Abstract

MOSQUERA VARAS, Andrea C.. On rupture or the bond between reason and madness in Descartes, Foucault and Derrida. Rev. Asoc. Esp. Neuropsiq. [online]. 2017, vol.37, n.131, pp.19-38. ISSN 2340-2733.

This article proposes thinking the relation between madness and reason, but at the same time problematizing its allegedly evident difference taking into account three interconnected works. As the starting point we will discuss Descartes' Metaphysical Meditations. Afterwards, we will review the critique made to it in the chapter "the Great Confinement" of Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, where it is argued that it was during the Modern Age, with Descartes, when a "violent philosophical confinement of madness" was carried out. Thirdly, we will assess Jacques Derrida's discussion of this thesis in the second chapter of Writing and Difference, "Cogito and the History of Madness", whose proposal refuses the theory according to which such confinement would have occurred, and if anything, that it is not a historical fact. We will also take notice of Foucault's counterargument to Derrida in the appendix to the second edition of his History of Madness, "My body, this paper, this fire" To sum up, we will meet the debate between these two authors around Descartes' paragraph in which he, at least, mentions the possibility of madness.

Keywords : Madness; reason; history; cogito; différance; Descartes; Foucault; Derrida.

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