Publication Details

Abstract

The author analyzes a short writing by Gaston Bachelard called A Fragment of a Journal of Man which deals mainly with the question of intimacy. Firstly, the author considers the primary pluralism of various constitutions of the world. These constitutions arise from primary subjective impressions, from which (following the discourse with the others) an objective and more abstractive image of the world arises. Secondly, these original worlds, however, are not fixed, but they change as a result of new impressions and also projections, by the help of which the subject creates his/ her world. Thirdly, the uncertainty of the solitary subject is approached. The more the subject comes near to his/her Self, the more he/she moves away from the common social communication with the others. Similar distance from the common social world we experience when facing the matter and surpassing the immediate evidence of the surrounding objects. Prima facie, it is this situation, in which the subject experiences the horror of solipsism. Bachelard understands the latter as the inability to communicate the contents of his/her intimate experiences or his/her attitude to the scientific world to the others. In these border zones the communication is not totally eliminated, but it requires a new mode of speech – either the argumentative type of the discursive communication of scientists, or the oneiric type of the poetical speech. In this sense, Bachelard is not a philosopher of solitude, but rather a philosopher who calls for the communication with the Other.