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Название: The Dao of Madness
Автор: ALEXUS MCLEOD
Аннотация:
In his famous exploration of madness and civilization, Michel Foucault claims, “The Reason-Madness nexus constitutes for Western culture one of the dimensions of its originality.”1 This claim, like many claims about the dis- tinctiveness of Western culture, philosophy, and tradition by scholars over the years, is demonstrably false. Part of my aim in this book is to offer such a demonstration. It is nearly impossible to encounter non-Western traditions in any kind of depth and fail to recognize a distinction made between reason and madness, between the cultivated and the wild, between sanity and in- sanity. Indeed, this distinction seems a hallmark of human society, and per- haps it is even necessary to form the boundaries of a society. In this sense, at least, Foucault is on to something. Human societies are defined not only by characteristic actions and cultural norms but also by what is deemed as outside of these boundaries, transgressive of the norms. Madness is in- deed a necessary category for the creation and maintenance of a society and social norms.