Philosophizing madness from Nietzsche to Derrida 978-3-319-57093-8, 3319570935, 978-3-319-57092-1

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-ix
Introduction (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 1-12
Front Matter ....Pages 13-13
Nietzsche and Autobiographical Philosophy (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 15-47
Nietzsche’s Intuitive Movement in a Labyrinth of Contradictions and Masks (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 49-61
Nietzsche and Madness (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 63-84
Front Matter ....Pages 85-85
Bataille and Autobiographical Philosophy (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 87-103
Heterogeneity, Inner Experience and the ‘Ethics of Vulnerability’ (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 105-111
Bataille and Madness (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 113-133
Front Matter ....Pages 135-135
History of Madness: Is There Such a Thing as Madness? (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 137-156
Foucault and Autobiographical Philosophy (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 157-170
Foucault and Madness (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 171-184
Front Matter ....Pages 185-185
The Debate: Derrida on Foucault via Descartes (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 187-203
Derrida and Madness (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 205-213
Derrida and Autobiographical Philosophy (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 215-225
Front Matter ....Pages 227-227
Post-Nietzschean Possibilities and Responsibilities (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 229-243
Being ‘in the Distance of Madness’ (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 245-256
Conclusion (Angelos Evangelou)....Pages 257-264
Back Matter ....Pages 265-286

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Philosophizing

from

to

A N G E L O S E VA N G E L O U

Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida “A thoughtful examination of madness as a philosophical metaphor, asking how engagement with the autobiographical writings of prominent philosophers— Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault, Derrida—might change the way we read their respective theories of conscience, lucidity, accountability and doubt.” —Ted Hiebert, Associate Professor, University of Washington Bothell, USA “Angelos Evangelou’s book is a remarkably bold attempt to stage a confrontation between two conceptions of the relation between philosophy and madness: Michel Foucault’s, on the one hand, and Jacques Derrida’s and Georges Bataille’s, on the other. It attempts to rethink Foucault’s notion of an exclusion of madness from reason and from philosophy in the Classical age, and it does so by demonstrating the extent to which philosophy need not be rigorously separated from the autobiography of the philosopher—that philosophy, as well as being a self-contained work without external conditioning and presupposition, is also a witting or unwitting form of autobiography. The intrusion of the philosopher’s life (or bios) into the philosophical ‘work’ (œuvre) introduces a fissure within logos itself, which opens reason to the inclusion of madness at its very heart. The most exemplary philosophical madness is that of Friedrich Nietzsche, but, so it is argued, the philosopher himself remained unable fully to reflect upon this madness and to capture it in a work, his corpus rather disintegrating with the onset of insanity. In Nietzsche’s wake, Foucault, our most renowned historian of madness, is argued also to resist including his own bios in a philosophical logos, and is hence led to assume that literature and the absence of work, rather than philosophy and the production of a work provide the most adequate response which writing can make to madness. Confronting Foucault’s approach to madness and philosophy with that of Bataille and Derrida, this exceptional text elaborates with exemplary clarity the thesis that the latter’s philosophical response to madness provides us with the model of an ethical relation to madness which Foucault ultimately does not. An extremely important book for anyone with an interest in the relation between philosophy, work, life, and insanity.” —Michael Lewis, Teaching Fellow in Philosophy, Newcastle University, UK

Angelos Evangelou

Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida

Angelos Evangelou Department of Comparative Literature University of Kent Canterbury, UK

ISBN 978-3-319-57092-1 ISBN 978-3-319-57093-8  (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938541 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: © Mimadeo/Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To E. and E.

Contents

1 Introduction

1

Part I Friedrich Nietzsche: Madness and the Limits of Becoming 2

Nietzsche and Autobiographical Philosophy

15

3

Nietzsche’s Intuitive Movement in a Labyrinth of Contradictions and Masks

49

4

Nietzsche and Madness

63

Part II Georges Bataille: Madness and the ‘Ethics of Vulnerability’ 5

Bataille and Autobiographical Philosophy

6

Heterogeneity, Inner Experience and the ‘Ethics of Vulnerability’

87 105 vii

viii     Contents

7

Bataille and Madness

113

Part III Michel Foucault: Madness and Philosophical Incapacity 8

History of Madness: Is There Such a Thing as Madness? 137

9

Foucault and Autobiographical Philosophy 157

10 Foucault and Madness 171 Part IV Jacques Derrida: Philosophy Opens Up to Madness 11 The Debate: Derrida on Foucault via Descartes 187 12 Derrida and Madness 205 13 Derrida and Autobiographical Philosophy 215 Part V Responding to Madness: Autobiographical Philosophy 14 Post-Nietzschean Possibilities and Responsibilities 229 15 Being ‘in the Distance of Madness’ 245 16 Conclusion 257 Appendix A 265 Appendix B 267 Appendix C 269 Bibliography 271 Index 277

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 A schematic representation of the intersection of earlier Nietzsche’s life and work 40 Fig. 2.2 A schematic representation of the dramatically expanded intersection of later Nietzsche’s life and work 41 Fig. A.1 Three-level drawing of the Parc de la Villette site illustrating how the surfaces, the points (follies) and the lines created by buildings, plants or other spaces come together. Copyright Bernard Tschumi Architects 265 Fig. B.1 A digital representation of the parts of a point (folie) which illustrates its potential for its own undoing and rupture. Copyright Bernard Tschumi Architects 267 Fig. B.2 A photograph of a real point (folie) on site. Copyright Bernard Tschumi Architects 268 Fig. C.1 Grid of points (follies) superposed on the Parc de la Villette site. Copyright Bernard Tschumi Architects 269

ix

1 Introduction

The Topic and Argument of the Book Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida constitutes an attempt to account for what Shoshana Felman describes when referring to philosophy, and literary and critical theory, as the ‘massive investment in the phenomenon of madness’ (2003: 13). But while I acknowledge the risk of this book being just another example of the ‘inflation in discourses on madness’ (13), it is proposed as the first explicit meta-philosophical exploration which sheds light on this phenomenon by asking a series of fundamental questions: Why is philosophy interested in madness or why has philosophy invested in madness? Why does philosophy find itself implicated in a discussion about, or an engagement with madness, and how does it respond to this implication? However, this book does not account for philosophy in general, and besides, it is not philosophy in general which has inflated the discourse on madness. On the contrary, this investment in madness seems to be characteristic of contemporary European philosophy and, more specifically, twentieth-century French philosophy. The emphasis here, then, falls on philosophers whose work paradigmatically marks the relation between madness and philosophy as a central philosophical question. © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_1

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2     A. Evangelou

As something which itself ‘disturbs’ the boundaries between thought and body, mind and biology, logos (reason and language) and bios (life), madness or a preoccupation with madness more easily finds its way into the philosophy which itself results from such a confluence, namely of a philosopher’s thought and life, of logos and bios. This enquiry therefore begins with equal attention to the philosophy as well as the philosopher whose work I read as precisely an encapsulation of both: logos and bios. In order to account for the relation between philosophy and madness, I approach philosophy from the perspective of autobiography and assess the degree to which it commits itself to this mingling of logos and bios, in other words, whether the philosophical text is a reflection of the philosopher’s thought as well as of his life. I claim that it is with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) that this relation of logos and bios and its implications become central in and for philosophy. Nietzsche’s philosophy challenges both his predecessors’ assumption that logos and bios are separated, as well as their privileging of the former over the latter in their conception of philosophy. With Nietzsche, therefore, a new philosophical genre is inaugurated; one which already implies a necessary inscription of bios into logos in the sense that the bios of the philosopher is reflected in the philosophy. This needs to be understood differently from the relation between life and thought in the case of the Cynics or the Stoics for whom philosophy served as a manual for a good life. This autobiographical perspective, therefore, will be reflected in the kind of philosophy which this book introduces: autobiographical philosophy. But, why Nietzsche? In Nietzsche: The Body and Culture (1987), Eric Blondel makes a useful distinction: text, he observes, is different from discourse. While the latter is what ‘tends to create a fixed, established and univocal link between the signifier and the signified’, and thus move towards logos, the former—in this case Nietzsche’s text—is what accommodates the strife to ‘exceed the limits of logical discourse’ (1991: 22). This strife enables the text to ‘be the saying1 of life, history, the body, to “live”, in both the rhetorical and philosophical sense’ (22). Nietzsche, according to Blondel, achieves this by employing metaphors which trigger a ‘movement of pluralization’ through which both bios and logos are conceived. This effect of the metaphor may be seen as loosening the fixity

1 Introduction     3

of the literal, the logical and the conceptual. Nietzsche’s writing, therefore, seems to initiate and respond to the imperative that Sarah Kofman articulates, namely, to ‘write conceptually in the knowledge that a concept has no greater value than a metaphor’ (1993: 3). What I find exceptional in Nietzsche is that apart from his philosophical mission to deconstruct the concept of truth as a ‘movable army of metaphors [and] metonyms’ (Nietzsche 1976: 46), he turns himself into a metaphor—or a symbol—too. It is important to understand this turning of Nietzsche into a metaphor as a plurality of events, which develops dynamics which assume a symbolic value independent of the value (or non-value) of the separate events. These events, the combination of which marks philosophy so distinctly, are three: First, Nietzsche is the philosopher who paradigmatically commits himself to a critique of the discourse of the Enlightenment and who seeks to offer an alternative to the instrumental reason that the latter promotes. Despite his refusal to explore madness philosophically, in the sense that he did not consider madness to have any philosophical value, his philosophy, even if unintentionally, enacts the language of feigned madness on account of both its content2 and its style. Secondly, Nietzsche brings bios to the centre of the logico-philosophical practice, thereby turning philosophy into the space in which bios is already inscribed into logos. Finally, Nietzsche is the philosopher who happens to go mad. This coincidental coming together of the logico-philosophical and the biological in the madness of the philosopher who merges the philosophical and the biological in his philosophy, is what becomes a philosophical metaphor and what I will be referring to as the ‘Nietzsche event’.3 The symbolic value of the ‘Nietzsche event’ needs to be dissociated from accusations of biological reductionism or of a regression to romanticism. Despite the romantic undertones of this gesture on account of its emphasis on the significance of Nietzsche’s madness, one needs to note that his madness is not attributed philosophical value in the sense that it contributes to his philosophy (such an argument could well be used by others to claim that his madness compromised the value or the impact of his philosophy) but that it simply occurs. This reading of the ‘Nietzsche event’ reflects a reading of Nietzsche’s philosophical doctrine

4     A. Evangelou

as well as of his own madness, and is itself a manifestation of contemporary philosophy’s acknowledgement of the inscription of bios into logos, an acknowledgement which autobiographical philosophy assumes. Post-Nietzschean philosophy does not fail to pick up the symbolic significance for philosophy of the combinatory nature of these elements embedded in the ‘Nietzsche event’, and sees itself as profoundly rooted in the legacy that this demand initiates. In other words, the ‘Nietzsche event’ as a philosophical metaphor paves the way for a philosophy that perceives itself as possible insofar as it implicates itself in the plea that the metaphor makes and responds to that plea. The assumption of this metaphor, which I treat as having ethical grounds, is characteristic of the post-Nietzschean philosophers I discuss here. Georges Bataille (1897–1962), Michel Foucault (1926–1984) and Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) undertake the responsibility to account for Nietzsche’s philosophy as autobiographical philosophy: a philosophy in which are reflected both Nietzsche’s logos as well as his bios. The hyperbolical act of the complete dissolution of the line which separates the two results in a collapse of both logos and bios into madness. Through my discussion of Nietzsche in Part 1, I examine the dynamics which develop between autobiographical philosophy and madness, and the degree of threat that madness poses for the one who writes this kind of philosophy. Chapter 2 consists of a close reading of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo (1988; published 1908), a paradigmatic work of autobiographical philosophy. There, I also explain how autobiographical philosophy is to be distinguished from or simply positioned in relation to (a) philosophical autobiography, (b) what became known in nineteenth-century Germany as Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life) and (c) American philosopher Stanley Cavell’s understanding of the relation between the philosophical and the autobiographical. Situating Ecce Homo in Nietzsche’s thought more generally (Chap. 3), focusing especially on his praise of contradiction and multiplicity as well as his use of masks, I continue to Chap. 4 with an investigation of the concept of madness from the twofold perspective of madness for Nietzsche and the madness of Nietzsche. Regarding the former, I analyse what Nietzsche says about madness and how or whether he treats it philosophically. Regarding the latter, I attempt to account for Nietzsche’s own madness and examine the ways

1 Introduction     5

that it is and should be read in relation to his philosophy. I argue that it remains one of the most extraordinary philosophical coincidences that the philosopher of amor fati (love of fate) should have succumbed to what he found least attractive. The philosopher who almost never writes of madness philosophically, but who speaks of life’s ‘most questionable and dangerous’ moments (Nietzsche 2007a: 94) as a necessary part of one’s life, comes to have his life sealed with what he most dreaded. It is the significance of this coincidence that contemporary philosophy acknowledges and attempts to respond to by reproducing—through autobiographical philosophy—the same gesture of inscribing bios into logos which allows a movement towards a position of vulnerability. The book continues with an examination of three monumental figures of twentieth-century French philosophy who should be read as the philosophers of the future for whom Nietzsche himself was hoping. But more important than this master-disciple type of continuity from Nietzsche to Bataille, Foucault and Derrida, is the fact that these philosophers engage with autobiographical philosophy and madness in varying ways and degrees. It is the significance of this connection— between autobiographical philosophy and madness—which legitimizes the attention to these three philosophers and not simply philosophers who wrote on madness either in a positive or in a negative light such as Plato, Desiderius Erasmus, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, or Søren Kierkegaard, to name just a few. But, perhaps, a slightly more detailed justification may be necessary for the omission of Gilles Deleuze, who certainly belongs within the Nietzschean tradition as well as engages with questions of madness.4 Admittedly, Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche in his Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962) has been very influential, and without it, as François Ewald points out, ‘Nietzsche would not be what he has become for us today’ (Ewald in Large 1993: xi). This claim ultimately refers to the fact that Deleuze’s reading ‘decisively breaks with existentialist and, in particular, Hegelian readings of Nietzsche’ (Large 1993: xi). The reason, however, Deleuze is not included in the present discussion is to be found in the importance of the connection between autobiographical philosophy and madness mentioned earlier. Deleuze does not engage in autobiographical philosophy as is understood and treated in this book5 nor does he treat madness in relation to autobiographical philosophy.

6     A. Evangelou

More than any other philosopher, Bataille commits himself to autobiographical philosophy, through which he opens up to madness in the sense that not only does he discuss madness philosophically but he also brings upon himself the task of getting as close to madness as possible. In Chap. 5, I concentrate on Bataille’s trilogy Summa Atheologica, consisting of Inner Experience (1943), Guilty (1944) and On Nietzsche (1945), as a second case study of autobiographical philosophy. In Chap. 6, and in the context of Bataille’s key conceptual framework (especially with reference to the concepts of heterogeneity and inner experience), I introduce Bataille’s ‘Ethics of Vulnerability’ which stands as the foundation not only for one’s understanding of and relation with madness but for the practice of autobiographical philosophy as well. Chapter 7 concentrates on Bataille’s philosophizing about madness and illustrates how his work manifests and enacts a certain relation to madness through inner experience also practised during the process of writing his books. Inner experience involves a diminution—yet not a disappearance—of rational faculties aiming at as close a contact with madness as possible. Moreover, Bataille theorizes and philosophizes about madness in terms of the importance of an engagement with madness not only for the process of philosophical production but also for the process of subjectivation (through desubjectivation) in general. Bataille, I claim, imitates the Nietzschean insertion of bios into the work, by creating—in and through the text—a space which puts not only itself (the text) but also the philosopher at risk. According to Bataille, this is the demand—an ethical demand for vulnerability—that Nietzsche’s going mad raises for us. Unlike Nietzsche, who does not value or engage with madness philosophically, Bataille acknowledges the importance of madness both for the subject of philosophy and for the subject in general. Bataille’s contribution lies precisely in the fact that he does two things: not only does he write about madness and about how madness should permeate—in its quality as a threat—autobiographical philosophical writing, but he also attempts to apply this in both his life and his work, where he draws himself towards madness, but returns to reason quickly enough: ‘a rushed repatriation’, in Pier Aldo Rovatti’s words (2002: 16). In Chap. 8, I engage in a critical reading of Foucault’s History of Madness (1961) through which, apart from tracing Foucault’s reading of Nietzsche (his work but especially his madness), I attempt to expose a

1 Introduction     7

tension between Foucault’s argument that madness is, on the one hand, a sociocultural construction without any definite essence of its own, and hence relative to the self-understanding of reason, while, on the other hand, subtly being assigned certain essential qualities. I argue that there emerges in History of Madness the idea of ‘madness itself ’, in the guise of a voice of madness, to which Foucault feels obliged to grant permission, and which undermines Foucault’s other, non-essentializing argument. In Chap. 9, I evaluate the absence of the autobiographical in Foucault’s philosophy. The philosopher who first positions madness within philosophical discourse in a systematic way in order to do it justice remains unconvinced about the usefulness of this rendition of vulnerability exercised within the philosophical discourse to any meaningful response to madness. This is because of his assumption that no philosophical language can do justice to madness in the way the latter deserves. I therefore argue that while excluding the autos from the work in a Barthesian ‘death of the author’ gesture and similar to how Maurice Blanchot’s ‘ethics of discretion’ may be seen as a radical eradication of the autos, in reality it secures the safety of the bio-philosophizing subject. Compared to the intensity and the pathos present in History of Madness, Foucault arguably remains a little too cocooned on the side of reason. Despite Foucault’s position in relation to the autobiographical, in Chap. 10, I explore further his philosophizing of madness by focusing on an oscillation generally present in his work: one between philosophical intention and philosophical act. In this case, this is expressed through a simultaneous flirting and discomfort with the idea of philosophy opening up to madness. These tensions inherent in Foucault’s project as well as its implications become scrutinized by Jacques Derrida especially in his 1963 article ‘Cogito and the History of Madness’. Chapter 11 offers a detailed exploration of the two philosophers’ understanding of Descartes’ construction of the Cogito as well as the latter’s attitude towards madness. Through my own reading of the most central aspects of this debate, I address the question of whether—according to Foucault—madness is excluded from philosophical (that is, rational) practice or whether—as Derrida argues—madness is closer to reason than is widely accepted. In Chap. 12, I go on to evaluate the presence of the autobiographical in Derrida’s work and suggest that, following the lineage of Nietzsche and Bataille, Derrida fits into autobiographical philosophy. Apart from this

8     A. Evangelou

clear gesture of inserting the bios into his work, with which Derrida, like Bataille, simulates the Nietzschean model, in Chap. 13, I also explain how madness becomes a philosophical paradigm which acquires significance in Derrida’s philosophy and which is at the core of the very conception as well as the mechanisms of deconstruction. In the final, concluding, Part of the book, in which I assume a broadly Derridean perspective, I argue for the symbolic value of this philosophical gesture that autobiographical philosophy allows, a gesture which remains deeply embedded in the response to and evaluation of the ‘Nietzsche event’. In Chap. 14, I investigate in some detail the ethics and the implications of the response in general—of the lending of an ear— while attempting to evaluate—not without some unease—Nietzsche’s own understanding of the economy of hearing and understanding him. In Chap. 15, I consider the relation between the literary and the philosophical in relation to madness and explore—along with Felman—the possibility of philosophy simulating its own ‘literary thing’, so that, like literature, it render itself vulnerable. For this reason, I suggest that philosophy should not be dismissed when the question of a meaningful response to madness arises. On the contrary, while philosophy in general should be credited for its ability to—just like madness—be liberated from any meaning, autobiographical philosophy more specifically should be acknowledged for its ability to symbolically simulate—in different degrees—the ‘Nietzsche event’. Finally, Chap. 16 is designed to take the reader back the book’s key themes through my reading of Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault and Derrida, in order to shed some more light on the practise of philosophizing madness after Nietzsche.

This Book’s Shift of Perspective In a book which celebrates the significance of the autobiographical presence and expression in the philosophical corpus, hopefully, an insight into the inception of this project as well as its author’s intellectual course is not reproached as a faux pas. This project, which reaches to assess the importance of madness in contemporary philosophy, has undergone radical transformation since its initial conception. In its origin the project departed from an

1 Introduction     9

unambiguously Foucauldian basis, and was considered as being in line with Foucault’s own early research interests. In the early stages of his career, preceding but also following History of Madness (1961), and as is documented by his biographer David Macey, Foucault ‘was to devote a great deal of effort to tracing and deciphering that experience [of madness] and its literary expression, […] as though he detected some primal relationship between writing and madness’ (1993: 97). Initially, then, I could be thought to have engaged in a quest for the ‘truth of madness’. Retrospectively, I recognized this interest to be deeply embedded in and partly inspired by what I identify in Chap. 8 as Foucault’s romantic shortcomings in his approach to madness, with which he himself struggles throughout History of Madness. From an interest in a ‘truth’, possibly traceable in works of literature written by authors who have been diagnosed as mentally ill, I grew more interested in the question of whether there was any such ‘truth’ in those works which would have to be deciphered as if through a matrix of unconventionally articulated riddles. Growing more aware of the complexity of these questions, and of the arbitrariness inherent in the hypothesis, I became more interested in the very grounds of the hypothesis itself: why is one looking for something believed to be accessible only in what can be described as literary works of madness? This shift from what (the nature of the literary text and its relation to madness and possibly to ‘the truth of madness’) to why (why look for this connection between madness and ‘truth’ in the first place) has necessarily displaced and repositioned my enquiry in terms of discourses and disciplines. An examination of the what, which is effectively embedded within a literary discourse, would necessarily also require an engagement with the medical discourse qua psychiatric discourse in order to account for my selection of authors, a selection which would rely heavily on the medical accounts of their diagnoses and conditions. This would, consequently, imply a consideration not solely of ‘madness’ but of ‘mental illness’ as well. Gradually dissociating myself from these two discourses (literary and medical), I was drawn to the one which I considered more useful in accounting for the why: philosophical discourse. Once positioned within the discipline of philosophy, the question of the why—in the sense of why this investment in the phenomenon of madness—was inevitably reformulated on philosophical grounds. Therefore, instead of seeking the ‘value’ or the ‘truth’ of madness in

10     A. Evangelou

literary texts through its ‘symptoms’, I grew more interested in scrutinizing the nature of the intention which I felt was not specific to literature. This project thus commenced with the gesture of shifting the question ‘why is madness of interest?’ from a literary to a philosophical context.

The Concept of Madness One key question should be raised at this stage, consideration of which will facilitate the reader throughout the rest of the book: Is a definition of madness necessary? What does it mean for one to claim to ‘work’ with the ‘term’ and the ‘concept’ of madness, and what does it mean to do so without a definition of madness? First, the requirement for a definition of madness in the context of a philosophical discussion of madness lies in the nature of the ‘work’ that one claims to be doing. Second, in the light of the meta-philosophical perspective of this discussion, I propose a shift in the questioning about madness: instead of asking ‘What is madness?’, we should ask ‘Why are we asking “What is madness?”?’. It is for this reason that Rovatti’s concern with and understanding of this question—What is madness?—is crucial: ‘madness as a question, if we pose it, makes us oscillate. It seems that, in order not to betray it, we must force ourselves to maintain a strange position’ (2002: 14). Possibly, then, a definition of madness only makes sense when it means an understanding or a definition of this strange position that we—the posers of the question ‘What is madness?’—are forced to take. It is this implication (in the sense of being implicated) of the subject who asks, or who decides to ‘work’ with this thing that we do not know, that grants the questioning its ethical character, which, in the context of this book, is understood predominantly in a philosophical rather than a socially-oriented way. It is thus a posing of a question in which the one who poses it is at the same time posed in (the) question. It is ethical, first, because it is founded in the attitude that ‘madness must not be betrayed’; as a symbol of radical alterity, otherness, silence and vulnerability, madness must be addressed with respect for the heterogeneity that it is. Secondly, it is ethical because it implies a surrender, a symbolic assumption of this ‘strange’ position which is a position of vulnerability. Being in this

1 Introduction     11

position implies being open to the anxiety that the very being in this position entails. Yet, opening up to a state of vulnerability is necessarily accompanied by a holding back—hence Rovatti’s oscillation, Bataille’s inner experience and Derrida’s rhythm—and it is this holding back which grants one the ability to implicate oneself in this ‘strange’ position: ‘As if there were an obstacle in the way, or a low wall, and we were to sit with a leg on either side of it’ (14). What makes this movement possible is the fact that the impetus both exists and resists. Impetus and withdrawal engage in what I call an exercise in acrobatics, which involves ‘the risk and the discomfort of an unstable position’ (14), yet knowing where to stop, how to return, and then go again. ‘This seems to be the condition which is necessary so as not to make madness disappear’ (14). Maintaining this position of uncomfortable balance is the best thing we can do, considering we are immersed in reason.

Notes 1. Unless indicated with ‘emphasis added’, italicized words or phrases within quotations reflect the author’s emphasis in the original text. 2. ‘Nietzsche is the antidote to the Cartesian conception of the subject that infects Kant, Hegel, Husserl, and Sartre despite their efforts to criticize or even to reject the cogito. Thus, Nietzsche is important to the poststructuralists because he shows a way out of the traditional epistemological and metaphysical conceptions of subjectivity and selfhood’ (Hoy 2004: 19). 3. This term (the ‘Nietzsche-event’) is also used, albeit differently, by Peter Sloterdijk in the ‘Introduction’ of his Nietzsche Apostle (2007; based on a speech delivered in 2000). Sloterdijk uses the term to describe how Nietzsche’s philosophy marks, what he calls, ‘a catastrophe in the history of language’ (2013: 8), and suggests that by establishing ‘a linguistics of jubilation or self-affirmation’ (11), Nietzsche saves self-affirmation from sin, and gives form to ‘the individualist wave’ (66). 4. See Gilles Deleuze, Two Regimes of Madness, Texts and Interviews 19751995 (2001) and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980). 5. Deleuze’s closest autobiographical commitment could be said to be the television interview he gave to Claire Parnet based on a discussion of

12     A. Evangelou

themes and concepts as they fell under the letters of the alphabet: A for ‘animal’, B for ‘boire’, et cetera. The interview is therefore called ‘Gilles Deleuze’s ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet’ (L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, avec Claire Parnet) and was directed by Pierre-André Boutang (1996).

References Blondel, Eric. 1991. Nietzsche: The Body and Culture: Philosophy as a Philological Genealogy, trans. Seán Hand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson. London: The Athlone Press. Derrida, Jacques, and Ferraris, Maurizio. 2001. A Taste for the Secret, trans. Giacomo Donis. Bodmin: Polity Press. Ewald, François. 1992. “Introduction” to Gilles Deleuze, “Mystere d’Ariane.” In Magazine Littéraire, (298, “Les Vies de Nietzsche”): 20. Felman, Shoshana. 2003. Writing and Madness: Literature/Philosophy/ Psychoanalysis, trans. Martha Noel Evans and Shoshana Felman, with the assistance of Brian Massumi. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Flynn, Bernard. 1989. Derrida and Foucault: Madness and Writing. In Derrida and Deconstruction, ed. Hugh J. Silverman. New York: Routledge. Hoy, David Couzens. 2004. Critical Resistance: From Poststructuralism to Postcritique. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Khalfa, Jean. 2010. ‘Introduction’. In History of Madness, Michel Foucault, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. Oxon: Routledge. Kofman, Sarah. 1993. Nietzsche and Metaphor, trans. Duncan Large. London: The Athlone Press. Large, Duncan. 1993. Translator’s Introduction. In Nietzsche and Metaphor, Sarah Kofman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Macey, David. 1993. The Lives of Michel Foucault. London: Random House. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1976. On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense. In The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufman, ed. Walter Kaufman. New York: Penguin. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007a. Ecce Homo. In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rovatti, Pier Aldo. 2002. Astride a Low Wall: Notes on Philosophy and Madness. trans. Lorenzo Chiesa. In Plí: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, vol. 13: Foucault: Madness/Sexuality/Biopolitics, 13–25.

Part I Friedrich Nietzsche: Madness and the Limits of Becoming

2 Nietzsche and Autobiographical Philosophy

The Topic of Ecce Homo On 13 November 1888, Nietzsche wrote to his close friend Franz Overbeck1 about Ecce Homo: ‘an absolutely important book, gives some psychological and even biographical details about me and my writings; people will at last see me. The tone of the work, one of gay detachment fraught with a sense of destiny, as is everything I write’ (1996: 324). Ecce Homo, an attempt at an autobiography, was conceived and written at the very end of Nietzsche’s career and just before his mental collapse, but not published until 1908, eight years after his death. It is a text which can be read as challenging both the autobiographical and the philosophical expectations of the reader, as it manifests an unprecedented merging of the ‘psychological’ and the ‘biographical’ with the ‘philosophical’, a merging of the ‘me’ with ‘my writings’, only to disclose as clearly as possible the ‘me’ of Nietzsche. Perhaps this is what Aaron Ridley implies when he calls the book ‘a strange sort of autobiography’ (Ridley in Nietzsche 2007a: viii), disturbing and undermining the very genre (autobiography) to which it is supposed to belong, a transgression which is documented and elaborated on by Douglas G. Wright in © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_2

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his essay ‘The subject of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo’ (2006). In this section I will, therefore, attempt to account for this strangeness and propose a reading of Ecce Homo as a special kind of text, which inaugurates a new philosophical genre, autobiographical philosophy, which no longer considers the life of the philosopher independently from his thought and philosophical production, but rather as two indistinguishable domains. With this claim I do not wish to diminish the importance of earlier philosophers who have merged life and thought in their writings, such as the Cynics (fifth–third centuries BC), the Stoics in general (third century BC–second century AD) and one of the last Stoic philosophers in particular, Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations (circa 170–175 AD), or Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Confessions (1769). I will aim, however, to show that Nietzsche pushes autobiographical writing to its limits, especially by challenging the boundaries of bios, logos and writing in ways different from philosophers committed to Lebensphilosophie (life philosophy) such as, for example, Wilhelm Dilthey. If one turns to Philippe Lejeune, one of the most important recent theorists of autobiography,2 one finds that Ecce Homo, on the one hand, sits comfortably within his revised3 definition of the autobiographical genre, while, on the other hand, it challenges it. According to Lejeune, an autobiography is a ‘[r]etrospective prose narrative written by a real person concerning his own existence, where the focus is his individual life, in particular the story of his personality’ (1989: 4). Looking for ‘stricter criteria’ (3) for the autobiographical genre, and true to his taste for dissection, which other theorists of autobiography such as Georges Gusdorf and James Olney criticize sharply (Olney 1980: 18), Lejeune breaks up this definition further so that four distinct aspects or criteria be identified: (a) the form of language (narrative/prose); (b) the topic (individual life/story of personality); (c) the situation of the author (author and narrator being the same); and (d), by extension, the position of the narrator (narrator and principal character being identical/ retrospective point of view of the narrative). At first sight, Ecce Homo could be said to fit well within Lejeune’s test diagram as a ‘classical, autodiegetic autobiography’ (7), since Nietzsche causes no obvious confusion through grammatical distortions or inconsistencies, such as the mixing of personal pronouns (‘I’ and ‘he’). Despite this conventional

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use of the ‘I’, however, the more Lejeune develops his definition by emphasizing the necessity of identity, the more Ecce Homo is found to resist it. As far as identity is concerned, Lejeune points out, ‘there is neither transition nor latitude. An identity is, or is not. It is impossible to speak of degrees[…]. In order for there to be autobiography (and personal literature in general), the author, the narrator, and the protagonist must be identical’ (5). Despite the fact that Lejeune uses the term ‘identity’ in the sense of an identification or ‘identicalness’ between author, narrator and protagonist—an affirmation of this identity is what he calls ‘the autobiographical pact’ (14)—it still raises the question about the identity or identities that Nietzsche attributes to himself which go beyond Lejeune’s logic of no transition, latitude or degrees: ‘My hypothesis: The subject as multiplicity’ (Nietzsche 1968b: 270). Moreover, the following sentences from Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Ecce Homo respectively further problematize the concepts of the narrating subject and the narrated object, author and reader: ‘No one tells me anything new, and so I tell myself to myself ’ (2008: 157); ‘And so I will tell myself the story of my life’ (2007a: 74): one tells me, I tell myself to myself, I, myself, my life. The topic of this ‘strange’ autobiography becomes thus essential to explore in order to verify whether it is indeed, complying to Lejeune’s criterion, the individual life and the story of Nietzsche’s personality. It is true, of course, that in Ecce Homo Nietzsche does write about a father and a mother, about a sister, about a Cosima Wagner and a Lou Salomé, about his education and his career, about the places and the people (artists, philologists, politicians and philosophers) that in one way or another marked the course of his life. On top of that, an abundance of thoughts, opinions and feelings are disclosed and recorded. And then there is a list of the books he has written. There is no doubt that all these pieces of information—which is the usual repertoire of an autobiographical text—are included in Ecce Homo. However, if one really wants to be accurate, which means being faithful to Nietzsche’s evaluation of and attitude towards this information, one should be more sensitive not to the chronological order in which these events take place in Nietzsche’s life, or to the way a conventional biographer or autobiographer would treat them, but to the degree of intensity and

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importance that Nietzsche himself gives to all of these empirical givens of his life: ‘Between the 15th of October and the 4th of November I brought to completion an extremely difficult task, that is to say, talking about myself, my books, my opinions, and partly, to the extent that this was necessary, my own life’. It is essential that one pay attention to the order of the words Nietzsche uses in this letter to Naumann of 6 November 1888: I will talk about myself, which means my books, then my opinions, which are in my books, and, finally, partly my life as much as it is necessary to illuminate myself, which is my books, et cetera. If, therefore, our task is to identify the topic of Ecce Homo, it is the same, circular reading of this letter extract that I also propose here. Ecce Homo should thus be read as revolving around Nietzsche’s philosophy, main and recurring ideas and an analysis of his books which consists of emphases, corrections and clarifications. Skilfully, Nietzsche enriches this account with practical details about his books (writing and publishing procedure) as well as with short or longer references to the people who played an important role in his intellectual development. Whether to express his admiration as in the case of Heraclitus, Voltaire and Goethe, or his contempt as in the case of Jesus, Schopenhauer and Wagner, Nietzsche blurs the boundaries between admiration and contempt and pays respect to the people who contributed to his life and who, good or bad, served as creative and enriching encounters. This influence that Nietzsche accepts from other thinkers merges within him creatively in a way that the others become essential in what Nietzsche himself becomes. Along with the influence that a number of people have had on him, Nietzsche acknowledges the importance of certain places he has visited, as well as of the climatic conditions of these places. Scenery or climate become worthy of the philosopher’s attention, but only with regard to their contribution to his philosophical production, constituting Nietzsche’s understanding of εὖ ζῆν (well-being; good life or good living) as a requirement of philosophy. In his attempt to say who he is, Nietzsche also writes about his education in the humanities and his career as a philologist from which his physical weakness and illness saved him, clearly making a distinction between the unchallenged and comfortable career of a philologist in contrast to the icy and hazardous nature of the

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philosophical altitudes. In passing, Nietzsche mentions a father and a mother only to express his respect and affection for the former as an angelfather-figure and to reject—if rejection is ever possible—the latter as a devil-mother-figure. What this symbolic reference to the parents implies relates to Nietzsche’s concept of the subject as multiplicity, as well as to his understanding of the weighty concepts of necessity, choice and intuition. I have suggested that Ecce Homo is to be read not as a series of biographical facts placed chronologically one after the other, but as a collection of events and ideas working together dynamically, the importance of which is determined by Nietzsche himself and emphasized accordingly. What, then, are the implications of such a reading? In the light of this redistribution of emphasis and the diminished status of the biographical information—‘even biographical details’ (Nietzsche 1996: 324; emphasis added)—one could argue for a quasi-total absence of the element of βίος (bios: life) from Ecce Homo. One would have to agree with this argument if bios were to be seen as a collection of psycho-biographical sketches or other trivial empirical givens of life, not different from what Roland Barthes calls ‘biographemes’.4 However, bios in Ecce Homo acquires a new identity and, as such, it is present.

