Henri Bergson is often referred to as a philosopher of continuity. It was the continuity supposedly entailed in Bergson’s temporal concept ‘duration’ that prompted Gaston Bachelard to launch a polemic against him. Bachelard’s critique against Bergson is coupled with his claim that temporality is constituted solely by the discontinuous instant. But the disagreement here, does not seem as straightforward as initially appears. Current scholarship recognises a form of discontinuity (in addition to continuity) in duration that Bachelard seems to have missed. In this chapter I will explore Bachelard’s instant, elaborate the notion discontinuity in Bergson’s philosophy, and finally discuss the two in relation to current scholarship. I will find that Bachelard, while seemingly mischaracterising duration, still provides an interesting critique for Bergson’s philosophy that highlights potential tensions and contradictions in his work.
