"Cogito and the History of Madness" is a 1963 paper by the French philosopher

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...

that critically responds to Michel Foucault's book ''History of Madness''.Derrida, Jacques, 1978. "Cogito and the History of Madness" from ''Writing and Difference'' trans. Alan Bass. London & New York: Routledge. pp. 36–76. Originally published as "Cogito et histoire de la folie", ''Revue de métaphysique et de morale'', 68/4 (oct.-déc. 1963), 460-494. In this paper, Derrida questions the intentions and feasibility of Foucault's book, particularly in relation to the historical importance attributed by Foucault to the treatment of madness by Descartes in the ''

Meditations on First Philosophy ''Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated'' ( la, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, in qua Dei existentia et animæ immortalitas demonstratur) is a philosophical treatise ...

''. Derrida's paper began a high-profile exchange between Derrida and Foucault as well as a considerable amount of attention from scholars. Foucault responded directly to Derrida in an appendix added to the 1972 edition of the ''History of Madness'' titled "My body, this paper, this fire." Derrida again considered Foucault's 1961 text on madness with "To do Justice to Freud: The History of madness in the age of psychoanalysis" in 1991. The exchange between Derrida and Foucault was sometimes acrimonious and it is said that "the two writers stopped communicating for ten years." Commentators on the exchange include

Shoshana Felman Shoshana Felman is an American literary critic and current Woodruff Professor of Comparative Literature and French at Emory University. She was on the faculty of Yale University from 1970 to 2004, where in 1986 she was awarded the Thomas E. Donn ...

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Geoffrey Bennington Geoffrey Bennington (born 1956) is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature at Emory University in Georgia, United States, and Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerlan ...

Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New Y ...

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Rémi Brague Rémi Brague (born 8 September 1947) is a French historian of philosophy, specializing in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought of the Middle Ages. He is professor emeritus of Arabic and religious philosophy at the Sorbonne, and Romano Guardini ...

Manfred Frank Manfred Frank (born March 22, 1945) is a German philosopher, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Tübingen. His work focuses on German idealism, romanticism, and the concepts of subjectivity and self-consciousness. His 950-page ...

, and Christopher Norris. It has been stated that Derrida first used the neologism ''

différance is a French term coined by Jacques Derrida. It is a central concept in Derrida's deconstruction, a critical outlook concerned with the relationship between text and meaning. The term means "difference and deferral of meaning." Overview Derr ...

'' in "Cogito and the History of Madness". __TOC__

Presentation and publication

Derrida presented the paper “Cogito and the History of Madness” at the ''Collège Philosophique'' in 1963. Derrida sent a letter inviting Foucault to attend this presentation.Foucault, M., 1994. Dits et Écrits 1954–1988, vol. I: 1954–1969. Edited by D. Defert, F. Ewald, J. Lagrange. Paris: Gallimard. p. 26. The paper was subsequently published in the ''Revue de métaphysique et de morale'' in 1963 with the addition of a short passage inserted between brackets. Additional notes to the paper were published in the next issue of the ''Revue de métaphysique et de morale'' in 1964. The paper was subject to a further revision for its inclusion in the 1967 collection ''L'écriture et la différence''. The paper was translated into English by Alan Bass in 1978 as part of ''

Writing and Difference ''Writing and Difference'' (french: L'écriture et la différence) is a book by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The work, which collects some of the early lectures and essays that established his fame, was published in 1967 alongside ''Of G ...

''.

Structure of the paper

Epigraphs

Derrida prefaces the paper with two quotations. The first quotation is

Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on ...

stating that "The instant of decision is madness".Derrida, Jacques, 1978. "Cogito and the History of Madness" from ''Writing and Difference'' trans. Alan Bass. London & New York: Routledge. p. 36. Kierkegaard characterises the instant of decision as madness because it is only when one choice is not clearly superior to anotherwhen reason fails to indicate which option is betterthat a choice really needs to be made. The second quotation is

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

stating of ''Ulysses'' that "In any event this book was terribly daring. A transparent sheet separates it from madness."

Point of departure

Derrida states that his point of departure for "Cogito and the History of Madness" is Foucault's 1961 book ''Folie et déraison''. Derrida's paper primarily relies on two sections of Foucault's work, the original 1961 preface in which Foucault makes a number of general comments about the book, setting forth his intentions and methodology, and two and a half pages at the start of the second chapter where Foucault links Descartes to an historical event that silenced madness at the beginning of the classical age. Foucault's 1961 text was heavily abridged for a popular edition in 1964 that formed the basis for Richard Howard's translation of the text into English as ''

Madness and Civilization ''Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason'' (French: ''Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique'', 1961) is an examination by Michel Foucault of the evolution of the meaning of madness in the cultu ...

''. The abridged 1964 edition removed the pages concerning Descartes on which Derrida had explicitly based his argument in "Cogito and the History of Madness." These pages on Descartes were only made available in English with Jean Khalfa's 2006 translation of Foucault's work on madness.

Allusion to Hegel

Derrida makes an allusion to the

master–slave dialectic Master–slave or master/slave may refer to: * Master/slave (technology), a model of communication between two devices in computing * Master–slave dialectic, a concept in Hegelian philosophy * Master–slave morality, a central theme of Friedrich ...

in Hegel's ''

Phenomenology of Spirit ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' (german: Phänomenologie des Geistes) is the most widely-discussed philosophical work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; its German title can be translated as either ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' or ''The Phenomen ...

'' in the opening pages of "Cogito and the History of Madness."

Argument concerning Descartes

Foucault writes at the start of the second chapter of ''

'' of a strange violent event that silenced madness at the end of the

renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

and the beginning of the classical age. He then discusses the treatment of madness by Descartes in the ''

''. Foucault argues that Descartes refuses to recognise a commonality between himself and people who are mad and uses this dissociation as an excuse not to take madness seriously as a grounds for doubt. For Foucault this exclusion of madness by Descartes leads to a cogito that is more or less arbitrarily self-assured of its own rationality. Derrida argues that Descartes might appear to dismiss madness at the point of the meditation to which Foucault refers but shortly after this takes madness seriously as a ground for doubt when he considers the possibility of there being an

evil demon The evil demon, also known as Descartes' demon, malicious demon and evil genius, is an epistemological concept that features prominently in Cartesian philosophy. In the first of his 1641 ''Meditations on First Philosophy'', Descartes imagines ...

controlling his thoughts. Derrida argues that Descartes includes the possibility of his own madness when he hypothesises that an evil demon could corrupt even the most assured and reasonable judgements he can make, such as those of basic arithmetic. Derrida argues that madness is not subject to an arbitrary exclusion by Descartes but that once Descartes earnestly but momentarily enters into the hypothesis of the evil demon he must be reassured by the ordered operative norms of his language and project of

self-reflection Self-reflection is the ability to witness and evaluate our own cognitive, emotional, and behavioural processes. In psychology, other terms used for this self-observation include 'reflective awareness', and 'reflective consciousness', which origi ...

Notes

{{Michel Foucault Works about mental health Works by Jacques Derrida