"This translation is the first English edition of the complete French text"--Front flap. "An abridged English edition was published in 1967 as Madness and civilization"--Front flap. Includes bibliographical references (p. [665]-693) and index.
Contents:
Index. Jean Khalfa -- Introduction / Jean Khalfa -- Preface to the 1961 edition -- Preface to the 1972 edition -- 4. 1. Stultifera navis -- 2. The great confinement -- 3. The correctional world -- 4. Experiences of madness -- 5. The insane -- pt. 2 -- Introduction -- 1. The madman in the garden of species -- 2. The transcendence of delirium -- 3. Figures of madness -- 4. Doctors and patients -- pt. 3 -- Introduction -- 1. The great fear -- 2. The new division -- 3. The proper use of liberty -- 4. Birth of the asylum -- 5. The anthropological circle -- Appendices -- 1. Madness, the absence of an œuvre. Appendix 1 of 1972 edition -- 2. My body, this paper, this fire. Appendix 2 of 1972 edition -- 3. Reply to Derrida ('Michel Foucault Derrida e no kaino'. Paideia (Tokyo) February 1972) -- Endnotes -- Annexes -- 1. Documents -- 2. Foucault's original bibliography -- 3. Bibliography of English works quoted in this translation -- 4. Critical bibliography on Foucault's History of Madness -- Index.
Summary:
Challenging entrenched views of madness and reason, History of Madness is one of the classics of 20th century thought. It is Foucaultʼs first major work, written in a dazzling and sometimes enigmatic literary style. It also introduces many of the inspiring and radical themes that he was to write about throughout his life, above all the nature of power and social exclusion. History of Madness begins in the Middle Ages with vivid descriptions of the exclusion and confinement of lepers. Why Foucault asks, when the leper houses were emptied at the end of the Middle Ages, were they turned into places of confinement for the mad? Why, within the space of several months in 1656, was one out of every hundred people in Paris confined? Foucaultʼs bold and controversial answer is that throughout modern history, madness has meant isolation, repression and exclusion. Even the Enlightenment, which attempted to educate and include the mad, ended up imprisoning them in a moral world. As Foucault famously declared to a reporter from Le Monde in 1961, ʺMadness exists only in society. It does not exist outside the forms of sensibility that isolate it, and the form of repulsion that expel it or capture it.ʺ Shifting brilliantly from Descartes and early Enlightenment thought to the founding of the Ho^pital Général in Paris and the work of philanthropists and early psychiatrists such as Philippe Pinel and Samuel Tuke, Foucault focuses throughout not only on the philosophical and cultural values attached to the mad. He also urges us to recognize the creative forces that madness represents, drawing on examples from Goya, Nietzsche, Van Gogh and Artaud. History of Madness is an inspiring and classic work that challenges us to understand madness, reason and power and the forces that shape them.
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