The Identity of Nietzsche’s Bios Christie McDonald pertinently identifies an immense interest of poststructuralist5 debates in ‘the relationship of an empirical, individual life to the structure of the written text’ (1988: ix). Expressions of this interest can be traced, for example, in the work of post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida for whom ‘thought and philosophy cannot be dissociated or abstracted from its place of enunciation’ (Thomassen 2005: 1), and Simon Critchley who is ‘highly dubious as to whether the spirit of philosophy can be separated from the body6 of the philosopher’ (2008: xxxiii). At the same time, one needs to accept that the distinction between the triviality of bios and the traditionally valued activities of λόγος (logos: reason and language) is dissolved, a dissolution that Nietzsche, and specifically Ecce Homo, can be said to have initiated. In other words, bios should be seen as always already inscribed

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within logos because ‘[p]ure spirit is a pure lie’ (Nietzsche 2007d: 8). Nietzsche becomes more than relevant in this context, as someone who contributed greatly to the shift from ἐαυτός or αὑτός (autos: self ) as pure logos to autos as bios already inscribed into logos, which encompasses the body as the habitat of spirit and becomes the synonym for life. This shift, which predominantly comes with Nietzsche, also proved of importance in the context of autobiography studies in which a reassessment of the three separate components of auto-bio-graphy—as well as their interrelation—allows for nuanced and philosophically more interesting discussions, which, by distancing themselves from Lejeune’s rigidity, attempt to account for the increasing and very diverse production of autobiographical texts. Before the wide interest in what came to be known as autobiography studies, that is a theory on the genre of autobiography, admittedly initiated around the mid-twentieth century with Georges Gusdorf ’s essay ‘Conditions and Limits of Autobiography’ (1956), the focus was primarily on the element of bios, and in a rather superficial way, indicating nothing more than ‘the course of a lifetime’ (Olney 1980: 20), while the element of autos was considered as a straightforward part of the auto-bio-graphical relation; in other words, as Olney points out, ‘the autos was taken to be perfectly neutral and adding it to “biography” changed nothing’ (20). What the early criticism on autobiography studies provides, then, is a shift of the attention from bios to autos. There was more to explore about the self who did the writing and about what precisely was or could potentially be involved in this process of writing in relation to the life that was written about. The ‘act of autobiography’ may at the same time be considered as ‘a discovery, a creation, and an imitation of the self ’ (19). The same acknowledgement is already made by Gusdorf in his 1956 essay, where the role of ‘consciousness of self ’ is not only stressed but also allowed to give autobiography a status higher than the lived experience which, according to Gusdorf, is devoid of consciousness: ‘autobiography is a second reading of experience, and it is truer than the first because it adds to experience itself consciousness of it’ (Gusdorf in Olney 1980: 38). It is precisely by showing how autobiography attaches consciousness to experience that Gusdorf presents autobiography as a process of creation. The truth may not be a treasure which is hidden but it is, for

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Gusdorf, a treasure which is made, and this product is one which aims at capturing ‘a life in its totality’ (38), the ‘individual unity’ (38) and the ‘dialogue of a life with itself in search of its own absolute’ (48). It is precisely the totality, the unity and the absoluteness of his life, or that transparent ‘I’ which is behind the work and informs the whole that Nietzsche is deconstructing in Ecce Homo, risking, if we follow Olney’s reasoning, being reduced to insignificance (Olney 1980: 21). What is interesting is that this revival of interest in autobiography and especially the shift of attention from bios (life) to autos (self ) which was ‘largely responsible for opening things up and turning them in a philosophical, psychological, and literary direction’ (Olney 1980: 19), comes at a time when the post-structuralists (and especially Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault) launch an attack on the status and the authority of the author as conventionally perceived. The author is no longer the external or absolute source of meaning but is reduced to the voice, which can articulate itself fragmentarily within an already fragmented text. It is thus the text which is the agency of meaning and not the consciousness of the author. The interest in the autos, therefore, which in effect resulted in the disempowerment of the authorial self, swiftly brings about another shift of interest, coinciding with Jacques Derrida’s project of deconstruction. This time the emphasis is put on γραϕὴ (graphē: writing), calling for a new redistribution of weight within the space of auto-bio-graphy. The (autobiographical) text must not be understood as the space which accommodates the meaning that the author (as an agent) expresses about himself/herself, but rather as the space in which the author’s subjectivity is constructed in the first place rendering subjectivity compliant with the laws of textuality. The structure of the text, as a system of self-proliferating and arbitrary signs, lends itself to the construction and the interpretation of the subject, which, far from being whole and uniform, is decentred, fragmented and multivocal. With its meaning being constantly deferred—just like a text’s meaning—the subject is never complete but always in the process of becoming. Decentring, fragmentation, multivocality and impersonality are concepts that eventually become familiar in one’s reading of Nietzsche too. Myself becomes the main addressee of my writing in my effort to see who I am through the writing of me: ‘I tell myself to myself ’ (Nietzsche

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2008: 157), with the two processes, of the telling of the self and the becoming self being effectively entangled. ‘I’ is no longer considered as the all-knowing agent, the εαυτός (autos: self ) which—through writing—reports on or expresses bios (life) from a position of total control and knowledge. On the contrary, writing is the process of putting the subject in words (signs). As Keefe and Smyth explain, ‘an autobiography is the locus of the confrontation between a fragmentary self and a multivocal text’ (1995: 2).7 A similar point is made in Rodolphe Gasché’s analysis of the body in Ecce Homo, which ‘becomes readable through a chain of metaphors’ (1990: 113). These metaphors, according to Gasché, represent disconnected and heterogeneous images of the body which is never whole apart from the moments in which images qua metaphors are ‘assembled coherently’ (114) in the text. Gasché suggests that these fragments of the body—as elusive and singular moments—make it into the text through their being fixed ‘by an operation of the pen’ (116) as metaphors or ‘commemorative signs of the lost actuality of that presence of a whole body’ (116), a loss which could also be accounted for with the concept of the impersonal. The body comes together and ‘is completed with a set of quite heterogeneous elements. The body is everything at once: books, men, landscapes’ (121) making sense in their specificity and determinacy in relation to Nietzsche, in the same way as do a few ‘biographemes’ such as preferences of food, place and climate. Retrieving Nietzsche’s own metaphor of the ‘diamond’ used for Zarathustra in Ecce Homo (2007a: 83), Gasché presents the idea of the shaping, the forming and the becoming of the body through continuous (cutting) work: ‘So Ecce Homo is nothing other than the attempt to constitute a body for oneself, by writing oneself in granite words, by fixing the divine instants of a life, sparkling, like precious stones; it is nothing other than the effort to erect oneself as a monument by fixing oneself with the steely point of a pen’ (Gasché 1990: 119). Gasché’s analysis points not only to the involvement of the body in the process of becoming through writing but also to the harshness, arduousness and even painfulness of this process (fixing with the steely point of a pen). Making the body subject to the potential outcomes of this uneasy process of writing (and necessarily of becoming) implies the risk of endangering the body also with madness. The challenging of the

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distinction between bios and logos as both already becoming and being shaped within the text sets both in a position of vulnerability in relation to madness. It is this quality of permitting the distinction between logos and bios to be challenged which is at the core of autobiographical philosophy. It has been a common conviction among Nietzsche scholars such as Hollingdale, Nehamas, White, Kaufmann, Hayman, Krell and others that in Nietzsche the life component plays a more important role in his philosophy than in the work of other philosophers. This should not mean, of course, that the only legitimate reading of Nietzsche presupposes a knowledge of his life’s little details. What is of the essence, though, is that one be aware that Nietzsche’s philosophy is understood when read as a manifestation of life (his life), which considers itself lived properly when lived to the fullest, when hearing the instinct of self-preservation and ascent, and when it is lived in consistency with the philosophy which is the graphic expression of all this. Life and philosophy are written, therefore, with an equal degree of intensity and passion for seeking and experimentation: ‘To you, the bold seekers, experimenters’ (Nietzsche 2008: 124).8 Nietzsche’s own attitude, however, towards the relation between his life and his philosophy is ambiguous. On the one hand, we read fragments such as the following: ‘It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography’ (Nietzsche 1997: 4), clearly showing that he considers philosophy—or rather great philosophy—intrinsically related to its producer. On the other hand, we come across sentences such as: ‘I am one thing, my writings are another’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 99). Remarks such as the latter, however, come at a period when Nietzsche is deeply concerned with the image of himself as ‘eccentric’, ‘pathological’, and ‘psychiatric’ going public (from Nietzsche’s letter to Reinhard von Seydlitz, 12 February 1888, in Kofman 1994: 54). In another letter, to Carl Fuchs on 14 December 1887, Nietzsche tries to diminish the credibility of such characterizations as well as to explain them: ‘the enterprise I am engaged in has something immense and monstrous about it—and I can’t blame anyone if here and there they feel a doubt arise about it, as

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to whether I am still “in my right mind”’ (Nietzsche in Kofman 1994: 59). Nietzsche’s real problem with these comments, perhaps, was not that he felt them to be a direct attack on his person, on Herr Nietzsche, but rather that these descriptions and accusations served ‘as grounds for explaining [his] book and as a censorship of it’ (from Nietzsche’s letter to Carl Fuchs, 14 December 1887, in Kofman 1994: 59). Kofman is even of the opinion that Nietzsche might have written Ecce Homo in an attempt to show to himself and others that he was sane, or, in the worst case, if he could not convince on that point, at least show that his philosophy is totally independent from a life that has already been stigmatized as abnormal, degenerate and even mad. A number of Nietzsche’s remarks, however, provide evidence which challenges such an independence and suggests that Nietzsche, perhaps unknowingly, attests a relation between life and philosophy, which seems consistent with comments made as early as 1882 in The Gay Science: ‘Interpreting myself, I always read/Myself into my books’ (Nietzsche 1974: 49). On 27 December 1888, Nietzsche writes to Carl Fuchs: ‘All things considered, dear friend, there is no sense any more in talking and writing about me; I have settled for the next eternity the question as to who I am, with the book which we are having printed now, Ecce Homo. People should not trouble about me hereafter, but about the things for which I exist’ (1996: 340). Nietzsche is trying hard here to make visible a distinction between himself and his texts, but he is caught up in a word game between the two sentences, which results in a very important deduction: the question about who I am is answered by this book, which is about the things for which I exist. Here one can observe the same circularity in the reading that was proposed in the case of Nietzsche’s letter to Naumann (myself, my books, my opinions, my life, et cetera), a circularity which very closely resembles what Rachel Gabara describes when she discusses the autobiographical text Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes (1975): ‘The author of this text will be writing about the writer writing about the writer’ (2006: 3). I treat this circularity or self-reflexivity as indicative of the link that is here being suggested between Nietzsche’s life and his philosophy, also reflected in the weighty assertion that Nietzsche makes through the mouth of Zarathustra that I mentioned earlier: ‘no one tells me anything new, and so I tell myself

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to myself ’ (Nietzsche 2008: 157). What Nietzsche tells himself is himself, with faith in a nearly complete identification between himself and the only thing which is new and worth saying, which is his philosophy. Arguments about an encroaching arrogance are beside the point here— at least for now. Nietzsche identifies himself with philosophy and vice versa with both R. J. Hollingdale and Ronald Hayman confirming this identification by drawing attention especially to the parallels between Nietzsche and Zarathustra (1965: 141 and 1980: 332). An important example of this identification of life and philosophy in Nietzsche concerns his disillusioned love for Lou Salomé and the bitterness of betrayal by Paul Rée. The way these two relationships developed and ended was experienced by Nietzsche as a blow to his feelings of love, pride and dignity, but what is important is that this negativity had to be turned into something positive; Nietzsche had to make the best out of it. What is revealed in the following quotation from a letter to Overbeck is of considerable importance and shows how Nietzsche saw this misfortune as a ‘splendid chance’ to put amor fati into practice.9 In this letter at Christmas of 1882, Nietzsche, in low spirits, writes: ‘I have suffered from the humiliating and tormenting memories of this summer as from a bout of madness. […] Unless I discover the alchemical trick [or magic formula] of turning this—muck to gold, I am lost. Here I have the most splendid chance to prove that for me “all experiences are useful, all days holy and all people divine”!!!’ (Nietzsche 1996: 198–199). It is a significant operation that Nietzsche puts to work here. First of all, the muck has to turn into gold, and this will happen through an existentially oriented formula which becomes one of his most important philosophical concepts: amor fati (love of fate). He leaves to the hands of philosophy the task of helping him overcome this traumatic life experience. But to fully appreciate the identity of Nietzsche’s bios, one needs to acknowledge the presence of a significant quality which infuses it: impersonality. It has already been said that Nietzsche plays no grammatical tricks on the reader by mixing the personal pronouns, yet there exists, unarticulated yet permeating his identity, an impersonal ‘it’, which the careful reader should be able to identify in passages such as the following where Nietzsche explains, for example, how his ideas are conceived only in motion: ‘Sitting down […] is a true sin against the Holy Spirit’

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(Nietzsche 2007a: 87). In passages like this, the narrator is no longer simply Nietzsche. It is life itself or sitting itself, speaking with a certainty of tautology. Nietzsche does not feel the need to insert his name when writing so that we are clear that all of this is for him alone. Ecce Homo is not a manual for escaping decadence; it is rather a description of how Nietzsche tries not to be decadent: ‘What, then, is regressive in the philosopher?—That he teaches that his qualities are the necessary and sole qualities for the attainment of the “highest good”. That he orders men of all kinds gradatim up to his type as the highest’ (Nietzsche 1968b: 246). When asked for ‘the way’, Nietzsche declares: ‘That […] is my taste: not good, not bad, but my taste […]. “This—it turns out—is my way— where is yours?” […] The way after all—it does not exist!’ (2008: 156). The more intimate and personal his accounts are, the more impersonal the narrator becomes. In this light, extreme subjectivity equals absolute objectivity. One’s self should be considered a ‘reliable instrument’ for measuring what is good and what is bad in one’s circumstances, strengths and weaknesses: ‘I have had considerable experience in charting the effects of climatic and meteorological factors, using myself as a very subtle and reliable instrument […]. Naumburg, Schulpforta, Thuringia in general, Leipzig, Basle—all disastrous locations given my physiology’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 88; emphasis added). It is in this metaphor of the instrument that Gasché also identifies the circularity I have suggested earlier, which could also be seen as a tautological event of the becoming and the writing, a tautology being acknowledged through the reading: ‘Nietzsche is himself his own book, because his writing is the writing of his body. The first reader of the book-body’ (Gasché 1990: 123). For a more detailed assessment of the element of the impersonal which marks his identity, Nietzsche’s letter to Carl Fuchs of 14 December 1887 proves considerably important for two reasons: not only does it reveal the weight the impersonal has for Nietzsche’s perception of himself but it also stands as one of the finest examples of the mixture of the autobiographical and the philosophical, each pushing the boundaries of the other to create this third, new space that I have identified as autobiographical philosophy. This extract from the inspired yet sober letter, which I quote below at length, could, with minimal alterations, have appeared as an extract in Ecce Homo or any other of his

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philosophical texts. In this letter, Nietzsche makes explicit reference to the idea of impersonality by using the term ‘depersonalization’. You chose a very good moment to write me a letter. For I am, almost without willing it so, but in accordance with an inexorable necessity, right in the midst of settling my accounts with men and things and putting behind me my whole life hitherto. Almost everything that I do now is a “drawingthe-line under everything.” The vehemence of my inner pulsations has been terrifying, all through these past years; now that I must make the transition to a new and more intense form, I need, above all, a new estrangement, a still more intense depersonalization. So it is of the greatest importance what and who still remain to me. What age I am? I do not know―as little as I know how young I shall become. (Nietzsche 1996: 280)

The transition towards this new and more intense form of depersonalized existence requires this detachment from one’s own self; it requires a distance from which Nietzsche can see himself as another; the title of the book—Ecce Homo (behold the man)—probably best encapsulates this distance and the pointing finger. The philosophical character of the letter—consisting of his thoughts about his ‘centre’ and his ‘eccentricity’, his ‘instinct’ or his ‘passion’ to choose correctly, et cetera—as is the case with many of his letters, confirms the close link that exists between Nietzsche’s philosophy and life. Autobiographical philosophy is precisely this new space that Nietzsche inaugurates in which bios is inscribed into logos and vice versa, the space in which life is lived as well as read as philosophy, and philosophy is read as a manifestation and expression of life.

Demarcating the Genre of Autobiographical Philosophy The distinction between autobiographical philosophy and other philosophical theories of genres which form as a response to an interest in the relation between life and philosophy at different moments in the history of philosophy, such as philosophical autobiography, philosophy of

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life and Stanley Cavell’s theory on autobiography and philosophy, can certainly help to clarify important differences between these similar yet different—or even slightly different—genres. Regarding the first distinction (between autobiographical philosophy and philosophical autobiography), the fundamental difference lies in the fact that while the former is a genre of philosophy, the latter is a type of autobiography. In other words, while the former is constituted upon a very dynamic merging into the text of the philosopher’s bios and logos, a merging which, according to Nietzsche, is manifested both in the text as well as in the life, philosophical autobiography, ‘provides a particularly well-focused medium for the examination of the interplay between life and thought and the need to accept and understand the role of personal judgment in philosophizing’ (Baggini 2002: 311). Baggini admits that his claim is made ‘on empirical rather than logical grounds’ (300), but he continues nonetheless to argue that the special thing about autobiographies written by philosophers is that ‘what is revealed of their personalities sheds light on how they thought as philosophers’ (300). Even though Baggini’s argument may seem to imply a certain blurring between the subjective character of personal judgment and philosophical objectivity, it does not go as far as to radically suggest, as Nietzsche does in Ecce Homo, the insertion of bios into logos. The distinction I am pursuing here, therefore, still holds, even if one accepts that by reading a philosopher’s autobiography one gets a glimpse of their philosophy, even if to do so fully, as Baggini says, one may still need to read the philosopher’s philosophical works. While in autobiographical philosophy the focus is on the relation between philosophy and life, in philosophical autobiography the focus is on how philosophy is expressed within or via the autobiographical discourse. In other words, in philosophical autobiography there is no simultaneity in the processes of philosophizing and living. Instead, philosophy is only inserted—as an added component—in an otherwise already complete account of a largely independent life. The second distinction that needs to be made is between autobiographical philosophy and the nineteenth-century philosophical school of thought known as Lebensphilosophie (life philosophy or philosophy of life),10 which was introduced by Wilhelm Dilthey in Germany. Dilthey’s main (and unfinished) philosophical project, known as the

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Critique of Historical Reason, should be read—as the title already suggests—as a dialogue with Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781). For Dilthey, Jos de Mul remarks, ‘Kant reduced humankind to a purely intellectual subject […]. In place of this bloodless subject, […] Dilthey brought the living, flesh-and-blood human being to the fore— that is, a human being who is guided not only by his intellectual powers but by his will and by his feelings as well. […] [Moreover,] whereas in his criticism Kant assumed reason to be pure and timeless, Dilthey placed the emphasis on the historical nature of reason and argued that fundamental philosophical investigation cannot be disassociated from historical investigation’ (2004: 2). One could easily observe the striking similarities between Dilthey’s and Nietzsche’s philosophical agendas in terms of their ‘cultural diagnoses’ (24), that is, their concern not only about Kantianism but also about the prominence of positivism and scientism, as well as in terms of their interest in life. Despite these similarities, however, Dilthey’s understanding of philosophy of life is not the same as autobiographical philosophy. Dilthey does not formulate a philosophical system or genre with certain characteristics which would be classified as ‘philosophy of life’. Interestingly, what came to be known as Dilthey’s philosophy of life is in reality a ‘hermeneutics of life’ (Bollnow 1955) or even an ‘ontology of life’ (de Mul 2004). According to de Mul, therefore, Dilthey ‘was of the opinion that reality cannot be a priori constructed with the aid of fixed metaphysical concepts but can only be understood from concrete life experience’ (2004: 35). The distinction I am pursuing here between Dilthey’s life philosophy and the autobiographical philosophy initiated by Nietzsche is thus based on two interrelated facts. The first is that there is an element of normativity in Dilthey’s life philosophy, which is absent both from Nietzsche’s idea of philosophy as well as from what I read as autobiographical philosophy. The second is that Dilthey’s conception of life and of descriptive psychology, which replaces epistemology and signifies the ‘task of obtaining an “analytic knowledge of the universal characteristics of man” by means of pure description’ (Dilthey in de Mul 2004: 161), is likely to be based on a certain degree of essentialism regarding the value of human introspection, consciousness and selfreflexive thinking which he identifies as philosophical. This essentialism will also have to be seen as running counter to Nietzsche’s thought.

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Dilthey identifies the onset of life philosophy with the change that was brought by the work of ‘the Sceptics, Epicureans, and Stoics, […] of Cicero, Lucretius, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius’ (1969: 13), with which philosophical claims to universal validity gradually relaxed and the subject matter shifted. ‘The hierarchy of individual problems changed: the cosmological problem was subordinated to the problem of the value and purpose of life’ (13), which was to be associated with a growing interest in normativity, pedagogy and ethics. This could be observed in Dilthey’s emphasis on this new philosophy’s elements of ‘character-building’, ‘virtue’ and ‘application’. ‘In the Roman-Stoic system,’ he writes in The Essence of Philosophy (1954), ‘the characterbuilding power of philosophy came to the fore. […] Cicero sees in philosophy “the teacher of life, the discoverer of laws, the guide to every virtue,” and Seneca defines it as the theory and art of the correct conduct of life. In other words, philosophy is a way of life, not mere theory, and so the expression “wisdom” is readily applied to it’ (1969: 13). Foucault too may be seen as following this tradition as it becomes evident from his lectures at the Collège de France in 1982–1983 under the topic ‘The Government of Self and Others’: ‘The reality of philosophy is practice’, not ‘as the practice of logos’ but ‘as “practices,” in the plural; the practice of philosophy in its practices, its exercises’ which are directed towards ‘the subject itself ’: ‘Philosophy finds its reality in the practice of philosophy understood as the set of practices through which the subject has a relationship to itself, elaborates itself, and works on itself. The reality of philosophy is this work of self on self ’ (Foucault 2010a: 242). The direction philosophy is likely to take from here is indeed towards a manual of how to live a good life, something which Nietzsche was strongly opposing. Nowadays, this understanding of philosophy may also be referred to as philosophy of life or philosophy for life.11 The other issue which makes Dilthey’s conception of philosophy of life incompatible with autobiographical philosophy is the fact that Dilthey proposes that meta-thought or self-reflexive thinking is in itself philosophical: ‘wherever the subject, who relates himself to this world in his activity, rises in the same way to reflection on this activity of his, the reflection is philosophical’ (Dilthey 1969: 75). Dilthey’s idea of

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philosophy, therefore, is closely associated with consciousness, which in turn he considers an intrinsic—and essential—human trait: philosophy ‘is embedded in the structure of man’ (36). What Nietzsche sees as contingent to the need for social communication, Dilthey accepts as essentially human. In The Gay Science Nietzsche argues that consciousness, or life’s ‘seeing itself in the mirror’, is conditional upon man’s need to communicate and even more primarily his need to survive: ‘consciousness has developed only under the pressure of the need for communication; that from the start it was needed and useful only between human beings […] and that it also developed only in proportion to the degree of this utility’ (1974: 298). And he continues even more clearly: ‘My idea is, as you can see, that consciousness does not really belong to man’s individual existence but rather to his social or herd nature’ (299). It is in the next aphorism, however, that de Mul identifies Nietzsche’s implicit criticism of Dilthey, where he challenges Dilthey’s idea that through the ‘inner world’ or the ‘facts of consciousness’ one can reach knowledge. That these facts were familiar was for Dilthey a given and an advantage, while for Nietzsche it was an illusion: Even the most cautious among [these men of knowledge] suppose that what is familiar is at least more easily knowable than what is strange, and that, for example, sound method demands that we start from the ‘inner world,’ from the ‘facts of consciousness,’ because this world is more familiar to us. Error of errors! What is familiar is what we are used to; and what we are used to is most difficult to ‘know’—that is, to see as a problem; that is, to see as strange, as distant, as ‘outside us’. (Nietzsche 1974: 301)

On the contrary, Dilthey argues that ‘[i]n inner experience we are given this reality of consciousness, and with it the possibility of knowing more profoundly from the source the various products of the human mind as they are understood in the human studies’ (1969: 23). In direct opposition to this, Nietzsche expresses his apprehension with this acquisition of consciousness or knowledge through Dilthey’s ‘inner experience’ or what he himself calls introspection:

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We psychologists of the future―we have little patience with introspection: we almost take it for a sign of degeneration when an instrument tries ‘to know itself ’ […]. First mark of the self-preservative instinct of the great psychologist: he never seeks himself, he has no eyes for himself, no interest or curiosity in himself―The great egoism of our dominating will requires that we shut our eyes to ourselves―that we must seem to be ‘impersonal,’ ‘désintéressé,’ ‘objective’!―oh, how much we are the opposite of this! (Nietzsche 1968b: 230)

In this extract from The Will to Power, Nietzsche not only challenges the Greek maxim γνῶθι σαὐτόν (know thyself ), when it implies the illusion of the subject’s total control, but also establishes once more the importance of the notion of impersonality, the necessity to see ourselves as an other. The final ‘distinction’ which is the most difficult to make—and, in a sense, impossible in an absolute way—is between autobiographical philosophy as is understood and treated in this book and American philosopher Stanley Cavell’s proposal regarding these two practices or ‘exercises’: philosophy and autobiography. I confess that I discovered Cavell’s work when this book was very close to completion and I was both somewhat concerned as well as content when I realised that even if Cavell was thinking within a different context—ordinary language philosophy—and despite clear differences in perspective and purpose, some of the profound principles of his understanding of this relation (between philosophy and autobiography) echoed mine, or rather, mine echoed his. For this reason, and despite a few minor differences that I will outline here, I choose to present Cavell’s ideas in terms of a fortuitous intellectual companionship. In A Pitch of Philosophy (1994), in which Cavell employs an autobiographical perspective himself,12 puts forward his two ‘guiding intuitions’: (a) ‘that there is an internal connection between philosophy and autobiography, that each is a dimension of the other,’ and (b) ‘that there are events of a life that turn its dedication toward philosophy’ (1994: vii). Cavell’s second intuition—as he himself admits—points towards and triggers the question ‘What is an education for philosophy?’. In other words, which pool does the philosopher draw from? Which is

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the source of the evidence he uses? How does he educate himself as a philosopher who distinguishes himself from other philosophers. This last qualifier is very important and already points towards Cavell’s indebtedness to the views of the American Romantic essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), especially his advocacy of individualism and his belief that it is the most personal that has the most universal value: ‘the deeper the scholar dives into his privatest, secretes presentiment, to his wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most public, and universally true’ (Emerson in Cavell 1994: vii). This universalisation of the personal—the claim to speak for the human in universal terms—is precisely the ground upon which Cavell accounts for what he calls philosophy’s arrogation and arrogance, namely philosophy’s ‘arrogant assumption of the right to speak for others’ (vii–viii). It is the same arrogance that Cavell identifies in autobiography using as an example, apart from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854),13 Nietzsche’s megalomaniac outburst in Ecce Homo evident in sentences such as ‘I have … given mankind the greatest gift that has ever been given it’ (Nietzsche in Cavell 1994: 3). Cavell observes that despite this structural similarity between philosophy and autobiography, which lies behind Cavell’s first intuition, philosophy’s reaction towards the autobiographical is one of ambivalence and rejection because it (the autobiographical) is perceived as alien to philosophy’s claim to speak ‘with necessity and universality’ (3). It is safe to assume that Cavell implies that philosophy has hitherto been based on a misunderstanding from its part akin to a forgetting about this structural similarity it shares with the autobiographical and the necessary connection between the personal and the universal. This is why he calls for and works towards what he calls a ‘new philosophy’: the ordinary language philosophy. This new philosophy, according to Cavell, escapes the constraints of this misunderstanding and, through a turn to the ordinary, the personal and the contextual, tries to reach neutrality. Cavell endorses this new philosophy precisely because of its emphasis on speaking in the first person and its analysis not of abstract logical formulations but of concrete uses of linguistic expressions. Despite the fact that Cavell first identifies these characteristics in the work of J. L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein, he insists that these characteristics ‘are not personal’, in other words, they are not specific to Austin and

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Wittgenstein, but they are ‘structural features of the necessity to say what we say’ (10). Ordinary language philosophers acknowledge their philosophy’s arrogance which is an acknowledgement of philosophy’s autobiographicality. Cavell, therefore, presents philosophers as having two fundamental choices, namely rejecting or accepting the autobiographical, a choice with weighty implications. Those who do the former deprive themselves of what would justify their authority as philosophers with the right to speak for the others: ‘Philosophers who shun the autobiographical must find another route to philosophical authority, to, let’s say, the a priori, to speaking with necessity and universality […] and find another interpretation of its arrogance’ (8). On the other hand, in his autobiographical text Little Did I Know (2010) he recalls how Austin’s and Wittgenstein’s (philosophical) methods were autobiographical and how they insisted that ‘I speak philosophically for others when they recognize what I say as what they would say, recognize that their language is mine’ (Cavell 2010: 6). Cavell confesses these ideas to be heavily marked by his, and especially, his father’s experience as an immigrant in the United States, namely, of lacking the means of comprehension, expression and communication. But what happens when one acknowledges the autobiographicality of philosophy? In A Pitch of Philosophy Cavell explains that ‘[n]ot to shun the autobiographical means running the risk of turning philosophically critical discourse into clinical discourse’ (8). The remarkable closeness of this idea to my understanding of autobiographical philosophy and its symbolic effect is unquestionable. Cavell may not articulate it explicitly, but what he describes here as the result of the insertion of the autobiographical into the philosophical is the putting of the latter in a position of vulnerability. This notion of vulnerability, Yi-Ping Ong pertinently suggests, is incorporated in Cavell’s ‘technique of excerpting’ which is ‘a reminder that our lives, as our utterances, come out of fragments and return to them’ (2011: 964). Moreover, vulnerability seems to be related to Cavell’s use of the concept of losing one’s voice, an experience to which Cavell relates: ‘for the third explicit time in my life I found myself creatively stopped, not understandably challenged and inspired, but at a dead end’ (2010: 451); later in the same passage from Little Did I Know he describes it as ‘the inescapable human subjection to the terror

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of inexpressiveness’ (452), an anxiety which is justified also because of Cavell’s sense of responsibility for one to express oneself, for the philosopher to speak. This loss or ‘absence’ of voice, Cavell compares to the experience of being a child—when one has not yet found his voice— a comparison, however, which he traces to the periods during which his parents were not speaking to each other. During these periods of his parents’ ‘speechlessness’ young Stanley wondered whether his parents were mad, a question which floated over him as well, who was in the middle of such—linguistic, intellectual and emotional—unintelligibility. This leads Cavell to pursue—in philosophy—this comparison between childhood and madness on the basis of the ‘isolation and unintelligibility’ that a child goes through while learning the world and acquiring language. This sense of isolation and unintelligibility, Cavell claims, perhaps somewhat hyperbolically, is so great that he is willing to present childhood as a ‘state akin to madness’ (1994: 22). Although it is clear that Cavell here is constructing a metaphor—akin to madness—he nonetheless seeks evidence from psychoanalysis (Melanie Klein) and poetry (Elizabeth Bishop) in order to validate his claim on literal rather than metaphorical grounds. Yet, the construct can only be metaphorical. So, is this how we are supposed to understand the ‘clinical discourse’ too? The notions of vulnerability and madness seem to hold less when Cavell provides examples to illustrate it. His example of Descartes, who ‘wondered whether his doubts about his existence might not class him with madmen’, betrays a different, perhaps lighter or more superficial notion of what Cavell’s understanding of this clinical discourse might be. How are the Meditations an ‘autobiographical experiment’ (8) or where does the (philosophically) critical meet the clinical—or risks meeting the clinical—in Descartes’ text in which he exposes his doubt or his certainty about his existence and his difference from the mad? Chapter 11 will, hopefully, illuminate the doubts I am raising here. It seems to me that one should not overlook the philosophical perspective from which Cavell’s understanding of the autobiographical is filtered. His background in ordinary language philosophy is perhaps to account for his attention being based primarily on a linguistic level. Despite the fact that he also considers texts such as Ecce Homo,

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in his analysis of these ideas, and especially through some of the other examples he uses, Cavell gives the impression that the insertion of the pronoun ‘I’ in the text would be enough to qualify the text as autobiographical. In other words, the insertion of the ‘I’ seems to stand as valuable evidence for the philosopher’s acknowledgement of the source—the personal, the subjective, the ‘anecdotal’ and the ‘autobiographical’ source—of the authority of the claims he makes. For Cavell, and despite his passing acknowledgement of the existence of vulnerability and the risk of exposure implied in writing philosophy autobiographically, this same practice concludes with a sense of achievement. Cavell proposes to talk about philosophy in connection with the idea of finding one’s voice through a combination of inheriting from the past and inventing for the future with emphasis on the role of language in this perception and construction of the self. While the process of translation between the self and language seems to require a loss of the self, the self is, nonetheless, reconstructed as a more dynamic and selfassured entity which can now enjoy anew the authority and the right to speak for the community, the ‘we’: ‘finding one’s voice through an autobiographical exercise is a work of mourning for the rebirth of the self ’ (Saito 2009: 254), for arriving at self-knowledge. So one loses themselves in order to find themselves, to constitute themselves stronger, to find their voice as themselves. This points to an aspect of this philosophical-autobiographical writing which Cavell’s readers do not fail to pick: its ‘aspiration toward the therapeutic’ (Cavell 1994: 4), perhaps, a Wittgensteinian inheritance itself.14 The ‘therapeutic process of gaining a clear view’, and consequently of achieving perspicuity, as Hagberg points out in his reading of Wittgenstein, ‘is common to both’ philosophical and autobiographical investigations (2003: 203). The possibility of perspicuity which Wittgenstein allocates also to the ‘ordinary’ language and expression, Cavell relates to ‘the movement from being lost to finding oneself ’ (1996: 378). I conclude this brief outline of Cavell’s ideas about the relation between the philosophical and the autobiographical with an acknowledgement of these ideas’ consonance with aspects of autobiographical philosophy as is treated in this book and my intention is neither to distort this consonance or worse silence it. My aim, though, is to build on

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the notion of vulnerability (Chap. 6) that the insertion of the autobiographical into the philosophical necessarily secures, and to further comment on the symbolic value of autobiographical philosophy as a response to madness, that condition of absence of voice. Yet, while Cavell’s understanding of how the autobiographical meets the philosophical is more general and less qualified, I identify the onset of the demand for this response and of autobiographical philosophy as being inaugurated with Ecce Homo. With Ecce Homo and autobiographical philosophy, Nietzsche initiated and acted out a new way of relating to one’s own existence: to live life as philosophy—but as the philosophy which in turn does justice to life rather than that which attempts to model it according to certain philosophical doctrines, virtues, principles, et cetera—and write philosophy as a real manifestation of (this) life and not as an attempt to abstract and purify empirical reality. Instead, autobiographical philosophy reflects the incompleteness and polymorphousness of our existence, our life and our bodies. Nietzsche’s autobiographical philosophy is not a doctrine; it is a call for us to be faithful and say ‘Yes!’ not to him, but to our specificity and to life. Autobiographical philosophy is thus the philosophical genre which initiates the act and the signature of the philosopher’s pledge. It is a commitment which comes with an acknowledgement of the necessity of putting oneself at risk as well as with a compliance to it; a pledge to what I call the putting of the self on the line. Within the sphere of autobiographical philosophy, one can go as far as one chooses. In Bataillean terms, one knows how far one can go but, of course, what distinguishes one philosopher from another is precisely the distance that they choose to cover which translates into the extent of the risk they are prepared to take.

The Line Between Nietzsche’s Life and Philosophy Reinforcing the idea that the only reading which is philosophically legitimate is the one which reads the bios (of the philosopher) as being part of the (wider philosophical) system is Derrida’s (technical) account

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of the relation between bios, logos and graphē. In Otobiographies: The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name (1982), Derrida describes the borderline that traverses the corpus (philosophy) and the body (life) as ‘not a thin line’ (1988: 5). The significance of Nietzsche here lies precisely in the fact that he challenges, in effect, the thickness of this line which is implied by Derrida. Living life philosophically and turning philosophy into the philosophy of his life, Nietzsche challenges the boundaries of the two spaces, and he gradually comes to suggest (not explicitly but implicitly) an experience of the two as one. We are therefore left to see how the ‘dynamis’ (Derrida’s term for this borderline) is constituted and how ‘not thin’ it remains. Using as a perspective the space between logos (reason and/or language) and grammē (line) or graphē (writing), Derrida proceeds towards the production of a discourse on bios which encompasses both life and death, sketching its terminological derivatives: logical—graphical, biological—biographical and thanatological—thanatographical (4–5). But Derrida’s commitment to the ethical is quickly revealed through his understanding of the biographical not as a text alone, ‘a corpus of empirical accidents’, but rather as a system in which communication is possible. Through the biographical space a voice is raised but also the demand for an ear. It is the space where ‘the proper name and the signature’ (5) may be read or heard. The operation of this space depends on the relation or the ‘borderline’ between ‘the system and the subject of the system’, between the work and the life, between logos and bios. We have already seen that Derrida calls this borderline dynamis on account of its force and understands it as ‘not thin’. In my view, Nietzsche challenges both the thickness of this dynamis suggested by Derrida, and the implied demarcation between the spaces of logos and bios that dynamis creates. In other words, what I propose here is a re-evaluation of the alleged visibility and thickness of the line in the case of Nietzsche, which separates ‘the enclosure of the philosophemes, on the one hand, and the life of an author already identifiable behind the name, on the other’ (5). The potentiality of the thickness of dynamis to be challenged and transformed, as is indeed what happens in the case of Nietzsche, is an essential characteristic of autobiographical philosophy and consequently of the extent of the risk that the philosopher is willing to take.

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In one of his question to Derrida in the Roundtable on Autobiography, Rodolphe Gasché introduces the term ‘border’ to suggest that it is ‘the internal border of work and life’ from where texts are produced (1988: 41). Unless the border is porous, though, in which case it would allow for a relation between what it divides, it is generally accepted that it maintains a safe distance between the two parts be this mental, physical, social, political, et cetera. As an alternative to Derrida’s dynamis and Gasché’s border, then, I would like to introduce the equally pictorial two-set Venn diagram with the surfaces of the two circles indicating the two elements—work and life—in terms of space. What is most useful with this diagram is that it clearly depicts the relation of the two spaces or elements while indicating at the same time a third space that the relation itself creates. This third space needs to be understood not as fixed and static but on the contrary as flexible and changeable due to its ability to shrink or expand. It is the intersection of the two circles, the shared space, in which the ‘autobiographical-philosophical event’ in Nietzsche takes place. This is the shared space of the work that is not work alone and of life that is not life alone (see Fig. 2.1). In Nietzsche, this space, which I will call auto-bio-logico-graphical is large and growing larger. It is impossible to attach exact dates to the figures below, since the expansion of this third space should be understood as a dynamic process, which led to the point when—and this was even before Nietzsche’s collapse in Turin, in 1889—there were hardly two distinct spaces or realms of activity (see Fig. 2.2). As the auto-bio-logico-graphical space expands or when, as Derrida states, ‘the problem of the autos, of the autobiographical, [is] redistributed’ (1988: 45)—an expansion which implies that the degree of assimilation between the body (life) and the corpus (work) increases—the previously distinct spaces of the body and the corpus shrink as they lose their independence, autonomy and balance, and living and writing are no longer that distinguishable. The importance of this space is more than symbolic. It is the space from which subjectivity is constructed. Since Nietzsche tells us that there is no (unitary) self which knows or which is to be known, there cannot be any (unitary) subject to write about. Therefore, Ecce Homo does not—cannot—tell the story of an ‘I’. Sarah Kofman first

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life

auto-bio-logico-graphical

work

Fig. 2.1  A schematic representation of the intersection of earlier Nietzsche’s life and work

introduces this idea only to relate it to the taking off of the masks Nietzsche has been assuming so far, also suggesting that ‘only the time of the autobiography permits the “I” to accede to itself in a gesture of selective and discriminative reaffirmation’ (1994: 57). It is rather the

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life

auto-bio-logico-graphical

work Fig. 2.2  A schematic representation of the dramatically expanded intersection of later Nietzsche’s life and work

story itself that constructs the ‘I’ both as the narrating/writing subject and as the narrated/written object. Bios (life) is, therefore, writing itself. Nietzsche’s dynamis keeps shrinking, getting thinner—in self-destruction or self-overcoming—until it dissolves, allowing philosophy to take over and determine his life. This complete dissolution of dynamis is the same as the maximization of the intersection of the Venn diagram, the auto-bio-logico-graphical space. The two circles slide one over the other, leaving very little intact from the spaces of work and life, and creating instead this prevailing overlapping third space which becomes almost the only space, the only corpus. Philosophy, in other words, is beginning to write his life, but since his life is philosophy and his philosophy is his life, it is life which is actually writing itself, upsetting the power structures of agency and agent, of subject and object, of philosopher

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and philosopheme. The loss of the distinction between the two spheres of activity (philosophy and life) leads to Nietzsche assuming in life his philosophical personas, that of Dionysus and of the Crucified among others. The symptoms of such a merging of the two spheres into one also implies a breaking away from the conventions of linguistic expression into a style that could be called ‘eccentric and liberated’ or ‘histrionic’, even if language does not break down completely until the final mental collapse. This is the moment when the auto-bio-logico-graphical space takes over completely. The impersonal turns from a philosophical device into reality. Impersonality is fleshed out. Nietzsche enters into psychosis.

Notes 1. Franz Camille Overbeck (1837–1905) was a German Protestant theologian. His friendship with Nietzsche began in the early 1870s at the University of Basel where the two worked as Professors of New Testament Exegesis and Old Church History, and Classical Philology respectively. They remained close friends throughout their lives. Immediately after 7 January 1889, when Overbeck received a letter from Nietzsche, symptomatic of his mental instability, he travelled to Turin where Nietzsche was and took him to a psychiatric clinic in Basel. Overbeck continued to visit Nietzsche until his death in 1900. 2. The term ‘autobiography’ was first suggested as a hybrid word in 1797 by William Taylor (English scholar; 1765–1836), even if deprecatingly due to what he perceived as its pedantic character, and later, in 1809, by Robert Southey (English Romantic poet; 1774–1843) in its present sense. 3. Lejeune’s definition of ‘autobiography’ first appears in 1971 in L’Autobiographie en France, while the revised one, which is used here, appears in 1989 in On Autobiography. 4. In his preface to Sade, Fourier, Loyola (1971), Roland Barthes defines the ‘biographeme’ as follows: ‘Were I a writer, and dead, how I would love it if my life, through the pains of some friendly and detached biographer, were to reduce itself to a few details, a few preferences [tastes], a few inflections, let us say: to “biographemes”’ (1977: 9).

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5. Named after Structuralism (an intellectual movement of the early- to mid-twentieth century), which offered an interpretation of culture in terms of structures which are manifested in language, Post-structuralism is a school of thought which challenges the principles of Structuralism and their implications. Specifically, it sought to undermine any conceptual, theoretical or ideological system which claimed to have universal validity and offered a model of subjectivity as a work in progress devoid of fixed or predetermined meanings. Seen in this light, then, the meaning of philosophical, literary, artistic or other cultural products remains for ever open and undecided, indeed undecidable. Post-structuralism was a predominantly French phenomenon which developed in the 1960s and established itself internationally by the 1970s, and is associated with philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, JeanFrançois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva, and others. 6. Simon Critchley’s claim raises the need for a brief terminological clarification here, namely that in the context of this book, the term ‘bios’ encompasses the otherwise different concepts of body as well as of (empirical) life. 7. See here a fuller presentation of this idea as is expressed by Keefe and Smyth: ‘The emphasis on the decentred self would mean that autobiographical writing could no longer be regarded as a privileged and unproblematic site of self-expression; the unity of the text had been contested in parallel with the unity of the subject. Deconstructive and psychoanalytic criticism in particular seemed to have forced a reappraisal of the relationship between writing and the self. […] Indeed, the study of autobiography emerges as affording the possibility of analysing the processes by which selfhood is constructed; uniquely, it becomes the site of the formation of subjectivity through writing. From this point of view, an autobiography is the locus of the confrontation between a fragmentary self and a multivocal text’ (Keefe and Smyth 1995: 2). 8. In this edition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (2008), the translator, Adrian Del Caro, uses instead the words ‘searchers’ and ‘researches’, but in a footnote he explains the related meanings of searching, attempting, experimenting, researching and tempting, entailed in the words ‘Suchern’ and ‘Versuchern’ that Nietzsche uses.

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9. ‘My formula for human greatness is amor fati [love of fate]: that you do not want anything to be different, not forwards, not backwards, not for all eternity. Not just to tolerate necessity, still less to conceal it— all idealism is hypocrisy towards necessity—but to love it…’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 99). 10. After the First World War, life philosophy was viciously attacked because it was considered to have ‘facilitated the success of the general biologism in the theory of culture, which culminated in National Socialist racism’ (Schnädelbach 1984: 149). It is the same criticism that had already come from Georg Lukács in The Destruction of Reason (1962), where he presents Dilthey as ‘the founder of imperialistic vitalism’ (1980: 417) and Nietzsche as ‘the founder of irrationalism in the imperialistic period’ (309) as well as ‘a direct forerunner of the Hitlerian view’ (337). Again, like Schnädelbach, Lukács had argued that ‘both by his historical relativism and nihilistic scepticism and by his irrationalist view of life Dilthey made possible the rise of the Fascist Weltanschauung’ (de Mul 2004: 45). 11. See Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (1995); A. C. Grayling, The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life (2001); Deric Bircham, A Philosophy for Life (2006); Robert Rowland Smith’s Breakfast With Socrates: A day with the world’s greatest minds: The Philosophy of Everyday Life (2010); Jules Evans, Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations (2012); Trevor Curnow, Introducing Philosophy for Everyday Life: A Practical Guide, (2012); John M. Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus (2012). 12. According to Michael Gorra, ‘the “autobiographical exercises” in Cavell’s A Pitch of Philosophy seem a failure’ because, he claims, the text would not be ‘accessible and interesting to a reader who doesn’t already know the permutations of its author’s thought’ (1995: 146). In my view, Gorra completely misses the point regarding the nature of Cavell’s text. For a full account of Gorra’s criticism, see his article ‘The Autobiographical Turn’ (1995). 13. Henry David Thoreau was an American essayist, poet, philosopher and historian. Walden (first published in 1854 with the title: Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is an account of Thoreau’s views on simple living in nature. 14. See Garry Hagberg’s article ‘On Philosophy as Therapy: Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Autobiographical Writing’ (2003).

