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

Michel Foucault (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 28, 1988

Perhaps the French philosopher's masterpiece, which is concerned with an extraordinary question: What does it mean to be mad?

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Superb scholarship rendered with artistry" --The Nation

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (November 28, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067972110X
• ISBN-13: 978-0679721109
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Modern
  • #39 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Mental Illness

More About the Author

One of the leading intellectuals of the twentieth century and the most prominent thinker in post-war France, Foucault's work influenced disciplines as diverse as history, sociology, philosophy, sociology and literary criticism.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

108 of 118 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The sociology of madness August 4, 2001

By TheIrrationalMan

Format:Paperback

"Madness and Civilisation", which was first published in 1959, was the first major work of the cultural critic and maverick structuralist Foucault, and it eloquently and stylishly establishes the main themes, (namely, power, knowledge, confinement) of his later works. Foucault, in his brilliant and forceful exposition, traces the codes or "epistemes" responsible for the shaping of madness from the Reneissance and up to the late nineteenth century. He charts the history of insanity from it being considered as a virtually harmless "wisdom of folly", to it being considered as a disease in the age of confinement and the psychiatric clinic. Drawing on several imprtant representations of madness in culture, which include the Ship of Fools of Jerome Bosch, and "The Disparates" of Goya, as well as the fates of Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Nerval and Artuad in the modern era, he "deconstructs" the concept of "reason" itself, by placing it in an inverse relation to supposedly "mad" experience. He asks the fundamental, and highly philosophical, question of "what does it mean to be mad, and what is the qualitative distinction between 'sanity' and 'insanity'?" This leads him to make the extraordinary claim that the "pathologisation" of madness, its treatment as a disease, is something approximating a disease of the modern era itself. Madness represents a moment of rupture, whose suppression is an attempt to avoid something mysterious, unseizable and dangerous within our own selves. In his examination of the history of confinement, and the supposed devastation that it has caused, Foucault is not trying (as his critics have alleged) to promote insanity in a bid to transgress social modes and conventional wisdom.... Rather, he is attempting nothing else than a sociology of madness, by seeing how it arose in the context of modernity, with its work ethic, industrialisation, and its expansion of business enterprise, imperatives which entailed the exclusion of marginal and supposedly "deviant" behaviour. Written with considerable flair and panache, the book is highly opaque, relying much on paradox, wordplay, discontinuity and the need to undermine the rigour and consistency of "reasoned" discourse, which Foucault charges of embedding dangerous authoritarian implications. The obscurity and complexity of his style also illustrates the very pressing difficulty of trying to express any certain or objective truth about reality. The translation of Richard Howard, however, is the superior version, as it retains much of the impact of Foucault's style. Read more ›

52 of 56 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars category mistakes May 26, 2004

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Certain reviewers of this book seem to confuse the categories of operation Focualt addresses in this book and others. He is not making the simplistic argument that "madness" is socially constructed but rather that certain concepts, including the medicalized model of insanity, only become possible under cetain conditions and operate within a specific, historical and culutral formation of knowledge. Understanding what these conditions are, and how these change is important both to become critical concerning the limitations of current organizations of these concepts, but also so that one does not anachronistically project present concepts into the past, ie, seeing 18th century discourses as premature versions of today's ideas. The problem of madness as an object of knowledge is his task within the history of ideas, not discerning its reality.

Those that fail to recognize this, both the cultural relativists and the reactionaries, reveal their own lack of critical thought and say little about the text's strengths or weaknesses.

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A poetic historical tour de force redefining reason March 29, 1998

By Eduardo Navas([e-mail])

Format:Paperback

Madness and civilization is a powerful survey on the historical development of what we call madness today. What the term means today is radically different from what it meant during the age of reason. This book takes a more or less chronological approach to the development of madness. What is most important is it shows how the term mad was manipulated throughout history in order for society to redefine itself against "the other." This book makes a good case as to why we still live under the shadow of Freud, as Foucault credits him with defining the relationship of the clinically insane, and the physician. A must read to understand the current definition seperating the sane and the insane.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A SANE VIEW OF INSANITY April 8, 2000

By Beverly Frost

Format:Paperback

I read this book for a graduate class in psychotherapy. Given the choice of Foucault's history versus books on various theoretical perspectives on psychology and psychiatry, chosing this book was a no-brainer. Reading it, however, did take some brains, but it was worth the effort.

The first chapter is especially delightful. Its focuses on the time period from the end of the Middle Ages and into the Rennaisannce. Foucault gives many specific and poignant examples of how the changing view of insanity was intertwined with the changing concepts of God and humanity. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of the "Ship of Fools" and the extensive and elevative literary treatment of Folly during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

I would recommend this book to anyone in the mental health professions or to people of reason everywhere.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Analysis, but poor edition December 3, 2005

By Steiner VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Foucault employs an exacting and yet artistic methodology of historical-sociological interpretation of the history of madness in the age of reason. In this impressive work, he discovers that the origin of insanity, of psychological confinement, corresponds with the diminution of leprosy in Europe, and that the sectors of institutional power sought to find another means of normalization and social control through the imprisonment, and public degradation of the mentally ill, the poor, and the homeless. This power dynamic later manifests itself in the form of absolute confinement and normalcy, in which the insane were subjected to physiological experimentation, which marks an apparent disregard for Descartes' mind-body distinction. Foucault skillfully outlines the means of psychological repair through the exploration of the balancing of the four humors, to the revealing of insanity's non-being and non-reason through its release to the ultimate freedom of nature. Foucault then examines the transition of psychology from the real of biological-intellectual non-reason, to the imposition of moral and religious absolutism and the birth of the asylum, and finally to the (perhaps salvation) of Freud and psychoanalysis, in which the patient-doctor relationship is recreated as a mode of observation, not judgment or condescension, "he made it the Mirror in which madness, in an almost motionless movement, clings to and casts off itself" (pg. 278). Foucault's Madness and Civilization represents an important breakthrough in the field of post-modern philosophy; it is truly an excellent work of scholarship and profound insight....

-As a side note, this edition appears to be an incomplete version of Foucault's book, as it contains nothing on Descartes and his methodoligical relation between madness and doubt raised in the Meditations. This section would later be the focus of Derrida's criticism in his lecture 'Cogito and the History of Madness,' published in 'Writing and Difference,'which caused a rift between the two thinkers. The Vintage edition appears to be only one half of Foucault's original book. The complete version of the text is going to be published by Routledge later this year, so hold off on this one. Read more ›