Istorija ludila u doba klasicizma

Foucault, born in 1926 in Poitiers, French philosopher and historian of power (died 1984), here introduces the “archaeology of knowledge”: madness is not an inherent disease, but a discursive product of social norms, where reason defines “non-reason” as the Other, subjecting it to control.

The book, divided into four parts, traces the evolution: in the Middle Ages, lunatics are visible in leper colonies, reminiscent of Christian grace; the Renaissance celebrates them as prophets of cosmic truths, symbolized by “ships of lunatics” sailing freely; the classical era (17th-18th centuries) brings the “Great Confinement” – confinement in general hospitals with beggars and prostitutes, under the rational regime of Descartes, where madness becomes a moral punishment for economic inefficiency. In modernity, classified under psychiatry, madness loses its voice: confined in asylums under the supervision of doctors, without dialogue with reason, turning into a “mental illness”.

Foucault exposes the mechanisms of power: madness as a mirror of reason, but also a critique of the Enlightenment myth of progress. Quote: "Madness and non-madness, reason and non-reason, are confusedly intertwined here: inseparable from the moment in which they do not yet exist, and existing for each other."

It influenced his later work (Supervise and Punish), inspiring Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus, and critiques of institutions (such as Szasz's Myth of Mental Illness). Criticisms: Merquior accuses him of factual errors and selective quoting of Christian cruelty to the insane; Gutting notes the polarization – praised as analytically thorough (Porter), but criticized for neglecting empirics. The book remains crucial to understanding how power shapes subjectivity.