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References Baggini, Julian. 2002. Philosophical Autobiography. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 45 (3): 295–312. Routledge. http:// www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/002017402760258141#preview. Accessed 12 Aug 2012. Barthes, Roland. 1977. Sade, Fourier, Loyola, trans. Richard Miller. London: Jonathan Cape. Bollnow, Otto Friedrich, 1955. Dilthey. Eine Einführung in seine Philosophie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Cavell, Stanley. 1994. A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cavell, Stanley. 2010. Little did I Know: Excerpts from Memory. Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress. Cavell, Stanley. 1996. The Cavell Reader, ed. Stephen Mulhall. Oxford: Blackwell. Critchley, Simon. 2008. The Book of Dead Philosophers. London: Granta Publications. Derrida Jacques. 1988. Otobiographies: The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name. In The Ear of the Other, trans. Peggy Kamuf, ed. Christie McDonald. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Dilthey, Wilhelm. 1969. The Essence of Philosophy, trans. Stephen A. Emery and William T. Emery. New York: AMS Press. Foucault, Michel. 2010a. The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France 1982–1983, trans. Graham Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gabara, Rachel. 2006. From Split to Screened Selves: French and Francophone Autobiography in the Third Person. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gasché, Rodolphe. 1988. The Internal Border. In The Ear of the Other, trans. Peggy Kamuf, ed. Christie McDonald. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Gasché, Rodolphe. 1990. Ecce Homo or the Written Body. In Looking After Nietzsche, trans. Judith Still, ed. Laurence A. Rickels. New York: State University of New York Press. Gorra, Michael. 1995. The Autobiographical Turn. Transition (68): 143–153. Gusdorf, Georges. 1980. Conditions and Limits of Autobiography. In Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, ed. James Olney, Princeton

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University Press, pp. 28–48. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7ztmtj.5. Accessed 15 May 2012. Hagberg, Garry. 2003. On Philosophy as Therapy: Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Autobiographical Writing. Philosophy and Literature 27 (1): 196–210. Hayman, Ronald. 1980. Nietzsche: A Critical Life. London: Willmer Brothers. Hollingdale, R.J. 1965. Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Kant, Immanuel. 2000. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keefe, Terry, and Edmund Smyth. 1995. Autobiography and the Existential Self: Studies in Modern French Writing. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Kofman, Sarah. 1994. Explosion I: Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo. In Diacritics, vol. 24, no. 4, trans. Duncan Large, 51–70. The John Hopkins University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/465358. Accessed 19 Jan 2009. Lejeune, Philippe. 1989. On Autobiography, trans. Katherine Leary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lukács, Georg. 1980. The Destruction of Reason, trans. Peter R. Palmer. Whitstable: Whitstable Litho. McDonald, Christie. 1988. The Ear of the Other, trans. Peggy Kamuf, ed. Christie McDonald. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. de Mul, Jos. 2004. The Tragedy of Finitude: Dilthey’s Hermeneutics of Life, trans. Tony Burrett. New Haven: Yale University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968a. Also Sprach Zarathustra. In Nietzsche Werke VI1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968b. The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1996. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. and ed. Christopher Middleton. Indianapolis: Hackett. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1997. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Helen Zimmern. New York: Dover. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007a. Ecce Homo. In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007d. The Anti-Christ. In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2008. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Olney, James (ed.). 1980. Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ong, Yi-Ping. 2011. Of Voice and Vulnerability: Experience as Inexperience in Cavell’s Little Did I Know. MLN 126 (5): 962–971. Saito, Naoko. 2009. Ourselves in Translation: Stanley Cavell and Philosophy as Autobiography. Journal of Philosophy of Education 43 (2): 253–267. Schnädelbach, Herbert. 1984. Philosophy in Germany 1831–1933. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomassen, Lasse. 2005. Derridaphilia. In Derrida: Screenplay and Essays on the Film, ed. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wright, Douglas G. 2006. The Subject of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo. In Autobiography as Philosophy: The Philosophical Uses of Self-Presentation, ed. Thomas Mathien and Douglas G. Wright. Abingdon: Routledge.

3 Nietzsche’s Intuitive Movement in a Labyrinth of Contradictions and Masks

Of Sickness, Health and Intuition Nietzsche’s taste for heights, for the summit, for health, strength and bravura is undeniable. My philosophy, he writes in Ecce Homo, is created ‘from out of my will to health, to life’ (2007a: 76). But which position do sickness and weakness hold in Nietzsche’s thought? Why of all human conditions do physical sickness (explicitly) and mental sickness (implicitly) constitute the decadent human condition par excellence? Must a sick body necessarily be inhabited by a sick soul and a sick mind? It is obvious that Nietzsche is deeply influenced by the ancient Greek credo νοῦς ὑγιὴς ἐν σώματι ὑγιεῖ (a healthy mind in a healthy body), according to which equal importance was placed on both the body and the spirit, and consequently on both theoretical and physical education and exercise. These are qualities which feature centrally in the metaphorical construct of the summit in which he places his Zarathustra or his wishful construct of the ‘free spirit’ figure. Nietzsche warns about the risks but also the reward. The way to it is full of hardship and loneliness. The air is icy and poisonous: ‘you need to be made for it or you will catch a cold’ (72). Being on the summit, however, is © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_3

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also liberating: ‘How freely you can breathe. How many things you feel to be beneath you!’ (72). In this light, of course, a refutation of a sick or degenerate body and spirit makes sense. But can Nietzsche really be against sickness? How is one to interpret his ambiguous assertion that ‘[s]ickness is a powerful stimulant—but one has to be healthy enough for it’ (Nietzsche 2007c: 276)? This assertion from the Writings from the Late Notebooks is historicized by Hollingdale who points out that by 1876 Nietzsche’s ‘health had […] settled into the rhythmic cycle of sickness and recovery which was to persist for the remainder of his life’ (1965: 130). The association between Nietzsche’s life and work that Hollingdale points to here is not at all unlikely. It is ironic, though, that despite his powerful instrument of intuition (Instinkt), necessary for the reversal of bad into good, the time will come that Nietzsche will not be healthy enough to use sickness as a stimulant for greater health. It is interesting though, that this biological condition understood literally further confirms Nietzsche’s philosophical idea—one has to be healthy enough for sickness—which was, of course formulated as a metaphorical construct. Someone who is the opposite of a decadent should have the ability and strength to heal himself, to regenerate, to use his sickness in order to experience health anew: ‘almost all passions have come into disrepute because of those who aren’t strong enough to turn them to their advantage—One must be clear that the same objection can be made to passion as to sickness: and yet—we couldn’t do without sickness and even less without the passions… We need the abnormal, we give life a tremendous shock with these great sicknesses …’ (Nietzsche 2007c: 262).1 So Nietzsche claims, if one is healthy enough to use one’s sickness as a form of stimulant rather than as a source of self-annihilation, one not only avoids death by continuing to live, but uses this stimulus (which reminds one of one’s destructibility and finitude) to ascend to a higher, more creative type of existence. Physical weakness is not in itself exclusive of ascent, but should not be defended at all costs: ‘in the concept of the good person, the defence of everything weak, sick, badly formed, suffering from itself, everything that should be destroyed […] is believed, as morality’ (150–151). Nietzsche points out that sickness and weakness have indeed become characteristics of (Christian) morality: ‘Christianity needs sickness’; ‘you have to be sick enough for [Christianity]’; ‘sickness

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belongs to the essence of Christianity’ (2007d: 49, 50, 51), et cetera. I should clarify that Nietzsche condemns sickness when it falls prey to the unhealthy and weak spirit that cannot resist the Christian propaganda. He therefore accuses Christianity of using sickness and other weaknesses such as guilt as a tool to reinforce its authority over the vulnerable subject with the intention of its intellectual atrophy and the promise of salvation: ‘every type of misery, age, hardship, and above all illness,—these are just tools [Christianity uses] in the struggle against science. Troubles prevent people from thinking’ (47). However, Nietzsche emphasizes that instead of investing in these hardships morally and religiously, people should turn them to their benefit. This benefit should not be understood only as the possible healing of the sickness—which is not something Nietzsche disapproves of—but, also, as an acknowledgement of life’s polymorphous nature. Nietzsche insists that people recognize that the condition of sickness is just another condition of life, another perspective through which life is to be perceived. People should, therefore, understand the fundamental principle of bios (life), which consists of the constant war between the forces of eros (love; creation) and thanatos (death; destruction), with their bearing to Freudian theory being more than obvious. This principle reduces bios—an amoral reduction—to its deepest and most basic functions of ‘growth’ and ‘flow’: ‘Life itself is not a means to something; it is merely a growth-form of power’ (Nietzsche 2007c: 274). Associations between this position and Nietzsche’s theory of the ‘will to power’ as well as of his vitalism have provided critics with efficient, yet not justified tools for a vicious criticism of Nietzsche’s project for its dangerous political implications and ethical shortcomings. The quasibiological discourse Nietzsche chooses to use (growth-form), however, encourages us to see life as the organic process which goes its way of self-destruction and self-creation independent of any moral imperatives. One never asks a tree why it grows. Sick or healthy, then, it no longer matters, as long as one is aware of the other side, and is able—potentially—to turn whatever one finds oneself in, at a given moment, into its opposite—to one’s benefit. This is what Nietzsche did with his physical illness, which made him interrupt and eventually quit his career as a philologist, which he came to

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consider a fortunate decision. Whatever comes to one by necessity or contingency, not only does one have to make it work for oneself, one must also love it. It is by loving the necessity of contingency (amor fati) that one loves oneself: To be able to look out from the optic of sickness towards healthier concepts and values, and again the other way around, to look down from the fullness and self-assurance of the rich life into the secret work of the instinct of decadence – that was my longest training, my genuine experience, if I became the master of anything, it was this. I have a hand for switching perspectives: the first reason why a ‘revaluation of values’ is even possible, perhaps for me alone. (Nietzsche 2007a: 76; emphasis added)

Nietzsche is advocating, therefore, a world where everything and everybody has a place, where unity and harmony are the results of a successive striving of contradictory forces and perspectives: ‘all oppositions are combined into a new unity in him’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 129–130). Even beauty—that sensuous aesthetic experience—should be seen as the result of opposites and contradictions instead of homogeneous and nearly overlapping elements: ‘I walked outside to discover the most beautiful day Upper Engadine had ever shown me—transparent, glowing in colours, containing all opposites, everything between ice and the South’ (137). Everything that people have seen as bad and painful is potentially good and placating. It is the clash between the two that keeps the world going—and going beautifully. For this idea, Nietzsche fully acknowledges his debt to the pre-Socratic philosophers, especially Heraclitus, the philosopher of opposites and contradictions, whose pun on βιός (bow) and βίος (bios)—βιός τῷ τόξῳ ὄνομα βίος ἔργον δὲ θάνατος (The name of the bow is life, its action is death) (Heraclitus DK B48)— is of relevance, as it implies that life entails and indeed includes death. Nietzsche writes: I generally feel warmer and in better spirits in [Heraclitus’] company than anywhere else. The affirmation of passing away and destruction that is crucial for a Dionysian philosophy, saying yes to opposition and war, becoming along with a radical rejection of the very concept of “being”—all these

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are more closely related to me than anything else people have thought so far. The doctrine of the “eternal return”, which is to say the unconditional and infinitely repeated cycle of all things—this is Zarathustra’s doctrine, but ultimately it is nothing Heraclitus couldn’t have said too. (Nietzsche 2007a: 109–110)

It is the same idea Nietzsche will have Zarathustra declare: ‘pain is also a joy, a curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun—go away or else you will learn: a wise man is also a fool. […] All things are enchained, entwined, enamored’ (2008: 263). How, then, is it possible to deny anything that comes in your life, if everything is your life? Where does this leave one, though, when it comes to questions of agency? Does opening up to contingency necessarily exclude any degree of active attitude or relation towards it? This question will have to be answered in the negative. On the contrary, affirmation should be read as the ultimate human activity which includes choosing as well: someone who ‘turned out well […] honours by choosing, by permitting, by trusting’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 77). While Nietzsche may indeed reject free will as an independent agency that can actually make things happen or prevent things from happening, he still saves choice as the minimum version of the right—as well as the responsibility—that the individual is granted, with which he can relate to what happens by necessity. When Nietzsche writes that he is not related to his parents (78) or that he is ‘without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood’ (77), it does not mean that he literally gets rid of his blood, he just chooses to ‘look away’ from it: ‘I want to learn more and more to see what is necessary in things as the beautiful in them—thus I shall become one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: may be my love from now on! I want to wage no war against the ugly. […] May looking away be my only form of negation!’ (Nietzsche in Hollingdale 1965: 177). If looking away is the result of a choice, as is the making beautiful, how are we to understand choice—having constituted it as a plausible option—and what are its consequences? Nietzsche might be able to ‘choose’ his father (Julius Ceasar, Alexander, Dionysus) but is his choice, and choice in general, to be understood as a costless luxury? On the contrary, choice is one of the heaviest human responsibilities.

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Unfortunately, there is no manual for choosing correctly. The ingredient it takes is instinct. How is instinct, then, to be understood? The word ‘instinct’ appears in the English translations of Nietzsche’s texts and inaccurately stands for two different things. In some instances—which are very few—the word is closely related to the animal instincts, drives or impulses, such as aggression, sexual appetite, et cetera and is found in Nietzsche’s original texts as ‘Trieb’: ‘But your wicked instincts also thirst for freedom’ (Aber auch deine schlimmen Triebe dürsten nach Freiheit) (2008: 30; 1968a: 49) and ‘all instincts become sacred in the seeker of knowledge’ (dem Erkennenden heiligen sich alle Triebe) (2008: 58; 1968a: 96). The other meaning of the English word ‘instinct’ is intuition, which in the German original is found as ‘Instinkt’, a word which is used with much greater frequency. Some of these cases are: ‘my sureness of instinct in practice’ (meine I n s t i n k t – S i c h e r h e i t in der Praxis) (2007a: 81; 1969: 271); ‘I have no sense of atheism as a result, and even less as an event: for me it is an instinct’ (Ich kenne den Atheismus durchaus nicht als Ergebniss, noch weniger als Ereigniss: es versteht sich bei mir aus Instinkt) (2007a: 85; 1969: 276); ‘In spiritual pregnancy a certain cleverness of instincts directs you to wall yourself in’ (eine Art Selbst-Vermauerung gehört zu den ersten Instinkt-Klugheiten der geistigen Schwangerschaft) (2007a: 89; 1969: 282). By introducing ‘Instinkt’ (instinct as intuition),2 Nietzsche saves choice from the risk of associating it with rational calculation or total free will. Consequently, by introducing the ‘instinctive (intuitive) choice’, he saves the individual from a potentially devastating and helpless fate: ‘the opposite of a decadent […] instinctively [instinktiv] gathers his totality from everything he sees, hears, experiences: he is a principle of selection […] he does not believe in “bad luck” or “guilt”’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 77). There is a distinction to be drawn, therefore, between what comes unto you, ‘near’ you and your own reaction to it, which should be acknowledged as action: ‘I have always instinctively chosen the correct remedy for bad states; while complete decadents always choose the means that hurt themselves’ (76). Chance and accidental events, therefore, are what grant choice its importance. It is only when confronted with a totally unpredictable incident that intuition is activated, leading to the ‘correct’ decision, that is, the decision which is characteristic of the people who ‘turn […] out well!’

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(77): ‘I have to be unprepared in order to be in control of myself’ (78). It is the unpredictability and the giving oneself up to this unpredictability, to this world of chance, that guarantees relative power over one’s life. The correctness of the decision, furthermore, should be read along the same lines as Nietzsche’s metaphorical construction of the eternal return, the principle that ‘[t]his life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’ (1974: 273). The correctness of one’s decision depends, therefore, on whether it is geared towards a life which one would happily live over and over again in eternity.

One is Many: ‘My Hypothesis: The Subject as Multiplicity’ We have seen how Nietzsche values contradictions and oppositions as the only presupposition of creation, harmony, beauty and life, and this is a lesson he learns from Heraclitus. It is nevertheless crucial to ask whether such a presupposition holds not only for the cosmos but also for the individual. Nietzsche expresses his suspicion of a singular, monolithic subject and argues instead for multiplicity, which, however, should not necessarily be interpreted as contradictory: ‘The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and our consciousness in general? […] My hypothesis: The subject as multiplicity’ (Nietzsche 1968b: 270). For Derrida, Kofman, Vattimo and others, it is clear that the practical application of this hypothesis, which they also share, the hypothesis of the subject as a space of a proliferation of multiple identities, is a multiplicity of perspectives, which allows one to experience the world and people as well-rounded as possible: ‘I have a hand for switching perspectives’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 76). And this is how Derrida reads Nietzsche in Otobiographies, not as a philosopher, scholar or scientist—all these leave ‘their lives and names out of their writings’ (Derrida 1988: 7)—but as a multiplicity of faces behind masks and behind pseudonyms (Dionysus, the Crucified, Zarathustra, Nietzsche), mixing and leading ‘all the affiliated threads of the name astray in a labyrinth’ (11).

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Nietzsche moves within the labyrinth which he constructs for himself simulating a Borgesian proliferation of forking paths and simultaneous choices, a movement which parallels a type of existence which is anything but monolithic, anything but single. This idea of a polymorphous existence has been interpreted in a number of ways by scholars (Derrida, Kofman, Zupančič, White, Deleuze, Vattimo, Klossowski, et cetera.), and has often been read in accordance with Nietzsche’s own metaphor of the noon, the shadowless time during which all states and statements are ‘at once possible […] and necessarily contradictory’ (Derrida 1988: 15). Even with his genealogy, Derrida argues, Nietzsche retreats to contradictory interpretations of and identification with a dead father and a too living mother: ‘Inasmuch as I am and follow after my father, I am the dead man and I am death. Inasmuch as I am and follow after my mother, I am life that perseveres, I am the living and the living feminine. […] This double birth explains who I am and how I determine my identity: as double and neutral’ (15). But living like this is not a straightforward thing. I agree with Alenka Zupančič, who maintains that ‘to be up to the task of confronting the neutrality of life is akin to walking a tightrope […]—it entails walking on the edge that constitutes the “middle”’ (2003: 88). This ‘middle’ is to be understood as the edge of a sheet of paper which separates the two sides while holding the sheet together. The middle ‘exists only as an edge’ (89), which makes both the distinctions and the unity possible. And what an acrobat Nietzsche is. Along with or in response to the notion of multiplicity, Nietzsche introduces what proves to be an ambiguous and perilous concept, that of unity, of becoming one: ‘It is clever of me to have been many things and to many places so I can become one thing—can come to one thing. For a long time I even had to be a scholar’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 115). It is inevitable that the concept of unity, or rather the access to unity, needs to be read along the lines of teleology. If unity follows multiplicity in a linear fashion, then the most disturbing implication would be for Nietzsche to believe that he has become what he is. Yet, it is apparent that he considers he has arrived at a place which he had anticipated: metaphorically speaking, at the peak of the summit: ‘the situations witnessed by these writings [Untimely Meditations], I would not want to

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deny that they are basically only talking about me. The essay “Wagner in Bayreuth” is a vision of my future; by contrast, “Schopenhauer as Educator” registers my innermost history, my becoming. Above all my pledge!… What I am today, where I am today […]—I did not deceive myself for a minute about the path, the sea, the danger—and the success!’ (115). This is a kind of dead-end raising itself in Ecce Homo, an invisible stoppage to Nietzsche’s becoming, a telos. The implication of ‘one believing to be what one is’, an assumption which is also reinforced by the association of ‘becoming’ with ‘history’ (past), as well as by the term ‘success’, can be argued to mean a teleological formation of a self, and which in this context can be thought of as symptomatic of madness. One could pretend to ignore this implication by drawing attention to Nietzsche’s statements of the period between November 1887 and March 1888, such as: ‘Becoming does not aim at a final state, does not flow into “being”’, and ‘Becoming is of equivalent value every moment; the sum of its values always remains the same’ (1968b: 378). Even if Ecce Homo’s last sentence, ‘Dionysus versus the crucified…’ (2007a: 151), bears Nietzsche’s eternal duel, the unsettled conflict of the absolute double, the absolute neutrality, I believe that an indication of a vital achievement, of having reached a critical point is undoubtedly present. An exploration of the device of the ‘mask’ can help us account for this evident ambiguity. An analysis of Nietzsche’s masking and its implications is likely to cause major problems for the consistency of Nietzsche’s thought. If we assume that a mask hides a face, are we justified in thinking that behind all the masks that Nietzsche wears there is another ‘real’ face? What would this unmasked and naked face be like? What does the taking off of the masks reveal? What is revealed beneath the masked face which is conceived as an organic totality of everybody and everything that makes up ‘Nietzsche’? The significance of Nietzsche’s unmasking was not overlooked by major readers of Nietzsche. Sarah Kofman suggests that Nietzsche’s abandoning of the masks should be read as a movement into death, which leads to a rebirth: Ecce Homo, she writes, ‘is first of all a work of mourning—and in this sense a thanatography—in which Nietzsche buries himself several times over so as to be reborn to himself and

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reappropriate himself ’ (1994: 58). Contrary to this rather teleological reading, Derrida suggests that Nietzsche’s unmasking is in effect another movement of masking. Derrida is very suspicious of Nietzsche’s decision to unmask himself, which he initially interprets as an act which goes ‘against [his] instinct of dissimulation’ (1988: 10) and accuses him of either masochism or hypocrisy. In other words, Derrida suspects that this unmasking is just another (kind of ) mask, saving Nietzsche from being understood as having faith in origins or ends. Like Kofman, Pierre Klossowski sees the unmasking as leading to something new, but, like Derrida, he thinks that it is consistent with and reflects the motive of the masking. The unmasking, Klossowski claims, is more like a revelation of the result of ‘his own secret labour of decomposing the person’ (1997: 223). ‘The mask hides the absence of a determinate physiognomy […]. The mask, which forms a determined physiognomy all the same, […] reveals that the person who appears to wear the mask must also have decided on such-and-such a face with regard to “himself ”’ (224). What should be noted here is both the emphasis that Klossowski puts on the conscious part of this act—it is a decision—as well as the ambivalence that he leaves hanging over the result of this act in the form of the questions that fall on the nature of the resulting ‘self ’. And he continues: ‘Nietzsche would treat his own necessary ego as a mask (what he has become in order to be such-andsuch an ego). […] Ecce Homo, as an autobiography, does not glorify an exemplary ego, but rather describes the progressive disengagement of an idiosyncracy [sic] at the expense of this ego, insofar’, and here Klossowski makes sure that the element of the conscious decision is again stressed, ‘as this idiosyncracy is imposed on the ego, and disintegrates the ego into what it itself constitutes’ (224). But this disintegration of the ego and this self-inflicted indeterminacy of physiognomy, which are the reasons for the masking, are paralleled with chaos, from which Nietzsche is confident that he is safe: ‘An incredible multiplicity that is nonetheless the converse of chaos—this was the precondition, the lengthy, secret work and artistry of my instinct’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 97). It is ‘the richness of Chaos’ (Klossowski 1997: 224), however, Klossowski argues, that the mask conceals—‘the mask is nonetheless an emergence from Chaos’ (223)—and it is this chaos that is eventually revealed in

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Turin. I am sympathetic to Klossowski’s reading here because a certain illusion of having reached somewhere and the illusion of having been some-one can be seen as characteristic of Nietzsche at this stage in his life, when he was close to mental collapse. This is the moment when the heterogeneity of the images and the metaphors making up the body (and the subject) takes over, eliminating any interstices and gaps. Nietzsche himself also points out the necessity of distance and separation amongst these heterogeneous and contradictory elements or abilities3: ‘Rank order of abilities; distance; the art of separating without antagonizing; not mixing anything, not “reconciling” anything’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 97). The heterogeneity and the contradiction of these elements, in Gasché’s words, ‘spac[e] the body out’, but, at the same time, distance ‘prevents the body from returning to chaos’ (1990: 127). I see Nietzsche’s madness as the disappearance of this ‘distance’, which lets the chaos in by creating the illusion that a whole body is eventually created compromising thus Nietzsche’s becoming which ‘presupposes that you do not have the slightest idea what you are’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 96).

Notes 1. This idea cannot but remind one of Bataille’s fascination with whatever has been classified as ‘abnormal’, which he has treated as a manifestation of human existence which he called the ‘heterogeneous’. These concepts will be discussed in Part 2. 2. An important aspect of the concept of intuition is disclosed upon further scrutiny. What does intuition consist of? Is it legitimate to read it as a skill, and if so, is it like all other skills? Is intuition a skill that can be learned, practised or perfected? Starting off as a highly optimistic idea (you are no longer decadent if your choice is instinktiv), it ends up being totally restrictive and elitist: ‘complete decadents always choose the means that hurt themselves’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 76). So, ‘you need to be made for it’ (72), made for the correct choices which will save you from the caste of the decadents. In the same way, you also need to be made for being able to ‘breathe the air of [Nietzsche’s] writings, [knowing] that it is the air of high places, a strong air’ (72). Nobody can measure the hardships of your road, nobody can help you walk it. It is your call. What,

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then, are the implications of these statements? What are we supposed to understand when Nietzsche writes that ‘things like [Ecce Homo] only reach the most select’ (73)? If it is not a matter of accessible knowledge to be possessed and applied, if it is not a matter of education and nurture, can it be a matter of nature, talent or aptitude? Is it really such an exclusive idea? Or is it both? Nietzsche does not exhaust all efforts to become more illuminating, yet the book’s subtitle—How to become what you are—may help to provide an alternative interpretation: There should exist the potentiality for everybody to become apt to the challenge, to make oneself for it, to overcome oneself, one’s limitations. Sarah Kofman seems to be less optimistic, though, when she claims that ‘one can become “only what one is”’ (1993: 103). And, perhaps, one cannot be any more optimistic than that especially since Nietzsche clearly establishes intuition as an affective perception rather than an acquired quality: ‘The sensitivity of my instinct […] gives me psychological antennae to feel and get hold of every secret’ (83). 3. ‘The task of revaluing values might have required more abilities than have ever been combined in any one individual, and in particular contradictory abilities that could not be allowed to disturb or destroy one another’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 97).

References Derrida, Jacques. 1988. Otobiographies: The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name. In The Ear of the Other, trans. Peggy Kamuf, ed. Christie McDonald. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Gasché, Rodolphe. 1990. Ecce Homo or the Written Body. In Looking After Nietzsche, trans. Judith Still, ed. Laurence A. Rickels’. New York: State University of New York Press. Hollingdale, R.J. 1965. Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Klossowski, Pierre. 1997. Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, trans. Daniel W. Smith. London: The Athlone Press. Kofman, Sarah. 1993. Nietzsche and Metaphor, trans. Duncan Large. London: The Athlone Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968a. Also Sprach Zarathustra in Nietzsche Werke VI1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter

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Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968b. The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1969. Ecce Homo in Nietzsche Werke VI3. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1997. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Helen Zimmern. New York: Dover. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007a. Ecce Homo. In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007c. Writings from the Late Notebooks, trans. Kate Sturge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007d. The Anti-Christ. In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Othe Writings, trans. Judith Norman, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2008. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zupančič, Alenka. 2003. The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

4 Nietzsche and Madness

Introducing ‘Madness’ Rarely does an engagement with Nietzsche’s philosophy come without an eventual implicit or explicit, brief or extended, accurate or inaccurate mention or consideration of his madness as well as of madness in general. ‘The starting-point for an engagement with his work’, Gianni Vattimo remarks, ‘was the debate concerning the nature and cause of [his] collapse’ (2002: 168). The neurologist Wilhelm Lange-Eichbaum articulates this association, too, but in an effectively belittling tone: ‘only the psychosis with all its aspects of fame generation, made us pay attention to Nietzsche; this has elevated him to the high plateau on which only then the throne of genius erects itself ’ (Lange-Eichbaum in Weineck 2002: 83). Apart from these similar, but distinct, and by no means exhaustive interpretations, the interest that is generated by this inevitable mark of Nietzsche as the philosopher who went mad, which I do not consider a problem but rather as a confirmation of the interest that madness exerts on the philosopher as well as on the reader of philosophy, may on the one hand reinforce the link between life and philosophy that I have been trying to establish, but, on the other hand, © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_4

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raise sensitive questions related to the nature of this link; how is the relation between his life and his philosophy, especially in the case when his life has been marked by madness, to be understood? These questions bear important implications which subsequently lead to claims that in one way or another take a position as to the way Nietzsche’s philosophy should be read. Do these claims legitimate the drawing of the distinction between bios and philosophy or its erasure? In other words, does my proposal about the relation between life and philosophy still hold when Nietzsche’s madness is considered? ‘Madness’ resists definitions unless one is prepared, as Foucault would say, to subscribe or submit to an already existing system of discourse, power and knowledge, such as religion, science, psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, but also philosophy, literature, etc. It is in and via language, therefore, that one articulates, describes and decides upon what madness is, having been influenced by the existing social and historical demarcations of madness and reason. Accepting thus man’s inevitable immersion in language, and inevitably in these systems of discourse, definitions of madness have long been attempted: from divine inspiration or demonic possession, to a malfunction of humors and fluids, from a disorder of the psyche, of the nerves or the brain to faulty cognition and lack of reason. The most well-known challenge to the systems of discourse—one could say another system of discourse in its own right—came from the anti-psychiatry movement, which attempted to identify madness as an alternative way of perceiving the world, thus saving it from the sphere of abnormality and deviance. After the work of Thomas Szasz, R. D. Laing, and especially that of Michel Foucault, who was sympathetic to anti-psychiatry but objected to his being identified with it, ‘few doubt that definitions of madness and sanity are culturally and historically determined’ (Lindemann 1999: 30). Far from the view of madness as a socio-cultural product, the dissecting eye of twentieth-century psychiatry sees the terms ‘madness’ and ‘insanity’ giving way to more than one hundred and fifty specialized categories of mental illnesses (from dyslexia and juvenile hyperactivity to manic-depression and schizophrenia) which are listed in what is known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The manual is based around an understanding of mental illness as a

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category which relies heavily—apart from the symptoms—also on the cause, and is updated every few years in order to reflect the most recent scientific developments in psychiatry. This practice of such a highly detailed classification of mental illnesses on the basis of their causes draws largely from the Cartesian distinction between the corporeal and the non-corporeal part of the subject (body and mind), and gets down to a distinction between physical or organic reasons (caused by irregularities of the glands, chemicals or genetics), and the non-corporeal, psychological reasons, without excluding combination of the two as in the case of a somatic predisposition and a traumatic experience which triggers an emotional or psychological reaction. But the terminological and conceptual map of mental illness fleshed out in the DSM is far from reflecting madness as is treated here. Even so, or, perhaps, precisely because of this, the reader of this book should not expect a ‘precise’, ‘scientific’ or in any way satisfactory definition of ‘madness’. I am using the term ‘madness’ quite loosely, as I do not intend it to stand for the accurate description of an actual condition or to reflect the socio-historical shift observed in people’s understanding of this condition in terms of its cause, symptoms or treatment and in their attitude and feelings for it. This is part of the monumental project that Foucault undertakes in History of Madness (1961). I will therefore treat the concept of madness as an archetypal term, a philosophical paradigm. For the purposes of my discussion here, I will be referring to madness as—and this will be in a rather Nietzschean vein—the irreversible condition in which one is deprived of one’s cognitive and affective potentiality and is rendered unable to contribute or even relate to one’s own becoming.

The Madness of Nietzsche Nietzsche collapsed on 3 January 1889, in Turin, and within the next couple of days he was accompanied by his friend Overbeck to the psychiatric clinic of Dr Ludwig Wille in Basel, where he was diagnosed with ‘paralysis progressiva’. Specifically, he was said to be suffering from a ‘general paralysis of the insane’ (Hollingdale 1965: 289). This was

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thought to be the normal consequence of syphilitic infection, an association which proved convenient to those who chose to interpret the whole of Nietzsche’s life and philosophical production as a direct effect of latent syphilis. Despite the fact that the circumstances of the death of Nietzsche’s father could point to the possibility of congenital syphilis, the scenario has been abandoned by doctors and Nietzsche scholars alike: Hayman argues that ‘the evidence is not conclusive’ (1980: 24), and Hollingdale clarifies that ‘in all events, the evidence there is disposes of any necessity to believe that Nietzsche inherited insanity from his father and was therefore “mad all along”’ (1965: 37). For this reason, Nietzsche’s syphilis is thus generally agreed to have been caused by an infection that Nietzsche contracted in a brothel around the age of eighteen. Deborah Hayden (2004) and Lynn Margulis (2004), to a greater and smaller scale respectively, provide a matching account of Nietzsche’s symptoms based on his letters to his family and friends and the general symptoms of syphilitic patients. Based on ‘the biological reality that paresis is a gradual process presaged over many years’ (Hayden 2004: 174), Hayden argues that Nietzsche’s final collapse was not a manifestation of an abrupt attack of insanity or of a sudden shift from pure health to serious sickness; rather, she claims, it is perfectly consistent with the already observed progression of the spirochete bacterium causing syphilis which was called Treponema pallidum. As a matter of fact, the bacterium’s progression could account not only for Nietzsche’s intense pain, eye inflammation, rheumatisms and headaches, but (according to Hayden) also for his extremely productive, inspiring and almost ecstatic period in 1888, which included the writing of Twilight of the Idols, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, and The Case of Wagner. Margulis distances herself from Hayden insofar as she considers that the bacterium lay completely dormant in Nietzsche for decades and that ‘the philosopher really did plummet abruptly into madness; armies of spirochetes did awaken suddenly from decades of slumber, and literally began to eat his brain’ (2004: 120). The paretic syphilis scenario, however, is not left undisputed. In his short article ‘What was the cause of Nietzsche’s dementia?’ (2003), the psychologist Leonard Sax argues that Nietzsche’s madness was caused by a meningioma (a type of brain tumour) ‘of the right optic nerve’ (2003:

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50). More interesting, though, is how Sax exposes the grounds of the widely accepted syphilis diagnosis. He shows how this diagnosis was the result of a chain effect of ill-informed, biased and at times completely fictitious claims: ‘One man’s gossip becomes another man’s reference, which in turn becomes a scholar’s footnote’ (53). Sax points to Wilhelm LangeEichbaum as the first who claimed that there existed ‘documentary evidence that Nietzsche had syphilis’ (52). This interpretation, which Sax considers to be undocumented, was endorsed by Richard Blunck, who gave it more solidity in his biography of Nietzsche in 1953.1 These conflicting attempts to diagnose Nietzsche’s condition may be frustrating, yet the lack of agreement does not in any way hinder my discussion here. Despite the disagreements on certain aspects of Nietzsche’s madness, and what seems to be an unavoidable inconclusiveness as to its exact cause, what remains secure is the fact that his condition is attributed to something biological. The alternative to this somatic attribution would be the assumption that Nietzsche drove himself mad through his thoughts. But that would necessarily mean that there are thoughts which would be able to drive people mad, and if this was true, then such ideas would be equally dangerous for their consumers as well as their producer. Or is there a difference between the production of ideas and their consumption? Is it possible that there is a danger involved in the generation of ideas that is absent in the reflection of these ideas by others? If it is—and this is something to which Foucault would not object—then the reader ‘emerges as someone who surpasses Nietzsche’s achievements, thinking the thoughts he thought, but bearing what he could not bear’ (Weineck 2002: 81). I will be returning to these ideas in the next sections, in which I explore the relation between Nietzsche’s madness and his philosophy.

Madness for Nietzsche Even if Nietzsche always acknowledged the dangers of his intellectually rigorous lifestyle—‘Ah, my friend, sometimes the idea runs through my head that I am living an extremely dangerous life, for I am one of those machines which can explode’ (Nietzsche 1996: 178)—and if he had

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Zarathustra admit that ‘there is always some reason in madness’ (2008: 28), he was never comfortable with the possibility of giving himself up to insanity. On 4 May 1885, in a letter to Overbeck, Nietzsche not only shows off his confidence about his mental health but also expresses how highly he values it: ‘I occasionally had a suspicion that you might be inclined to consider the author of Zarathustra2 whacky (übergeschnappt). My danger is indeed very great, but it is not of this kind’ (Nietzsche in Jaspers 1965: 111).3 Moreover, in Ecce Homo, it is with relief—if not pride—that he writes: ‘All pathological intellectual disturbances […] have been completely alien to me to this day, and I have to learn about their nature and frequency through study. […] A doctor who treated me for a long time as a neurological patient finally said: “No! The problem is not your nerves, I am the one who is nervous” [nein! An Ihren Nerven liegt’s nicht, ich selber bin nur nervös]’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 75). And again, in his curriculum vitae that he attached to his letter to Georg Brandes of 10 April 1888: Around 1876 my health grew worse. […] There were extremely painful and obstinate headaches which exhausted all my strength. […] The malaise must have had an entirely local cause—there was no neuropathological basis for it at all. I have never had any symptoms of mental disturbance—not even fever, no fainting.4 […] Rumors have gone around that I am in a madhouse (have even died there). Nothing could be further from the truth. During this terrible period my mind even attained maturity. (Nietzsche 1996: 294)

But, how is this intense effort to confirm his mental lucidity (Klarheit) reconciled with his philosophy? How would the philosopher of amor fati love, or rather be able to love his fate of going mad? Nietzsche’s contempt for, and suspicion and fear of, madness arises because of this inability. Nietzsche considered being mad as one of the very few states—if not the only state—of overwhelming vulnerability and paralysis, in which one can neither exercise choice or (re)act, and from which one cannot escape. Madness is the condition which denies one the possibility of turning the misfortune into an advantage. Nietzsche felt that madness kills; it does not make stronger. Madness, for Nietzsche, is

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irreversible, and as such it is a threat to affirmation and life. Madness cannot be a perspective like any other perspective because it cannot acknowledge the possibility of a shift or of a multiplicity of perspectives. Madness marks a fixation and an interruption of becoming. So, while becoming necessarily entails overcoming oneself or willing ‘to be other than you are in order to become what you are’, at the same time it requires a lucidity and an individuality which will make this becoming other possible. As Klossowski accurately observes, for Nietzsche, [t]o be lucid, an individuality is necessary. Only the experience of identity itself can blossom into a lucidity capable of conceiving the overcoming of identity, and hence its loss. Everything Nietzsche expressed through the heroic nostalgia of his own decline – the will to disappear – stemmed from this lucidity. Nonetheless, this nostalgia was inseparable from his anguish over the loss of a lucid identity. (Klossowski 1997: 98)

It is for these reasons that for Nietzsche madness constitutes an impossibility or a dead-end, and as such it remains devoid of any substantial philosophical value. On the contrary, Nietzsche distinguishes his position from the popular Romantic5 view that madness may guarantee a tinge of the forbidden or access to the source of inspiration and creation for the poet or the artist, an assumption which Foucault totally endorses. This Romantic conception of madness has constructed and made extensive use of the ‘mad genius’ paradigm which, unlike Foucault, Nietzsche challenges and mocks: ‘The fanatic, the possessed, the religious epileptic, all eccentrics have been experienced as the highest types of power; as divine. […] To make oneself sick, mad, to provoke the symptoms of derangement and ruin—that was taken for becoming stronger, more superhuman, more terrible, wiser’ (1968b: 30–31). And again: Reverence for madness. – Because it was noticed that a state of excitement often made the head clearer and called up happy inspirations, it was believed that through the extremest states of excitement one would participate in the happiest of inspirations: and thus the mad were revered as the wise and propounders of oracles. What lies at the bottom of this is a false conclusion. (Nietzsche 2004: 69)

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I would, therefore, claim that Nietzsche neither discusses madness extensively, nor values madness philosophically, as Van Tongeren (2000) seems to suggest when he refers to Nietzsche’s parodic aphorism: ‘in the beginning was the madness, and the madness was, by God!, and God (divine) was the madness’ (Nietzsche in Tongeren 2000: 121). Acknowledging Nietzsche’s unmistakable twist on John’s ‘in the beginning was the Word’, Van Tongeren argues that in spite of the fact that the term ‘madness’ (Unsinn) is used to parody, it should not be interpreted in a negative way. ‘“Madness”’, Van Tongeren writes, ‘is not only a lack of order, of logos, of intelligibility. It is as divine for Nietzsche as is the logos for John’ (2000: 121). In the light of Nietzsche’s sarcastic comments cited earlier, though, I am not so sure about the implications of the premise from which Van Tongeren departs, namely that Nietzsche elevates madness to the realm of the divine, even if only metaphorically. Because of Nietzsche’s praise of the Dionysian experience and suspicion of the Socratic tradition of the sovereignty of reason, or even because of his own becoming mad, Nietzsche, as Arthur Danto rightly points out, ‘is so often taken to be the apostle of impulse and unreason’ (1970: 57). Irrespective of this popular trend, Nietzsche scholars such as Danto, Jaspers and Kofman acknowledge that Nietzsche would not let reason go altogether, and that his critique of reason and rationality does not equal a praise of unreason and irrationality. He was rejecting only that ‘rationality [which goes] against instinct’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 108). In Danto’s reading, however, Nietzsche’s faith in rationality is somewhat stretched. Danto is painstakingly committed in his effort to present Nietzsche as an analytic philosopher, challenging those who present him as an anti-rationalist, with references especially to Nietzsche’s treatment of language and his acceptance of the irreversibility of reason. By doing this, Danto may save Nietzsche from the claims that classify him as a poet rather than a philosopher, yet he necessarily reduces an important element of Nietzsche’s philosophy, namely his passionate objection to the hypocritical belief in reason’s priority over the stomach: ‘It has never occurred to anyone to regard his stomach as a strange or, say, a divine stomach’ (Nietzsche 1968b: 348). This element is equally important for its own merit and, without it, Nietzsche’s thought cannot be understood or fully appreciated.

