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Quote by Michel Foucault

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

This book delves into the societal and medical perspectives on mental illness from the 17th to the 19th centuries, examining the evolution of attitudes towards the mentally ill and the development of psychiatric practices. more

Author

Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher known for his critical analysis of knowledge, power, and discourse. His work covered a wide range of topics, including madness, prisons, sexuality, archaeology of knowledge, and biopolitics. Foucault's ideas have had a profound impact on postmodernism, critical theory, and cultural studies. more

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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.”

IfsMenLooksLongReasonEyeFeltSidesAnimalDangerStrangePeriodsMadnessRelationDistanceOneselfMonstersBarsCompromiseMechanismRenaissanceResemblance
Book:Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
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“Confession frees, but power reduces one to silence; truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an origincal affinity with freedom: traditional themes in philosophy, which a political history of truth would have to overturn by showing that truth is not by nature free--nor error servile--but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power. The confession is an example of this.”

DoePhilosophyPoliticalOrderSilenceShareExampleTruth IsRelationErrorsProductionsTraditionalThemeConfessionAffinityPolitical History
Book:The History of Sexuality: An Introduction
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“A law which excludes all dialectic and all reconciliation; which establishes, consequently, both the flawless unity of knowledge and the uncompromising division of tragic existence; it rules over a world without twilight, which knows no effusion, nor the attenuated cares of lyricism; everything must be either waking or dream, truth or darkness, the light of being or the nothingness of shadow.”

KnowsWorldDreamLightCareLawExistenceDarknessShadowUnityTragicDivisionWakingTwilightNothingnessReconciliationFlawlessUncompromisingDialectics
Author:Michel Foucault
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