Foucault: Madness & Civilization (History of Madness)
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- Опубліковано 14 гру 2020
- Michel Foucault’s History of Madness (abridged in English as Madness and Civilization) was a revolutionary exploration of how our interpretations and experience of madness have changed over time, and how they’re not quite as ‘rational’ - or even more ‘rational - than they first appear. Everyone who was worked on the history of psychiatry since has worked in Foucault’s shadow.
He looked at history not as a history of administration, of records or politics, or what the psychiatrists said happened, but as a question of something was experienced and how what we think of as timeless actually changes over time.
He introduced difficult and exciting questions in both history and philosophy. Where might the voice of the excluded and silenced be heard? To what extent is madness a product of society’s attitudes towards it. ‘How,’ he writes ‘can a distinction be made between a wise act carried out by a madman, and a senseless act of folly carried out by a man usually in full possession of his wits? ‘Wisdom and folly are surprisingly close. It’s but a half turn from the one to the other.’
What does it mean to transgress? And how is it possible to reach something out of reach, something beyond reason. What does it mean to be mad? Insane? Crazy?Do these things exist outside the realms of reason?If they’re unreasonable how can they be understood by reasonable means?
Foucault looks at leprosy and the leper colonies, ships of fools, renaissance madness as a type of wisdom, the great confinement during the Enlightenment, different aspects of madness and how they were made sense of, and finally, William and Tuke and the birth of the asylum.
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Images from the Wellcome Collection (wellcomecollection.org/ ), CC BY 4.0, creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
![Rick Roderick on Foucault - The Disappearance of the Human [full length]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hP79SfCfRzo/mqdefault.jpg)
![Rick Roderick on Foucault - The Disappearance of the Human [full length]](/img/tr.png)
Watch the next video on criticisms of Foucault and an exploration of his method here: ua-cam.com/video/-UMcq5Rgm1k/v-deo.html
Jokes aside your YT videos are some of the very few that I've seen that explore ideas in different scenery as opposed to some others that have very meaningful content but feel a bit like a school lesson. Like it's a group of ideas a teacher is giving to us but we can only see it through imagination.
Your videos feel like I'm actually experiencing what you're telling me.
I've posted this message in multiple videos because I really fvck with what you're doing.
What a remarkable thing: that madness was actually created WITHIN sanity. It is the very product of rational thought.
I think I understand, but I'm not sure. Any further reading on the specific train of thoutht that is not Madness and Civilisation?
@@chrisryan9191 Obviously you must red Madness and Civilization first. But to understand its internal contradictions, how Foucault’s book intangles itself in the very thing it’s trying to clarify, you should read Derrida’s critique of Foucault. I’m sorry if I’m not being very clear. These are two very complex writers to deal with.
No, Foucault's argument is NOT that insanity was CREATED within reason. It is that the modern institutional systems that were created to deal with the insane, in other words mental hospitals, developed out of a major shift in how society viewed the mad - from a sacred figure, keeper of an unreachable knowledge, to a figure marked by the moral giult of being a fallacy in the social order. And this shift, according to Foucault, is attributable to the beginning of what we generally consider the start of the age of Reason. Obviously, this new system of dealing with the mad consequently transformed not only how we view the mad, but the very nature of insanity itself.
Seems like a classic conjunctio oppositorum - you bring the light and the shadow is formed.
@@albertodedominicis2495 I feel one could argue that insanity as a concept was not the same thing before and after the age of reason; i.e insanity was created within reason, but madness predicated it
Madness only becomes apparent in hindsight. I wonder what the people of the future will consider mad from this era? I have a couple ideas...
You havent met an internet troll?
Pandering to lefty, middle-class morons who can't get enough of Epicurean fantasies - and want to experience the exposition of their stupidity through the comic view of Hobbes and Marx, reflected in the mad stare of a crackpot like Foucault?
I can only dream. I see no way out. The true believers are everywhere and control our culture.
Capitalism is as mad as feudalism.
There will be A LOT of footage of them.
Killing animals for food as an example..
Still boggles my mind to see such a low view count on such a quality video. So glad you're making these.
What a quality production - I'm so excited about these new philosophy youtubers popping up all around! Looking forward to read the book !
I'm a philosophy student and your channel is really saving my year since we're studying at home. I've learned so much since I discovered it. The editing is truly fascinating and helps a lot with the learning. It conveys a certain feeling. Thank you so much ! And well done !
One of the most enlightening videos you’ve ever made. Thanks and well done!
Very glad I have found this channel. Listening while working. Thank you
Fascinating! Highly informative and the visuals are just perfect. My favourite video to date. 👍
Excellent as usual! but consider adding subtitles for people who are deaf etc
amazing video, been waiting for this one for a while!
I just found your channel, thank you for your efforts. You turned me on to Baudrillard whom I am now about to read! For this gift, I am now binge watching your videos and considering adding your channel to my patreon donations list.