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Another defence of Nietzsche’s basic commitment to reason is provided by Sarah Kofman and in relation to her discussion of Nietzsche’s use of metaphors. She states that to be Nietzschean does not mean to reject concepts and use only metaphors, which convey a rather loose and fleeting meaning; rather, it means to write conceptually, having in mind that a concept has no more value than a metaphor (1993: 3). What is crucial here is the recognition of the fictiveness of the concepts of reason and of reason in general on the one hand, as well as the inevitability or rather the necessity, on the other, to continue using them: ‘happily it is too late to reverse the development of reason, which rests upon error. […] Error has made men out of animals’ (Nietzsche in Danto 1970: 85); and: ‘Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme that we cannot throw off ’ (Nietzsche 1968b: 283). Despite the inescapability of this error and this scheme, one is not completely powerless. There is space through which one can disturb and undermine reason’s sovereignty. Twisting comprehension or comprehensibility—in this case through the use of metaphorical language—is one way of compromising this sovereignty. This compromise is not achieved from an equally established position of power but, on the contrary, from one of vulnerability. The compromise of the text’s reason is achieved only when the text becomes a vulnerable space and when, according to Kofman, misunderstanding emerges. She points out that ‘to write while displacing the habitual meaning of metaphors, to write outside the norms of the concept, like a “madman”, is to risk not being understood—to want not to be understood—by the herd, by common sense’ (1993: 112), as Nietzsche does at times. This notion of writing like a madman and its implications are at the core of the argument I am pursuing in this book, that is the ethical dimension of autobiographical philosophy as a response to madness. The insertion of the biographical in the philosophical is what makes the philosophical text and the philosophical practice vulnerable, as Nietzsche’s text becomes vulnerable when he writes ‘like a madman’. The question, however, still remains: how does Nietzsche treat madness in his philosophy? The term, as well as the concept ‘madness’ and all related terms and concepts are used, I argue, metaphorically and serve to reinforce his critique of Christian morality. When reading Nietzsche, therefore, one needs to be alert when confronted with

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numerous references to words and phrases such as: madness (Wahnsinn), mad (wahnsinnig), madman (Irrenhäusler), folly (Torheit; Narrheit), fool (Narr), senseless (unsinnig; ohne-Sinn), lunatics (Verrückte), house for the senseless (Haus für Unsinnige), unreason (Unvernunft), irrational (unvernünftig), mental illness (Geisteskrankheit), mental disturbance (geistiger Störung; Geistesstörung), neurasthenic (neurasthenik), insanity (Irrsinn), madhouse or insane asylum (Irrenhaus), craziness (Tollheit), and derangement (Zerrüttung). It is almost always the case that Nietzsche associates these terms with the sickness, decadence and degeneration of Christian morality, using their actual psycho-pathological implications and parameters only to mirror the symptoms of a psychologically and philosophically decadent existence: ‘And the Church itself—doesn’t it have the Catholic insane asylum as its ultimate ideal?—The earth as one big insane asylum’ (Nietzsche 2007d: 49). In what is to be read, therefore, as the core of Nietzsche’s thought, madness is condemned. Below are a few examples from Nietzsche’s texts, all of which need to be read as reflecting the same thing: first, Nietzsche’s insensitivity to the philosophical nuances that all of the terms cited above entail—to which Foucault paid the utmost attention—and, second, his contempt for what these terms represent metaphorically: Alas, much ignorance and error have become embodied in us! Not only the reason of millennia – their madness too breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir. (Nietzsche 2008: 58) Oh, where in the world has greater folly occurred than among the pitying? (Nietzsche 2008: 189) They’ve all gone pious again, they’re praying, they’re mad! (Nietzsche 2008: 254) Germans have everything that has happened on their conscience, everything that is the case today, the most anti-cultural sickness and unreason there is, nationalism, this névrose nationale that Europe is sick from, this immortalising of Europe’s provincial character, of petty politics. They have even robbed Europe of its sense, its rationality – they have steered it into a dead end. (Nietzsche 2007a: 140)

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I have asked myself if all the supreme values of previous philosophy, morality, and religion could not be compared to the values of the weakened, the mentally ill, and neurasthenics: in a milder form, they represent the same ills. (Nietzsche 1968b: 29) The unworthy attempt has been made to see Wagner and Schopenhauer as types of mental illness: one would gain an incomparably more essential insight by making more precise scientifically the type of decadence both represent. (Nietzsche 1968b: 52) Rousseau, beyond a doubt, mentally disturbed; […] The rancor of the sick; the periods of his insanity also those of his contempt of man and his mistrust. (Nietzsche 1968b: 63)

It is evident that Nietzsche uses these terms for what they carry, for their symptoms and implications as mental disorders, in order to compare them on a metaphorical level with ignorance, stupidity, error, bad politics, bad philosophy, morality, religion, contempt for life—in a word, ‘sickness’, understood as the condition which does not allow one to see beauty or value in sickness. Having discussed both the madness of Nietzsche and madness for Nietzsche, I will now seek to revisit the nature of the link between Nietzsche’s life and philosophy, especially from the perspective of his own madness. How does an ‘infected’ bios relate to the philosophical corpus?

Nietzsche’s Philosophy in the Face of His Madness While Nietzsche’s mental collapse may have been responsible for the generation of the massive interest in his philosophy, at the same time it ‘has served as a pretext to dismiss what he wrote long before his collapse’ (Weineck 2002: 83). Malek K. Khazaee, for example, in ‘The Case of Nietzsche’s Madness’ (2008) ‘tries to evaluate [Nietzsche’s] mental state by detecting signs of madness in his writing’ (2008: 40) long before his final collapse on 3 January 1889 or even a week before that

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which is the time that some scholars (for e.g., Jaspers) identify as the onset of Nietzsche’s madness as his letter to Overbeck on 27 December 1888 may suggest. I do not consider Nietzsche’s philosophy to be symptomatic of his madness which sparked off in Turin, but before I clarify my claim with the distinction which I will be making, namely between Nietzsche’s madness and Nietzsche’s coming madness, I feel there is something useful and constructive in raising the question in a general way nonetheless. So, has Nietzsche’s madness affected his philosophy? The possibility that Nietzsche might have been suffering from a type of manic-depression which had gone unnoticed for about 10 years (Jaspers 1965: 97), or that his health might have been oscillating from highs to lows according to the progression of the syphilitic bacterium is suggestive enough that his condition might have been reflected in his work. This is especially true in relation to his later works such as The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche Contra Wagner. Again, estimations and arguments vary, from Zarathustra marking Nietzsche’s first work of insanity to being the best book ever written in German, and from the books of 1888 being repetitive, extravagant and contradictory to being Nietzsche’s masterpieces of maturity. Hollingdale, Hayman and Ridley are among those who, without being oblivious to Nietzsche’s impending madness or to the possibility of symptoms of madness in his work, credit his last books with consistency, clarity and sharpness (of mind), and claim that any doubt or shadowing is a result of the smallness and intolerance of his audience which feels alienated when confronted with Nietzsche’s ideas. Even the most tolerant of Nietzsche’s readers, however, may feel the need to account for sentences such as this: ‘As I am writing this, the postman is bringing me a head of Dionysus’ (Nietzsche 2007a: 78). Commenting on this particular sentence, Walter Kaufmann suggests that ‘[t]his is certainly not vintage Nietzsche, and one need not doubt that if he had retained his sanity just a little longer, he would have rewritten this passage by way of integrating the best parts of it with the earlier version of Sect. “Madness for Nietzsche”’ of Ecce Homo (1978: 457). Contrary to Kaufmann’s advice, however, I feel we do need to doubt what is suggested here rather arbitrarily if not insensitively.

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Why should one assume that had Nietzsche continued living in the same condition as the one in which he was while writing Ecce Homo, he would have changed or removed that sentence? Nevertheless, claims of more or less the same type are put forward by Hayman and Jaspers among others suggesting that had Nietzsche not gone mad, he would not have written in the way he did. These claims, however, are bound to remain rather vague and abstract as it is impossible to confidently decide what from Nietzsche’s texts is symptomatic of madness and what is not. Even with the unsound things that Nietzsche wrote, Hayman acknowledges, ‘we shall never be able to isolate a point at which disease began to unbalance his thinking’ (1980: 361). Having accepted a link between Nietzsche’s madness and aspects of his texts, Jaspers acclaims the philosophical outcome and proposes that ‘the “sick” factors—if we can so designate the unknown biological factor […] may even have made possible what otherwise would not have eventuated. […] What at first impresses one as accidental and strange may suddenly appear as the most profound truth or the meaningful strangeness of the exceptional. The spirit imparts meaning even to the insanity, and so permeates the insane notes that they become indispensable to the work’ (1965: 107). In a similar vein, one of Nietzsche’s friends, Paul Deussen, emphasizes that ‘no one can say to what extent the seeds of insanity were already present as a disposition in this highly talented mind. But if Nietzsche had not diligently separated himself from human society […] who knows whether he might not still be living with us in full health and be able to offer us, instead of the torso of his posthumous works, the perfected divine image of an eccentric but highly noteworthy worldview’ (Deussen in Gilman 1987: 226). Deussen’s views necessarily draw from the Romantic link between madness and creativity which turns the mad into heroic mediators between the darkness, or the fire of truth which they communicate and the safety of the receiver of the (artistic) medium through which the fire is sublimated. We have already seen how Nietzsche would have objected to these considerations. Despite the difficulty that Hayman identifies in confidently deciding when strangeness of expression enters Nietzsche’s text, claims about symptomatic texts, and attempts to save them, increase and become

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more explicit when one considers specifically Ecce Homo, which has very often been read as a symptom of madness or of a coming madness. But does saving Ecce Homo from madness necessarily mean depriving Nietzsche of his own? The distinction between madness and coming madness needs to be made clearer here. While madness marks the irreversibility and Nietzsche’s inability to write anything at all, coming madness only manifests as a liberation of style and as such it is of course reflected in Nietzsche’s work gradually, increasing as time progresses. This is why I doubt Kaufman’s hypothesis, that had Nietzsche not collapsed in Turin he would have come back to change those ‘strange’ sentences. Nietzsche’s coming madness, signs of which may indeed be found in the text, is not enough to disqualify it. So, how can Ecce Homo be read independently as a reliable, consistent and coherent philosophical text? Looking for signs of madness, Hollingdale offers a useful analysis of Ecce Homo according to four aspects: content, organizing ability, style, and focus. According to Hollingdale, when one is reading Ecce Homo the degree of discomfort increases as one’s attention moves from the first two to the third and then to the fourth aspect. The content is consistent, with no new ideas introduced and no old idea contradicted, Nietzsche’s organizing abilities are as good as ever, style is different but ‘the famous brevity of these last works is an effect of absolute control over the means of expression’ (Hollingdale 1965: 238). As for the focus, Hollingdale argues that ‘when Nietzsche leaves philosophy and writes about himself his sense of his own quality passes the bounds of reasonableness and lands in absurdity’ (238). The term ‘absurdity’ is an unfortunate one and does not accurately apply to what Hollingdale justifiably seeks to express. Nor is he sensitive to the fact that in Nietzsche, or more specifically in Ecce Homo, such a clear-cut shift of focus from philosophy to self and back is not very likely to exist. It has already been argued that writing for Nietzsche is the epitome of a tautological act: that of philosophizing and living, articulated and enacted, written and lived in what I called earlier the auto-bio-logico-graphical. It is true, however, that this tautology becomes firmer and more restrictive as well as more apparent the older Nietzsche becomes. There is a progression to be traced, which is manifest as a parallel between the extent or even the

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span of this tautology of life and philosophy on the one hand, and his psychosis on the other. I agree with Hollingdale that Nietzsche’s style is a paradigmatic example of ‘absolute control over the means of expression’, yet one cannot deny that if Ecce Homo stands vulnerable to accusations of being symptomatic of madness, this is chiefly within the domain of style. That the style of Ecce Homo is particular is no secret. From the megalomaniac tone and the fact that he ‘attributes to himself impossible abilities’ (239)—‘I am the first immoralist’, ‘I am the first psychologist’, ‘I am so wise’, etc.—to stylistics and punctuation, particularly the large number of question and exclamation marks, short and sharp sentences and aphorisms, Ecce Homo creates the effect of the tension before an explosion.6 However, what Kofman describes as ‘mad’ punctuation (1994: 61), or Hollingdale describes as ‘passionate diction’, or ‘exalted and impassioned exhortation’ (1965: 167) should be seen, instead, as an attempt to challenge the linguistic boundaries of his time and consciously produce a carefully elaborated poetic discourse, an eccentric, even terrific and terrifying style, a dancing language; a somewhat aggressive dance on a paradoxical, yet very consistent, internal, rhythmic pattern: ‘my attempt to shed a little light and terror as regards myself seems to have been almost too successful’ (Nietzsche 1996: 324), and ‘there is no parallel to it even in nature herself; it blasts, literally, the history of mankind in two—the highest superlative of dynamite’ (331). What would be more appropriate, then, in Ecce Homo, than short and fragmented sentences, abundant with the most extreme emphasis, exclamations, and, of course, questions? Besides, when was Nietzsche not sharp, aphoristic, seemingly contradictory and sincerely polemical? It would thus be inappropriate to isolate Ecce Homo and describe it as a ‘mad’ text without implying the same claim for the rest of Nietzsche’s philosophy with a less explosive language. On the contrary, Ecce Homo is a highly consistent text which follows on from and confirms the rest of his work, albeit with an undoubtedly more eccentric, uninhibited, liberated style: In 1888 his inhibitions decreased rapidly to the point where he freely expressed himself on these subjects not only in more and more letters, but in his books, too. Altogether, the disease can explain no more than

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his growing lack of any inhibition and, toward the very end, the failing power to fashion ideas into a well designed whole. It certainly cannot explain away Nietzsche’s ideas. Large parts of his last books are actually distinguished by a clarity and lucidity that are almost unequalled in German letters, and by a startling depth of insight. […] Even the notes Nietzsche sent to his acquaintances during the first days of January 1889, signing them ‘Dionysus’ or ‘The Crucified,’ throw light on his thought and are meaningful, if mad. (Kaufmann 1978: 67)

And if this lucidity that many commentators identify is in any way related to a pre-collapse (pre-paretic) mania, it is still lucidity. As Dionysus’ soul ‘ought to have sung […] and not talked’ (Nietzsche 2000: 6), Ecce Homo is probably an attempt at a story said or even sung, rather than written. Because of Ecce Homo’s valedictory air, we may assume that Nietzsche is probably aware that he is running out of time, but for what? ‘Not that I have much time … The heavens are glad I am here …’ (in a letter to Cosima Wagner, 3 January 1889, in Kofman 1994: 59). Feeling the end of his ‘decadent’ life approaching (of the life on the slopes rather than on the mountaintops), and by this time his life and work being nearly in complete overlap,7 Nietzsche is liberated. This liberation, as Kaufmann also demonstrated, has an effect on his style and tone, which have to accommodate and reflect the more general liberation from the constraints of reason. Yet, most of his maddest sentences—consistently at the end of the sections—can be seen as revealing a pattern, coming as a musical coda, to confirm in a shocking way the ideas which preceded them in a laconic yet aesthetically loaded way since life for Nietzsche is shaped and made not much differently than a work of art.8

Responding to the ‘Nietzsche Event’ It has been suggested that Nietzsche considered madness to be a negation to life in the sense that it is an obstacle to the affirmation of life, a paralysis and a condition which makes any sense of becoming and of overcoming oneself impossible. For this reason, he almost never

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explicitly treated madness philosophically, but only referred to it metaphorically, to associate it with Christian morality and everything else that is sick, degenerate and decadent, those conditions that paralyse man and negate life. He clearly distances himself from the romantic cliché of the ‘mad genius’, and from the idea that madness is a path to ‘truth’, also because he challenged this very idea of an absolute or hidden ‘truth’ in the first place. But if this is the case, why did Nietzsche turn into a philosophical icon of the renegade from reason? To respond to this question, one needs to consider not only Nietzsche’s philosophy but what I call the ‘Nietzsche event’, that is the entirety of the phenomenon ‘Nietzsche’ as it is manifested both in and through his logos as well as in his bios. The ‘Nietzsche event’ needs to be understood as encompassing three separate events the combination of which creates an effect which is much more significant than the effect that each of these events has separately. These three events refer (a) to how Nietzsche’s philosophy poses a challenge to the Enlightenment discourse and rationality in terms of its content and its style, (b) the repositioning of bios within logos, and (c) Nietzsche’s madness. If, then, Nietzsche is understood as the ‘Nietzsche event’ then an ethical response needs to see this event for the bio-philosophical phenomenon that it is and which calls for a response to the madness of the philosopher as well as to his philosophy. It has been established that Nietzsche may not theorize about madness but he acts out the embrace of madness. He acts it out with his style. As Weineck rightly suggests, ‘[p]erhaps, Nietzsche has indeed made mad language—the speech of true, voluntary, and feigned madness—one of the languages of philosophy, but they are subjected to reason throughout’ (2002: 120). What is mostly important here is the concept of ‘feigned madness’, or of the philosophical assumption of the language of madness which is similar to Kofman’s claim that Nietzsche wrote like a madman. This enactment is thus a combination of an unusual and heterogeneous writing style— ‘discontinuous and aphoristic, in contrast to the architectonic project of the discourse of classical philosophy’ (Blondel 1991: 13)—and an unprecedented transgression of the discourses of knowledge disturbing them with his game of masks (masking) or his play of ‘mad roles’:

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Nietzsche is a figure too heterogeneous to fit into an intellectual landscape divided into little workshops of mental labor where scientist, sociologist, prophet, critic, priest, composer, poet, and philosopher coexist in mostly peaceful isolation. With him, philosophy expands to lose its established identity, and his polyvalent persona encompasses a great many of the traditional and contemporary mad roles: the raving preacher, the hermit who speaks to animals, the megalomaniac, the maniac, the melancholic, the antisocial, the compulsive, and the obsessed. The very excess of his work has surely helped turn Nietzsche into a model of the mad philosopher, the personification of a world headed into chaos. (Weineck 2002: 82)

It is thus the style (metaphors and aphorisms) and stylistics of the text (emphases, inverted commas) which contribute to this excess, as well as the polyvalence of the text and of Nietzsche himself. Apart from these stylistic innovations, Nietzsche is also the philosopher who adopts from the pre-Socratics an alternative logic to what has been associated with the logic of Enlightenment.9 The latter, as Adorno and Horkheimer suggest,10 appropriates all alterity in the name of identity and out of fear of ‘outsideness’ (1992: 16). Enlightenment thought rejects the enchanted realm of the myth and irrationality which resist the positivistic and scientific ideals of truth and accuracy: ‘To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion; modern positivism writes it off as literature’ (7). Nietzsche’s philosophical contribution, on the contrary, is that his alternative logic embraces as a valuable condition of the world everything that the Western philosophical tradition and Christian morality have hitherto expelled as contradiction or evil respectively. Reading Nietzsche as a bio-philosophical phenomenon is crucial to the appreciation of Nietzsche’s influence to how the twentieth century Continental Philosophy positions itself in relation to madness and how it philosophizes madness. For this reason, even if Nietzsche does not praise madness philosophically, he and his philosophy create the conditions for the theorization of madness in the sense that they familiarize the philosophical landscape with its potential relation to madness. The rest of the book assumes the task of showing how this space that the ‘Nietzsche event’ initiates makes possible a new discourse of philosophizing and relating to madness.

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In her essay ‘Metaphoric Architectures’, Kofman writes that through Nietzsche’s ‘metaphorizing play, he in turn becomes a metaphor—of life and of life’s artistic power’ (1990: 90). I could not agree more with the idea that apart from Nietzsche’s own use of metaphors, he too becomes one, an idea which is very much at the core of my understanding of the ‘Nietzsche event’. I would even claim—perfectly aware of the possibility of this claim risking to sound banal—that Nietzsche also becomes a metaphor of madness. Abstracted from its biological specificity, Nietzsche’s madness becomes just another mask, or yet another of the heterogeneous images and moments which still make up Nietzsche in his absence. The fact that madness is yet another mask of Nietzsche that needs to be read, not by Nietzsche but by the philosophers of the future, raises this act to the status of necessity and responsibility. It is the responsibility of the postNietzschean philosophers to read his madness as one more mask which legitimates this endeavor’s ethical character. Philosophers after Nietzsche are called to read Nietzsche’s madness as a mask for him, in his place.

Notes 1. Friedrich Nietzsche: Childhood and Youth (Friedrich Nietzsche: Kindheit und Jugend) (München: Reinhardt, 1953). 2. In a letter to Overbeck of 24 March 1883, Nietzsche writes: ‘my latest folly—I mean Zarathustra’ (1996: 210). 3. ‘denn mitunter kam mir der Verdacht, Du möchtest gar den Verfasser des Z[arathustra] für übergeschnappt halten. Meine Gefahr ist in der That sehr groß, aber nicht diese Art Gefahr’ (The Nietzsche Channel). 4. This comes as a footnote (n. 146) also in the original: ‘The last detail here might suggest that N wished to dispel all suspicion of his being an epileptic’ (Nietzsche 1996: 294). 5. By romantic, I refer to the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century intellectual and artistic movement, which sets out as a reaction to the idealization of reason by the Enlightenment, Classicism and Neoclassicism, and advocates a reclamation of the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative etc. Such a romantic understanding of madness, makes use of the mad-genius paradigm, and expresses the belief that madness is the price paid for a profound understanding of the meaning of existence, which Nietzsche rejects.

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6. See Sarah Kofman, ‘Explosion I: Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo’ (1994). 7. See Fig. 2.2. 8. See Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (1996). 9. Despite the fact that the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries paved the way for the thought of the Enlightenment, the term here refers to the cultural movement which appeared in the middle of the eighteenth century mainly in France before its ideas and principles spread to the rest of Europe and North America. It is generally accepted, however, that the French Revolution promoted a cultural and socio-political reform based on reason and scientific progress rather than tradition, superstition and religion. Also, for a detailed account of Nietzsche and the Enlightenment, see Graeme Garrard, ‘Nietzsche for and against the Enlightenment’ (2008). 10. See Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944).

References Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. 1992. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. London: Verso. Blondel, Eric. 1991. Nietzsche: The Body and Culture: Philosophy as a Philological Genealogy, trans. Seán Hand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Danto, Arthur. 1970. Nietzsche as Philosopher. New York: Macmillan. Deussen, Paul. 1987. In Conversations with Nietzsche: A Life in the Words of His Contemporaries, ed. Sander L. Gilman. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hayden, Deborah. 2004. Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis. New York: Basic Books. Hayman, Ronald. 1980. Nietzsche: A Critical Life. London: Willmer Brothers. Hollingdale, R.J. 1965. Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Jaspers, Karl. 1965. Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity, trans. Charles F. Wallraff, and Frederick J. Schmitz. Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press. Kaufmann, Walter. 1978. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Khazaee, Malek K. 2008. The Case of Nietzsche’s Madness. Existenz 3 (1): 40–48. http://www.bu.edu/paideia/existenz/volume3No1.html. Accessed 28 August 2012. Klossowski, Pierre. 1991. Sade My Neighbor, trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern Uiversity Press. Klossowski, Pierre. 1997. Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, trans. Daniel W. Smith. London: The Athlone Press. Kofman, Sarah. 1990. Metaphoric Architectures, trans. Peter T. Connor, and Mira Kamdar. In Looking After Nietzsche, ed. Laurence A. Rickels. New York: State University of New York Press. Kofman, Sarah. 1993. Nietzsche and Metaphor, trans. Duncan Large. London: The Athlone Press. Kofman, Sarah. 1994. Explosion I: Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, trans. Duncan Large. Diacritics 24 (4): 51–70. The John Hopkins University Press. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/465358. Accessed 19 January 2009. Lindemann, Mary. 1999. Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Margulis, Lynn. 2004. On Syphilis & Nietzsche’s Madness: Spirochetes Awake!. Deadalus 133 (4): 118–125. The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027952. Accessed 19 August 2012. Nehamas, Alexander. 1996. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968a. Also Sprach Zarathustra in Nietzsche Werke VI1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968b. The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1996. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. and ed. Christopher Middleton. Indianapolis: Hackett. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2000. The Birth of Tragedy. In The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, trans. Ronald Speirs, ed. Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2004. Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007a. Ecce Homo. In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo,Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007d. The Anti-Christ. In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2008. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sax, Leonard. 2003. What Was the Cause of Nietzsche’s Dementia?. Journal of Medical Biography 11: 47–54. www.leonardsax.com/Nietzsche.pdf. Accessed 20 August 2012. Van Tongeren, Paul. 2000. Reinterpreting Modern Culture: An Introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Philosophy. Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Vattimo, Gianni. 2002. Nietzsche: An Introduction, trans. Nicholas Martin. London: The Athlone Press. Weineck, Silke-Maria. 2002. The Abyss Above: Philosophy and Poetic Madness in Plato, Hölderlin, and Nietzsche. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Part II Georges Bataille: Madness and the ‘Ethics of Vulnerability’

5 Bataille and Autobiographical Philosophy

Bataille’s Philosophy: From Nietzsche and Beyond An exploration of Georges Bataille (1897–1962) inevitably reveals his indebtedness to Nietzsche as well as a relation to autobiographical philosophy and its connection to madness. In tracing the extent to which bios (life) can be written into logos (thought, language and, by extension, philosophy), and the extent to which madness becomes relevant to or threatens bios and philosophy respectively, Bataille, and his reading of Nietzsche, are central. This choice is further justified by the fact that Bataille may be read as one of the philosophers of the future Nietzsche was referring to in Beyond Good and Evil, as the philosopher who probably better than any other ‘knows how to handle the knife surely and deftly’ (Nietzsche 1997: 81). It is in those philosophers yet to be born that Nietzsche invests all hope that he be read and ‘understood’, hope to which Bataille responds: ‘Except for a few exceptions,’ Bataille writes in On Nietzsche (1945), ‘my company on earth is mostly Nietzsche’ (1992: 3), and on more than one occasion he acknowledges that his conception of ‘communication’ comes from Nietzsche, the only one who ‘says © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_5

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we’ (3): ‘My life with Nietzsche as a companion is a community. My book is this community’ (9). Communication and communion are thus fleshed out both in Bataille’s life, through his virtual companionship with Nietzsche, and in his book. Since the same link between bios and logos exists here as it does in Nietzsche, speaking about Bataille’s life necessarily entails drawing from his philosophical conceptual reservoir in the same way as in talking about his philosophy one necessarily finds oneself talking about Bataille’s most intimate feelings, thoughts and experiences. How does Bataille’s ecstatic laughter at holding an open umbrella late at night while it was not raining find its way into his philosophy in the most profound way? What could the philosophical resonance of such experience be? Bataille’s indebtedness to the Nietzschean spirit of becoming is reflected in the fact that he lived his life to the extreme limit of the possible. This experience he recorded in his own writing, which is legitimate not as a subsequent witnessing but as an immanent reflection of his life’s turbulences and frustrations. Both Bataille’s philosophical concepts and his life experiences become meaningful if, and only if, they are read not from the perspective of action, project and planning but from the perspective of inner experience: ‘I come to this position: inner experience is the opposite of action.1 […] Project is not only the mode of existence implied by action, necessary to action—it is a way of being in paradoxical time: it is the putting off of existence to a later point. ETC.’ (Bataille 1988b: 46). ‘Et cetera’ in capital letters aims to explain the concept of the project as the whole range of one’s behaviour when plunged into the reality of project, concern for production, accumulation and hypocrisy, in other words, the one who believes in salvation and denies life based on false moral imperatives. Bataille stresses his ties with Nietzsche, who, like himself, wrote and must be read from the perspective of nonaction. For Bataille, Ecce Homo ‘affirms absence of goals as well as the author’s complete lack of a plan. Considered from the standpoint of action, Nietzsche’s work amounts to failure (one of the most indefensible!) and his life amounts to nothing—like the life of anyone who tries to put these writings into practice’ (1992: xxxi). While Nietzsche’s position regarding his readership is ambiguous,2 and his emphasis is placed on his own philosophical production, Bataille, like

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Derrida with his notion of otobiography,3 draws attention to philosophy’s reception, extending, thus, the responsibility of an action-less perspective from author to reader. This occurs in a spirit not of conceited didacticism but of honest self-reflection, recording how he himself understands reading Nietzsche, who gives up ‘the viewpoint of action’ and his ‘perfect nakedness is revealed’ for his readers to see (Bataille 1992: xxx). Here, already, one can detect Bataille’s intention to respond to someone who reveals his nakedness, accordingly and responsibly. One cannot, indeed should not, engage with someone who makes himself vulnerable from a position of safety and immunity. It is precisely in this intention that one can identify the ethical dimension of Bataille’s thought. Deeply embedded within the spirit of autobiographical philosophy, philosophical production and reception alike are marked with the requirement that what is written or read is done within a spirit of a contestation of action. Philosophical writing, for Bataille, implies the link that Ecce Homo initiates, and the demand that it raises: writing this kind of philosophy implies necessarily living it out; it implies, and here is where Bataille becomes much more articulate than Nietzsche, putting oneself at the risk of collapse and incoherence. This philosophy cannot be read unless one is in this very state: ‘I want to be very clear on this: not a word of Nietzsche’s work can be understood without […] living it out. Beyond that, this philosophy is just a maze of contradictions’ (xxxi–xxxii). The reader cannot read philosophy other than as an event of communication, and communication for Bataille consists of taking risks: ‘Nietzsche wrote “with his blood,” and […] experiencing him means pouring out one’s lifeblood’ (xxiv). Not only does Bataille do this as a reader (of Nietzsche), he also makes sure he commits to the event of communication when he himself is the author: ‘The opposition to the idea of project […] is so necessary within me that, having written the detailed plan for this introduction, I can no longer hold myself to it’ (Bataille 1988b: 6). Instead, writing opens up to chance in the sense that it lets itself be open to fits of depression, ecstasies, anguish, filth, sexual excitement, violence, fear of death and madness. All of this is inscribed in Bataille’s text through its form and style: in the form of poetry, inconsistencies, nonsensical or incomplete sentences, silence, ellipses, emphases, et cetera. In an apologetic yet proud

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way, Bataille struggles to achieve this inscription. In On Nietzsche he writes: ‘In a sense my book is the day-to-day record of what turned up as the dice were thrown’ (1992: xxvi), making it thus a text which breaks up and rejects itself, calls for its destruction, only to return, resume power and go on again, just like a human being who falls out of inner experience only to find himself striving for it again. In the same way, we, Bataille’s readers, ‘are never sure of our ground and often it seems that [his writing] is about to slip away’ (Richardson 1994: 24). This fear of losing one’s ground and slipping away is indicative of the self-produced vulnerability (the opening up to pain and suffering) that Bataille proposes and of which his life and work are symptomatic. The notions of the contestation of action and the pursuit of futile tasks, too, need to be read along these terms. Most, if not all, of Bataille’s concepts revolve around this opening up to pain, which is a prerequisite for a sovereign existence which itself is the condition of ‘communication’. Both concepts (sovereignty and communication) imply a ‘letting go’ of the assumptions that provide the subject with certainties about itself and the world. What enables this ‘letting go’, the ‘forgetting’ of oneself and consequently the risking of oneself, is the conscious positioning of oneself in relation to death and to madness. It is this risking that makes the communication possible: ‘“Communication” cannot proceed from one full and intact individual to another. It requires individuals whose separate existence in themselves is risked, placed at the limit of death and nothingness; the moral summit is the moment of risk taking, it is a being suspended in the beyond of oneself, at the limit of nothingness’ (Bataille 1992: 19). Closely related to the concept of communication is Bataille’s distinction between ipse4 and I. Despite human insufficiency, for Bataille, ‘man, inevitably, must wish to be everything, remain ipse’ (1988b: 91). The term ‘ipse’ is in this way introduced in Inner Experience, as the alter, true I, ‘the wild ipse (the proud master)’ (115). Ipse relates to heterogeneity (the realm of what is rejected as filthy, dangerous and sick); it is the other side of the ‘servile “I”’ (115), the “I” of project’ (142) and homogeneity (the realm of what is morally approved as beneficial, healthy, safe and enhancing). The following extract clarifies the

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dynamics of the distinction between ipse and I and demonstrates how strongly this distinction relates to communication, possible only for those who honour risk-taking: For one who is stranger to experience, that which precedes is obscure— but it is not destined for him (I write for one, who, entering into my book, would fall into a hole, who would never again get out). One can choose between two things: either the ‘I’ speaks in me (and most will read what I write as if ‘I’, vulgarly, had written it) or ipse. Ipse having to communicate—with others who resemble it—has recourse to degrading sentences. It would sink into the insignificance of the ‘I’ (the ambiguous), if it didn’t try to communicate. In this way, poetic existence in me addresses itself to poetic existence in others, and it is a paradox, no doubt, if I expect knowing them to be lucid. Now I cannot myself be ipse without having cast this cry to them. Only by this cry do I have the power to annihilate in me the ‘I’ as they will annihilate it in them if they hear me. (Bataille 1988b: 116)

What needs to be stressed here is the Derridean implication that for one to be able to shift from I to ipse, one needs the other. One can assume ipseity only through reaching the other, which is also in the state of losing itself. ‘“Communication” only takes place between two people who risk themselves, each lacerated and suspended, perched atop a common nothingness’ (Bataille 1992: 20–21). It is under these conditions that the subject is sovereign. It is essential to stress that sovereignty or communication do not imply a total dissolution of the subject (in death or madness) but require that the subject be preserved. The movement towards risk and the return is an idea which is also the core of another of Bataille’s key concepts: inner experience. By ‘inner experience’, Bataille means ‘that which one usually calls mystical experience: the states of ecstasy, or rapture, at least of meditated emotion [émotion méditée]’ (1988b: 3). Inner experience is therefore a state in which everything (including oneself ) is challenged; in short, it ‘is, in fever and anguish, the putting into question (to the test) of that which a man knows of being’ (4). In inner experience one’s rational faculties are not absent, yet one tries to maintain them in a dormant state;

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it is generated by reason with the intention of challenging itself and the claims that are made on its behalf. Being attuned to such experiences implies looking and seeking beyond the limit of the possible, or what Bataille calls ‘the extreme limit of the possible’. It is essential to clarify that what Bataille praises here is the very movement towards what lies beyond the limit, not the beyond of the limit. As a way to clarify these ideas, I am introducing here a term—‘the space of inner experience’— to which I will be referring throughout this Part. This term—which is not Bataille’s—is devised to denote both inner experience and the extreme limit of the possible. With the addition of the term ‘space’ my intention is to emphasize how inner experience creates a third space, one which goes beyond homogeneity and heterogeneity. ‘The space of inner experience’ is the space which accommodates one’s movement towards the impossible or the extreme limit of the possible; in other words, it is the space which accommodates one’s movement towards madness. In Chap.  6 I will return to these concepts and distinctions in a more detailed and systematic way. From the exposition of these concepts from Bataille’s philosophical framework, two types of human beings seem to emerge: ipse and I, sovereign and not sovereign, one who is willing to enter into the space of inner experience and one who is not, one who communicates and one who does not. For Bataille, ‘[e]very human being not going to the extreme limit is the servant or the enemy of man’ (1988b: 39–40). Here, ‘human being’ (être humaine) is used as the default term for a person, standing for the average existence which could be consumed in the realm of homogeneity and absorbed by concerns for project and giving up any attempt at moving beyond what is given or thought of as possible; in other words, giving up the extreme limit. The term ‘man’ (homme), on the other hand, closer to the bravura and virility that Kofman identifies as characteristics of Nietzsche and of his project, is used to denote the person who breaks through the wall of homogeneity and tries to experience the heterogeneous aspect of life. ‘Man’ is the result of an arduous work of becoming: ‘When I am there without a conceivable reply, I believe that within me, at last, this man should kill what I am, become himself to that point that my stupidity ceases to make me laughable. […] for condemned to becoming man (or more),

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it is necessary for me to die (in my own eyes), to give birth to myself ’ (Bataille 1988b: 33–34). Subjectivity—expressed as manhood, only to show that it takes strength and bravery—is identified with what is reborn in us. But, in a fit of anguish, pessimism and amor fati, Bataille seems to want to dismiss this distinction between the ‘human being’ and ‘man’, acknowledging that both states should be seen as conditions of the subject, and that the virility of man does not necessarily exclude his vulnerability and his laughable stupidity.

