Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

“We must try to return, in history, to that zero point in the course of madness at which madness is an undifferentiated experience, a not yet divided experience of division itself. We must describe, from the start of its trajectory, that ‘other form’ which relegates Reason and Madness to one side or the other of its action as things henceforth external, deaf to all exchange, and as though dead to one another.”

In the Preface, Foucault presents one of his central arguments: that “madness” is a social construct which has not always been present in Western European societies. The division between “madness” and non-”madness,” in his understanding, occurs at a definable moment for identifiable social reasons. This assertion forms the basis of all his subsequent arguments and sets up his discussion of Developing Concepts of “Madness” in Early Modern Europe.

“What doubtless remained longer than leprosy, and would persist when the lazar houses had been empty for years, were the values and images attached to the figure of the leper as well as the meaning of his exclusion, the social importance of that insistent and fearful figure which was not driven off without first being inscribed in a sacred circle.”

Foucault invests leprosy with great social importance, one which some critics have argued is overblown. Throughout Madness, Foucault utilizes horror imagery and religious imagery in conjunction with one another as a poetic evocation of the feelings that “madness” inspired in historical moments. Here, that response is anticipated by responses to people with leprosy, who were considered, by some, as holy by virtue of their disease, which was seen as a sign of divine election. To others, leprosy was seen as a horrible stigma and punishment for sin.

“There is no madness but that which is in every man, since it is man who constitutes madness in the attachment he bears for himself and by the illusions he entertains.”

This is the Renaissance’s definition of “madness,” as paraphrased by Foucault. The chiasmic construction, alternating between the words “man” and “madness” links humanity and “madness,” both verbally and conceptually.