7 quotes
The gesture that divides madness is the constitutive one, not the science that grows up in the calm that returns after the division has been made.
History of Madness (1961)
One thing is certain: the link between water and madness is deeply rooted in the dream of the Western man.
History of Madness (1961)
Unreason is to reason as dazzlement is to daylight.
History of Madness (1961)
This is the moment when it becomes clear that the images of madness are nothing but dream and error, and that if the unfortunate sufferer who is blinded by them invokes them, it is the better to disappear with them into the annihilation for which they are destined.
History of Madness (1961)
If our intention now is to reveal classical unreason on its own terms, outside of its ties with dreams and error, it must be understood not as a form of reason that is somehow diseased, lost or mad, but quite simply as reason dazzled.
History of Madness (1961)
But what then is this confrontation below the language of reason? Where might this interrogation lead, following not reason in its horizontal becoming, but seeking to retrace in time this constant verticality, which, the length of Western culture, confronts it with what it is not, measuring it with its own extravagance?
History of Madness (1961)
In its most general form, confinement was explained, or at least justified, by a will to avoid scandal. It thereby signalled an important change in the consciousness of evil. The Renaissance had let unreason in all its forms come out into the light of day, as public exposure gave evil the chance to redeem itself and to serve as an exemplum.
History of Madness (1961)