Summa Atheologica: A Case of Autobiographical Philosophy In the years 1943–1945, Bataille writes and publishes Inner Experience (L’Expérience intérieure) (1943), Guilty (Le Coupable) (1944) and On Nietzsche (Sur Nietzsche. Volonté de chance) (1945). Together they are known as the Summa Atheologica (La Somme athéologique)—a meaningful distortion of Thomas Aquinas’ thirteenth-century unfinished theological treatise, Summa Theologica. Of all Bataille’s works, they bear the mark of this vulnerability most intensely and explicitly, and they are his most autobiographical works of philosophy. In this respect, they may usefully be seen in relation to two of his short texts: ‘Nietzsche’s Madness’ and ‘Autobiographical Note’. In his Summa Atheologica, Bataille works along the lines of Nietzsche’s autobiographical philosophy inaugurated in Ecce Homo, but what is most interesting in this respect is that nowhere does he identify what he does in the Summa as autobiography. Nonetheless, the autobiographical references are plentiful; they are embedded in the theoretical parts, and they work with them almost indistinguishably. However, these references, almost extracts, pieces taken from his life, events, feelings, impressions, ideas, do not form a sufficient body of biographical information that could be read as a conventional autobiography. Roland Champagne has tried to make connections between Bataille’s life and work by tracing some of Bataille’s biographical information and matching it with themes that appear in his work. For example, he argues

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that Bataille’s ‘piety was crucial to his interest in the sacred and the nature of myth’ (Champagne 1998: 2–4), that war and military service ‘caused him to question his piety’ (5), that his meeting with Henri Bergson in London in 1920 introduced him to the world of laughter, later to become a core theme in his philosophy, or finally that his mother, father and other real people lay behind some of the characters in Bataille’s novels. All this may be fair enough, but the autobiographical in Bataille’s work, especially the Summa, ought not to be identified in this restrictive way. The presence of the autobiographical element in the Summa is of a much more intimate nature, in the sense that it proves a passage to his most personal and private moments and experiences, an element which cuts through and informs the philosophical work in its entirety. Despite this degree of generality which I propose here, the two extracts which I cite below, which depict instances of inner experience, are meant to emphasize the degree of intimacy, vulnerability and intensity Bataille allows to come from the sphere of the personal into his philosophical writing: An anecdote about an intense experience from a few months ago. I went to a forest at nightfall. I walked for an hour, then hid along a dark path, where I wanted to find relief from an obsessive sexual feeling that weighed me down. Then at a point, it occurred to me how essential it was to break through complacency. […] The impression I got was of a dark bird swooping down on me…and opening my throat. […] On the way home […] I saw. I saw: what a person can be kept from seeing only through intentional heaviness. All the useless fuss of the stifling day at last cracked open like eggshell and was volatilized in the air. (Bataille 1988a: 39) Fifteen years ago (perhaps a bit more), I returned from I don’t know where, late in the night. […] I held in my hand an open umbrella and I believe it wasn’t raining. (But I hadn’t drunk: I tell you, I’m sure of it.) I had this umbrella open without needing to […] I was extremely young then, […] but ideas already full of anxieties, rigorous and crucifying, ran through my mind. In this shipwreck of reason, anguish […] profited. […] This freedom, at the same time as the ‘impossible’ which I had run up against, burst in my head. A space constellated with laughter opened its dark abyss before me. […] I laughed divinely: the umbrella,

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having descended upon my head, covered me (I expressly covered myself with this black shroud). I laughed as perhaps one has never laughed; the extreme depth of each thing opened itself up—laid bare, as if I were dead. […] I was illuminated convulsively […] Doubt fills me with anguish without respite. What does illumination mean? of whatever nature? even if the brilliance of the sun blinded me inwardly and set me ablaze? A bit more, a bit less light changes nothing; in any case, solar or not, man is only man: to be nothing but man, not to emerge from this—is suffocation, burdensome ignorance, the intolerable. He who does not ‘die’ from being merely a man will never be other than a man. (Bataille 1988b: 34–35)

The biographical data is intertwined here within Bataille’s philosophical discourse and conceptual universe, and serves as its performative and supportive evidence. Moreover, such accounts, which are found throughout the text of the Summa, making it suffer from the intensity of these experiences of eroticism, laughter and death, are instances of ‘sovereign communication’. The umbrella extract also allows us to return to Bataille’s use of the term ‘man’ and see that it contains all the potentiality of the experience of ‘illumination’ (évanescence), which is similar to ecstasy, as well as of anguish and fear of loss: ‘At one and the same time my thinking must reach plenary illumination and dissolution… In the same individual, thought must construct and destroy itself ’ (Bataille 1992: 185). Knowing both states is what Bataille refers to as ‘human entirety’ (l’homme entier).5 All three books of the Summa are manifestations of the condition Bataille finds himself in at the moment of writing, a condition shaped by fear, anxiety and depression. Bataille had by then suffered the death of his lover Colette Peignot (Laure) in 1938, the crisis of the final issue of Acéphale6 and ‘abandonment’ by his friends in 1939, the end of his ambivalent 4-year relationship with Denise Rollin-Le Gentil in 1943, and of course the socio-political instability caused by the Second World War. In the 1944 edition of Guilty, Bataille re-introduces his introduction to the 1940 edition: ‘To introduce the first edition of Guilty, I wrote these words, whose general meaning related to an impression I had in

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1942—that I lived in the world like a stranger’ (Bataille 1988a: 5). This is the case with all three books: their meaning is related to how Bataille lived in the world, related to his fears, ideas, hopes and anxieties. This intimate autobiographical information necessarily becomes the content of his texts, which bear witness to what and how Bataille lived. Bataille’s texts are embedded in and acquire meaning through a web of personal experiences, informed and motivated by them and carried out within them. As was the case with the way Nietzsche prioritized and ordered his biographical data in Ecce Homo, the way Bataille presents this information also suggests a selective attitude according to his own criteria and priorities: information may be concealed, emphasized, distorted, made disproportionately important, or mentioned and then abandoned as probably too important to share, or too complicated to analyse, or too irrelevant for what is to follow, or all of the above. Moreover, this information may vary from obscure and intense experiences like the ones conveyed in the lengthy extracts above, to simple facts loaded with connotations—‘I’m going (for a few hours) to a town I’m taken back to by horrible memories of my early years (my family lived there)—memories I’ll have to put aside like the damned do, through laughter’ (52)—and to references which reveal a necessity that they just be written: ‘The date I start (September 5, 1939) is no coincidence. I’m starting because of what’s happening, though I don’t want to go into it. I’m writing it down because of being unable not to’ (11). Here, one would probably perceive an ambiguity concerning Bataille having to write things he would prefer not to, therefore mixing intention and necessity, a clash which is reconciled if one considers the role that bios takes on in the act of writing. Bataille’s pen becomes the necessary expression of a contingent life, which makes a demand on Bataille that it be treated as necessary, and over which he has little power. Bataille cannot make his sense of (impersonal) necessity any clearer than in two passages, one in Guilty and one in Inner Experience: ‘I’m starting a second notebook during the battle for the North. I can’t say exactly why… I feel there’s a dark necessity on me. I’m driven, scattered, tangled. I feel there’s a curse’ (1988a: 51); and ‘I carry within me the concern for writing this book like a burden. In reality, I am acted upon. Even if nothing, absolutely, responded to the idea which I have of necessary interlocutors (or of necessary readers),

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the idea alone would act in me. I create with it to such a point that one would more easily remove from me one of my limbs’ (1988b: 60). Like Nietzsche, Bataille seems to be allowing life itself to do the writing, through him, reducing his own individuality and opening it up to the force of this necessity of the impersonal. Everything theoretical that Bataille writes is already tested personally, experienced personally. Bataille’s experience finds its way into his texts, which are in turn a reflection of his experience, as is also the case with Nietzsche: ‘I only speak of experienced things’ (Nietzsche in Jaspers 1965: 386). Similarly, when Bataille talks about ecstasy being possible only in anguish and in the extreme surrender of knowledge, it is important to note that he treats both his work and his life as relevant to this experience or act: ‘the extreme construction of the surrender which I, my life and my written work represent’ (1988b: 52). What is therefore theorized, having become text, is faithful to that which has been experienced. This convergence between bios and logos becomes evident throughout the Summa, in which philosophical discourse is laid bare as being as vulnerable as the writing subject who has had experiences and feelings of death,7 depression,8 insufficiency9 and anguish.10 Bataille also writes of chance, of failed inner experience and frustration, and everything he writes is there, part of his life and part of his text, as Bataille himself explains in a note to Yves Breton: I shall write as the spirit takes me, drawing on my memories, and with no hesitation in talking about myself, for it’s myself that I have known the best and often it was just my own behaviour that asked the questions that matter to me. Most of all, though, I should like to make free with digressions; making free with digressions strikes me as the only approach conducive to what I have in mind. And yet my narrative might well be no different from the one I could have made of my ‘literary life’. (Bataille in Bataille and Leiris 2008: 43)

Besides this convergence between Bataille’s life and work in general, as well as the intense and frequent presence of the autobiographical element in his philosophy, circa 1958, 4 years before his death, Bataille also wrote his autobiography. It is a short essay or, as its title suggests, an

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‘Autobiographical Note’, which, surprisingly, has received little critical attention. In it, Bataille manages to combine the most austere distance and impersonality with the most intimate sense of subjectivity and privacy. The ‘Autobiographical Note’ begins with participles without auxiliary verbs (born, expelled, et cetera) and then shifts to verbs in the third person singular (‘now becomes a good student’, ‘is convinced’, et cetera). In both cases, the pronoun is omitted, proof of anonymity, namelessness and distance. Halfway through the text, however, when Bataille is forced to mention the names of people with whom he has interacted, he uses his own name as well, either the surname alone (‘edited by Bataille’, ‘Bataille publishes’, et cetera) or the full name, even if the latter is used only once and this when he writes his name as if pointed at and accused by someone else, staging a mini-trial for himself which has to be formal and with the minimum possibility of confusion: ‘the denunciation of Georges Bataille, considered to be planning the formation of an antisurrealist group’ (Bataille 1986a: 108). After that, and until the end, he uses both the surname and the personal pronoun ‘he’ (‘He separated from his wife’, ‘He then wrote’, et cetera). Through this unconventionally wide range of participles, pronouns or absent pronouns, names, full names, or even just nouns (‘Marriage in 1928’), there floats in the text, from the beginning to the end, at times present, at others absent, engaged or distant, a third-person singular which functions impersonally, inscribing itself in time randomly and inconsistently, moving from a dimension with no temporal specificity at all other than what the dates imply (‘Born, Billom’, ‘Schooling at Reims Lycée’), to the simple present (‘refuses to continue schooling’, ‘Now becomes’, ‘now leans toward Catholicism’), to the simple past (‘Bataille […] underwent a serious psychological crisis’, ‘He separated from his wife’), only to return to the present towards the end (‘he meets Maurice Blanchot’, ‘he is forced to leave’). This is almost like the wrapping up of a life in a time which could be any time and yet a life of only one, who ‘is, indeed, concerned with being, and being as sovereignty, with transcending the development of means’ (110). Even if Bataille’s autobiography acquires an air of impersonality, detachment and distance from both the writer and the object of the writing—clearly drawing from

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Nietzsche’s ‘becoming what one is’—it maintains its most personal, private and subjectively selected part of its own story (of his life). In his ‘Autobiographical Note’, Bataille adopts a provokingly subjective and inconsistently selective attitude, which is evident throughout. He mentions his father but omits his mother. He writes of the death of the Spanish matador but omits the Chinese torture, the two incidents that have played a crucial role for his fascination with violence. In a similar fashion to Nietzsche in Ecce Homo, in this autobiographical note Bataille writes of his early studies and decisive acquaintances and experiences, of his mental state and his intellectual activities: founding, editing and writing for magazines and journals, and writing books. Finally, he provides the reader with some guidelines as to how his philosophy is to be read, as if, or rather because, an understanding of who Georges Bataille is—it is after all an autobiographical note—is reducible to an accurate reading of Georges Bataille’s philosophy. Considering Bataille’s anxious efforts to escape homogeneity and project through the annihilation of the I in him and the shift to ipse, it should by now be evident why there is no single ‘I’ in his autobiographical note. Bataille’s intention to annihilate the I will also prove useful in the discussion of his use of pseudonyms which follows.

What’s in a Name? Putting on masks is something Bataille sees Nietzsche do. The masks of Dionysus’ disciple, of Dionysus, of the Crucified, et cetera. come to be assimilated within Nietzsche, to be merged and identified with him. This is of, course, something which Bataille acknowledges in On Nietzsche and which he approaches not only with respectful attention— ‘I am not about to rip masks off anyone…’ (1992: 9)—but also with a subtle satisfaction with the degree of uncertainty the masks ensure: ‘What do we in fact know about Mr. Nietzsche?’ (9). Later on Bataille advances with a gesture similar in spirit. He writes: ‘WHEN ALL is said and done, I have more than one face. I don’t know which is laughing at which’ (68). Here, ‘more than one face’ should not be read as necessarily more than two, and this is a problem which should be explored

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alongside Bataille’s use of pseudonyms. Despite the number of these pseudonyms, they should—as one entity (his non-civil name)—be seen as a means of Bataille expressing his other (ipse) face. Reading Bataille’s two faces in relation to Nietzsche’s masking, one finds that, in Bataille’s case, the assumption of his second or other face further problematizes the masking–unmasking distinction. Pseudonyms, extensively used by Bataille especially in the context of his fiction, always involve an ambiguity as to whether their user wishes to hide, distort or change his/her name and/or to protect, expose, or develop his/her identity. How is Bataille’s use of pseudonyms to be interpreted, then? Are not those pseudonyms a mask? The practical usefulness of a pseudonym cannot be denied: primarily it hides, and it has been agreed by Hollier and Champagne, among others, that in the case of Bataille, the pseudonyms function as a guard against censorship and as a mask of his shame. Champagne further argues that Bataille’s ‘self-masking behind these pseudonyms is an involvement in literary playfulness’ (1998: 48). This is arguably a judgement which bears the same dismissive quality as does Jules Monnerot’s response to Bataille’s expression of acute displeasure after the former revealed him as the author of Story of the Eye and Madame Edwarda in his article ‘Sur Georges Bataille’ in 1948. Monnerot remarked: ‘I don’t doubt I offended both his rather absurd feeling of respectability … and also a sense not so much of secrecy, but of the fiction of secrecy. There was an element of play. Bataille wanted everyone to know that he was the author of both Inner Experience and The Story of the Eye but was drawn to a sort of comedy of duplicity’ (Monnerot in Richardson 1994: 62). From Monnerot’s argument, which may be justified as an effort to detach from himself any sense of responsibility for what he had done, it is helpful to retain the idea of duplicity, but in its tragic rather than its comic version. His argument ignores the fact that it was only the most unassimilable of his texts that Bataille published under pseudonyms, and it implies a childishness to which no deeper meaning or intention can be attached. Bataille used four pseudonyms: L’Amitié, the first part of Guilty was published separately in the review Mesures under the pseudonym Dianus (1940); Story of the Eye was published under the name Lord Auch (three

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editions: 1928, 1947 and 1951); Madame Edwarda under the name Pierre Angélique (four editions: 1941, 1945, 1956 and 1965) and Le Petit under the name Louis Trente (one edition: 1943). Bataille scholars (including Michel Surya, Michael Richardson, Dennis Hollier, and Roland Champagne) have paid considerable attention to Bataille’s use of pseudonyms. Without denying the plausibility of interpretations which look for meaning behind the specific pseudonyms (Lord Auch: Lord to the shithouse or Father/God relieving himself; and Dianus: the criminal sovereign with no power), it needs to be borne in mind that these interpretations can only be partially useful as they cannot provide consistent and substantial background information for all four pseudonyms. Besides the practical value of concealing his public name and thereby avoiding unnecessary scandals, the use of pseudonyms is also a symbolic, yet necessary gesture, in order to make public the texts that are the production of ipse rather than of I; in other words, Bataille needs to make public the texts which are produced from the perspective of non-action, making use of his ideas of heterogeneity, expenditure, loss, sacrifice, laughter, nudity, vulnerability, death, et cetera. These texts are Bataille’s most shameful and indefensible, and for this reason the most sovereign. In this sense, Dianus, Lord Auch, Pierre Angélique and Louis Trente give a face to Bataille ipse and they are to be distinguished from Bataille I, who even wrote an introduction to Pierre Angélique’s ‘Madame Edwarda’ as Georges Bataille. Bataille’s pseudonyms help him unmask or expose his ipseity but within the realm of the I, a gesture with great significance structurally. It is the realm of the I, therefore, which makes possible the unmasking and the exposition, in the same way as it is the realm of reason which allows one to get as close to madness as possible. These pseudonyms are manifestations of the ‘annihilation’ which is specific to inner experience. The way in which Bataille uses the term ‘annihilation’ does not have the meaning of the term as it is commonly used, namely irreversible destruction, disintegration or obliteration. Rather, ‘annihilation’ is used loosely by Bataille only to denote the temporary loss of the I. For this reason, these shifts from ipse to I and vice versa should not be read as linear but as in a continuous oscillation between heterogeneity and homogeneity.

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Notes 1. The conceptual similarity between Bataille’s action and Heidegger’s Das Man (the ‘they’) is noteworthy. 2. See Chap. 14. 3. See Chap. 14. 4. From Latin; masculine intensive pronoun meaning ‘self ’. 5. See Bataille 1988b: 91. 6. Acéphale was a public review created by Bataille which ran—with five issues—from 1936 to 1939. The same title, which comes from the Greek ἀκέϕαλος (akephalos) meaning headless, was also used for a secret society founded by Bataille, whose members held nocturnal meetings in the woods with group readings of Nietzsche, Freud, Marquis de Sade and Marcel Mauss and other rituals. The society is mostly famous for the possibility of carrying out a human sacrifice which never happened. For more information on Acéphale the review and the secret society, see Michel Surya’s Georges Bataille (2002) pp. 231–260. 7. See Bataille (1988a: 52–53). 8. See Bataille (1992: 84–85). 9. See Bataille (1992: 100). 10. See Bataille (1992: 101).

References Bataille, Georges. 1986a. Autobiographical Note. In Georges Bataille: Writings on Laughter, Sacrifice, Nietzsche, Un-Knowing, October, vol. 36, 107–110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/i231779. Accessed 15 March 2010. Bataille, Georges. 1988a. Guilty, trans. Bruce Boone. Venice, CA: The Lapis Press. Bataille, Georges. 1988b. Inner Experience, trans. Leslie Anne Boldt. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bataille, Georges. 1992. On Nietzsche, trans. Bruce Boone. New York: Paragon House. Bataille, Georges. 1998a. The Use-Value of D.A.F. de Sade (An Open Letter to My Current Comrades). In The Bataille Reader, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie, Jr., ed. Fred Botting and Scott Wilson. Cornwall: TJ International Limited.

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Bataille, Georges. 1998b. Georges Bataille: Essential Writings, ed. Michael Richardson. Trowbridge: The Cromwell Press. Bataille, Georges, and Michel Leiris. 2008. Correspondence, trans. Liz Heron. Oxford: Seagull Books. Champagne, Roland A. 1998. Georges Bataille. New York: Twayne. Jaspers, Karl. 1965. Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity, trans. Charles F. Wallraff and Frederick J. Schmitz. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1997. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Helen Zimmern. New York: Dover. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1992. The Will to Power. In Georges Bataille, On Nietzsche, trans. Richard Howard. New York: Paragon House. Richardson, Michael. 1994. Georges Bataille. Cornwall: TJ Press. Surya, Michel. 2002. Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Rischardson. Essex: Verso.

6 Heterogeneity, Inner Experience and the ‘Ethics of Vulnerability’

Living as ‘Heteron’ Heterogeneity is one of Bataille’s central concepts in the sense that the meaning of most of the other concepts he employs and of his philosophy in general becomes clear when the latter are read in the context of the heterogeneous. The idea is simple: according to Bataille, those who want to reach the summit, to use a Nietzschean metaphor, first need to reach the bottom. This means that those who aim for human entirety, who want to be everything or achieve sovereignty, need to acknowledge and embrace the ἕτερον (heteron: other), that is, the heterogeneous element in existence and by extension in society. Acknowledging and embracing the heteron is to be understood as living it as sacred. Only by recognizing the heterogeneous as sacred is the other side of existence (beauty, goodness, purity, et cetera) justified: ‘I love purity to the point of loving impurity; without it purity would be a fraud’ (Bataille in Bataille and Leiris 2008: 42). Homogeneity, on the other hand, from the Greek ὁμός (homos) and γένος (genos) meaning ‘of the same kind’, is associated with power but not sovereignty. The latter ‘can only exist on condition that it should © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_6

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never assume power, which is action, the primacy of the future over the present moment’ (Bataille 1998b: 190). Contrary to power, sovereignty, possible only through embracing heterogeneity, is not compatible with utility, assimilable entities and qualities, elimination of differences and individuality, conformity, spirit, reason and all things lofty and worthy, as well as a hypocritical rejection of those aspects of life which put the individual in any kind of risk, physical or psychological. Heterogeneity has thus already been defined in the negative, as it is in total opposition to all this. The heterogeneous world is as base, filthy and dangerous, and is therefore associated with waste, bodily and psychological, excrement, sweat, menstrual blood, sperm, vomit, the ‘hairy parts of the body’, deviant sexual acts, ‘the various unconscious processes such as dreams or neuroses’ (69), madness, cannibalism, sacrifice, squandering, crime, violence and death. Despite the anarchic and messy character of these heterogeneous elements, Bataille recovers and systematizes their ‘coherence’ (Sollers in Botting and Wilson 1998: 75), and studies them under the name of science. This is a word choice which could be interpreted as ironic, yet it is successful in denoting the seriousness and respect—one could even say piety—with which Bataille approaches the heterogeneous: the science of heterology. Other possible word choices that Bataille considered, as Surya (2002: 138) and Hollier (1989: 131) explain, were ‘scatology’ and ‘hagiology’, Greek words for the study or science of excrement and saintliness, for their repulsive and sacred character respectively. It is important to distinguish, however, the science of heterology from the heterogeneous. While the heterogeneous is inassimilable and unrepresentable, heterology is a product of rationality set in motion by the rational intention to acknowledge and account for the non-assimilability of the heterogeneous. This intention runs the risk of either faking its actual bonds with the heterogeneous or appropriating the heterogeneous by bridging the gap between the two, the heterogeneous and the homogeneous, the inassimilable, unrepresentable and discourse-less with discourse and representation: ‘Heterology […] occupies the uncertain space within rationality where heterogeneity declares its necessity: “the intellectual process automatically limits itself by producing of its own accord its own waste products, thus liberating in a disordered

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way the heterogeneous excremental element”’ (Bataille in Botting and Wilson 1998a: 153). This ‘limiting itself of its own accord’ needs to be acknowledged as a rational project, and it will become relevant also in my discussion of madness and of the space of inner experience,1 in the context of which the distinction between the heterogeneous and heterology is also of the essence. We should, therefore, be ready to position madness in this scheme as evidently belonging to the heterogeneous, or better as being the heterogeneous—the term ‘belong’ already implies a distance—while the science of heterology, being a study and denoting claims of knowledge and definitions, should be identified with the space of inner experience, which consists of the ‘necessity of leaving’. At the same time, this space should not be confused with the realm of pure homogeneity and the submission of reason to the demands of utility, action, project, accumulation, et cetera. It is neither one nor the other; it is only the space which allows the transgressive gesture from one (homogeneous) towards the other (heterogenous) ad infinitum.

Doleo Ergo Sum: Bataille’s ‘Ethics of Vulnerability’ Bataille begins Inner Experience, and with this his Summa Atheologica, by establishing man’s ‘desire to be everything’, the desire to achieve human entirety, part of which implies a relation of knowledge between the knowing subject and the totality of everything which is to be known. This desire, however, is bound to be tragically frustrated and be registered as an impossibility due to the limits human beings come with. In all three books of the Summa therefore, Bataille establishes the existence of a wound, which is primarily based on or results from the lack of reconciliation between our incompleteness and the recognition of the impossibility of completeness, a painful gap, which in the absence of God (Bataille 1988a: 14) is made deeper. Bataille uses the word ‘blessure’ (wound) relatively infrequently, and he never treats it as a technical term: ‘In every instance, I think, only suffering (devastating, exhausting your existence) opens such deep-seated wounds’ (1992: 65); and

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‘I’m left defenseless and vulnerable, opening myself to [nothingness] in an exhausting wound’ (24). The idea of this wound (Latin ‘vulnus’) is central in Bataille’s thought, and it can be interpreted as constituting his ‘ethics of vulnerability’, which is simply his conviction that human being can be sovereign only when wounded. In other words, this ethics denotes one’s ability—or, better, one’s responsibility—to keep that wound open. The image of a flesh left open, the ‘gaping wound’ (Bataille 1988a: 119), can be paralleled to the openings of the body such as the mouth, the vagina, the anus and the eyes, which are also discussed extensively by Bataille. As Nidesh Lawtoo pertinently points out, each ‘wound’ is linked to Bataille’s central themes, which in turn revolve around the concepts of sovereign communication and ipseity: ‘the mouth connects to laughter; the vagina to eroticism; the eyes to tears; the anus to the excrements’ (2005: n.p.). At each of these openings-wounds, he goes on, ‘the integrity of the subject is questioned; its limits can be transgressed’ (2005: n.p.). It is precisely in these wounds that ‘sovereign communication’ and the shift from I to ipse are possible. As Bataille puts it: ‘In the realm of sensuality, a being of flesh is the object of desire. Although, in that being, what attracts isn’t immediate being but a wound, a break in the body’s integrity, the orifice of filth. This wound doesn’t precisely risk life—only life’s integrity and its purity. It doesn’t kill, it sullies’ (1992: 22). Guilty and On Nietzsche open with this wound and this suffering being taken for granted, and develop as manifestations of the author’s relating to this suffering, as a proof of living to the height of it: ‘If my suffering were eliminated […] human life would peter out. And as life vanished, so too would our far-off, inevitable truth, the truth that incompleteness, death, and the unquenchable desire are, in a sense, being’s never-to-be-healed wound, without which inertia […] would imprison us’ (24). This is probably the most important point: that this wound is never to be healed because if it is healed, (sovereign) life will no longer be possible. Bataille recalls Nietzsche’s wish that his disciples should suffer, and promises that his book will be faithful to this wish by putting itself at risk, placing the rest of the responsibility on the reader, who in turn needs to read the book in full acknowledgement of the risks involved (7). And here lies the responsibility of philosophy, to enhance the experience of suffering, which, for Bataille, translates

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into an experience of anguish (‘angoisse’) by providing the space for the expression of the heterogeneous: ‘We’ll make philosophy a dangerous thing, change the idea of it, teach a philosophy that is dangerous to life; what better service can be rendered to philosophy?’ (Nietzsche in Bataille 1992: 6). Recalling the tragic death of the Spanish matador Manolo Granero which came with the bull’s horn piercing his head through the right eye and which he witnessed during a bullfight in Madrid in 1922, Bataille reveals that he was both horrified and fascinated in equal measure: From that day on I never went to a bullfight without a sense of anguish straining my nerves intensely. This anguish not in the least diminished my desire to go to the bullring. On the contrary, [and this is the crucial point], it exacerbated it, taking shape with a feverish impatience. I then began to understand that unease is often the secret of the greatest pleasures. (Bataille in Surya 2002: 43–44)

Bataille’s own emphasis on understanding here is important in showing how his fascination with, as well as horror at, extreme violence is of both an affective and a rational nature, as is inner experience, the state of ‘meditated emotion’ (Bataille 1988b: 3). Consequently, Bataille becomes attracted by singular events or established activities of anthropological interest such as the death of Granero, the Lingchi torture in China (death by a thousand cuts), the human sacrifices of the Aztecs or even the war which was unfolding during the writing of the Summa, the experience of which could grant this kind of unease, which connects one back to that existential wound. In other words, Bataille focuses on the product of the experience of violence and not on the violent act per se, which for Bataille has to be stripped of any moral or utilitarian judgments. Violence is thus valued in Bataille’s thought for permitting man to experience horror and anguish.2 For Bataille, ‘pain is the teacher. “Without your pain, you’re nothing!”’ (1988a: 69). Reminiscent of Nietzsche’s views on the usefulness of pain, sickness and weakness— what does not kill you makes you stronger—Bataille, too, advises that those in pain should not feel pity for themselves; what they should seek is strength: ‘I don’t avoid either pain or wounds. Wounded in my eyes

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or gut? What I want all the same is strength, not sickness—unwavering strength. […] Strength comes from knowing the secret, and the secret’s revealed in anguish’ (57), which is both the result and the generator of the suffering. Anguish lacerates the wound and keeps it open, producing more anguish. Caught up in an incessant and vicious circle, anguish is understood by Bataille as leading nowhere other than more anguish: ‘If the will to anguish can only ask questions, the answer, if it comes, wills that anguish be maintained. The answer is, anguish is your fate’ (75).

Notes 1. My term denoting both inner experience and the extreme limit of the possible. 2. See Angelos Evangelou’s ‘Georges Bataille’s “Ethics of Violence”’ (2010).

References Bataille, Georges. 1988a. Guilty, trans. Bruce Boone. Venice, CA: The Lapis Press. Bataille, Georges. 1988b. Inner Experience, trans. Leslie Anne Boldt. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bataille, Georges. 1992. On Nietzsche, trans. Bruce Boone. New York: Paragon House. Bataille, Georges. 1998a. The Use-Value of D.A.F. de Sade (An Open Letter to My Current Comrades), trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie, Jr. In The Bataille Reader, ed. Fred Botting and Scott Wilson. Cornwall: TJ International. Bataille, Georges. 1998b. Georges Bataille: Essential Writings, ed. Michael Richardson. Trowbridge: The Cromwell Press. Bataille, Georges, and Leiris, Michel. 2008. Correspondence, trans. Liz Heron. Oxford: Seagull Books. Evangelou, Angelos. 2010. Georges Bataille’s Ethics of Violence. Pharmakon: Literature and Violence. Skepsi 3 (2): 51–64.

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Hollier, Denis. 1989. Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, trans. Betsy Wing. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Lawtoo, Nidesh. 2005. Bataille and the Suspension of Being. Lingua Romana: A Journal of French, Italian and Romanian Culture 4 (1). http://linguaromana.byu.edu/Lawtoo4.html. Accessed 27 Aug 2010. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1992. The Will to Power. In On Nietzsche, trans. Richard Howard. and ed. Georges Bataille. New York: Paragon House. Sollers, Philippe. 1998. The Roof: Essay in Systematic Reading. In Bataille: A Critical Reader, ed. Fred Botting and Scott Wilson. Oxford: TJ International. Surya, Michel. 2002. Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Rischardson. Essex: Verso.

7 Bataille and Madness

Madness for Bataille Where is madness to be found, then, in this violent infrastructure of the heterogeneous and the secret of anguish? How does Bataille understand madness and how does he treat it philosophically? From Nietzsche onwards—even if Nietzsche’s actual attitude to madness is unfavourable—madness is repeatedly granted a more autonomous and sovereign role in philosophical activity as well as in the experience of being (entirely) human. In the context of Nietzsche’s importance for Bataille, the key question becomes whether the latter sees a way out of the deadend, paralysis, sickness and degeneration that Nietzsche’s understanding of madness entails and whether he suggests that we respond to madness and to those who go mad ‘in our stead’ (Bataille 1986b: 44). These questions are themselves raised in a very short essay with a highly metaphorical and lyrical air entitled ‘Nietzsche’s Madness’ (January 1939). In this essay, Bataille constructs a correspondence to which he returns nearly six years later in the Preface of On Nietzsche, when he writes that ‘[t]he main impulse that leads to human entirety is tantamount to madness’ (1992: xxx; emphasis added). In order to © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_7

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establish this equivalence in ‘Nietzsche’s Madness’, Bataille employs the idea of the ‘generality of men’ which may be seen as referring both to a collective of people as well as to a collection of the potentialities of each single person separately: ‘their entire existence’ (1986b: 43). What is significant, though, is that when this generality becomes a singularity— thus reflecting the desire to be everything, to be one, in other words ‘the impulse that leads to human entirety’—there is constructed a figure, a ‘man incarnate’, which reminds one of Zarathustra and the Übermensch. This figure is mostly a conflictual and violent figure who kills God, becomes God himself only to return to nothingness and insignificance, unrestrained by discursive thought, with freedom as his reward, and anguish, horror and loneliness as the price he has to pay. It is only at the very end of this process of becoming, which in this case is a metamorphosis, one could say, of the I into ipse, that the acknowledgement of the necessity of madness also comes. Madness is needed in order to accommodate the new status of the violent man. It is a prerequisite for this new state of existence, which is primarily strife and horror, since no reason would be able to sustain, accommodate, or tolerate it. Bataille vests madness with violence in order to make it serve as a metaphor for the intensity or extremity of the experience of ‘man incarnate’ whose head ‘would be the site of inappeasable conflict, of a violence such that sooner or later it would shatter. We can hardly conceive the intensity of the storm or of release attained in the visions of this incarnate being. […] “man incarnate” must also go mad. How violently within his head the Earth would spin! How extreme his crucifixion!’ (Bataille 1986b: 43–44). Yet, the dramatic representation of this metamorphosis is not to be identified with real madness. Rather, this hypothetical construction in general and the concept of incarnation in particular need to be understood in the context of inner experience, an experience which is feasible only because someone goes mad: ‘Madness cannot be cast out from the human generality, for its completion requires the madman. Nietzsche’s going mad—in our stead—thus rendered that generality possible’ (44). What is at work here, therefore, is an acknowledgement of the significance both of real madness as well as of the symbolic gesture of simulating madness through philosophical and existential constructions. The impulse of someone striving for human entirety is ‘tantamount to madness’.

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Madness and Inner Experience We have seen how existence is understood as a perpetual suffering and how the embracing of experiences of horror ensures that this suffering is maintained, because ignoring or avoiding it ‘leads to inner hypocrisy’ (Bataille 1988b: xxxii). Being hypocritical, imagining or pretending that we will never die, for example, implies the employment of ‘narcotics’ (actions such as shopping, studying, travelling, et cetera), which enable us to forget suffering, and plunge more deeply into the realm of action and project, from which the narcotics have been produced in the first place. Bataille stresses that this—employing narcotics—is not what he plans to do in the course of Inner Experience, an intention which should not be seen as independent from his life either: ‘The self-acknowledged suffering of the disintoxicated is the subject of this book’ (xxxii), which is nothing more than a ‘a tale of despair’ (xxxiii). However, he is perfectly aware of the usefulness of narcotics, for without them, ‘an unbreathable void reveals itself ’ (xxxii). It is precisely this experience of the void—and only this experience—which is full of possibilities: ‘from that moment [after falling into the void] begins a singular experience. The mind moves in a strange world where anguish and ecstasy coexist. […] What characterises such an experience, which does not proceed from a revelation […] is that it never announces anything reassuring’ (xxxii), and with this Bataille offers the initial and most basic definition of ‘inner experience’. The text of the Summa becomes the space of this lack of reassurance, which suffers from ‘powerlessness’ and from ‘a measure of intention’ (xxxii), for which Bataille is ashamed. As has been mentioned when discussing the degree of intimacy that Bataille’s autobiographical accounts reveal, he includes in the Summa a large number of accounts of inner experience, at times failed, at times frustrated, at times drawn to the limit, and yet at times experiences which were misunderstood for inner experience. For all these accounts, however, Bataille always makes sure to remind the reader that the requirement for having such an experience is the weakening of logos: the fading of reason and the silencing of language.

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Bataille defines what lies beyond words as the ‘vague inner movements’ which language cannot access, yet can make us less conscious of them, an easy task considering their vagueness. In the following passage which is to be cited at length for this complex idea to become clear, Bataille stresses that although it is impossible to access these inner movements—‘the word silence is still a sound’ (13)—still we must persist: If we live under the law of language without contesting it, these states are within us as if they didn’t exist. But if we run up against this law, we can in passing fix our awareness upon one of them and, quieting discourse within us, linger over the surprise which it provides us. It is better then to shut oneself in, make as if it were right, remain in this suspended silence wherein we come unexpectedly upon the sleep of a child. With a bit of chance, we perceive from such a state what favors the return, increases the intensity. […] But the difficulty is that one manages neither easily nor completely to silence oneself, that one must fight against oneself. […] We seek to grasp within us what subsists safe from verbal servilities and what we grasp is ourselves fighting the battle, stringing sentences together— perhaps about our effort (then about its failure)—but sentences all the same, powerless to grasp anything else. It is necessary to persist—making ourselves familiar, cruelly so, with a helpless foolishness, usually concealed, but falling under full light: the intensity of the states builds quite quickly and from that moment they absorb—they even enrapture. The moment comes when we can reflect, link words together, once again no longer silence ourselves: this time it is off in the wings (in the background) and, without worrying any longer, we let their sound fade away. (Bataille 1988b: 14–15)

Here Bataille emphasizes that fighting a lost fight is not futile. What is important is the effect of this loss and the momentary effect of the fighting. One needs to learn to work along with chance, using one’s intuition, a concept so important for Nietzsche,1 and to persist. Bataille has persisted and he has said so repeatedly. Living for him becomes a task (rather than a project), and he is proud of what he has achieved, a pride, one could argue, reminiscent of Nietzsche in his final years of his philosophical life, the pride, that is, of breathing the icy air of the mountain tops. Bataille thus writes: ‘I surmounted problems whose

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novelty and dimensions exalted me. Having entered into unsuspected regions, I saw that which eyes had not seen. […] [But] [i]n this maze, I could lose myself at will, give myself over to rapture, but I could also at will discern the paths, provide a precise passage for intellectual steps’ (xxxiii). It is crucial therefore to understand that part of Bataille’s sense of pride consists not only of the letting go but also of the ability to discern the danger and the power to suspend the letting go. According to Bataille, in the space of inner experience this return is required. In the absence of a return, one is prey to madness.

Madness and the Impossible Nietzsche’s objection to madness stems from his conviction that it marks the limit of all possibilities; that it is impossibility par excellence. Uneasy with this position, however, Bataille explores impossibility, and, at least at first glance, he seems to see in it something more valuable than does Nietzsche. But does Bataille manage to reconfigure madness in terms of its relation to impossibility differently? The answer is that he both does and does not. The reason is that Bataille’s understanding of the impossible, in relation to which madness is positioned, consists of two, seemingly incompatible, aspects: on the one hand, the impossible is granted its open-ended and never reachable or definable nature, and is seen as the way which points towards the equally inaccessible summit, almost in a Sisyphean pattern; on the other hand, and closer to the more conventional usage of the term, the impossible is presented as what marks the limit of the possible within the space of inner experience up to where madness lies. Effectively, the potential incompatibility of these two aspects lies in the constitution and function of the limit in this scheme; while in the first case, the limit is challenged and is potentially pliable, in the second it is presented as something rigid and unchanging. Perceptions of what is humanly possible vary and where the human limits are to be drawn remains an unanswered—if not unanswerable— philosophical question. In the light of Bataille’s thought, and according to the first aspect of his treatment of the impossible, one can conclude

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that it is exactly at that limit set by unanswerable questions that human possibilities become imaginable. As I have already mentioned, Bataille employs the concepts of the extreme limit of the possible and the impossible—concepts which are to be read as more or less the same—to convey this pushing of the limits of human understanding and experience. This pushing of the limit is inherent in inner experience which ‘responds to the necessity in which I find myself—human existence with me— of challenging everything (of putting everything into question) without permissible rest’ (Bataille 1988b: 3). The necessity of such a painful challenging of one’s self—‘the putting into question […] of that which a man knows of being’ (4)—is parallel to the existential suffering Bataille has already established, and which should not be perceived as remaining in a vicious circle of pointless and immobile pain, but should be used in order to make us move forward too: We are defined by the extent of our sense of anguish, which is marked by an urge towards what is impossible. […] Anguish is […] at once a sense of loss and profusion [because] it is present within us not as a negative weight that bears down on us, but as an urge to go beyond our limits, for it is the sense of limits that defines our existence whilst at the same time being connected with the nakedness of existence, a nakedness that for Bataille was rending and painful. (Richardson 1994: 37)

What defines what we are, Richardson seems to imply, is the way we relate to what we are not, what we cannot be or what cannot happen— in other words, the impossible. Lala observes that ‘[i]t is a paradox of the human condition and existence that man can only escape the finitude of his being if he accepts losing himself. Only the impossible can provide an answer … because it is both the centre and derision of any centre. […] The search of an impossible object, which is essential, leads man beyond accepted limits’ (Lala in Gill 1995: 113–115). It is at the limit of the rationally human experience, our only seemingly available experience, that man’s responsibility to go further is intensified. The knowledge that logos (reason and language) will always be impeding one’s access to the impossible should not put one off from attempting to achieve such an access. It is only by challenging the limits, by trying to

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escape them—even from within them: ‘the wild impossibility that I am, an impossibility that can’t avoid limits but can’t stay inside them either’ (Bataille 1988a: 25)—‘that existence breathes the free air of the summit’ (1992: 48). Bataille is very clear about this: what we symbolically call the summit, to use Nietzsche’s words again, the direction towards the realization of what we are, of freedom and entirety, should be identified with a procession and a pushing towards impossibility: ‘I cannot conceive of my life any more except as nailed to the extreme of what is possible’ (Bataille in Champagne 1998: 102). This movement towards impossibility reinforces Bataille’s belief in the lack of motivations and ends: ‘human existence as the life of “unmotivated” celebration’ (Bataille 1992: xxxii); and ‘[f ]rankly put, the summit, when suggested as an end, is not the summit’ (37). The impossible therefore does not lead anywhere. The generation of the journey and maintaining the hardships of it are what matters for Bataille, a task which is to be met with frustration: ‘When the desire to grasp the truth takes hold of me—and here I mean the desire to know and to reach out to the light—I am gripped by feelings of desperation. And immediately, I am (forever) lost in a world in which I have no more power than a small child’ (46). This frustrated motivation only makes sense upon the realization that the ‘desire to know has just one meaning—as a motivation for the desire to question’ (47). Bataille insists on this indefiniteness of the impossible which is necessary to extend itself perpetually as what is to be reached but never is: ‘Like Kafka’s castle, in the final analysis the summit is simply whatever is inaccessible. It slips away from us, at least until we stop being human, that is, until we stop speaking. […] Essentially, the summit is where life is pushed to an impossible limit’ (39). However, Bataille uses the concept of the impossible in another sense too. The impossible now becomes the point where the movement of going further stops. Both the going further and the stopping are rational processes and they are what allow one to experience a fading of logos without being caught within madness, which in this scheme is the impossible: ‘Never knew a happiness so pure, so wild and dark. Awareness of going quite far—and coming to impossibility. The fascinating impossible. As if in the night we’d gotten lost’ (106). Impossibility

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here is not the totally open and unlimited space of possibilities, the force which pushes ever further. While in the first interpretation of the impossible—when it was seen as a parallel of the summit—we have seen that there is never an arrival but a perpetual going, a perpetual questioning, in this case, the impossible marks a coming, an arrival. This experience is also analogous to entering into ‘a dead end. There all possibilities are exhausted; the “possible” slips away and the impossible prevails’ (33). Here, the impossible is also necessarily exhausted and appropriated to a vague and symbolic space which demarcates madness. The vagueness of this interpretation of the impossible accounts for the fact that it is not a demarcation posed by some external source but, rather, depends on each individual person. Nevertheless, for each one, the concept of the impossible holds, as that which sets the boundary—an individual boundary—between reason and madness. It is precisely here where Bataille seemingly reproduces the Nietzschean categorization of madness as impossibility par excellence. But the fact that Bataille moves both ways—the impossible as a motivation and a force to move towards madness and the impossible as real madness or a dead end—allows him both to acknowledge madness for what it is (the place of no return) as well as to put madness to use by philosophizing its significance while also living it out in the context and according to the principles of inner experience.

