Page "Michel Foucault" Paragraph 17

While working in West Germany, Foucault had finally completed his doctoral thesis, Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l ' âge classique ( Madness and Insanity: History of Madness in the Classical Age ), a philosophical work based upon his studies into the history of medicine.

In the book, Foucault dealt with the manner in which Western European society had dealt with madness, arguing that it was a social construct distinct from mental illness.

Foucault traces the evolution of the concept of madness through three phases: the Renaissance, the " Classical Age " ( the later seventeenth and most of the eighteenth centuries ) and the modern experience.

He argues that in the Renaissance the mad were portrayed in art as possessing a kind of wisdom, a knowledge of the limits of our world, and portrayed in literature as revealing the distinction between what men are and what they pretend to be.

With the rise of the age of reason in the 17th century, madness began to be conceived of as unreason and the mad, previously consigned to society's margins, were now separated from society and confined, along with prostitutes, vagrants, blasphemers, orphans and the like, in newly created institutions all over Europe.

The subsequent modern experience, Foucault argued, began at the end of the 18th century with the creation of places devoted solely to the care of the mad under the supervision of medical doctors.

This was born out of a blending of two motives: the new goal of curing the mad away from the family who could not afford the necessary care at home, and the old purpose of confining undesirables for the protection of society.

The work contains a number of allusions and references to the work of French poet and playwright Antonin Artaud ( 1896 – 1948 ), who exerted a strong influence over Foucualt's thought at the time.

Histoire de la folie was an expansive work, consisting of 943 pages of text, followed by appendixes and a bibliography.

He decided to submit this work in France at the University of Paris, although the university's regulations for awarding a doctorate required the submission of both his main thesis and a shorter complementary thesis.