The Changing Meaning of Concepts Throughout History - Nietzsche and Foucault
In this essay I will summarize how the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault have recorded how the meanings of certain concepts have changed through history, paying close attention to the texts of Nietzsche 's "Good and Evil, Good and Bad" and Foucault 's "The Insane". I will also suggest what I believe are the philosophical lessons that they think we can draw from recognizing these changes. In the chapter from his book Madness & Civilization,"The Insane", Michel Foucault charts the changing conceptions of madness from the Renaissance through to the Neo-Classical Age. He notes how during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, though madness was sometimes treated as a personification of evil, it was something that was openly dealt with, the public outrage giving the perceived evil "the powers of example and redemption." (Foucault, P. 66) The mad were neither a source of shame or taboo, " madness was present everywhere and mingled with every experience by its images or its dangers." (Foucault, P. 66)
However, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Enlightenment, and the emergence of the 'man of reason ' drastically changed people 's attitudes towards the insane: '...madness was shown, but on the other side of bars; if present, it was at a distance, under the eyes of a reason that no longer felt any relation to it and that would not compromise itself by too close a resemblance. ' (Foucault, P.70)
After the Enlightenment a new set of values became prevalent, where reason was now considered the defining characteristic of being human, and therefore it followed that to be unreasonable was to be essentially inhuman. Foucault notes that to the 'enlightened ' men of the time: '... (the) animality that rages in madness disposesses man of what is specifically human in him; not in order to deliver him over to other powers, but simply to establish him at the zero degree of his own nature. ' (Foucault, P.74)
With their new perspective on
However, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Enlightenment, and the emergence of the 'man of reason ' drastically changed people 's attitudes towards the insane: '...madness was shown, but on the other side of bars; if present, it was at a distance, under the eyes of a reason that no longer felt any relation to it and that would not compromise itself by too close a resemblance. ' (Foucault, P.70)
After the Enlightenment a new set of values became prevalent, where reason was now considered the defining characteristic of being human, and therefore it followed that to be unreasonable was to be essentially inhuman. Foucault notes that to the 'enlightened ' men of the time: '... (the) animality that rages in madness disposesses man of what is specifically human in him; not in order to deliver him over to other powers, but simply to establish him at the zero degree of his own nature. ' (Foucault, P.74)
With their new perspective on
Bibliography: Foucault, Michel, 1964. "The Insane". Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1886. "Good and Evil, Good and Bad".