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Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Michel Foucault Quotes

“The marvellous logic of the mad which seems to mock that of the logicians because it resembles it so exactly, or rather because it is exactly the same, and because at the secret heart of madness, at the core of so many errors, so many absurdities, so many words and gestures without consequence, we discover, finally, the hidden perfection of a language.”

Madness
Book:Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
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“Sadism ... is a massive cultural fact that appeared precisely at the end of the eighteenth century and that constitutes one of the greatest conversions of the occidental imagination ... madness of desire, the insane delight of love and death in the limitless presumption of appetite.”

CivilizationMadnessSadism
Book:Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
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“In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, man's dispute with madness was dramatic debate in which he confronted the secret powers of the world; the experience of madness was clouded by images of the Fall and the Will of God, of the Beast and the Metamorphosis, and of all the marvelous secrets of Knowledge”

MenWorldAgeFallSecretMiddleMadnessDebateGods WillDramaticBeastMarvelousDisputesMiddle AgesRenaissanceMetamorphosisCloudedRenaissance Man
Book:Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
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“The constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been established only on the basis of such a silence.”

Has BeensMadeEndsReasonLanguageSilenceCenturyBrokenEvidenceBasesConstitutionMadnessIllnessSeparationMental IllnessDialogueFixedImperfectOblivionPsychiatryThrustMonologuesSyntax
Book:Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry
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“In the Renaissance, madness was present everywhere and mingled with every experience by its images or its dangers. During the classical period, madness was shown, but on the other side of bars; if present, it was at a distance, under the eyes of a reason that no longer felt any relation to it and that would not compromise itself by too close a resemblance. Madness had become a thing to look at: no longer a monster inside oneself, but an animal with strange mechanisms, a bestiality from which man had long since been suppressed.”

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Book:Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
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“And more than once in the course of time, the same theme reappears: among the mystics of the fifteenth century, it has become the motif of the soul as a skiff, abandoned on the infinite sea of desires, in the sterile field of cares and ignorance, among the mirages of knowledge, amid the unreason of the world - a craft at the mercy of the sea's great madness, unless it throws out a solid anchor, faith, or raises its spiritual sails so that the breath of God may bring it to port.”

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