A History of Madness in the Classical Age

Madness is not a natural phenomenon but a product of civilization. Without the history of cultures that labeled it madness and persecuted it, there would be no history of madness.
Foucault's work is a cleansing and questioning of knowledge. It returns a fragment of "nature" to history and transforms madness, transforming what we consider a medical phenomenon into a civilizational one. In reality, Foucault never defines madness; madness is not an object of knowledge, its history requiring rediscovery; it is, in other words, simply knowledge itself; madness is not a disease, but a sense of alienation that evolves over time. Foucault never considered madness a functional reality; for him, it was simply the effect of the union of rationality and irrationality, of the observer and the observed.
This book is an early masterpiece by Foucault, which once dominated the intellectual world as a shortened version of Madness and Civilization. This translation, directly from the French full text, not only restores the original text of this masterpiece but also clarifies many controversies and issues that have arisen due to differences in editions and translations.

2016-10-01

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