You're almost at 100'000 subs!! rly happy for you and the channel, it's very deserved.
congrats! :D
Fantastic. Looking forward to all the followups to this one
this is such good content, the channel should really be more well-known
Wonderful video! Looking forward for the next ones. Cheers~
This was an excellent video Lewis. Really enjoyed watching it and made me want to read the book too. Cheers thanks.
I started reading this a couple weeks ago. Had to watch.
Watched it! Great work, as usual xD. Besides the content, which quality is superb, I wanted to compliment the editing and the script of the video! It was very well paced and the connectedness of it made the whole experience better ^^
Really good. Watching this after reading the book to understand better
Really interesting and underappreciated content!!! Thanks
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed watching.
This is absolutely a fantastic and beautiful video. Thanks a lot Then & Now. Do a video on Richard Rorty in the future. :D
Great summary for a great book, thanks.
Thanks for this video! Coming in handy for uni study
Great production, great content. Bravo.
ur work, the rigor, is amazing.
Great video and happy birthday man
Now this is awesome keep it up man!
I am really mad at you that you didnt call this video "The Madness of Modernity"!
Great video as always
Thanks for this
One of the best reading 📚
16:00 hysteria is more common in women because they aren't used to hard labor... lol, clearly the writing of a city boy that never observed women working in agriculture!
Thanks a lot for this great video. Very well explained. I found the candles and darkness behind a bit creepy at first but what do i know, maybe it was intentional and it doesnt matter, since the content is awewome
Niiiiice! Can't wait to watch it xD
Thank you this was great
As someone with experience with substance abuse treatment I can confirm that the doctors are still "good and wise."
At least in their minds :)
Foucault is still immensely influential, and rightfully so. Thing is, Foucault had published Madness & Civilization in the 1961, and that is almost 60 years ago, more than half a century. A lot of madness has flown over the world since then. Surely in the Post-truth Era reason and rationality have lost their mainstream currency.
60 years is not a long time on the scale of history of philosophy. Plato wrote dialogues over 2000 years ago, but our philosophical works are still at most the footnotes of his books. P.S. : the madness flourishing today is definitely not the one discussed in Foucault's Madness and Civilization, and the "reason and rationality" you are talking about are also not those dealt with in this book.
@@xxx6555 what do you mean? please elaborate briefly, if you wish.
dumb politics isnt the same thing as madness. thats just a lazy insult. thouse outside of sanity still suffer
🙌 👏 🙏 🤝 👍
Wasn't Foucault a pedophile
Love it!
Thank you
so glad to see Orlando Bloom is doing well
Thanks!
Is Nicolas Delamare's treatise available in english?
If you truly want to understand Foucault’s Madness and Civilization and its fundamental contradictions, please read Derrida’s critique of him in Writing and Difference. I’ve rarely read anything better.
Then followed by Foucault's response of course ;)
@@1872959 Foucault was angered by Derrida’s critique but he never overcame it. In my opinion.
The psychiatrist view today video would be very interesting.
could I ask where the image at 13:29 is from :) great vid
Thank you for such a great video. You state that Foucault wrote: "Together with a desire to assist was the need to repress, a duty of charity and a will to punish." Do you have a reference for this please? Wonderful quote but I can't find it anywhere!
Dear Then& Now, if you could please insert or display the year of each reference, e.g., person, place, thing, or idea presented, this would be most helpful. Thx. Ur Loyal Follower, WG.
Sometimes I see comments on... I don't know, reaction videos or something, where someone's day gets made because there's a new one. A Then & Now Foucault video is that to me.
I wonder if Foucault read Heller’s “Catch-22”, essentially a summation of how we view madness in an age of reason.
🙌 👏 🙏 🤝 👍 GREAT read anyway . . .
I like that the channel isn’t well known. I’m selfish. I like attaining information others don’t have. Just me. Great work here. Thanks for making. :-)
when you realise all philosophy majors are theatre kids at heart
As I look at a number of intros there is this implicit Socratic notion about the operation of ideas what they enable, and inhabit. It does remind me, given the reactionary background Nietzsche, and Heidegger (priest), that "people simply thought slavery etc, was just the thing of the day back then". There seems to be a reactionary posture regarding, in this instance, imo, of the extent to which one may learn from history.
... I think what's irritating about videos such as these is that they tend to lay bare how much of a scapegoat post-modernist philosophers and their writings are used by a great deal of public individuals trying to peddle their social snake-oil for modern issues.
Problem was neurosyphilis: general paresis of the insane. Common before effective treatment of syphilis.
We're trying to fit circles into pretzel holes.
I was mad for a long time, you mean insane right? I didnt find anyone trained in mental health who could help me with it. The first thing I say to psychiatrists, psychologists and neurologists now is "You should know I consider you in the same light as a spiritualist or witch doctor or snake oil seller." "The fact that you accept this condition and ask payment for your services lowers you even further in my estimation."
I'm mad: I believe words have meaning...
Looks like an TV ad spot for a psychic. CALL NOW!
renayasence
Ok...can I use this on the question " Foucault's views on Enlightenment"...