An Exercise in Acrobatics: Madness, Balance and Intuition Bataille problematizes further the boundaries between reason and madness, and while Nietzsche would turn away, Bataille seeks—inspired not only by the Nietzschean idea of amor fati but by the ‘Nietzsche event’ more generally—to make the most of madness, from the perspective of one who is outside it. Consequently, he provides one with the possibility of a movement towards madness, which is to take place in the space of inner experience. This movement is thought as the necessary condition of the one who seeks truth, a seeking which for Bataille is synonymous with εὖ ζῆν, a sovereign and autonomous bios. The periphery of madness—not madness itself—is identified with the space which

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alone allows the persistent and extremely painful generation of questions, a generation made possible under the condition of anguish. Any answers—which may come in the form of a lack of answers—are only possible upon such a condition. The seeker must know anguish and madness; only then is it possible for the seeker to find. According to Bataille, ‘[p]hilosophy is never supplication: but without supplication, there is no conceivable reply: no answer ever preceded the question: and what does the question without anguish, without torment mean? At the moment of going mad, the answer springs forth: how would one hear it without that?’ (1988b: 36). But the answer is fire, Bataille seems to be saying, and one should advance to the point where burning is avoided. What are the implications of such a demand? Bataille claims he was never insane. Except for the depression for which he underwent psychoanalysis, no other serious mental illness is recorded. Michel Surya further supports this view by indicating that Bataille’s ‘vision was hallucinating, no doubt about it, but he was never insane’ (2002: 5); and in 1931, Bataille writes in The Solar Anus: ‘I was not insane but I undoubtedly made too much of the necessity of leaving, in one way or another, the limits of human experience, and I adapted myself in a fairly disordered way so that the most improbable thing in the world […] would at the same time appear to me necessary’ (Bataille in Surya 2002: 111). These are, therefore, the three poles around which Bataille’s understanding of madness should be read: sanity, ‘the necessity of leaving’ or of ‘going under’, and insanity. The question thus becomes: how far does Bataille want to go, and is Bataille an advocate of madness?

Nietzsche’s Madness and Nietzsche’s Inner Experience Throughout the Summa, and especially in Inner Experience, Bataille uses the concepts of inner experience and the extreme limit of the possible, which I read as suggesting a dim and elusive version of the experience of madness. It would not be incongruous to read these concepts as expressing an experience which consists of the fading of reason, a loosening

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of consciousness, a silencing of language, what Bataille identifies in Nietzsche as ‘a catastrophe of the intelligence’, with which he does not mean his collapse in Turin. On the contrary, Bataille clarifies: ‘I’m not suggesting that I’m accounting for Nietzsche’s illness this way’ and by ‘this way’ he means describing Nietzsche’s madness as inner experience. ‘(from what we know, it had some somatic basis), though it must be said, all the same, that the main impulse that leads to human entirety is tantamount to madness’ (Bataille 1992: xxx) and he continues by explaining precisely how it is so: I let go of good. I let go of reason (meaning). And under my feet, I open an abyss which my activity and my binding judgements once kept from me. At least the awareness of totality is first of all within me as a despair and a crisis. If I give up the viewpoint of action, my perfect nakedness is revealed to me. I have no recourse in the world, there’s nothing to help me—and I collapse. No other outcome is possible, except endless incoherence, in which only chance is my guide. (Bataille 1992: xxx)

Bataille’s understanding of Nietzsche in relation to madness is, of course, important and may be seen as running parallel to the distinction between the madness of Nietzsche and madness for Nietzsche that I sketched in Chap. 4. Bataille acknowledges both Nietzsche’s going mad, to which we are indebted, as well as his lack of philosophical interest in madness: In relation to him I am burning, as through a tunic of Nessus, with a feeling of anxious fidelity. That in the path of inner experience, he only advanced inspired, undecided, does not stop me—if it is true that, as a philosopher he had as a goal not knowledge but, without separating its operations, life, its extreme limit, in a word experience itself, Dionysos philosophos. It is from a feeling of community binding me to Nietzsche that the desire to communicate arises in me, not from an isolated originality. No doubt I have tended more than Nietzsche toward the night of non-knowledge. He doesn’t linger in those swamps where I spend time, as if enmired. But I hesitate no longer: Nietzsche himself would be misunderstood if one didn’t go to this depth. Up to now, he has in fact only produced superficial consequences, as imposing as they may appear.

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[…] Nietzsche was only a burning solitary man, without relief from too much strength, with a rare balance between intelligence and unreasoned life. The balance is not very conducive to the developed exercise of the intellectual faculties (which require calm, as in the existence of Kant, of Hegel). He proceeded by insights, putting into play forces in all directions, not being linked to anything, starting again, not building stone by stone. Speaking after a catastrophe of the intelligence (if I make myself understood). By being the first to become aware. Heedless of contradictions. Enamored only of freedom. Being the first to gain access to the abyss and succumbing from having dominated it. (Bataille 1988b: 26–27)

Confirming his feelings of fidelity, friendship and community with Nietzsche—feelings which are conditions of writing, reading and living philosophy—Bataille, too, unavoidably makes the distinction between Nietzsche’s lack of interest in, or intolerance of, the swamps or the night of non-knowledge, on the one hand, and his inescapable plunging into them on the other. Bataille essentially suggests that Nietzsche was living inner experience but was not aware of it, and he failed to see the connection between this experience and those swamps he perceived as sick and degenerate. While, on the one hand, Klossowski’s version confirms Bataille’s position that Nietzsche bore inner experience, it nonetheless offers a somewhat more nuanced interpretation of Nietzsche’s reaction regarding that experience. Klossowski does this with a meticulous analysis of how he thinks Nietzsche responded to his migraines and how he related to his pain and suffering—in other words, how he experienced and observed passionately the ‘dissolving confrontation between somatic and spiritual forces’ (1997: 24). Without suggesting that Nietzsche voluntarily caused his own madness, Klossowski seems to believe that Nietzsche must have been conscious of the impending danger and played with it as if training ‘in the practice of the unforeseeable’ (220). This means that he played with the ‘centrifugal forces of Chaos. […] Not that he had invoked these forces: the more he feared their imminent irruption, the more he fought against incoherence, and the more he submitted to the allure of the discontinuous and the arbitrary. […] In the consciousness he acquired of them, there appeared, from the start, little by little, the outlines of the seductive smile of the sphinx’ (216). In other words, he might have tried

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to resist and save himself from that smile, but he could not resist the temptation that it was exerting on him nonetheless. Klossowski clearly states that the ‘incoherence’ of Turin also ‘exists at the start of Nietzsche’s career’, and that this is due to ‘an unhealthy psychological disposition. […] But’, and this is the crucial point, ‘the collapse would never have occurred if the seduction exerted by Chaos—that is, by incoherence— had not still and always been present in Nietzsche’ (220). According to Klossowski, the fact that Nietzsche had a ‘premonition of his decline’ (221) gave rise to Nietzsche’s feeling of authority not of an individual, of one who has a new centre, but of a fortuitous case, which he incarnates (220-221), consistent with the law of the eternal return. Klossowski cannot help implying a conscious—even if involuntary—plunging into madness, a movement which can also be seen as being parallel to the gradual expansion of the auto-bio-logico-graphical, that is the gradual identification of his life and his philosophy. In other words, Klossowski’s analysis figures Nietzsche as an example of someone who, because of his ‘unhealthy psychological disposition’, reached a point from which he could not reverse the process of his inner experience. Despite the fact that Bataille advocates Nietzsche’s unawareness regarding the fact that he was living inner experience, he does not fail to evaluate Nietzsche’s life as a well-balanced game between intelligence and unreasoned life. This balance, which may not be good enough to contribute to the developed exercise of intellectual life, like that of Hegel and Kant, inevitably becomes the core of Bataille’s vision of inner experience and his thought in general. It is a balance that Nietzsche established in The Birth of Tragedy between the ‘Dionysian’ and the ‘Apollonian’, the forces of intoxication, dissolution, madness and destruction, and those of clarity, order, reason and creation. It is the balanced play with or of these two forces that Bataille identifies with communication. But after Turin, for Nietzsche this balance was destroyed; a loss which implies for Bataille submission to madness but also domination of it, in other words, a sacrifice: ‘But can the gift of a man’s madness to his fellows be accepted without return plus interest? And if that interest is not the unreason of he who has received that royal gift of another’s unreason, what might the return then be?’ (Bataille 1986b: 44). Like Foucault, then, Bataille considers Nietzsche’s madness in sacrificial terms and

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consequently beneficial to us (the non-mad) and, like both Foucault and Derrida, he expresses his belief that because of this sacrifice from which we benefit, a demand is raised for a certain way in which we need to relate and respond to madness or to those who go mad. One, here, needs to return to the significance of the ‘Nietzsche event’. While this gesture is to be made in philosophy, it is the biological dimension of Nietzsche’s going mad that triggers Bataille’s commitment to a dynamic involvement of his bios in this gesture as well, a commitment which can be detected already in 1939 in ‘Nietzsche’s Madness’ with the emphasis that he places on the embodiment or the living out of the thought of the ‘man incarnate’, in other words the emphasis on the insertion of bios into logos and vice versa. This is what the ‘man incarnate’ does by necessity: ‘He would surely not content himself with thought and speech, for inner necessity would constrain him to live out his thought and speech’ (Bataille 1986b: 43–44). This, which attests madness, is something to which Bataille assigns an important symbolic value. One way, therefore, in which, philosophically, one can relate to madness as the embodiment of logos is by committing to the philosophy which allows the insertion of bios into the work: autobiographical philosophy. Bataille, more than any other philosopher, treats his philosophy as the space in which his offerings to the sacrificed mad are laid, and his offerings are marked by nothing more and nothing less than a movement towards madness. But this movement towards madness should not be confused with madness itself. Bataille clarifies that the ‘choice is not between madness and reason, but between the lie “of a nightmare that justifies snores,” and the will to self-mastery and victory’ (Bataille 1986b: 45). By ‘selfmastery’ and ‘victory’ Bataille means not a control over oneself but rather sovereignty, which involves losing oneself and regaining oneself through inner experience. Besides the cessation of intellectual faculties that inner experience implies, the subject remains—and this is the importance of the notion of balance. Inner experience is a self-dissolution and self-annihilation at will: ‘The subject in [inner] experience loses its way, it loses itself in the object, which itself is dissolved. It could not, however, become dissolved to this point, if its nature didn’t allow it this change; the subject in experience in spite of everything remains’ (Bataille 1988b: 61).

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Is Bataille an Advocate of Madness? When, in Inner Experience, Bataille explains the experience of reaching the extreme limit of the possible, which involves the fading of reason, he acknowledges that the next step of this letting go, of this dissipation and dissolution of reason, is madness, and hastens to clarify that he does not encourage people to go into it: At first, at the extreme limit of the ‘possible’, everything gives way: the edifice itself of reason – in an instant of insane courage, its majesty dissipated; what subsists at the worst, like a piece of shaking wall, increases, does not calm the vertiginous feeling. Useless impudence of recriminations; it was necessary to experience this, nothing resists the necessity of going further. If it had been required, madness would have been the payment. (Bataille 1988b: 40)

But he insists that there should not be any more, one should not go further, and he stresses that ‘the extreme limit of the “possible” is that point where […] man, having stripped himself of enticement and fear, advances so far that one cannot conceive of the possibility of going further’ (39). So, despite his admiration for, and communication with, Nietzsche, or his attraction to the experiences which challenge reason, Bataille is not an advocate of madness, or, to be precise, he is not an advocate of any sort of conscious and calculated entering into madness. In other words, he is not calling for a sacrificial plunge into madness, just as he is not calling for a constant state of massacre and total eradication of human life. As he calls for a ‘dying while surviving’ (Bataille 1988a: 93), he also calls for a reason which can perceive itself as obscure and irrational: ‘this most complete reason, the reason which is its own night for itself, the reason which, as reason, judges itself not to be unreasonable, but which is just as obscure as the absence of reason’ (Bataille in Surya 2002: 430). In other words, he argues for a reason reasonable enough to embrace not its own complete and irreversible annihilation but the acknowledgement of the possibility of its own annihilation. It is in the same way that he argues for the acknowledgement of the fatality of death and the

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necessity for one to live to the height of these possibilities—in other words, responding ethically to these possibilities. This acknowledgement and this response are rational processes: Inner experience is led by discursive reason. Reason alone has the power to undo its work, to hurl down what it has built up. Madness has no effect, allowing debris to subsist, disturbing along with reason the faculty for communicating. […] Without the support of reason, we don’t reach ‘dark incandescence’. (Bataille 1988b: 47)

Bataille’s insistence on the necessity of the preservation of reason—even if weakened, or disturbed—becomes more than apparent in this extract, yet it remains to briefly outline the three principal reasons for Bataille’s explicit wish for reason’s safeguarding. First, madness marks the absence of desire: going mad is ‘a despicable destiny… […] There was always in some the bitter will—be it diffuse—to go to the furthest point that man could go. But if man ceased to wish to be himself with as much bitterness, that would only occur with the collapse of all desire—in whatever way that this desire is exerted (enchantment, combat, quest)’ (Bataille 1988b: 40). Since madness marks the lack of desire—in Nietzsche, this is the same as ceasing to become—it would necessarily mean a negation of the desire of the individual to be everything, which is met with frustration and ends in anguish. Consequently, a man within madness will not be able to experience or to will anguish, to ‘reach “dark incandescence”’. Therefore, when seen from the perspective of Bataille’s second treatment of the concept of the impossible, the implication is that a conscious going mad is a contradiction, an impossibility. Madness thus marks the limit of the furthest imaginable possible. Second, for Bataille, madness marks the end of communication; that is, the possibility of finding the other through losing oneself. ‘Now, it is obvious’, he writes in ‘Nietzsche’s Madness’, ‘that a representation of madness at the summit can have no direct effect; no one can voluntarily destroy within himself the expressive apparatus which links him to his fellows, like bone to bone’ (1986b: 44). The madmen are the absent ones, the ostracized, those who lack the apparatus for communication. Besides the relation of this position to the ancient Greek understanding

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of man as a communal and sociable animal—κοινωνικὸν γὰρ ζῷον γέγονεν ὁ ἄνθρωπος and κοινωνικὸν ἄνθρωπος ζῷον (man is a social animal) (Plutarch and Aristotle respectively)—this further supports the idea that for Bataille, unlike the violent instincts in man that are to be taken for granted, the possibility of madness is never a voluntary choice. Third, a conscious leap into madness would deny the domination of chance, and would force upon it action and calculation. Such a perspective (of action) would be parallel to suicide when it comes to one’s relation to death. A calculated and deliberate movement into death or madness would also imply turning away from anguish. Bataille privileges chance because it legitimizes and reinforces the threatening nature of the heterogeneous. The sovereign way to relate to chance is by being conscious of its dominance over oneself. Being open to chance, one is necessarily open to the unlimited possibilities that existence entails, including the heterogeneous: that is, horror, death, madness, et cetera. Chance is the condition of all possibility: ‘Possibility in fact is simply chance—chance that can’t be grasped without danger’ (Bataille 1986b: 95). For the most part, Bataille follows Nietzsche’s understanding of chance, which stands as the symbol for total freedom: ‘To want chance is amor fati (love of fate). Amor fati signifies wanting’ (120). It is therefore a matter not of accepting chance, but of wanting it, loving it. If one only accepts it or tolerates it, then one necessarily relates its outcome to either loss or gain, but, if on the contrary, one loves it, then no evaluative judgement can make sense of the outcome. For someone, therefore, who is close to achieving totality—human entirety—loving chance practically means a life which is lived to the height of death and madness, a life which moves towards the impossible, in an effort to transgress the limits of what is given as possible. What helps one in this effort to move towards the impossible is chance. At the edge of what is conventionally experienced as impossible, chance alone brings the next step. But how is one to understand the degree of human agency in this scheme so far dominated by chance? Bataille flirts with madness in an environment that is controlled and determined by his own intuition about how close he can get, and he almost makes fun of Hegel, who seems to have been unable to distinguish inner experience from madness: ‘A comic little summary. Hegel,

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I imagine, touched upon the extreme limit. He was still young and believed himself to be going mad’, but he wanted to escape which means that he turned ‘his back on the extreme limit’ (1988b: 43). Understanding the space of the transgressed limits between reason, inner experience and madness is crucial. It is an understanding of the dynamics of this space, and of the way one moves or rather manoeuvres within this space, that defines subjectivity. But this understanding and this manoeuvre are in effect one’s private dialogue with madness. Madness is at once a threat and an extreme possibility of existence, but also what is needed in order for one to be true to oneself and one’s possibilities. Man’s living in relation to madness, to the height of madness or even more accurately at the edge of madness, is determined by both chance and choice. How we relate to madness depends on factors that imply both. How far we go, and where exactly we stop, depend on one’s physiological make-up, the degree to which one is attracted to it, the extent to which one is able to shutter it off, the extent to which one feels vulnerable to it, one’s willingness to risk, and the extent of our intellectual capacities and our faculty of intuition. Bataille may seem ambiguous—‘I teach the art of turning anguish to delight’, yet ‘Anguish […] is not learned’ (35)—but the way he explains these subtle dynamics does away with any seeming ambiguity. What Bataille claims is that anguish is not chosen but chooses, yet the fact that it chooses one and not another depends on all those factors mentioned above, which are specific to the individual. One is ‘chosen in accordance with his forebodings. But what a waste if he escapes: he suffers as much and humiliates himself, he becomes stupid, false, superficial. Anguish, once evaded, makes of a man an agitated Jesuit, but agitated to emptiness’ (35). Bataille, like Nietzsche, is an elitist in the sense that he points out that the space of inner experience is not necessarily open for everybody: ‘Anyone may not embark on this voyage [of inner experience], but if he does embark on it, this supposes the negation of the authorities, the existing values which limit the possible’ (7). Once chosen, once one’s forebodings allow one to be chosen, Bataille does not appreciate passivity and inertia. Bataille should not be read as contradicting himself when he expresses his contempt for the realm of project, on the one hand, and forcing destiny on the other: ‘Inner experience is project […]

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But project is no longer in this case that, positive, of salvation, but that, negative, of abolishing the power of words, hence of project’ (22). In short, Bataille argues: ‘Principle of inner experience: to emerge through project from the realm of project’ (46). In his ‘Autobiographical Note’, Bataille writes that he ‘is convinced, from 1914 on, that his concern in this world is with writing and, in particular, with the formulation of a paradoxical philosophy’ (1986a: 106). The fact that Bataille always denied being a philosopher should be read as a confirmation rather than a contestation of the above statement, which is the most formal declaration of Bataille’s lifelong conviction. It is a claim which should be interpreted as meaning that he does not do philosophy as the latter is traditionally conceived. On the contrary, he turns philosophy on its head, demanding that it, like the human being, experiences the pain and the anguish of the wound and that it goes or rather that it is taken to the extreme limit of the possible. As a child of reason, philosophy has to reconsider both its grounds and its claims. Bataille therefore formulates a thought, an a-systematic system, which tolerates the heterogeneous, the acknowledgement of which ‘leads to the complete reversal of the philosophical process, which ceases to be the instrument of appropriation, and now serves excretion’ (Bataille in Botting and Wilson 1998a: 154). It is to the height of the heterogeneous, the inassimilable and impossible that ipseity (sovereign subjectivity) strives for its constitution. It is this reconsideration of philosophy’s grounds and claims that Bataille undertakes in the Summa, not with the intention of defining or explaining it, but simply to make us experience it. Such a task is difficult, since it proposes that we live according to the principles of the ‘ethics of vulnerability’ that Bataille establishes, which requires that we consciously open up to experiences that may cause us pain and suffering. In the same way, philosophy (as a corpus) should reflect this shift from power to vulnerability and should become the reflection of the experiences that it entails. According to Patrick ffrench, Bataille does achieve this in Inner Experience, in which ‘the content is inherent in the form’ (2007: 69). To read the book, ffrench claims, ‘is to oscillate from the intransigence of the demand for totality, for the summit, to the collapse, the experience of not being at all’ (69).

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Bataille’s Summa Atheologica paradigmatically offers itself as autobiographical philosophy by becoming the textual corpus in which Bataille’s bios is inscribed into logos and in which the two are reflected. It is in this corpus that Bataille inserts and ‘lacerates’ himself time and again, in the process of ‘paying back’ Nietzsche and everyone else who went mad in his place. In this sense, Bataille’s philosophy enacts the assumption of this ethical stance that one must have in relation to madness. This is why the question here is not so much how the traditionally accepted categories designating what is and what is not madness shifted—these can be traced historically, as Foucault disclosed—but rather, how we are to deal with madness as that which is primarily absence, lack of desire, lack of communication and impossibility. Despite his profound indebtedness to Nietzsche, Bataille goes further than Nietzsche in this respect. Bataille offers an alternative concerning the way we can or should relate to madness. From Nietzsche’s total rejection, Bataille goes so far as to acknowledge the ‘value’ of madness (as the demarcation of impossibility)—taken in the context of the realm of the heterogeneous—as well as the risks that it comes with, and suggests a movement not away from it but towards it. This movement, shielded within the space of inner experience, implies a going under, a keeping open of the wound, but at the same time a safe return. Bataille is, then, closer in this respect to Nietzsche, in the sense that he stops short of celebrating madness as a way beyond the systematic and the scientific in the Hegelian sense. With the same rigour that he demands that one glimpse madness, he also stresses the necessity of what Rovatti calls ‘repatriation’ (2002: 16). Bataille rejects madness in this way because it is identified with a fixation of being in a state (of selfhood) where the dissolution of the limits of being or the shift from I to ipse is no longer possible; in other words madness brings about the illusion of the personal, of wholeness and of achieved human entirety rather than acknowledging the reality of the impersonal and the deferral of a fixed identity: ‘it may happen that one of us tends towards madness, feels himself become everything’ (Bataille 1988b: 153). In this sense, there is a parallel with Nietzsche, for whom madness marks the arrival at a self, negating the process of becoming. Despite the fact that, for both Nietzsche and Bataille, madness equals this ‘becoming everything’, ‘knowing what one is’, believing oneself to

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be a complete self in total control of one’s life, it is only in Bataille’s work that madness is systematically philosophized.

Note 1. See Chap. 3.

References Bataille, Georges. 1986a. ‘Autobiographical Note’, October, vol. 36: Georges Bataille: Writings on Laughter, Sacrifice, Nietzsche, Un-Knowing, 107– 110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/i231779. Accessed 15 Mar 2010. Bataille, Georges. 1986b. ‘Nietzsche’s Madness’, October, vol. 36: Georges Bataille: Writings on Laughter, Sacrifice, Nietzsche, Un-Knowing, 42–45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/i231779. Accessed 15 Mar 2010. Bataille, Georges. 1988a. Guilty, trans. Bruce Boone. Venice, CA: The Lapis Press. Bataille, Georges. 1988b. Inner Experience, trans. Leslie Anne Boldt. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bataille, Georges. 1992. On Nietzsche, trans. Bruce Boone. New York: Paragon House. Bataille, Georges. 1998a. The Use-Value of D.A.F. de Sade (An Open Letter to My Current Comrades). In The Bataille Reader, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie, Jr., ed. Fred Botting and Scott Wilson. Cornwall: TJ International. Champagne, Roland A. 1998. Georges Bataille. New York: Twayne. ffrench, Patrick. 2007. After Bataille: Sacrifice, Exposure, Community. London: Legenda (Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing). Lala, Marie-Christine. 1995. The Hatred of Poetry in Georges Bataille’s Writing and Thought. In Bataille: Writing the Sacred, trans. Peter Collier, ed. Carolyn Bailey Gill. Cornwall: TJ Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1992. The Will to Power. In On Nietzsche, trans. Richard Howarded, ed. Georges Bataille. New York: Paragon House.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1997. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Helen Zimmern. New York: Dover. Richardson, Michael. 1994. Georges Bataille. Cornwall: TJ Press. Rovatti, Pier Aldo. 2002. Astride a Low Wall: Notes on Philosophy and Madness. In Plí: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, vol. 13, trans. Lorenzo Chiesa. Foucault: Madness/Sexuality/Biopolitics, 13–25. Surya, Michel. 2002. Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Rischardson. Essex: Verso.

Part III Michel Foucault: Madness and Philosophical Incapacity

8 History of Madness: Is There Such a Thing as Madness?

Madness as a Socio-Historical Construct The relevance of Michel Foucault’s monumental History of Madness (1961) (original title: Madness and Unreason: History of Madness in the Classical Age) to a study of the relation between twentieth century French philosophy and madness is unquestionable. Foucault’s project is the first which introduces madness in the philosophical debates in a systematic and substantial way, initiating thus what I call the madness studies in philosophy, part of which is also this book. Faced with a text so long and so detailed, however, and with a hardly traceable movement of the narrative across different genres (history, sociology, philosophy and psychology), I propose that the best and most effective way to approach it is by reading it as two separate projects. This is a choice inspired by Roy Boyne’s distinction between Foucault’s attempt in History of Madness ‘to give an account of the historical necessities underlying the exclusion of the mad and the silencing of madness’ as well as ‘to know madness in its primitive, untamed state’ (Boyne 1990: 56). This is not an unproblematic statement, and it is one which I explore and analyse in this section extensively. © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_8

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Although much criticised by historians, Foucault’s first project is simpler than the second one, as well as more conventionally or rationally acceptable in its conception, intention and execution. It consists of a historical tracing of the way madness has been perceived, understood and treated from the late Middle Ages through to the twentieth century, or, to give a taste of Foucault’s argument, it is an exposition of the processes through which the perception of madness and the discourses on madness have been constructed, shaped and reshaped. This historical tracing concentrates on three eras leading Macey to call it ‘a triptych or a tragic drama in three acts’ (1993: 96). The first covers the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance (fifteenth to mid-seventeenth century); the second involves the Classical Age, which according to Foucault stretches from 1657 to 1794 and on which he mostly concentrates—hence the subtitle of the original title: History of Madness in the Classical Age—and the third one extends from the late eighteenth century to Foucault’s time. Despite its flaws, mainly in the area of historical accuracy and consistency,1 this project deserves merit for its in-depth research, meticulousness and insight, and is convincing in its argument, summarized by Macey as ‘a positive history of the transition from “folie” to “mental illness”’ (1993: 97). It is a project which in itself implies Foucault’s evaluative approach, namely that madness is a conceptual construction which accommodates the needs and the tastes of each era, be these religious, aesthetic, philosophical or medical. In other words, it is a construction which is relative to the ‘reason’ with which each era wants to identify itself; the implication is that madness is not essentially bad.2

Madness: That Tragic Thing of the Middle Ages Foucault identifies the period of the Middle Ages until the Renaissance as one in which ‘the debate between man and madness was a dramatic [or tragic, as Foucault writes elsewhere] debate that confronted man with the dark powers of the world’ (Foucault 2010: xxxiii). Madness is connected with what man’s cultural psyche experiences as dark forces, death, nothingness, dreams, fantasy, et cetera. The concepts of the

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dramatic debate and the tragic experience refer precisely to the fascination with these things. This tragic experience of madness—one of fascination and fear—is also one which identifies madness as ‘a figure of the cosmos’ (25). This conception of madness may remind one of Nietzsche’s thesis in The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music (1872), regarding the struggle between the Apollonian and the Dionysian: the former as the force which contains, structures and gives form to the formless and tragic forces of violence and irrationality that the latter is. For Nietzsche, too, the highest form of expression of the balance between these two forces is literary, specifically ancient Greek tragedy. This tragic element in the experience of madness features positively throughout History of Madness and is linked with what Foucault later calls the literature of madness, which is effectively literature which ‘attest[s] to the great prestige of madness’ (1987: 67). It is the workings of this literature which Foucault will also describe as the ‘lyrical experience’ or ‘lyrical protest’ of madness, which the Classical Age—with its Cartesian ethics of reason which is constituted upon the exclusion of madness—will repress. Foucault will make clear, however, that this repression was not total. In other words, this tragic element of madness resists the Classical repression and finds its way through from Cervantes (1547–1616) and Shakespeare (1564–1616), to Sade (1740–1814), Goya (1746–1828) and Hölderlin (1770–1843), as well as to Nietzsche (1844–1900), Van Gogh (1853– 1890) and Artaud (1896–1948), among others. What Foucault nostalgically observes and stresses about the period of the Renaissance is how Western culture seemed to be hospitable to madness despite the fact that in the fifteenth century the concept of treatment was introduced and ‘the first great madhouses’ opened (Foucault 1987: 67). Foucault points out that madness was allowed free rein; it circulated throughout society, it formed part of the background and language of everyday life, it was for everyone an everyday experience that one sought neither to exalt nor to control. In France, in the early seventeenth century, there were famous madmen […] [who] wrote books that were published and read as works of madness. Up to about 1650, Western culture was strangely hospitable to these forms of experience. (Foucault 1987: 67)

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The essential thing for Foucault, therefore, is that madness, in its threatening monstrosity but also in its devout and respectable sanctity, was close to people; it was a part of their lives, terrible and exciting at the same time. This simultaneous terror and excitement resulted from the fact that in the mad the non-mad could see themselves as potentiality. Through the mad, the non-mad were measuring their own limits and their own possibilities, and were becoming witnesses of their own frailty and vulnerability. It is for this reason that the Renaissance allowed a wider margin for the possibility of error in the arbitrary association between reason and normality, on the one hand, and madness and abnormality on the other, and that it showed a great degree of hospitality to madness. But this tragic element in the Renaissance, which results from the perception of madness as already within the cosmos—‘a silent invasion from within, a secret gap in the earth, as it were’ (Foucault 1987: 77)—gradually gives way to a consciousness which develops alongside it, and which is more critical and cynical, what we would be inclined today to call rational. Foucault identifies the shift to this critical consciousness which, despite the fact that it becomes more intense in the Classical Age, is already visible in the fifteenth century and is paradigmatically linked to Erasmus,3 who, like ‘an Olympian God’, observes madness ‘from on high’ (24). Foucault’s reference to Erasmus, however, comes with a tacit disapproval of the fact that, according to him, Erasmus only engages in an observation from a safe distance which ‘ensures that he is never drawn in’ (24). Interestingly, this criticism could and will be directed to Foucault himself in relation to my assessment of the absence of the autobiographical in his work in Chap. 9. This new consciousness that Foucault introduces with his reference to Erasmus (despite the latter’s eminent praise of madness) he calls ‘critical consciousness’, and it is accompanied by a mood of irony which derives from the feeling of superiority over madness of which the man of reason is gradually made conscious. The experience of madness at the beginning of the Renaissance, therefore, is shaped by these two conflicting attitudes: the tragic and the critical consciousness of madness. It is the former, though, that Foucault consistently turns to in order to contrast the treatment of madness in the Classical Age.

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From Madness to Unreason: The Classical Age Often Foucault contrasts the perception of madness in the Renaissance and in the Classical Age in order to emphasize how historically determined madness is and how rapidly it changed. As far as the Classical Age is concerned, this change affected both the consciousness of madness and the establishment of institutions—asylums, houses of confinement and prisons—which initiated and enforced this new consciousness. It is primarily in this change in the consciousness of madness that Foucault is interested, and which is—we could safely say—his major project in History of Madness. This emphasis on the Classical Age was already evident in the original title of Foucault’s 1961 text: Madness and Unreason: History of Madness in the Classical Age before its re-edition three years later as History of Madness. Chronologically, Foucault sees the Classical Age as extending from the middle of the seventeenth century, specifically 1657 with the opening of the Hôpital Général in Paris, which symbolically also stands for the beginning of what Foucault calls the Great Confinement or Internment (Le grand renfermement), to the end of the eighteenth century, specifically 1794, with the beginning of the philanthropic mission by the two ‘saviours of the mad’, the philanthropists Philippe Pinel (1745–1826) in France and William Tuke (1732–1822) in England who could also be considered the initiators of the third period or moment of the historical triptych, the time of the development of positive psychiatry. Foucault goes to great lengths to describe in detail the way the lepers were treated and kept segregated in the lazar houses in the Middle Ages in order to illustrate how the mad are the ‘lepers’ of the Classical Age. Since the mid-seventeenth century therefore, the natural place of madness was literally behind bars or in chains. Since the mad are confined, along with all the others whom Classical morality deemed as deserving confinement, madness quickly turns into a sin. The madman now becomes a social type, and as such he shares the prison space with ‘all those who, in relation to the order of reason, morality, and society, showed signs of “derangement”’ (Foucault 1987:

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67). The punishment that the houses of confinement exercise is destined and justified for man only in his capacity as a wrong-doing social being.4 Foucault further clarifies that behind the brutality of the practices of confinement and punishment, one needs also to see a Classical concern with correction, help and charity reflected in a ‘desire to assist’ (52) which implies the belief in a truth which is lost and which needs to be retrieved: the purpose of confinement was therefore to bring ‘the lost back to the truth by moral constraints. As such, it bore witness to an experience of error that should be understood above all as a question of ethics’ (97). The Classical Age is responsible for an important terminological as well as conceptual change which brings about a distinction between madness and unreason. In fact, one would be justified in saying that the Classical experience of madness is unreason. Probably because of a seeming simplicity which has been taken for granted, the distinction between madness and unreason has escaped most analyses of History of Madness. It is only in the Foreword (by Ian Hacking) and the Introduction (by Jean Khalfa) of the 2006 edition of History of Madness that this theme is brought up as important. Hacking traces Foucault’s change in attitude and approach to the relation between madness and unreason. He tackles this distinction by describing the fading away of the term ‘unreason’ from the title of Foucault’s original Madness and Unreason: History of Madness in the Classical Age (1961) to the later and briefer History of Madness (1964), a change that Hacking attributes to Foucault ‘changing his mind about madness’ (Hacking in Foucault 2010: ix). Hacking intriguingly stimulates our curiosity concerning these changes but only with questions—‘What is the déraison that dropped from the title but was still all over the text?’ (x)—and vague statements: ‘Unreason is not identical to madness but something that contrasts with it’ (x). It is with the same vagueness that Khalfa remarks that in the Classical Age ‘madness is perceived as unreason, that is, the absolute opposite of reason’ (Khalfa in Foucault 2010: xvii). Nevertheless, this change marks the loss of the experience of madness as that which could be in dialogue with reason, as well as the loss of the tragic and almost sacred element that the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were happy to grant madness. As a result, there occurs a repositioning of madness in the domain of morality (and ethics),

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which is at the heart of Foucault’s argument concerning the distinction between madness and unreason. Unreason, therefore, is what reason made of madness, or it is what madness becomes after the labelling of madness by reason as its absolute opposite. This is an act with a double effect in the sense that by excluding madness as its opposite, reason simultaneously establishes itself as what it is. In other words, the exclusion of madness is constitutive of reason itself: ‘madness and reason enter into a perpetually reversible relationship […]. Each is a measure of the other, and in this movement of reciprocal reference, each rejects the other but is logically dependent upon it’ (Foucault 2010: 29). This change, this forced movement of madness as something which is to be understood and perceived against the horizon of unreason resulted in the loss of the madman’s individuality. The identity of the mad that Foucault is struggling to reshape—one could say (re)invent—is gone: the mad person is just one of those human beings whose behaviour is contra reason (unreasonable) and who should be isolated from the healthy society.5 Moreover, in contrast to the vagueness of madness, or rather as a result of it, unreason becomes recognizable: ‘unreasonable men were characters whom society recognised and isolated: the debauched and the dissolute, homosexuals, magicians, libertines and suicides. Unreason began to be considered as a certain distance from a social norm’ (Foucault 2010: 102). It is, perhaps, this association of madness with the (social) ‘abnormal’ which is responsible for the subsequent stain of sin that madness is left with for centuries. And with sin comes guilt, which nineteenth-century psychiatry managed to enhance in the consciousness of the mad. Despite these negative developments in terms of attitude and perception, the 1789 Revolution brings what Foucault identifies as a positive change to the physical conditions of the confinement of the mad which, of course, would only pave the way for the emergence of positive psychiatry and the establishment of the mental hospitals. The French Revolution initiates a new movement, with the revolutionaries rising against the monarchy, the aristocracy, the Church and social injustice. Against this political background, defending madness became one of the symbols of the protest and the revolution itself: ‘The pre-1789

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reformers and the Revolution itself wished to abolish internment as a symbol of ancient oppression and, at the same time, to restrict hospital assistance as far as possible on the grounds that it was a sign of the existence of a penurious class. Attempts were made to define a formula of financial help and medical care from which the poor would benefit at home’ (Foucault 1987: 70). Of course, the mad were not yet simply to be released from their captivity. The priority for the managers and administrators of the houses of confinement, therefore, became the ‘tidying up’ of the faceless mess of the crowds occupying these houses, which were now to be rearranged and redefined as houses of confinement for the mad only.6

From Madness to Mental Illness: The End of the Eighteenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century This third and last moment in the historical triptych in Foucault’s analysis of the discourses on madness extends from the end of the eighteenth century, with the abolition of confinement and the appearance of the first philanthropists and physicists devoted to breaking madness free from the chains of the houses of confinement, to the beginning of the twentieth century. It is the time when madness becomes a medical matter and consequently is objectified under the sanitized eye—or gaze—of the doctor. Madness escapes the chains of the houses of confinement, but offers itself up to become the object of medicine. Madness loses its tragic character not to the morally oriented unreason but to the medically oriented mental illness. The protagonists of this crusade of liberation and medicalization were Philippe Pinel in France, who is known as a physician and philanthropist, and William (Samuel) Tuke in England, known as a businessman, philanthropist and Quaker (a member of the Religious Society of Friends). Despite the fact that this is an age interested in locating madness in the realm of science, the moral concerns were still important though. The dynamic formula between care, protection and punishment was in use again, this time under the new self-justified authority, medicine.

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The structure of the modern asylum drew from the models of the houses of confinement on the one hand, and the family on the other, as the symbol of protection, supervision and control. The family politics and ethics that the new culture of the modern asylum wanted to re-enact requires the paternal figure as the source of knowledge, protection and moral guidance and the child who is in need of all these. This is why the mad acquire the status of minors at the house of their guardian, an arrangement which Foucault calls the ‘parental complex’ (Foucault 2010: 490). What Foucault associates with this complex is a combination of the structure of protection which would then lead to psychological control and domination by the doctor whose role and authority were informed not merely by his medical capacity but also by his responsibility as a paradigmatic agent of correct moral conduct.7 For Foucault, the positivism that came to be associated with modern psychiatry was therefore the result of a moral imposition rather than scientific research. It is for this reason that he dismisses psychiatry as the discourse of the exaltation of the doctor to the role of God and the sinking of madness into the realm of sickness and degeneration. Psychiatry, Foucault claims, developed precisely in the context of a complete lack of scientific objectivity and upon the grounds of the doctors’ acquisition of powers ‘beyond human measure’ (2010: 509). It is this Foucault— the critic of psychiatry—who became popular among the ‘“counterculture” of the late 1960s’ (Macey 1993: 211) and the anti-psychiatry movement in particular, which was extremely disapproving of the practices of mainstream psychiatry in a way very similar to Foucault’s.8 The fact that Foucault never committed himself to the movement, however, is probably partly to explain why he was harshly criticized for having no real interest in the mad and for offering no hope and no alternative for their treatment. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Henri Sztulman reproachfully writes: ‘Not one human cry is heard in these thousands of pages, in the closed and aseptic world of disembodied thought in which Foucault moves’ (Sztulman in Macey 1993: 214); and the psychologist Peter Barham points out that ‘Foucault’s perspective could hardly be said to have provided any grounds for social hope in our dealings with the mad’ (Barham in Still and Velody 1992: 47).

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When it comes to the actual treatment of the mad, and in order to expose the nineteenth-century psychiatric practices even further, Foucault compares it with basic medical treatment that existed already in the houses of confinement of the Classical Age. The interesting aspect of this treatment, which was otherwise primitive, was the implication of the pre-Cartesian consideration of body and mind or soul as one. In the houses of confinement, therefore, the mad patients were treated holistically: the treatment simultaneously targeted both their soul or mind and their body: ‘the patient was subjected to showers and baths in order to refresh both the spirits and the fibers of the body’ (Foucault 1987: 71). When these treatments were taken up and appropriated by nineteenth-century psychiatry, however, they entered ‘a purely repressive and moral context’ (72). It was therefore in the nineteenth century ‘that madness ceased to be regarded as an overall phenomenon affecting […] both body and soul. In the new world of the asylum, in that world of a punishing morality, madness became a fact concerning essentially the human soul, its guilt, and its freedom; it was now inscribed within the dimension of interiority; and by that fact, for the first time in the modern world, madness was to receive psychological status, structure, and signification’ (73). This psychologization of madness, Foucault protests, in no way does it justify the status of psychology as a discipline. In one of Foucault’s earliest texts, Mental Illness and Psychology, first published in French as Maladie Mentale et Personalité in 1954,9 Foucault goes to great lengths to make clear that ‘“objective,” or “positive,” or “scientific” psychology found its historical origin and its basis in pathological experience. It was an analysis of duplications that made possible a psychology of the personality’ (73–74), a remnant of Foucault’s first title of this book. Against this context, or rather because of psychology’s constitution upon an assumption that according to Foucault is arbitrary and unjustified, he argues that psychology cannot express the ‘truth’ of madness unless psychology admits its defeat at the root of its constitution. As far as psychoanalysis is concerned, and despite its difference from psychology and psychiatry, Foucault is also apprehensive. On the one hand, he praises Freud for his intention to give madness its voice back and to engage in a dialogue with it, yet he argues that Freud falls short of these intentions, a shift in attitude also observable between the first

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and the second publication of Mental Illness and Psychology. Foucault’s criticism of Freud is very simple—probably too simple, as Derrida’s 1991 ‘To Do Justice to Freud’ illustrates. But Foucault’s point is that the mad were to be liberated from the morally deterministic chains of the asylum and the gaze of the nineteenth-century psychiatrist, only to be chained up and put under the discreet and polite eye of another figure with divine powers, the psychoanalyst. For this reason, Foucault clearly compared psychoanalysis to psychiatry in the sense that both seem to be raising this hypothetical shield of scientific objectivity, thereby hiding the truth of madness. Foucault’s suspicion of psychoanalysis is further enunciated in The Will to Knowledge (1976), where the psychoanalytic practices are positioned in the context of the discipline of the body through the technologies of bio-power. The structure of Foucault’s critique of psychoanalysis is not very different from that of his suspicion of philosophy, which through its dialectical language, according to Foucault, blocks communication with madness.

