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

The central thesis of Madness and Civilization is that “madness” has not historically been a fixed concept in Western European thought, but rather one that has mutated in response to changing social conditions. Foucault traces the origin of the concept to the Late Middle Ages and ends in the mid-19th century, with the bulk of his analysis addressing the Early Modern period (which he deems the Renaissance and the Enlightenment). At the starting point of this timeline, he asserts, “madness” did not exist as a coherent idea, and at its end point it had transformed into a notion of mental illness. Between these two moments when “madness” does not exist as a social concept, is a “madness’s” heyday; during the Renaissance, and especially during the Classical Age, Foucault understands madness to have been a societal fixation in Western Europe.

Foucault characterizes the Middle Ages as a period so preoccupied with the ostracizing those afflicted with leprosy that they did not have or need a coherent formulation of “madness.” In this sense, the Middle Ages serve as an era of pre-”madness” that provides contrast with all of the constructions of “madness” that followed it. With the onset of the Renaissance, Foucault asserts that diminishing numbers of people with Hansen’s disease shifted the Western European fixation with defining an outcast community towards defining and othering “madness.