Somebody plz reply... thanks in advance
Is very simple... humanity is in easy and hard...animal.... dometic.....to tame...🫵👽
A good reading but not so good to understand, Foucault iz master of ideas 👍
5:57 NOOOOO FUCK PLEASE NO MAKE IT STOP NO MORE
i work in a county jail where we keep schizophrenics in isolation cells 24 hours a day for two years
I dont know who's crazy there.
You real for the sleep of reason produces monsters
Madness is, of course, a social construct, something that contemporary psychiatry understands. The momentous change in how mental-health issues are dealt with over the past few decades (already in full swing during Foucault's lifetime) is the result of scientific reasoning and objective research and knowledge, the result of the enlightenment and "modernism". The result of all those things that Foucault refers to with such contempt and rejects as meanningless.
Foucault doesn't have contempt for reason and science.
bruh , drugs are different now and people are violent a f. wtf?
As someone who has been living with Major Clinical Depression (or Major Depressive Disorder), I partly relate to the legacy of the "outcast", the "other" to the rational self, aspect of mental health issues, and that is evident in history, and that still informs our culture; but, at the same time, part of me wonders if Foucault is himself perpetuating the sane-insane binary, not to mention subsuming the ontological experiences of people with mental health issues in his epistemological approach to madness - i.e. "sane-splaining" madness, so to speak... I am a bit weary of European philosophers and theorists "inquiring" into the Enlightenment rationality bias present in medical science pertaining to psychiatric disorders, or into the neo-lib conspiracy to declare mental issues as "disease", etc. I mean, I'm sure all that is very true and grave matters, but as someone from the community, I just want to say people do have psychiatric issues, they suffer a lot, it is very painful, access and awareness about medical treatment, support groups, etc are very limited, globally. And praxis (breaking taboos, fighting legal battles) would be of greater help than theory. One can philosophise, sure - but it doesn't really help anyone.
Not sure what you mean by sane-splaining. Foucault had mental health issues. Most of his books are biographical, e.g. history of sexuality (he was trying to understand his homosexuality), history of medicine (his dad was a surgeon), etc.
As for mental illness not existing. Foucault did not say that mental illness doesn't exist. His book is a history of madness through premodernity and modernity. He plots the discursive and materialistic changes in how we've approached and understood madness.
As for the lessons of his book. He doesn't say the premodern practice of banishing people was better than confinement in asylums. Instead, he shows the historical processes that led to changes in the discourse and practice of managing madness, how it was entwined with our discourses and practices concerning sanity, and how some of these changes were due to the re-use of ideas and practices concerning the plague. Through this, we can then start to think differently as we're no longer believing that how mental illness is managed today, and how we order our world, is in any way natural.
@@robertgould1345 I guess I shouldn't have said "our" culture. As my culture, and cultural history, is not the same as European or "Western" societies. My response to Foucault, and other European philosophers and theorists, is most likely coloured by my subjective position/location in terms of socio-cultural milieu. I guess my error was not making that distinction. Videos on Western philosophers & theorists always use first personal pronouns: us, we, our society. Which is actually not applicable to all viewers. But while viewing one tends to forget that. As platforms like youtube tends to generate the illusion of commonality. Foucault's studies are of Western society and culture. Several ideas and norms and ideologies of the Western world have indeed seeped into and influenced the culture of erstwhile colonies. Yet, it is not the same society, or the same culture. My mistake was identifying myself as part of the "our" & "we". You are absolutely correct in your analysis of Foucault. My society & cultures has very different traditions and taboos about madness. I was erring in projecting those onto the content maker's representation of Foucault's theories. There is an illusion of universality in youtube videos, although the content maker, consciously or unconsciously, actually has a particular group in mind as their prospective audience. And as a viewer if u indentify with that then contexts get jumbled up. Hope I have made myself clear.
"A duty of Charity and a will to Punish."
None of this has changed.
And it's even worse with "Christian"-based organisations.
what an insult......MAD!??
madness was born of an anomaly!
Exclusion and fear.... hmmm, this sounds awfully familiar. ALMOST as if it's still occurring today. Turn off your TV, stop watching the news (that's controlled by big pharma/big tech), get off FB , IG and Twitter and you'll be fine... no... not fine- actually happy and healthy! *tucks soap box in the corner and walks away.
You have totally failed to devote one second into how the Native Americans viewed this "madness" so your video is sorely lacking important information. Why, like so many did you fail. Are they unimportant ? Did they not even exist ? Your type can't ever be thorough while you feign some sort of authoritarianism on subject matters.
lol at saying psychiatrists have worked in Focault's shadow. This is absolute nonsense. He has made zero contribution to psychiatry. He never worked with actual patients. Dude was JUST A PHILOSOPHER AND NOTHING MORE.
I said historians of psychiatry
Nietzsche was not a theologian. But theology after him can never be the same as before.
The same is true for Foucault and psychiatry.
Thanks!