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Foucault and Descartes

CroatAxeMan
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Posted 10/18/09 - 12:20 PM: Subject: Foucault and Descartes	#1
I am writing an interpretive essay concerning themes related to modren philosophy from two perspectives. The prompt is, "Foucault claims that Descartes dismisses madness in an all-too-arbitrary fashion. Respond to Foucault by critically taking up Descartes' meditations. How might Descartes be read in repose to Foucault's charges." I am having a lot of difficulty with this prompt especially one that must be 5 pages. I can only find about 1-2 pages of information on this and would really appreciate some help or pointers on where to look in the texts. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thepupil
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Posted 10/18/09 - 07:01 PM:	#2
Interesting topic there, For information I suggest you go to Foucault's "History of Madness" wherein you'll find his discussion on Descartes (pg 139 and pg 44) and how he so easily elided madness from one of the many pathologies that plagued truth; it was cordoned from any real place of significance. It might help to know that this disarmament of madness was only a gesture that was the consequence of an ethical consciousness at the time. Unreason and madness were, for the classical age, understood only as a background to reason. Doubt, for Descartes, automatically discluded madness only because of the ethical meaning of reason: doubt was the emergence of reason. The tendency in thought to automatically arrive at certainty was a result of madness. Descartes says he cannot be a madman because to compare himself to them would be mad. This means that madness cannot be realized of the self by the subject who is mad, that is an impossibility. Descartes and Spinoza followed what Foucault called a Critical Consciousness of Madness and the tactic used by this consciousness to disarm madness is simply being invested in its own truth. It completely believes itself and disperses formula’s and proof’s that, through identification of that knowledge, show madness for what it is. Now you can explore the problems with that consciosness, most importantly, reversibility (perhaps Descartes is the madman and the madmen the rational ones.) However, once again this was justified to them only through ethics - by consistently being on the lookout, by making sure that you try to correct your mistakes and understand the world, by those very actions, you cannot be mad. There is more to be said but I hope I was some help.

makerowner
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Posted 10/19/09 - 05:24 AM:	#3
The passage in the Meditations Foucault is talking about is in the first meditation. Descartes is trying to clear away any beliefs that can even be doubted, not just those that are proved false. The senses have sometimes in the past deceived me; therefore I will no longer trust them. --Yes, our senses sometimes deceive us about things that are small or far away, but there are some things that it would be ridiculous to think we could be deceived about: that I'm sitting by the fire, holding this paper, that I have this body. To doubt those things would make me like those madmen, who think they're kings, when they're very poor, that they're clothed in gold and purple, when they're naked, that imagine themselves to be jugs or that their bodies are made of glass. "Mais quoi ? ce sont des fous, et je ne serais pas moins extravagant, si je me réglais sur leurs exemples." But what--those are madmen, and I would be no less extravagant if I followed their example.* (This was one of the many terms for varieties of madness in the 17th century.) Foucault's claim is not really that "Descartes dismisses madness in an all-too-arbitrary fashion"; it's that this text by Descartes is an example of the way madness was perceived in th 17th and 18th centuries, which is very different from the way it was perceived before and after. The Medieval-Renaissance experience of madness was that it was the hidden truth of humanity: the madman's delusions are in a sense more true than all of sane man's reasonings, because they display their falsehood openly. Thus the Fool in Shakespeare is often the wisest character. All of us are a littlle bit mad, so the madman is the true picture of humanity. In the 17th and 18th century experience of madness, that all changes: the madman is no longer the true picture of reason, it's simply unreasonable falsity. The experience of madness is now an immediate experience of not being mad*.
For philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life. Even if a man has good parts, still, if he carries philosophy into later life, he is necessarily ignorant of all those things which a gentleman and a person of honour ought to know.

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