Product Description

In this classic account of madness, Michel Foucault shows once and for all why he is one of the most distinguished European philosophers since the end of World War II.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15952 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
'Michel Foucault's - Madness and Civilization has been, without a shadow of a doubt, the most original, influential, and controversial text in this field during the last forty years. It remains as challenging now as on first publication. Its insights have still not been fully appreciated and absorbed.'

'This is quite an exceptional book of very high calibre - brilliantly written, intellectually rigorous, and with a thesis that thoroughly shakes the assumptions of traditional psychiatry.' - R.D. Laing

'Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization has been, without a shadow of a doubt, the most original, influential, and controversial text in this field during the last forty years. It remains as challenging now as on first publication.' - Roy Porter

From the Back Cover
In this classic account of madness, Michel Foucault shows once and for all why he is one of the most distinguished European philosophers since the end of the Second World War. His influence dominates contemporary thinking. Madness and Civilization is Foucault's first book, and his finest accomplishment. His other books expand on themes established here: power and imprisonment are at the very heart of this study. Madness and Civilization will change the way in which you think about society. Evoking shock, pity and fascination, it might also make you question the way you think about yourself.

About the Author
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) Celebrated French thinker and activist who challenged people's assumptions about care of the mentally ill, gay rights, prisons, the police and welfare.

Customer Reviews

A QUESTION OF POWER...
This is not light reading and it takes some dedication to work through the chapters. The debates are as relevant today as they were when the book was published - just whom do we socially construct as "mad"? For Foucault, it's a question of power, charting the shifting status of madness through the late sixteenth to early nineteenth century. Some passages are easier to negotiate than others, equally this is a translation, adding to the difficulty of style. However, for any student of the history of medicine, it is essential reading. The key essay is the classic 'Birth of the Asylum', centering on Foucault's critique of the new moral treatment of the insane, as practiced at the famous Quaker Retreat Hospital in York, echoing developments in post-Revolutionary France. A stimulating, but challenging read.

History Catching Up With Itself
I am relatively new to the work of Foucault but (despite the arguments I have read elsewhere regarding whether he was essentially humanist or anti-humanist in orientation) it seems to me that his project here, an early one, was that of humanising the history of madness, or rather, bringing into the humanity of modern discourse the rather inhuman and widely divergent historical discourses on madness. We start at a massive remove from the modern discourses of mental health but trace a discernable path through historically changing social values and (what was later called) epistemes to reach it.
Foucault is very free with his style in this work and the tempo changes to accomodate different historical moods, as if he is in some kind of empathy or zeitgeist with the periods he lights up for us.
I wouldn't say that this is a pleasant read, since it deals with the harsh realities of confinement and the treating of inmates as animals - or less than - in some periods of time, but it feels very much like a necessary read, for anyone wondering how the medical perspective on madnes has become so hypostasised and final. In this respect the work is part of the bigger "archeology" of Foucault's other writings (which I am now undertaking). So, I guess I can conclude about this work, it definitely got me interested in a bigger picture and opened me to the significance that history plays behind the scenes of everyday life. Not light reading, but definitely worthwhile.

Reliability of Foucault's discussion
There has been scholarly criticism of the historical "facts" upon which Foucault bases his analysis. For example, "When other historians have examined the details of Foucault's account...they have concluded that the historical record provides very little support for...any of the philosophical points he wants to make".
This is an extract from a long article by K Windschuttle in Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy vol 1, No 2, 1998, pp 5-35. The article is available on the internet.
See also "Scholarship of Fools" by A Scull in Times Literary Supplement, March 2007, pp 3-4.
I am not competent to judge for or against.