The neo-kantianism of Gaston Bachelard
Bachelard. Non-Kantianism. Applied rationalism. Kant
This thesis analyzes how Gaston Bachelard received and interpreted the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, highlighting the Neo-Kantian aspect that permeates his applied rationalism. Bachelard, influenced by French Neo-Kantianism, recognized that Kantian ideas could not be directly applied to the interpretation of quantum mechanics—a science that established an epistemological rupture with the precepts of classical physics and challenged the fundamental principles of Kantianism. However, Bachelard realized that Kantian principles still offered a fruitful alternative for addressing the challenges of this new science. He thus proposed a non-Kantianism or open Kantianism, representing a philosophy inspired by Kant's transcendental perspective but adapted to the contemporary scientific context. This new philosophy, constituting a new rationalism, results from a project of flexibilization, expansion, and dynamization of Kantian categories, in opposition to the conception of an absolute and immutable reason defended by Kant. Bachelard incorporates the Kantian notion of the positive noumenon to explain the objectification of the quantum object, which he considers an object of mathematical thought realized in technical experimentation. This presupposes not only a new model of schematism, elaborated by Bachelard through an analogy with transcendental schematism, but also an update of synthetic a priori judgments, thus preserving the transcendental perspective.