There Is No Madness Not only in History of Madness, but also in his subsequent work,10 Foucault seeks to prove the absence of pure essences and show that everything results from the interplay of the discursive networks of power. It is in this light that he sets out to prove that there is no such thing as sickness and health, or abnormality and normality. Without denying any of the observable manifestations—the term ‘symptom’ already implies an evaluative approach—of the condition which is referred to as madness, what Foucault seems to be doing—in accordance with the work of his supervisor, Georges Canguilhem11—is to dissociate these manifestations of madness (be they physical or psychological) from the possibility of a natural source, from an original or a default model of non-health which is to be found in nature: The psychopathology of the nineteenth century (and perhaps our own too, even now) believes that it orients itself and takes its bearings in relation to a homo natura, a normal man pre-existing all experience of mental

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illness. Such a man is in fact an invention, and if he is to be situated, it is not in a natural space, but in a system that identifies the socius to the subject of the law. Consequently a madman is not recognised as such because an illness has pushed him to the margins of normality, but because our culture situates him at the meeting point between the social decree of confinement and the juridical knowledge that evaluates the responsibility of individuals before the law. (Foucault 2010: 129–130)

It is the same idea that Foucault entertains in Mental Illness and Psychology, where he claims that ‘the root of mental pathology must be sought not in some kind of “metapathology,” but in a certain relation, historically situated, of man to the madman and to the true man’ (Foucault 1987: 2; emphasis added). The claim that Foucault is trying to make here is that any attempt to define madness is always relative to, and dependent on, the reason against which, in which and by which that definition is made. The only identity that madness can have, therefore, is always in relation to reason; in other words, madness can only be defined as that which reason is not. The definition is only possible in its negative: ‘there is no perception of madness other than by reference to an order of reason, and to the consciousness that we have when confronted with a man of reason […]. It suddenly emerges like a discordance, i.e. it is entirely negative’ (Foucault 2010: 180). Foucault claims that this arbitrary identification of madness, like that of a photographic negative or an engraving, creates a paradox, namely that while the perception of madness is completely vague, the conviction of who is mad is characterized by intense specificity. This paradox, Foucault argues, is what lies at the heart of unreason, which creates and feeds the alienation and the distancing of the mad from his madness. It is, therefore, only through a relation that madness can be understood and defined, simultaneously shaking off the very same grounds of such definition, as well as reclaiming its fragmentary character. Fifteen years after Mental Illness and Psychology and eight years after History of Madness, Foucault repeats in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) that ‘it is not possible to accept, as a valid unity forming a group of statements, a “discourse, concerning madness”’ (Foucault 1986a: 32) nor

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that all these different statements about madness can refer to a ‘single object’ (32). While it firmly (and also somehow more maturely) reaffirms the multiplicity of the discourses on madness which suggest that madness is relative to the discourses of reason, this passage, in its context, eludes confirming the total absence of (an essence of ) madness itself, which would remain unconfined by the aforementioned discourses in the European culture at least. In other words, this absence of madness as a single object does not prove that there is no secret truth of madness, uncorrupted by and totally unknown to the discourses of reason, but simply tries to establish madness as the product of certain historically oriented discursive conditions that Foucault’s first project is all about. One could argue further that, for Foucault, it is precisely the singularity of madness that the polyphony of these voices of reason on madness fail to encompass. This tension, which remains unresolved, becomes one of the most intriguing but, at the same time, problematic aspects of Foucault’s text in History of Madness. On the one hand, there is no positive nature or essence of madness but what is conventionally perceived as madness only results as the negative mirror image through reason’s decision and act of delimiting what it does not want to be identified with. On the other hand, Foucault discreetly leaves traces of an intuition and a belief in something which appears in History of Madness in a number of guises, such as negativity, voice, echo, et cetera, to which Foucault urges us to be attentive.

‘There Is No Madness’ Rethought Despite the structural identification of madness and reason in the sense that madness is relative to reason, Foucault hints that madness has or is something more: ‘Madness is reason, with the addition of a thin layer of negativity’ (2010: 184). But what does it mean when Foucault initially writes that ‘[u]nreason is that the truth of madness is reason’ but then adds: ‘Or rather a quasi-reason. […] If reason is the content of the perceptions of the madman, that is not to say that it is not affected by a certain negativity. An agency is working here that gives unreason its distinctive style’ (206; emphasis added). It is this negativity and this other,

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unidentifiable agency that which will constantly bring us back to this something. Despite the intentional imprecision and vagueness embedded in the term ‘something’, I suggest it be treated with seriousness. In the same passage, Foucault further establishes this with the frustration evident in the aporia of the questions he poses that remain unanswered: However much a madman is mad with regards to reason […], however much he is reason, to become an object of reason, that distance still forms a problem, and the work of negativity can never be simply the void of a negation. […] The problem [i]s that other forces [a]re at work. Forces that are foreign to the theoretical plane of concepts, and which ultimately provide sufficient resistance to overturn it completely. What then are the forces at work here? […] what are these secret instances that resist? (Foucault 2010: 206)

Foucault never says what these forces or these secret instances that resist are. It is in this semi-secretive, discreet and even nervous fashion that Foucault gives the sense—or the feeling—that for him there is something beyond the virtual perception of madness by reason, beyond the perception of madness as the empty and negative image of reason and nothing more. This second, more complex and more intriguing project of Foucault in History of Madness, which makes him a prey to Derrida’s fierce criticism—‘everything transpires as if Foucault knew what “madness” means’ (2005: 49)—encompasses an asystematic or fragmentary effort to prove that the voice of madness has been silenced since the moment when Reason—or the Cartesian Cogito—constituted itself during the Classical Age. Most importantly, Foucault avidly tries to convince the reader that what could or should be done is that we attempt to hear that voice, ‘to lend an ear’ to it, to engage in a dialogue with it in the way the Middle Ages man did, through ‘a language more original, much rougher and much more matutinal than that of science’ (Foucault 2010: xxviii). Yet, Foucault states, regrettably, this common language no longer exists; the constitution of madness as mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, bears witness to a rupture in a dialogue, gives the separation as already enacted, and expels from the memory all those imperfect words, of no fixed syntax, spoken falteringly, in which the

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exchange between madness and reason was carried out. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue by reason about madness, could only have come into existence in such silence. My intention was not to write the history of that language, but rather draw up the archaeology of that silence. (Foucault 2010: xxviii)

Now, is this ‘intention’ that Foucault expresses, this normative claim for an alternative relation to madness, any safer and more sober than the romantic desire to reach the ‘truth’ of ‘madness itself ’, which is explicitly open to criticism? Is this intention for a new relation to madness not also guilty of the assumption that the man of reason is to relate—even if differently—to something? How is this relation to be of any value if the man of reason does not know what he relates to? Is the object of the relation not to define this relation and vice versa? Because if ‘madness itself ’ does not exist, then a prescription to relate to it ‘authentically’ is equally a construction of reason. It must therefore be a specific construction, which wants to perceive madness as that unknown, horrible and exciting fissure at the edge of reason from where reason is to be challenged, which wants to perceive madness as that which has suffered injustice, and to which eventually justice must be done. In other words, Foucault articulates the wish, or the intention, to have reason and its limits challenged. But does this challenging of reason by madness not come from a ventriloquizing reason? It is from this discrepancy that stems a series of criticism mainly focusing on the fact that Foucault’s project, which is rational through and through, involves a degree of appropriation or a reduction of the mad to certain standards: Kyoo Lee, for example, mentions a ‘metaphysical blindness to the banality, everydayness, of hallucinatory madness’ (2005: 60), and Peter Barham claims that in History of Madness Foucault ‘entertained a curiously innocent and untamed conception of madness’ (1992: 47). Barham further emphasizes the fact that the mad are presented by Foucault as having no agency of their own, which would somehow make them enter rationality, but instead their connection with rationality is perceived only as a violent and forced capture. These are fair criticisms, given that Foucault seems unintentionally to reproduce the madness–wisdom or madness–resistance paradigms as

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is pointed out by Robert Castel: ‘madness became the paradigm for a subjectivity freed from the constraints of social adaptation, a kernel of authenticity that had to be preserved or rediscovered without making concessions to the established order’ (1992: 67). I suggest, therefore, that Foucault’s second project in the History of Madness, no matter which way one approaches it, consists of an attempt to lift the discursive layers that have systematically been laid over madness by reason in order to reveal (hence his project of archaeology) either ‘madness itself ’ or something which bears some kind of contact with it. The first time Foucault makes a reference to ‘madness itself ’ is in his 1961 Preface in which he describes his project as being ‘not at all a history of knowledge, but of the rudimentary movements of an experience. A history not of psychiatry, but of madness itself, in all its vivacity, before it is captured by knowledge’ (Foucault 2010: xxxii). The phrase ‘madness itself ’ is not in any way highlighted, punctuated or otherwise emphasized as possibly denoting a metaphor. It is, on the contrary, intensified and specified by the phrase: ‘in all its vivacity’. There is a constant emphasis on the living and the experiential aspect of madness—‘the rudimentary movements of an experience’—and not on any theory or knowledge of it. Here, Foucault is engaged with the reader—perhaps also with himself—in a movement of going back and forth between what he would like to do and what he knows he cannot do. He acknowledges on the one hand that the structure of the experience of madness is historical, but what he is interested in is a madness which lies at the margins of this historical structure, so apparently something more than what he deals with in his historical analysis of the discourses on madness. After the declaration of the desire to write a history of madness itself, comes the acknowledgment: ‘But it is, no doubt, a doubly impossible task’ (xxxii). This playfulness, this indulgence in exploring the things he knows he cannot do, is not only a characteristic of the first Preface which Foucault later retracted but is also present throughout History of Madness. Madness, Foucault writes, ‘may for the moment in fact be inaccessible in the totality of its truth, yet we do not doubt that one day it will split open and deliver up its secrets to our knowledge. Yet this is merely an assumption and a neglect of essential truths. This reticence […] in fact camouflages the fundamental retreat of madness to a region that extends

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beyond the frontiers of what man can possibly know’ (Foucault 2010: 462). This extract reflects this frustrated, yet very calculated, back and forth movement, indulging in the wishful intention, and then falling back into the realization of the impossibility of this intention—the ‘wild state [of madness] can never be reconstituted’—only to retreat into a compromise: his archaeology must remain a historical archaeology: ‘in the absence of that inaccessible primitive purity, the structural study must go back to that decision that both bound and separated reason and madness’ (Foucault 2010: xxxii). The oscillation that I have identified as inherent in Foucault’s work, between the inexistence of madness as something only relative to reason on the one hand, and his secretive quest for an extracted truth of madness on the other, creates a tension. I propose that the only way to read Foucault’s project without being put off by this seeming contradiction, in other words a way to approach Foucault’s philosophical rhythm and join its undulation, is to read it as an exercise in balance; as if it simultaneously moves on the edge of two axes: philosophical intention and philosophical act. It is a movement which rests nowhere; it is the very unrest which keeps Foucault’s philosophical activity going, in the form of an attempt, as Roy Boyne puts it, ‘to formulate a non-exclusionist discourse’ (1990: 60–61). And according to Boyne, he partly succeeded by giving us ‘a clue as to what a non-exclusionist reason might be like’ (61). In Chaps. 11 and 12, I will return to reassess Foucault’s project via Derrida’s criticism of it.

Notes 1. Some commentators on History of Madness criticize Foucault for what they spot in the text as inconsistencies and consequently accuse him of being historically vague, inaccurate and sometimes simply wrong: ‘Foucault gets his facts wrong’ (Bové in Still and Velody 1992: 54). Besides Paul Bové, other such critics are Andrew Scull, J.G. Merquior, Peter Sedgwick, H.C. Erik Midelford, Ian Hacking, Dörner and Lawrence Stone. On the other hand, fewer but equally determined are Foucault’s defenders, who offer two possible explanations for this

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seeming historical inconsistency. The first explanation is the claim that the translations of Foucault are flawed: ‘Had the critics paid proper attention to the French text, they would have realized that some of the apparent flaws are mistranslations’ (Still and Velody 1992: 1). Among historians, Colin Gordon, the most well-known and most devoted of Foucault’s defenders, tried to demonstrate exactly which seeming flaws are based on mistranslations, and confidently concludes ‘that Histoire de la folie has been a largely unread or misread book’ (Gordon in Still and Velody 1992: 167). The second explanation, offered mainly by Gordon, has to do with the fact that the first appearance of History of Madness in English was as an abridgement entitled Madness and Civilization (translated by Richard Howard and first published in 1967), an idea also proposed by Jean Khalfa (Khalfa in Foucault 2010: xiii). Gordon’s defence, however, has been met with scepticism, critics dismissing his arguments and deeming him ‘perhaps guilty of wanting to load too much of the peculiarity of the work—and the reactions it has provoked—on the effects of selective translation’ (Barham in Still and Velody 1992: 45). 2. No extract better introduces and clearly exposes the historical triptych of Foucault’s first project than a passage from Foucault’s 1961 interview with J.P. Weber, ‘La folie n’existe que dans une société’: ‘Madness cannot be found in a wild state. Madness exists only within a society, it does not exist outside the forms of sensibility which isolate it and the forms of repulsion which exclude it or capture it. We can therefore say that in the Middle Ages, and then in the Renaissance, madness is present within the social horizon as an aesthetic or day-to-day fact; then, in the eighteenth century—as a result of confinement—madness goes through a period of silence, of exclusion. It has lost the function of manifestation, of revelation, that it had in the epoch of Shakespeare and Cervantes (Lady Macbeth, for instance, begins to speak the truth when she goes mad), and becomes mendacious, derisory. Finally, the twentieth century collars madness, and reduces it to a natural phenomenon bound up with the truth of the world. This positivist appropriation gave rise to, on the one hand, the scornful philanthropy which all psychiatry displays towards the madman and, on the other, the great lyrical protest we find in poetry from Nerval to Artaud, an effort to restore to the experience of madness a depth and a power of revelation which had been destroyed by confinement’ (Foucault in Macey 1993: 114–115).

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3. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (c.1466–1536) was a Dutch humanist and theologian of the Renaissance, famous for his satirical work In Praise of Folly (1511), which targets the hypocrisy and the corruption of the upper classes and the religious institutions of the time, and in which a personified folly praises herself. 4. See Foucault (2010: 78). 5. See Foucault (2010: 118). 6. See Foucault (1987: 70). 7. See Foucault (2010: 489 and 1987: 71). 8. For more on the relation and exchange between Foucault and anti-psychiatry see David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault (1993: 211–215 and 326); Robert Boyers and Robert Orril (eds.), Laing and AntiPsychiatry (1972); and Michel Foucault, Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France 1973–1974 (2006). 9. In its original version the book betrayed Foucault’s Marxist and Heideggerian influences, but also his respect for Freud and psychoanalysis. His attitude to these, but especially to the latter two, however, was to change with the revision he made to the second part of the 1962 edition, marking the onset of his subsequent suspicion of psychoanalysis as well as his understanding of madness as a social and cultural construct. It is widely accepted (see Hubert Dreyfus, Foreward to Mental Illness and Psychology (1987: viii) and John Caputo in Bernauer and Carrette (2004: 120)) that Part II, ‘Madness and Culture’ (which replaced the 1954 edition’s ‘The Actual Conditions of Illness’), is nothing less than a summary of History of Madness. 10. See Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic (1963), The Order of Things (1966), The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (vol. 1, 1976; vols. 2 and 3, 1984). 11. Foucault’s ideas are here reminiscent of Canguilhem’s Ph.D. thesis (1943), published in English as The Normal and the Pathological (1978, with an introduction by Michel Foucault), where he claims that the concepts of the normal and the pathological cannot be interpreted in an objective or positivistic way because the living organism, contrary to being in a priori harmony with its environment and its laws, finds normality in its ability to adjust to changing conditions.

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References Barham, Peter. 1992. Foucault and the Psychiatric Practitioner. In Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault’s ‘Histoire de la folie’, ed. Arthur Still and Irving Velody. London: Routledge. Bové, Paul. 1992. Madness, medicine and the state. In Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault’s ‘Histoire de la folie’, ed. Arthur Still and Irving Velody. London: Routledge. Boyne, Roy. 1990. Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of Reason. London: Unwin Hyman. Carrette, Jeremy R. 2000. Foucault and Religion: Spiritual Corporality and Political Spirituality. London: Routledge. Caputo, John D. 2004. On Not Knowing Who We Are: Madness, Hermeneutics and the Night of Truth in Foucault. In Michel Foucault and Theology, ed. James Bernauer and Jeremy Carrett. Hampshire: Ashgate. Derrida, Jacques. 2005. Cogito and the History of Madness. In Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass. Oxon: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1986a. The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. Bristol: Tavistock. Foucault, Michel. 1987. Mental Illness and Psychology, trans. Alan Sheridan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Foucault, Michel. 2010. History of Madness, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. Oxon: Routledge. Gordon, Colin. 1992. Rewriting the history of misreading. In Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault’s ‘Histoire de la folie’, ed. Arthur Still and Irving Velody. London: Routledge. Lee, Kyoo. 2005. The Madness of Measuring Madness: Revisiting Foucault vs. Derrida on Descartes’s Madmen. Naked Punch: The Engaged Review of Contemporary Art and Thought, vol. 4, 53–66. London: The Postanalytic Group. http://www.nakedpunch.com/site/issues/4. Accessed 17 Jan 2007. Macey, David. 1993. The Lives of Michel Foucault. London: Random House.

9 Foucault and Autobiographical Philosophy

Foucault: The Philosopher Without an Autobiography Foucault does not engage in any autobiographical project, and his approach and attitude to the relation between autobiography and philosophy, or between the author’s life and his work, is mainly recorded through interviews, apart from a few references in some of his shorter works such as ‘What Is an Author?’ (1998b) and ‘The Masked Philosopher’ (2003c). Despite these fragmented and scarce thoughts, I will be attempting to engage with this absence (of the autobiographical in his work as well as of a systematic philosophical discussion of autobiography) in relation to Foucault’s wider thought. This discussion of Foucault and autobiography needs to be read in the context of the two links that I am proposing in this book: (a) the connection between the autobiographical and philosophy, and (b) the connection between autobiographical philosophy and madness. On the one hand, Foucault seems to accept the validity of the former, as documented in his interviews— ‘the subject who is writing is part of the work’ (Foucault in Macey 1993: xiii)—and embraces the ethics of vulnerability which is essential © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_9

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for autobiographical philosophy. However, Foucault pursues this vulnerability of the philosophical subject through its absence and its disappearance from the text in order (symbolically) to account for its withdrawal and detachment from any position of authority in the context of the philosophical discourse in general. He therefore remains unconvinced about the usefulness of this rendition of vulnerability exercised within the philosophical discourse to any meaningful response to madness because of his assumption that no philosophical language can do justice to madness in the way the latter deserves. In what follows, then, I will expose the absence of the autobiographical in Foucault, its justification, and its implications for Foucault’s commitment to an ethical response to madness. Foucault did not write an autobiography and refused to publicize any autobiographical information, deeming it either uninteresting or irrelevant. Even the text titled ‘Foucault’, written by Foucault himself1 and signed pseudonymously as by Maurice Florence, bears nothing of the autobiographical in the sense of an insertion of the bios. Foucault writes about ‘Foucault’ in the third person a few times—‘Michel Foucault did not pose this question’; ‘Michel Foucault attempted’; ‘Foucault has now undertaken’, et cetera (2003a: 2)—but only to give an overview of ‘Foucault’s’ philosophy as pure thought. Among the main Foucault biographies,2 David Macey’s The Lives of Michel Foucault (1988) most articulately discusses the autobiographical element in Foucault. The very plurality that Macey points to in his title—The Lives—may justify a reading of Foucault within the Nietzschean, as well as the Bataillean, light of a subject as a multiplicity rather than a fixed unity, a subject with multiple faces or multiple masks, a reading which seems consistent with Maurice Blanchot’s as well as Antonin Artaud’s influence on Foucault. We will be encouraged, therefore, to read Foucault as having no face, as having a fragmented life, or, as Macey suggests, many lives. But one needs to be careful here: Macey’s plurality may not be the same as the anonymity, the fragmentariness or the dispersion of identity that Foucault himself refers to in his work. Macey introduces the idea of Foucault’s multiple lives under the categories of the academic, the political activist, the child, and the homosexual (1993: xi), a multiplicity which ‘makes it difficult to arrive

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at any satisfactory periodization of his work’ (xii). But I think that an understanding of multiplicity as multiple qualities may not fully do justice to the more profound approach to identity and subjectivity that Foucault himself proposes through his work. In his text, Macey makes manifest a tension between, on the one hand, Foucault’s openness to the idea that the bios of the philosopher is necessarily part of his work,3 and, on the other hand, an obsessive attempt to keep his private life—the factual aspects of his personal life—away from the public sphere, and also, I would argue, from his work. To show this tension I am going to cite some extracts from Macey, in and through which this tension is exposed: In November 1971, Foucault took part in a debate with the American linguist Noam Chomsky on Dutch television. The debate was to have been preceded by a short film on Foucault; he flatly refused to provide any biographical information and the film was never made. (Macey 1993: xii)

And again: Foucault rarely spoke of his life—particularly of his early life—in any detail. He ended an unusually personal interview in 1983 by saying: ‘Anyway, my personal life is not at all interesting. If someone thinks that my work cannot be understood without reference to such and such part of my life, I accept to consider the question. [Laughter] I am ready to answer it if I agree. As far as my personal life is uninteresting, it is not worthwhile making a secret of it. [Laughter] By the same token, it may not be worthwhile publicising it’. (Macey 1993: xiii)

And yet: […] in May 1981, he stated quite clearly: ‘In a sense, I have always wanted my books to be fragments from an autobiography. My books have been my personal problems with madness, with prisons, with sexuality.’ The same view was expressed with even greater force in Vermont a year later: ‘Each of my works is a part of my own biography.’ To say that the history of his books is to a large extent the biography of Michel Foucault is, at one level, almost a truism. His biography is, that is, the story of

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a thought, a work in progress. In such statements, Foucault appears to be hinting at some deeper relationship between author and text. (Macey 1993: xii)

And again: Referring to the novelist and poet Raymond Roussel, he argued: ‘Someone who is a writer is not simply doing his work in his books, in what he publishes … his major work is, in the end, himself in the process of writing his books. The private life of an individual, his sexual preference, and his work are interrelated not because his work translates his sexual life, but because the work includes the whole life as well as the text. The work is more than the work; the subject who is writing is part of the work’. (Foucault in Macey 1993: xiii)

And again: In a late interview Foucault was asked about the emotional undercurrent of outrage and sadness in the book: ‘Each of my works is a part of my own biography. For one or another reason I had the occasion to feel and live those things. To take a simple example, I used to work in a psychiatric hospital in the 1950s. After having studied philosophy, I wanted to see what madness was: I had been mad enough to study reason; I was reasonable enough to study madness. I was free to move from the patients to the attendants, for I had no precise role. It was the time of the blooming of neurosurgery, the beginning of psychopharmacology, the reign of the traditional institution. At first I accepted things as necessary, but then after three months (I am slow-minded!), I asked, “What is the necessity of these things?” After three years I left the job and went to Sweden in great personal discomfort and started to write a history of these practices’. (Foucault in Martin 1988: 11)

One should not fail to perceive the demand that a distinction be acknowledged here between the bios which is uninteresting and not worth publicizing and the bios of which Foucault’s work is necessarily a part. To start with, there seems to be the distinction—also made in my discussion of Nietzsche—between bios as the details of one’s personal

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everyday life, and bios as something capacious enough to include principles, beliefs and ideas. For example, one may know Foucault’s political ideas through his work without necessarily knowing about his political activism (even if this is public in nature); or again, one may know Foucault’s sexuality without having details of his sexual practices. Supposing this distinction as well as Foucault’s insistence on concealing his everyday personal life to be legitimate, then one needs to ask whether a different kind of bios is inserted into the work. Foucault claimed that History of Madness is part of his own biography. How successful or convincing are the examples that Foucault gave to account for this connection: intense interest in and sincere concern for madness, an ethically led intention to ‘help’, and, perhaps, some practical experience in the field of mental health institutions? A clarification needs to be made here: the perspective from which Foucault establishes the relation of life and work is very important. Things that Foucault said, such as that ‘the work includes the whole life as well as the text’ (in Macey 1993: xiii), need to be read carefully and in context, which should illustrate Foucault’s real priority and perspective. Foucault wants life to be understood as a work and philosophical work is of course part of the wider work on the self, an idea he will elaborate later as the concept of the care of the self.4 In this sense, the self and the work have a lot in common as they are both perceived as fragmented and constantly in process. But, more than the bios being present in the work, what we have here is the reverse perspective: the work being part of the bios (biography). Despite his claim that life and work are linked, Foucault is careful only to talk about parts and fragments: his books are only fragments from an autobiography, which do not necessarily correspond to the whole, which is precisely the concept that Foucault will challenge through the concept of the oeuvre. My point here is that the fragmentariness of Foucault’s published work should also make visible the gaps and the crevices that exist in Foucault. These gaps and crevices, it seems, constitute the space which Foucault saves for the body as the locus of resistance, inevitably caught up, of course, in the structures of power. The body, his body, I argue, is not put at risk in his work as is the case with Nietzsche, Bataille and (even if to a lesser degree with)

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Derrida. Foucault makes manifest in his work an absent autos by securing the absence of bios. The only rendition of the subject’s vulnerability in Foucault, then, is to be understood as its disappearance—through which the neutralization of its authority can be achieved—rather than its insertion into the text in order subsequently to make it vulnerable. Even if one would be willing to interpret the idea of vulnerability that Foucault suggests here as structurally relevant to autobiographical philosophy, Foucault does not take the extra step to see this vulnerability as relevant to one’s response to madness as becomes clear in Foucault’s discussion of Bataille in his 1963 ‘A Preface to Transgression’. The absence of bios from Foucault’s work in the sense that his bios is not subjected to any risk is raised in Lorenzo Chiesa’s critique of Foucault’s treatment of Artaud in History of Madness, which points to the fact that Foucault’s contribution to the ‘liberation’ of madness from the constraints of reason is theoretically filtered (2002: 41). This filtering, according to Chiesa, is marked by what he understands as Foucault’s need for self-protection against madness, and is manifested in the fact that while Artaud5 ‘lives-writes’, Foucault ‘“criticises”’ (45). While Chiesa’s critique of Foucault is at times too harsh—implying that, like Artaud, Foucault too should be ‘predestined’: ‘Foucault, the advocate of transgression and perversion […] was never interned’ (49)—he is right to point out Foucault’s dissociation from any meddling with ‘real’ madness: Foucault ‘prefers to obtain a safe distance’ from the artisticliterary-philosophical subversion from which he draws (54). This is a fair criticism, and one which is also found in Jean-Luc Nancy’s ‘Mad Derrida: Ipso facto cogitans ac demens’ (2007) where he refers to this as a paradox: ‘Foucault, who first of all presented himself in sympathy, indeed empathy, with […] “madness” […], remained marooned on the shores of reason, caught up in its discourses and works’ (2007: 18). It is in strikingly similar terms that Foucault himself criticizes Erasmus for observing madness ‘from a distance that ensures that he is never drawn in. Like an Olympian God he observes it from on high’ (Foucault 2010: 24). But what does Foucault expect Erasmus to have done? And what do we expect Foucault to have done? Despite these criticisms regarding Foucault’s failure to insert bios into his work and render it vulnerable there, the structural similarity of

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bios and work may be seen as attesting to a link between life and work that Foucault has suggested. The fragmentariness that Foucault attributes to his work should also be understood as reflecting a fragmentariness of life. Life remains pending and always in process, just as a text is subjected to an infinite making through its infinite interpretations. Foucault faithfully walks down the path of Nietzsche’s becoming in this sense. Macey also points out Foucault’s desire to throw off any fixed identity or identification with a concrete philosophical system, and his intention to be perceived as a work in progress himself. Macey reports Foucault’s reply to Paolo Caruso when he says: ‘It would be a little difficult for me to describe the itinerary that has brought me to my present positions, for the very good reason that I hope I have not yet reached the point of arrival’ (1993: xiv). Moreover, it is a similar idea that is brought up in Foucault’s reply to a freelance writer in 1982: I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly who I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know what will be the end. (Foucault in Macey 1993: xiv)

Having no end, in the teleological sense, and also being aware of this condition, was very important for Foucault. Apart from celebrating the dismissal of a wholeness of identity, therefore, we also have to celebrate chance and an openness to it. This is what he meant, I believe, when he talked about having no face, having no definite features and characteristics that would betray one as someone: ‘I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: that is an ethics for the état civil; it governs our identity papers. It might leave us free when it’s a matter of writing’ (xiii). This is probably why Foucault scorned the purely biographical, because it remained the same not in the sense of being deprived of change but in the sense that it is marked by a certain degree of necessity and inflexibility; one is statically born on this day at this place, one statically has the

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mother one has and the father one has. I do not agree with Macey’s quasiironic objection that the idea of Foucault’s multiple lives implies a subtle contradiction with the idea of having no face: ‘“Writing in order to have no face” was the stated ambition of a man who had many faces’ (Macey 1993: xiv). On the contrary, I would argue that it is perfectly consistent, as the multiplicity of faces (as in the case of Nietzsche too) prevents a face from forming and becoming stabilized and static. Foucault seems to have been aware of the elusiveness of his identity—an elusiveness also diligently pursued—and very much entertained by it: ‘It’s true that I prefer not to identify myself and that I’m amused by the diversity of the ways I’ve been judged and classified’ (Foucault 2003b: 20). Foucault’s attempt to have no face, and by that no fixed identity, as a person generally and as an author specifically, is reinforced by his ‘ambiguous desire for anonymity [which] characterised both Foucault’s intellectual and personal identities’ (Macey 1993: xv). One may want to read this desire for anonymity as a desire of the author to approach the reader with the most respect possible, confirming the acknowledgement that the author comes with no face, with no name. By repudiating his name, the author repudiates his authority and establishes himself as a user of a non-absolute discourse, thereby meeting the reader on a basis of equality, respect and honesty, who is in turn summoned to become a less passive reader and no longer reliant on the preloaded and probably self-explanatory ‘name’ signing the text. For this reason, anonymity is not imposed but won: ‘We have to win anonymity … For anyone who writes, the problem was once tearing oneself away from the anonymity of all; in our day the problem is finally erasing one’s own name and succeeding in lodging one’s voice in the great, anonymous murmur of discourses’ (Foucault in Macey 1993: xvi). At the very beginning of his interview with Christian Delacampagne for Le Monde, Foucault was asked to account for his choice to remain anonymous in that interview, to which he replied amusingly: ‘Why did I suggest that we use anonymity? Out of nostalgia for a time when, being quite unknown, what I said had some chance of being heard. With the potential reader, the surface of contact was unrippled. The effects of the book might land in unexpected places and form shapes that I had never thought of. A name makes reading too easy’ (Foucault 2003c: 174).

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Foucault: The Philosopher Without an Oeuvre Foucault’s insistence on the concepts of anonymity and having no face, embedded in the act of writing, and extended to include the writer as well as the subject in general, leads to his refusal to be considered the creator or the bearer of an oeuvre: ‘I certainly do not see what I do as a body of work [oeuvre], and I am shocked to see anyone can call me a writer … I sell tools’ (Foucault in Macey 1993: xx–xxi). Foucault is trying hard here to release himself from the burden of being considered a writer or a philosopher whose work is to have any kind of unity or the illusion of speaking some absolute truth, without at the same time denying its utility and ability to ‘shed light’, not in the sense that it enlightens but in the sense that it enables the examination of conflicting matters. What should become clear therefore is the fact that by dismissing his bearing of a potential oeuvre Foucault is in fact problematizing the very unity—in the sense of a system or homogeneity—of the oeuvre in general. ‘[D]oes the name of an author designate in the same way a text that he has published under his name, a text that he has presented under a pseudonym, another found after his death in the form of an unfinished draft, and another that is merely a collection of jottings, a notebook?’ (Foucault 1986a: 23–24). Foucault uses Nietzsche as an example when he refers to the fragility of the concept of oeuvre in History of Madness, in The Archaeology of Knowledge, and in his essay ‘What Is an Author?’ even if by way of questions and hints than by definite answers: The establishment of a complete oeuvre presupposes a number of choices that are difficult to justify or even to formulate: is it enough to add to the texts published by the author those that he intended for publication but which remained unfinished by the facts of his death? Should one include all his sketches and first drafts, with all their corrections and crossings out? Should one add sketches that he himself abandoned? And what status should be given to letters, notes, reported conversations, transcriptions of what he said made by those present at the time, in short, to that vast mass of verbal traces left by an individual at his death, and which speak in an endless confusion so many different languages (langages)?

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In any case, the name “Mallarmé” does not refer in the same way to his themes (translation exercises from French into English), his translations of Edgar Allan Poe, his poems, and his replies to questionnaires; similarly, the same relation does not exist between the name Nietzsche on the one hand and the youthful autobiographies, the scholastic dissertations, the philological articles, Zarathustra, Ecce Homo, the letters, the last postcards signed “Dionysos” or “Kaiser Nietzsche”, and the innumerable notebooks with their jumble of laundry lists and sketches for aphorisms. In fact, if one speaks, so indiscriminately and unreflectingly of an author’s oeuvre, it is because one imagines it to be defined by a certain expressive function. One is admitting that there must be a level (as deep as it is necessary to imagine it) at which the oeuvre emerges, [Foucault will later attack the idea of origin explicitly] in all its fragments, even the smallest, most inessential ones, as the expression of the thought, the experience, the imagination, or the unconscious of the author, or, indeed, of the historical determinations that operated upon him. (Foucault 1986a: 24)

Macey reads an inconsistency, if not a hypocrisy, here, and protests: ‘Foucault was ready to argue’, in The Archaeology of Knowledge, ‘that the “complete works” of Nietzsche should perhaps contain the notebooks in which laundry lists are jumbled up with outlines for aphorisms. He took the view that the same argument did not apply to his own laundry lists’ (1993: xx). Macey’s complaint is not really justified, however, because Foucault’s style in the extracts above should, perhaps, be read as more playful and ironic than assertive. Foucault does not consider that Nietzsche’s laundry lists should be included in his oeuvre, a gesture which is mainly concerned not with the triviality of laundry lists but with the non-definability of the oeuvre. This point is somewhat clearer in ‘What Is an Author?’, where Foucault revisits the same question: Even when an individual has been accepted as an author, we must still ask whether everything that he wrote, said, or left behind is part of his work. The problem is both theoretical and technical. When undertaking the publication of Nietzsche’s works, for example, where should one stop? Surely everything must be published, but what is “everything”? Everything that Nietzsche himself published, certainly. And what about the rough drafts for his works? Obviously. The plans for his aphorisms? Yes. The

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deleted passages and the notes at the bottom of the page? Yes. What if, within a workbook filled with aphorisms, one finds a reference, the notation of a meeting or of an address, or a laundry list: is it a work, or not? Why not? And so on, ad infinitum. How can one define a work amid the millions of traces left by someone after his death? (Foucault 1998b: 207)

As usual, and almost in a Cartesian step-by-step argumentative process, Foucault begins with the widely accepted idea that the common parentage of an author’s works provides a certain unity. It is not long, however, before Foucault expresses the insufficiency of the parentage and of the signature: ‘all those texts, including the postcard to Strindberg, belong to Nietzsche, and all are connected in a common parentage to The Birth of Tragedy. But that continuity should not be thought of as being on the level of a system, or a thematics or even an existence’ (2010: 537). In challenging the (conventional) conception of oeuvre, Foucault is in reality challenging the processes and the operations which arbitrarily legitimate it as their product through an interpretative operation. Foucault’s challenge of the unity of the oeuvre at the same time that extends to a problematic of the authority of the parentage and the unity of author’s subjectivity as well. Therefore, by putting the myth of a transcendent originality in question, Foucault points towards the conviction about ‘the death of the author’: ‘What does it matter who is speaking?’ Foucault declares, quoting Samuel Beckett (1998b: 205). This ‘indifference’, which is based on a particularly active process and which Foucault describes as ‘ethical’, encompasses or reflects his claim that writing does not designate ‘something completed’ but a ‘practice’ (206). An aspect related to this ‘indifference’, a cause of this ‘indifference’ one could say, is the fact that what is at stake in writing is not to make a subject (the writing subject) emerge, but on the contrary it is ‘a question of creating a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears’ (206). This (concept of ) disappearance is deeply embedded in Blanchot’s concept of the thought from outside.6 Foucault explores these concepts in detail in relation to the concepts of neutrality and the neutral voice, which in turn emerge from the space of the outside, the space from which the subject qua author is absent, and the space in which the only thing that can be said is that ‘he is no longer himself,

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he is already no one’ (Blanchot 2003a: 50). Contrary to the expectations of unity, accomplishment and identity, ‘an infinite holding to a plural (anonymous and neutral) speech would open onto an outside of speech and language wherein these would abandon their work, and no longer answer to the demand for unity (or homogeneity) of the concept and the self-subject’ (Hanson 2003: xxviii). Foucault writes in ‘What is an Author?’ in strikingly similar terms: ‘As a result, the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more than the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing’ (Foucault 1998b: 207). The assumption or the effect of this death, Blanchot sees reflected in the very work itself, which for him becomes ‘a region […] where nothing is made of being, and in which nothing is accomplished. It is the depth of being’s inertia (désoeuvrement)’ (1989: 46). Blanchot, too, believes that this kind of writing, which claims to accommodate the death of the author, needs to be devoid of the presence of the author. Consequently, he too seems to strive to maintain an anonymity via an effacement of the autobiographical: ‘There are few photographs of the author, no published accounts of his life, little in his work would seem to warrant biographical extrapolation’ (Hill 1997: 5), suggesting that he commits to what Leslie Hill accurately calls ‘an ethics of discretion: an ethics that shuns the risk of indiscriminate self-exposure in order to affirm the value of distance and silence’ (5). It is in this context of the ethics of discretion that the absence of the autobiographical in Foucault needs to be understood, and perhaps it needs to be understood as its hyperbolic gesture. It is as if the erasure of his name that Foucault attempts is the only way to be in as well as outside the text, and to be ethically: the indifference which envelops the author(ship) in Foucault is what secures ‘one of the fundamental ethical principles of contemporary writing (écriture). I say “ethical”’, Foucault writes, because it is about ‘a kind of immanent rule’ which renders writing as something dominated rather than dominating (Foucault 1998b: 205–206); ‘Writing has become linked to sacrifice, even to the sacrifice of life’ (206). For Foucault, therefore, the absence of the author, the absence of the autobiographical, is the way for the autos to be ethical, an idea which Foucault discusses along with his deconstruction of the concept of the oeuvre.

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Foucault adopts and rearticulates Blanchot’s concept of désoeuvrement as ‘absence of oeuvre’. Yet it remains to explore how Foucault considers the oeuvre in relation to madness? How is something which itself is fragmentary, and a space of the author’s sacrifice, to relate to the violence of madness? How is one to read Foucault’s argument that ‘madness is the absence of an oeuvre’ ?

Notes 1. The text which would appear as the revised entry in a new edition of the Dictionnaire des philosophes is entirely written by Foucault apart from the first sentence—in italics—which was written by Foucault’s assistant François Ewald, the one who was actually asked to re-edit the entry in the first place. 2. The two other are Didier Eribon’s Michel Foucault (1989) and James Miller’s The Passion of Michel Foucault (1993). 3. See Derrida (1998) and Critchley (2008). 4. See Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, Volume 3 (1984); Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (1995); Alexander Nehamas, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (1998); and Edward F. McGushin, Foucault’s Askēsis: An Introduction to the Philosophical Life (2007). 5. Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) was a French avant-garde playwright, poet, actor and theatre director. Artaud’s relevance both for Foucault and Chiesa’s analysis because of the poet’s artistic and philosophical production on the one hand and his own ‘madness’ on the other. Artaud was interned in psychiatric clinics for several years where most of his writing was done. See Antonin Artaud, ‘A Letter to the Medical Directors of Lunatic Asylums’ (written in 1925); ‘Letters from Rodez’ (written during his forced internment from 1943 to 1946); ‘Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society’ (1947). 6. See Blanchot’s The Work of Fire (1949), The Space of Literature (1955), The Book to Come (1959), The Infinite Conversation (1969), as well as Foucault’s ‘Maurice Blanchot: The Thought from Outside’ (1966).

