiency in modern science. But, within the French context, he is almost as important as they are because he has a pseudo-religious force, without taking a stand on religion. To define him as briefly as possible - he is a philosopher, with a professional training in the sciences, who devoted most of the second phase of his career to promoting that aspect of human nature which often seems most inimical to science: the poetic imagination ..." - J.G. Weightman, "The New York Times Review of Books"

Appearing in English for the first time, "Intuition of the Instant"--Bachelard's first metaphysical meditation on time and its moral implications--was written in 1932 in the wake of Husserl's lectures on streaming time-consciousness, Heidegger's "Being and Time, " and Henri Bergson's philosophy of the elan vital. A culmination of Bachelard's earlier studies in scientific epistemology, this work builds the epistemic framework that would lead theorists of all stripes to advance knowledge by breaking with accepted modes of thought. "Intuition of the Instant "sows the seeds of Bachelard's future poetics, most notably in the essay "Poetic Instant and Metaphysical Instant" (1939)--included in this volume, along with an excerpt from Jean Lescure's lecture "Introduction to Bachelard's Poetics" (1966). Eileen Rizo-Patron's translation offers a key to Bachelard's subsequent works on science, time, and imagination, which remain epistemological touchstones.