77 INTERVALS, POSSIBILITIES AND ENCOUNTERS The Trigger of a Ruptured History in Bachelard Monika Wulz 1. Bachelard The starting point for my paper was the sharp attention drawn by a sentence that I happened to read in Bachelard’s Dialectic of Duration. In the corresponding passage Bachelard is concerned with the question: what is an action? How is it initiated? How and from which elements does it emerge? What is its trigger? And which kind of temporal duration does it generate? Referring to Eugenio Rignano’s Psychology of Reason, 1 Bachelard emphasizes that an action is not just effected by physiological impulses. Instead he points to much more abstract circumstances that initiate the possibility of activity. Bachelard writes: Il faut qu’il y ait permission d’agir, adhésion de l’esprit à l’être. Cette adhésion, cette présence de l’esprit, n’est sentie que dans un repos préalable, en confrontant nettement le possible et le réel. (DD, p. 73) There has to be permission to act, and the mind must lend its full support to being. We only feel this support, we only feel the mind’s presence, in the repose that precedes the action, when the possible and the real are clearly compared. (DDe, p. 86) So, what happens in this encounter of mind and being? What kind of agency does the moment of repose initiate? What does it mean to confront the possible and the real in this instant? Why is the mind only present in this encounter that takes place within the moment of repose? And why, for Bachelard, is the initiation of an action the origin of a temporal duration? Why is temporality only an effect of the agency within this confrontation? Bachelard ties his metaphysical interest in the agency that produces temporality and duration to the enterprise of a “philosophy of repose” (DD, p. V) and a “psychology of annihilation” (DD, p. 8). As a consequence his account requires the idea of nothingness (DDe, p. 29), the possibility of voids. It implies negativism, coercion, inhibition, hesitation, and destruction. In addition, and in contrast to the idea of a continuous creation in living processes (as proposed by Bergson), Bachelard’s philosophy of temporality is based on ruptures. It allows lacunae: realms of nothingness. It sets – as we will see – the possibility of initiating a development within these vacancies. This instant of nothingness is the point of departure for a temporal sequence. 1 Eugenio Rignano, Psychologie du raisonnement, Paris: Alcan, 1920. All abbreviations used for referencing quotations in the text are explained in the bibliography at the end of this contribution. Erschienen in: Epistemology and history : from Bachelard and Canguilhem to today's history of science ; conference ["Epistemologie und Geschichte. Von Bachelard und Canguilhem zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte von heute", 9. - 11. Dezember 2010] / [org. von Henning Schmidgen, ...] Max Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte. - Berlin : Max-Planck-Inst. für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2012. - S. 77-89. - (Preprint / Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte ; 434) Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS) URL: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-215429