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References Blanchot, Maurice. 1989. The Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock. Nebraska: The University of Nebraska Press. Blanchot, Maurice. 2003a. The Book to Come, trans. Charlotte Mandell. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Blanchot, Maurice. 2003b. The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. Chiesa, Lorenzo. 2002. Lucid Unreason: Artaud and Foucault. In Plí: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, vol. 13: Foucault: Madness/Sexuality/ Biopolitics, 26–65. Critchley, Simon. 2008. The Book of Dead Philosophers. London: Granta. Foucault, Michel. 1986a. The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. Bristol: Tavistock. Foucault, Michel. 1998b. What is an Author. In Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, trans. Robert Hurley and others, ed. James D. Faubion, vol. 2. Bath: The Bath Press. Foucault, Michel. 2003a. ‘Foucault’ (by Maurice Florence). In The Essential Foucault: Selections from the Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, trans. Robert Hurley, ed. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose. London: The New Press. Foucault, Michel. 2003b. ‘Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations: An Interview with Michel Foucault’ (Interview with Paul Rabinow). In The Essential Foucault: Selections from the Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, trans. Lydia Davis, ed. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose. London: The New Press. Foucault, Michel. 2003c. The Masked Philosopher. In The Essential Foucault: Selections from the Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, trans. Alan Sheridan (amended by the editors), ed. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose. London: The New Press. Foucault, Michel. 2010. History of Madness, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. Oxon: Routledge. Hanson, Susan. 2003. ‘Foreward’ in Maurice Blanchot’s The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. Hill, Leslie. 1997. Blanchot: Extreme Contemporary. London: Routledge. Macey, David. 1993. The Lives of Michel Foucault. London: Random House. Martin, Rux. 1988. Truth, Power, Self: An Interview With Michel Foucault. In Technologies of the Self, ed. L.H. Martin, H. Gutman, and P.H. Hutton. London: Tavistock Publications. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2007. Mad Derrida: Ipso facto cogitans ac demens. In Adieu Derrida, trans. Celine Surprenant, ed. Costas Douzinas. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

10 Foucault and Madness

Madness as the Absence of (an) Oeuvre ‘Madness is the absence of an oeuvre’ is one of Foucault’s most ambiguous enunciations. He first discusses this idea in the final pages of History of Madness, in the chapter ‘The Anthropological Circle’, and in more detail, yet not necessarily more clearly, in the essay which appeared three years after History of Madness and is attached as an Appendix to the 1972 edition of History of Madness, entitled ‘Madness, the Absence of an Œuvre’. This idea presents Foucault’s reader with a degree of ambiguity for four reasons: firstly, Foucault never develops a fully articulated explanation or justification of his quasi-aphoristic argument; secondly, this idea relies heavily on ideas and concepts of others previously stated, which Foucault does not acknowledge, thus no background for the reading of his argument is provided; thirdly, Foucault oscillates between different concepts of the term ‘oeuvre’; and fourthly this aphorism, which is eventually about the break between madness and work, demands to be read alongside a contradictory idea, namely the ‘proximity between madness and literature’ (Foucault 2010: 548). In my attempt to read this argument, therefore, I will: (a) provide a background context by briefly © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_10

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acknowledging Foucault’s sources, (b) consider the lack of consistency in Foucault’s use of the term ‘oeuvre’, and (c) analyse in detail the nature of this apparently contradictory relation of proximity between madness and literature as well as its implications. Foucault never acknowledges directly what are thought to be the sources of his argument, neither in terms of its content nor its phrasing. Apart from Blanchot’s influence in the form of his concept of désoeuvrement, there seem to be two more sources behind Foucault’s use of this concept, both of them associated with madness. These sources are usually taken to be Jacques Martin and Antonin Artaud. It is Martin who in the early 1950s, according to Yann Moulier Boutang (Louis Althusser’s biographer), proposes this idea (madness as the absence of oeuvre) both in terms of the concept as well as its phrasing: as Macey points out, ‘Boutang believes that the expression was originally Martin’s’ (Macey 1993: 26), and Eleanor Kaufman also notes in the same vein that, ‘[p]reoccupied with the idea of madness, Martin was apparently the first to equate madness with the absence of work (“l’absence d’oeuvre”)’ (2001: 62). Despite being a brilliant student, a profound thinker and an influential philosopher, Jacques Martin produced very little work sensu stricto, having allegedly destroyed the majority of his work before he committed suicide, turning thereby into a symbol of the philosopher without work. Boutang suggests that for ‘Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser, fragile at the time—each in a different fashion, Jacques Martin is the shadow of failure, the mirror of what they could have become. The mythical philosopher “without work,” which both made into a symbol, and sometimes a screen—this is Jacques Martin’ (Boutang in Kaufman 2001: 171–184). I am more inclined, however, to follow Eleanor Kaufman’s reversal of Boutang’s argument, and her suggestion that Martin becomes a normative symbol, one that Foucault and Althusser were instead striving to become. ‘Indeed’, Kaufman remarks, ‘Martin’s absence of work is both a symbol and a screen for a certain moment of French thought, one that Deleuze-Foucault […] have captured as a new form—absence of work’ (2001: 83). Having become mad himself, Martin (as the philosopher without work) offers himself nicely as a paradigm for Foucault’s argument. The similarity here with Nietzsche’s becoming a bio-philosophical symbol is striking.

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Contrary to Boutang, Macey proposes that ‘it is probably Artaud who provides [Foucault] with his definition of madness: madness is the absence of an oeuvre, meaning a work in the literary sense’ (Macey 1993: 102), and points specifically to one of Artaud’s early texts, ‘The Nerve Scales’, published in 1925: ‘I’ve told you: no works [oeuvres], no language, no speech, no mind [esprit], nothing’ (Artaud in Macey 1993: 102). With various interpretations of the term ‘oeuvre’, it becomes all the more imperative to shed some light on it, and to consider whether Foucault’s use of it is consistent. What further contributes to the ambiguity of the term ‘oeuvre’ is the fact that Foucault does not make it clear what exactly he means when he refers to an oeuvre. Ferit Güven, too, deliberates on this lack of clarity and suggests that ‘[i]t is not entirely correct to translate l’oeuvre as “work of art,” as it seems to speak to a more general conception of a work. Yet the translation is not entirely misleading, as the context suggests that Foucault is discussing the works of Nietzsche, van Gogh, and Artaud’ (2005: 149). Güven’s distinction between the general and the specific is helpful, and I would argue that a double or twofold reading of the term has to be made in order for Foucault’s claim to make sense and be compatible within Foucault’s wider work. Already apparent in the references made at the end of the History of Madness, the term ‘oeuvre’ needs to be read both as the most general and abstract concept of work and production, as well as be associated with the most specific: with only those works which are interrupted by madness. This is why it is artists and authors who eventually go mad—Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Artaud, et cetera—that Foucault mentions when discussing his argument about the absence of an oeuvre. Foucault himself clarifies this, but just once and only implicitly: ‘That is not to say that madness is the only language common to an oeuvre and the modern world’ (2010: 537). At the end of ‘The Anthropological Circle’, Foucault draws the reader’s attention to the increase ‘in the modern world’ of the frequency with which works (mainly literary but generally artistic) ‘explode into madness’ (536). Even though this frequency ‘must be taken seriously’, Foucault hastens to remark that it ‘proves nothing’ (536). In other words, with the same gesture Foucault seeks to present this increased frequency as something of significance but also remain safe from any

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association with the romantic cliché of madness and creativity, of the mad genius, et cetera: ‘we should not be deceived—between madness and oeuvre there has been no arrangement, no more constant exchange, and no communication between languages’ (536). In the rest of History of Madness, Foucault will proclaim that ‘madness is an absolute rupture of an oeuvre’ (536). He does this by using Nietzsche and Artaud as examples, and proceeds to establish the detachment between their madness and their oeuvre. The doubleness of the meaning of the term ‘oeuvre’ that I have suggested earlier becomes clear: The madness of Artaud does not slip into the interstices in his oeuvre: it is the absence of an oeuvre, the constantly repeated presence of that absence, the central void that is experienced and measured in its never-ending dimensions. Nietzsche’s last cry, as he proclaimed himself to be both Christ and Dionysus, is not at the limits of reason and unreason, the vanishing point of their oeuvre, […]; but it is rather the destruction of the oeuvre itself, the point at which it becomes impossible, and where it must begin to silence itself: the hammer falls from the philosopher’s hand. Van Gogh, who did not want to ‘ask the doctors’ permission to paint’, knew very well that his oeuvre and his madness were incompatible. Madness is an absolute rupture of the oeuvre: it is the constitutive moment of an abolition, which founds the truth of the oeuvre in time; it delineates the outer limit, the line of its collapse, its outline against the void. (Foucault 2010: 536–538)

The first sentence—‘The madness of Artaud does not slip into the interstices in his oeuvre’—calls for a reading of the ‘oeuvre’ as the specific work of Artaud. This is a literal reading which comes with two interrelated implications: first, Foucault’s intention to ‘save’ Artaud’s work from the stain of madness; and, second, the ‘ethical’ demand that the specific work instigates. However, by the time we reach the claim that ‘it [madness] is the absence of an oeuvre, the constantly repeated presence of that absence, the central void that is experienced and measured in its never-ending dimensions’, things have changed. ‘Oeuvre’ now turns into an abstract idea, a symbol, the symbol of production, a homogenous unity, a forced face and a forced name, which are contrary to

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Foucault’s taste for having no face and for anonymity. ‘Oeuvre’ in this sense comes to stand in opposition to madness—also now read symbolically rather than literally. In other words, it is not Artaud’s madness we are dealing with here but a more abstract idea of madness and what it symbolizes, namely illogicality, contradiction, openness and chaos. In this sense, oeuvre becomes the symbol of an anti-Bataillean model of production and of an established homogeneity. In this abstract schema, then—which needs to be distinguished from the specific one (Artaud’s madness), but which runs parallel to it—madness is, as Felman also reminds us, ‘[u]naccomplishment at work: active incompletion of a meaning which ceaselessly transforms itself, offers itself but to be misunderstood, misapprehended’ (2003: 54). In the passage at the end of History of Madness (but not in the Appendix of 1964 that follows), Foucault, apart from elaborating on Nietzsche and Artaud, makes the detachment clear with plain and bold phrases such as: madness is ‘the absence of an oeuvre’, madness is ‘the destruction of the oeuvre itself ’, ‘madness is an absolute rupture of the oeuvre’, et cetera. By establishing thus this total detachment of madness and oeuvre, at both the specific level (Artaud’s oeuvre, for example) and the abstract level (the concept of oeuvre in general), Foucault saves the work of people like Artaud, Nietzsche and other ‘mad’ authors from the stain of madness, which would otherwise—even if unjustifiably for Foucault—be deemed ‘mad’ and consequently dismissed from literature or philosophy respectively as non-sense. On the contrary, and this is why the two implications (saving the work which itself raises a demand) are interrelated; the nature of these texts which are interrupted by madness necessarily constitutes them as texts which need to be read and ‘addressed’: It matters little exactly what day in the autumn of 1888 Nietzsche went definitively mad, and from which point his texts were suddenly more the concern of psychiatry than of philosophy; […] Nietzsche’s madness, i.e. the collapse of his thought, is the way in which that thought opens onto the modern world. It is that which made it impossible that makes it present to us: we are offered it by all that wrenched it from his grasp. […] By the madness that interrupts it, an oeuvre opens a void, a moment of

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silence, a question without an answer, opening an unhealable wound that the world is forced to address. […] The madness where an oeuvre plunges into a void is the space of our work, the infinite path to understanding it at last, our confused vocation as apostles and interpreters. For that reason it matters little when the voice of madness first whispered within Nietzsche’s pride or Van Gogh’s humility. There is only madness as the last instant of the oeuvre – for the oeuvre indefinitely repels madness to its outer limits. Where there is an oeuvre, there is no madness. (Foucault 2010: 537)

What needs to be noted here, something which becomes clearer as the passage unfolds, is that despite the rupture, the absence, the break and the destruction of the oeuvre, there is no annihilation. Foucault challenges the very concept of the oeuvre by challenging its unity and its contribution to the authority of the author; here, however, the oeuvre is stripped of these implications precisely because it is the work which is interrupted by madness, and this oeuvre—Artaud’s oeuvre, Nietzsche’s oeuvre, et cetera—is not guilty of the unity and the authority of the conventional oeuvre. Despite this clear inconsistency in Foucault’s use of the term, it is important to concentrate on the argument which the extract above presents. According to Foucault, the world (the man of reason) is summoned to respond to the question or the wound that opens through this reaction which implicates the world. This response is to be made in relation to that oeuvre which has been interrupted by madness. This is why it is not important to know exactly when Nietzsche went mad; what is important is that the eventual madness which interrupts his oeuvre raises the demand that his oeuvre be addressed. In other words, when confronted by oeuvres such as Nietzsche’s, it is not madness that the world is summoned to measure or justify but itself ‘when confronted by madness, for its efforts and discussions have to measure up to the excess of the oeuvre of men like Nietzsche, Van Gogh and Artaud’ (Foucault 2010: 538). This measuring of the self in the face of madness is an important theme in History of Madness. To express this idea of one’s reflection in the mad, Foucault makes a quite predictable use of the metaphor of the mirror: ‘what was really at stake was the relationship between man and

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the mad, and these faces, so long unfamiliar, now took on the virtues of a mirror’ (519). In fact, the oeuvre which is interrupted by madness assumes the role of the mirror which lives on by emanating its demand to those who did not go mad, as Bataille also implied with his treatment of Nietzsche’s madness as a sacrifice. The connection between oeuvre (as a literary text) and madness is further pursued and established by Foucault in his essay ‘Madness, the Absence of an Œuvre’ in which he compares the two in terms of their expressive medium, language. In effect, Foucault describes madness as an excluded language which has been drawn to its own limits and has become unable to say anything but to imply or auto-implicate itself as madness. To be sure, madness, as the space which is hollow and in which one is absent, becomes the (structural) model of how the work, the oeuvre, the writing can be organized or structured in the sense that it simulates the same hollowness and the same absence. However, Foucault would see this power of writing as specific to literature (and not philosophy), and this is the core reason that Foucault resists the methodology as well as the implications of autobiographical philosophy.

Foucault’s ‘Mad Philosopher’ Apart from History of Madness, the Foucault text which most rigorously addresses the question of philosophy’s ability to open up to madness is ‘A Preface to Transgression’, first published in the ‘Hommage à Georges Bataille’ issue of Critique in 1963. Here, Foucault celebrates Bataille’s (philosophical) language—the fact that the qualification ‘philosophical’ needs to be in parenthesis is important—qua his treatment of sexuality. Foucault explains that transgression is not a negation or an affirmation per se but an affirmation of both the limit and the limitlessness ‘into which it leaps as it opens this zone to existence for the first time’ (1986b: 35). This, Foucault calls the ‘nonpositive affirmation’ (36) and it is what he identifies with Blanchot’s principle of ‘contestation’, which he discusses in his study of Blanchot, ‘The Thought from Outside’ (‘La Pensée du dehors’) published in Critique in 1966. Contestation, Foucault writes in ‘A Preface to Transgression’, ‘does not imply a

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generalized negation, but an affirmation that affirms nothing, a radical break with transitivity. Rather than being a process of thought for denying existence or values, contestation is the act which carries them all to their limits and, from there, to the Limit where an ontological decision achieves its end’ (36). What interests me here is that despite the fact that Foucault does not distinguish Bataille’s literary from his philosophical texts, drawing with equal rigour from Inner Experience (1943), L’Abbé C (1950) and Eroticism (1957), the claims he makes are claims for Bataille’s philosophical language and for philosophical language in general. He therefore connects the notions of ‘nonpositive affirmation’ and of ‘contestation’ as originating from the Greeks, a return which is aware of the lack of positivity at the centre of its question(ing). But Foucault quickly shifts to ‘our day’, in which this category of philosophy is found in Nietzsche: ‘would not the instantaneous play of the limit and of transgression be the essential test for a thought which centers on the “origin,” for that form of thought to which Nietzsche dedicated us from the beginning of his works’ (37–38). Despite Kant’s contribution to the opening of this space for Western philosophy through his ‘reflection on the limits of reason’ (38), Kant’s dialectics and anthropology proceeded to close this space, leading to a ‘confused sleep’ from which Nietzsche awakens us with his ‘figures of tragedy, of Dionysus, of the death of God, of the philosopher’s hammer, of the Superman approaching with the steps of a dove, of the Return’ (38). Having established the connection between this language—which, and Foucault needs to be reminded of this, is a philosophical language—and Nietzsche, Foucault proceeds to what in his thought is most problematic. On the one hand, he will acknowledge, clearly and explicitly, that this language, this tragic and non-discursive language is the ‘home’ of Bataille, Blanchot, and Klossowski, while, on the other, the discursive language of our day is unable to ‘maintain the presence of these [tragic] figures and to maintain itself through them’ and therefore it is ‘nearly silent before them’ (38). Is there not a contradiction here? How can Bataille and a few others make these tragic figures ‘the summits of [their] thought’ (38) if this was impossible, or if philosophical language ‘in our day’ could not do it? In the same way, how is it possible that Foucault’s pathos, this silent condition for which Derrida will give him credit, finds its way through his

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philosophical language? This is a discrepancy or inconsistency for which Foucault does not account, and it infects his work with the impossibility of considering philosophy’s potentiality to accommodate this non-discursive intention that those tragic figures, the muteness and the suffering of madness, be addressed. But let us follow Foucault more closely in this text in which he focuses on the nature of this non-discursive language, which is disruptive, ‘neither complete nor fully in control of itself ’ (39), yet sovereign. It manifests in textual moments and spaces which are in erotic or ‘philosophical turbulence’. What connects the erotic and the philosophical in this way seems to be the fact that language, in these circumstances or conditions, ‘seems to lose its very basis’ (39). Contrary to Sade’s language which despite its lacking an ‘absolute subject’ maintains ‘its hold on speech’ through the announcement of the ‘“triumph of philosophy”’ (39), Bataille’s language ‘continually breaks down at the centre of its space’ (39). But what is problematic here is that Foucault does not recognise that this ‘turbulence’ and this ‘breaking down’ are also accommodated in a language which remains philosophical. What he does recognize, which is important, is that in the face of this collapse, one can go on. The possibility of this transgressive thought, indeed depends on the persistence of one who goes on despite the very impossibility of language; the persistence to go ‘[r]ight to this limit where the existence of language becomes problematic’ (40). This philosophical language is specific only to the philosopher who is aware that another language exists which replaces the language from which ‘a subject had traditionally spoken in philosophy’ and in which ‘a multiplicity of speaking subjects are joined and severed, combined and excluded’ (42). In his quest for a philosophical language which does not deny or cancel philosophy but the philosophical subject as the bearer of the truth, Foucault finds, apart from Nietzsche, Bataille, who attacks ‘the pre-eminence of the philosophical subject as it confronted him in his own work, in his experience and his language which became his private torment, in the first reflected torture of that which speaks in philosophical language’ (42). His analysis of Bataille will force Foucault to acknowledge an important parallel: the ‘breakdown of philosophical subjectivity and its dispersion in a language that dispossesses it […] is probably one of the

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fundamental structures of contemporary thought’ (42). Foucault seems unable, however, to read the symbolic significance of the vulnerability that he injects into the philosophical subjectivity which now has to learn to speak in a language which undermines it. This possibility of self-undermining within the philosophical language—as potentiality— is embedded in the structure of contemporary thought. Unaware of or unwilling to accept the significance of these parallels, Foucault goes on, however, to make the possibility of the ‘mad philosopher’ emerge which will further point to the inherently potential similarity between the mad subject and the modern philosophical subject. It is worth citing the extract at length, as it is here that the structural connection between madness and philosophy in Foucault is made: But if the language of philosophy is one in which the philosopher’s torments are tirelessly repeated and his subjectivity is discarded, then not only is wisdom meaningless as the philosopher’s form of composition and reward, but in the expiration of philosophical language a possibility inevitably arises […]: the possibility of the mad philosopher. In short, the experience of the philosopher who finds, not outside his language […], but at the inner core of its possibilities, the transgression of his philosophical being: and thus, the non-dialectical language of the limit which only arises in transgressing the one who speaks. This play of transgression and being is fundamental for the constitution of philosophical language, which reproduces and undoubtedly produces it. (Foucault 1986b: 42)

Foucault assumes here a connection between philosophical language and madness only insofar as the one who speaks it is ‘transgressed’, in the sense that the philosopher’s subjectivity is discarded, a condition which is repeated three times in the extract above. This assumption, however, is never fully substantiated. We are only led to perceive the similarity between the structures of these conditions or experiences that is the ‘expiration of philosophical language’, and madness. Despite the fact that Foucault’s position here only reinforces what I have already suggested as a connection between madness and contemporary philosophy, the fact that this position does not reflect what Foucault gives philosophy credit for cannot be overlooked.

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Written 1 year after Bataille’s death, ‘A Preface to Transgression’ turns Bataille into a mythological figure who, like Nietzsche before him, produces language in which philosophy and madness come together. Even if Foucault’s constant dismissal of philosophy’s potentiality in relation to questions of madness is unjustifiable, it can nonetheless be explained. More attention needs to be paid to the nature of the ‘mad philosopher’ that Foucault constructs as a possibility. I doubt whether Foucault actually believes that the possibility of the ‘mad philosopher’ has anything to do with madness, and it is for this reason significant that in this text on transgression and on the transgression of philosophical subjectivity, the term ‘madness’ does not appear. The ‘mad philosopher’ is a metaphorical construct which consists of the understanding of madness as absence—the mad as the absent ones. Consequently, the philosophical subject engages in a language which renders it absent or non-existent too. This is why Bouchard’s reading of the ‘mad philosopher’ is unconvincing. Bouchard refers to the ‘mad philosopher’ as the common term which can represent the whole group of Sade, Hölderlin, Flaubert and Nietzsche, from whom, he argues, Foucault ‘discerns the madness that attends the most lucid moments of the human sciences’ (Bouchard 1986: 18). But Foucault’s ‘mad philosopher’ cannot—at least in the same way—refer to both Nietzsche and Bataille. I take this identification implied by Bouchard to be problematic because it denies the metaphoricity with which Foucault uses it when referring to Bataille. Foucault’s ‘mad philosopher’ is not mad nor does he have to go mad eventually, but he is a philosopher who subverts his own philosophical identity qua philosophical subjectivity as if mad. Regrettably, Foucault does not make much of the loaded symbolism and ethical importance of this act. For Foucault, no matter how transgressive it may be, philosophical language cannot have a meaningful relation to madness, as literature can. If this is the case, Foucault should have resisted the temptation to use the ‘mad philosopher’ metaphor, or should at least have been more articulate about the way the two—madness and philosophy—come together. What Foucault discusses in relation to Bataille as the ability of philosophical language to accommodate the disappearance of the subject and therefore philosophy’s ability to render the philosophical subject

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vulnerable is what I extend to mean the philosopher’s (ethical) response to madness. So, despite the fact that Foucault recognises Bataille’s ‘achievement’, and he even goes as far as to articulate it in its appropriate terms (structural similarity of this thought/language to madness), he does not take the next step, which would be to acknowledge that what happens in Bataille’s language is of some relation to madness. No philosophical enterprise can have any meaningful relation to madness, because for Foucault a meaningful relation to madness is one which allows madness to speak its silence. This is why he values and prioritizes literature and art, which he considers capable of expressing in flashes the dark, silent and deadly truth of madness. All this may seem incompatible with Foucault’s previous admission that this philosophical language (of Bataille, Blanchot and Klossowski) is the only one which can contain and maintain the presence of the tragic figures of Nietzsche’s philosophy, which, nonetheless, need to be understood as different from madness proper. Foucault’s belief in the incapacity of philosophy to have any valuable relation to madness is further stressed in John Caputo’s evaluation of the early1 Foucault’s belief in the ‘truth’ of madness which the poetic experience, contrary to the scientific truth of psychology or psychoanalysis—one could add philosophy—can ‘disclose’ (2004: 118). Moreover, Caputo suggests that Foucault’s interest is not in the physiological or therapeutic questions of madness, but in hermeneutics: ‘he wants to hear what one says who has been driven in extremis’ (119); ‘The mad speak of a truth to us for which we have neither the nerve nor the ear, which is the truth of who we are’ (119–120). Despite Caputo’s explicit references to the ‘truth’ of madness made on behalf of Foucault, he makes clear that this ‘truth’ has nothing to do with philosophy. For Foucault, Caputo claims, the truth of madness is greater than the truth that philosophy claims to express. While the former bears the element of the tragic, the latter claims wisdom. Foucault is not saying that the mad are the true philosophers but rather that they are precisely not philosophers at all, that they are the most forceful testimony to the breakdown of philosophy. They speak not with philosophical knowledge but with tragic knowledge. They have broken

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through the veil that philosophy lays over reality […]. The mad speak de profundis, from the depths of an experience in which both the reassuring structures of ordinary life and the comforting reassurances of scientific or philosophical knowledge have collapsed. They experience the radical groundlessness of the world, the contingency of its constructs, both social and epistemic; […] they are voices from an abyss. (Caputo 2004: 120)

What should be noted here is Caputo’s belief that for Foucault, madness is more ‘authentic’ than philosophy in reflecting the groundlessness and the contingencies of the world. An evaluative thinking thus permeates Foucault’s thought, which makes any effort within the domain of reason— philosophical language in this case—always come up short when compared to the quality and the depth of the voices from the abyss. Philosophy, for Foucault, will always be lacking in rigour and authenticity. Because of this lack, Foucault did not pay attention to the capabilities of philosophy beyond its very limitations. This is why, despite the fact that he acknowledges the value of philosophy’s transgressive language—he does so paradigmatically in his reading of Bataille—he does not take it as having any value which would be relevant to madness, a madness which is too far and deep to be accessed even by a transgressed or transgressive philosophical language.

Note 1. By ‘early Foucault’, Caputo means the Foucault of Mental Illness and Psychology (1954) and History of Madness (1961).

References Bouchard, Donald F. 1986. Introduction. In Michel Foucault: Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard. New York: Cornell University Press. Boutang, Yann Moulier. 1992. Louis Althusser: Une Biographie. Vol. I, La Formation du myth, 1918–1956. Paris: Grasset.

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Caputo, John D. 2004. On Not Knowing Who We Are: Madness, Hermeneutics and the Night of Truth in Foucault. In Michel Foucault and Theology, ed. James Bernauer and Jeremy Carrett. Hampshire: Ashgate. Felman, Shoshana. 2003. Writing and Madness: Literature/Philosophy/ Psychoanalysis, trans. Martha Noel Evans and Shoshana Felman, with the assistance of Brian Massumi. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1986b. A Preface to Transgression, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. In Michel Foucault: Language, CounterMemory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard. New York: Cornell University Press. Foucault, Michel. 2010. History of Madness, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. Oxon: Routledge. Güven, Ferit. 2005. Madness and Death in Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kaufman, Eleanor. 2001. The Delirium of Praise: Bataille, Blanhot, Deleuze, Foucault, Klossowski. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Macey, David. 1993. The Lives of Michel Foucault. London: Random House.

Part IV Jacques Derrida: Philosophy Opens Up to Madness

11 The Debate: Derrida on Foucault via Descartes

The Debate: René Descartes Chapter 8 outlined Foucault’s two projects in History of Madness, namely the exposition of the sociohistorical discourses that bring about madness and the more speculative attempt to allow madness to speak for itself. Compared to the criticism that the first project received mainly about its historical inaccuracies, the criticism that was levelled at the second project was more ardent, and revolved around the claim that, philosophically, Foucault’s project is simply impossible, unless seen as a metaphysical enterprise. The publication of Foucault’s monumental History of Madness in 1961 continued with Derrida’s response and critique in the essay ‘Cogito and the History of Madness’ (first given as a lecture to the Collège Philosophique in 1963, then published in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale in 1964 and then in Writing and Difference in 1967), Foucault’s response with his essay ‘My Body, This Paper, This Fire’ (1966), as well as a shorter version of it, ‘Reply to Derrida’ (1972),1 and concluded with Derrida’s essay ‘“To Do Justice to Freud”: The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis’ (1994), given as a lecture after Foucault’s death. © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_11

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Foucault and Derrida’s debate is thematically complex as well as quite confrontational betraying what has been described as two very different philosophical systems—one ‘historiographical’ and the other ‘ontological’ (Harrison 2007: 79)—despite the compatibility that Ferit Güven (2005: 159) and others are forced to acknowledge. In these two philosophical attempts, one should be aware of the fact that they have as their starting point the same idea, or the same interest, or even the same intention—to restore an ethical relation to madness—despite a difference in approach and perspective which should not be overlooked. Derrida’s reading and criticism of History of Madness is twofold. It is a reading and a discussion of Foucault’s text which unfolds, on the one hand, as a response to Foucault’s reading of Descartes, and, on the other, as a critique to Foucault’s intention to write an archaeology of silence. What is important, though, is the fact that these two seemingly different objections need to be read together as this twofold argumentative thread unfolds in a circular argumentative chain. Derrida’s main arguments are: (a) the very nature of reason necessarily and consequently deems the writing of the history of ‘madness itself ’ impossible, and (b) Foucault’s reading of Descartes’ First Meditation and consequently of the relation between madness and the constitution of the Cogito is wrong. Derrida’s discussion of these two themes becomes circular in the sense that he begins from the specificity of Foucault’s reading of Descartes, which he then extends to his general critique of Foucault’s intention of carrying out an archaeology of silence, which is based on the exposition of his argument about the unsurpassability of reason and the fundamental distinction between history and historicity. This, in turn, shifts to a detailed discussion of Foucault’s—inaccurate— reading of Descartes, and finishes with his own reading of Descartes, which once more will turn into a general discussion of the origin and the nature of reason (in its manifestation as the Cogito) and its relation to madness, explaining how madness (as a possibility) is internal to the constitution of the Cogito, as well as the role of madness in the constitution or movement of philosophy. Despite the circularity in the exposition of Derrida’s arguments, I will attempt first to present the two separately and then to discuss their implications together.

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According to Boyne, the debate ‘was not about madness at all, but about the patriarch of Western philosophy, René Descartes’, and, most importantly, ‘the nature of Western thought: is it possible to imagine a complete restructuring of the way we think?’ (1990: 1). While I see Boyne’s point about how the debate concerns a much more general question about the limits of (Western) reason, it is misleading to claim that madness is a superficial topic in this debate. On the contrary, the debate revolves around the specific question about madness and what it means to write and think about madness. Derrida acknowledges that a proper reading of Foucault’s interpretation of Descartes, and the reading that he himself will eventually propose, would necessarily make claims not only about the Cogito but also about the relation of philosophy in general with the history of madness. But Boyne is right; Derrida’s essay is based on a discussion of Descartes, first in the form of Derrida’s reading of Foucault’s reading of Descartes, and then, of course, Derrida’s own reading of Descartes. Readers of the Foucault/Derrida debate on madness and the Cogito have correctly identified something profoundly similar yet different in the two philosophers’ engagement with Descartes and their understanding of the Cogito. On the one hand, both Foucault and Derrida seem to be interested in testing or even provoking reason, informed by their intention to ‘embrace’ madness or declare their discontent with the way it has been excluded or silenced. With an air of irony, Kyoo Lee points out that the debate ‘seems to be motivated by their mutual fears of being branded—rationalistic, self-assured, reactionary, good old—Cartesian’ (2005: 60). In different ways, then, both Foucault and Derrida take the Cartesian authority too much for granted2 as they do with the ‘precariousness’ of the Cartesian legacy,3 and they end up reaffirming it to support their opinion on whether madness is or is not excluded. Despite their common points of departure, however, Foucault and Derrida read the Cogito and its relation to madness quite differently. Descartes’ importance in this debate as well as in the book more generally lies in the fact that an engagement with Descartes can be read as an engagement with what has been perceived as the foundations of modern rationality, and by extension modern philosophy (Güven 2005: 120). In what follows I will try to show how Descartes is less polemical regarding madness—even if only unintentionally—than is generally

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believed. At the same time I will be referring to the Foucault/Derrida debate by following the way Descartes’ argument unfolds. In other words, I will concentrate on Foucault’s and Derrida’s arguments, especially in relation to the four main stages of Descartes’ argumentative process: (a) the establishment of the sensory errors, (b) the test of the dreams, (c) the test of the ‘evil genius’, and (d) the final assertion or constitution of the Cogito.

The Sensory Errors Descartes departs for his philosophical exercise with the confession ‘that there is nothing in all that I formerly believed to be true, of which I cannot in some measure doubt’ (1997b: 137). This is because of our predicament embedded in our human make-up since everything we accept as true is the result of our sensory perceptions. In other words, our being linked to the physical world through our bodies compromises our knowledge, or our certainty of our knowledge, of reality. One may argue that it is unfortunate for Descartes that this knowledge is not merely a result of a purely rational process, and that this situation confirms—initially—the power of the body over the mind. Therefore, because ‘it is sometimes proved to me that these senses are deceptive, […] it is wiser not to trust entirely to any thing by which we have once been deceived’ (135). This is how Descartes establishes the origin of the doubt and moves on to establish the limits of the erroneous nature of the senses, and in a quasi-rhetorical fashion attempts to assure the reader that, of course, there are things of ‘which we cannot reasonably have any doubt […] [such as] the fact that I am here, seated by the fire, [et cetera]’ (135), and goes on to say that if one were to doubt these things, one would necessarily be mad: For example, there is the fact that I am here, seated by the fire, attired in a dressing gown, having this paper in my hands and other similar matters. And how could I deny that these hands and body are mine, were it not perhaps that I compare myself to certain persons, devoid of sense, whose cerebella are so troubled and clouded by the violent vapours of black bile, that they constantly assure us that they think they are kings when they are

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really quite poor, or that they are clothed in purple when they are really without covering, or who imagine that they have an earthenware head or are nothing but pumpkins or are made of glass. But they are mad, and I should not be any the less insane were I to follow examples so extravagant. (Descartes 1997b: 135)

This is the crucial extract on which Foucault concentrates in his attempt to discredit Descartes for excluding madness from the constitution of the thinking subject without serious consideration, and which seems to justify the unvarying references that he makes throughout History of Madness: ‘madness, quite simply, is no longer [Descartes’] concern’ (Foucault 2010: 46); ‘madness is banished in the name of the man who doubts’ (46); ‘madness is placed in a zone of exclusion’ (46); ‘[m]adness was simply of no use in the process of doubt’s movement towards truth’ (138), et cetera. It seems that it is Descartes’ attitude that Foucault most intensely criticizes, as well as the ease with which he dismisses the possibility of being mad: ‘Faced with the insane […] Descartes knew immediately that he was not of their number’ (181). This is how and why, methodologically, Descartes or Foucault’s reading of Descartes serves Foucault’s argument about the exclusion of madness by Classical Reason. This is why Foucault contrasts Descartes with the sixteenth-century French Renaissance writer, Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), for whom reason was not at all safe from unreason: ‘do we not often feel ourselves to be in contradiction with our own better judgement?’ (Montaigne in Foucault 2010: 46). For Descartes, on the contrary, madness is not an enemy of the thinking subject: ‘madness, quite simply, is no longer his concern. […] The perils of madness have been quashed by the exercise of Reason, and this new sovereign rules a domain where the only possible enemies are errors and illusions’ (Foucault 2010: 46). Derrida launches a straightforward criticism of Foucault’s reading of Descartes, through which he will eventually argue that madness is not excluded from the construction of the Cogito and that it (madness) can be, contrary to what Foucault thinks, an object of philosophical reflection. Referring to Descartes’ extract quoted above, Derrida insists that ‘madness, folly, dementia, insanity seem, I emphasize seem, dismissed, excluded, and ostracized from the circle of philosophical dignity’ (2005: 37).

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To prove this, and in defence of Descartes, Derrida attempts to counter Foucault’s claim regarding the exclusion of madness from the philosophical exercise of doubt by suggesting that, in reality, it was not Descartes the philosopher who excluded it, but the (persona of the) non-philosopher through Descartes. The construction of this ‘nonphilosopher’ persona needs to be understood, Derrida implies, in the context of the Cartesian methodology. It is, precisely, the ‘astonishment and objections of the nonphilosopher [sic], of the novice in philosophy who is frightened by this doubt and protests’ (60) that Descartes pretends to take into account. It is the non-philosopher’s unsophisticated fear and objection, namely that it would be mad to doubt that I am sitting by the fire that Descartes ‘echoes’ (61), only to skilfully and more impressively make that objection collapse in the next stage of his philosophical exercise: the exploration of the experience of sleep and dreams. How much of the non-philosopher’s view and objection Descartes shares deep down has to remain open to interpretation and intuition. For Foucault, at least, Derrida’s hypothesis may be ‘seductive’, yet it is ‘useless and arbitrary’ (2010: 568, 579). Although I am sympathetic to Derrida’s argument, I understand Foucault’s point, especially since Descartes does not say anything in order to imply or clarify such a philosophical trick. While Derrida believes that this refutation, that is, the proof of the fact that the objection (raised by the non-philosopher) to the possibility of madness is refuted (by Descartes), comes from his reference to dreams alone, I would argue that if there is such a refutation, it is only implicit and accidental. Differing from Foucault’s conviction that such a refutation is made explicitly and provokingly, I think that madness is discredited and credited in the margins of Descartes’ main argument, on the level of the implication rather than of the assertion.

The Dreams Next, Descartes brings up dreams for their power of deception, which will put to the test what has at the previous stage escaped from doubt. What one experiences in dreams may be worse than what one experiences in madness in the sense that in dreams one ‘represent[s] to [one]self

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the same thing or even less probable things, than do those who are insane in their waking moments’ (Descartes 1997b: 135). This is precisely why Derrida argues that the hypothesis of dreams is capable of refuting the non-philosopher’s fear of madness. And it does; whether it is the nonphilosopher or just Descartes pretending a fake argument or even Descartes not pretending, Derrida is right that the reference to dreams is enough to make that initial objection collapse by pointing out that ‘from this point of view the sleeper, or the dreamer, is madder than the madman. Or, at least, the dreamer […] is further from the true perception than the madman. It is in the case of sleep, and not in that of insanity, that the absolute totality of ideas of sensory origin becomes suspect, is stripped of “objective value” […]. The hypothesis of insanity is therefore not a good example’ because: (a) ‘the madman is not always wrong’ and (b) madness ‘meets the resistance of the nonphilosopher’ (2005: 61–62). But Derrida offers another reason why madness is not a useful example for Descartes, for whom ‘madness is thought of only as a single case— and not the most serious one—among all cases of sensory error. […] Madness is only a sensory and corporeal fault, a bit more serious than the fault which threatens all waking but normal men, and much less serious, within the epistemological order, than the fault to which we succumb in dreams’ (62). With this, Derrida reminds us that for Descartes, madness is of a sensory and corporeal, not of an intellectual nature. From what he presents as the deceiving nature of the dream state, Descartes saves certain elements of perception which he claims remain unaffected both in wakefulness and in dreams: these are the qualities or constants of corporeality or materiality, size, quantity, place and time. ‘For whether I am awake or asleep, two or three together always form five, and the square can never have more than four sides’ (Descartes 1997b: 137). This is a point which Derrida accuses Foucault of not having picked up. Derrida on the contrary stresses the importance of the fact that what Descartes safeguards as true and certain within the uncertainty of the sensory errors and dreams is not of sensory but intelligible nature. So, while Foucault groups dreams and sensory errors together against madness, Derrida claims that madness belongs to the sensory errors, and consequently, in the context of Descartes’ project, madness, too, needs to be excluded. Yet, this exclusion, Derrida explains, is not of a special

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kind: ‘All significations or “ideas” of sensory origin are excluded from the realm of truth, for the same reason as madness is excluded from it. […] The hypothesis of insanity […] seems neither to receive any privileged treatment nor to be submitted to any particular exclusion’ (2005: 60). Foucault, on the other hand, and from a different perspective, considers that madness is done an injustice, and discriminated against, because of its total and definitive exclusion, while the sensory and oneiric errors are eventually restored: ‘however strong the [sensory] illusion, there is still a residue of truth assuring him that he is ‘sitting by the fire, wearing a dressing gown’ (Foucault 2010: 45). According to Foucault, therefore, Descartes shows that besides their illusory nature, dreams and sensory errors have truth, since in them survive the constants which at that stage Descartes places as outside doubt, yet ‘[m]adness is an altogether different affair’ (45). Foucault seems to fail to realize, however, that this distinction (between sensory errors and dreams on the one hand, and madness on the other) holds only at that specific stage of Descartes’ argument. The next stage will employ the ‘evil genius’, which submits to doubt that which had earlier escaped it and that on the grounds of which Descartes could distinguish himself from the mad. Consequently, what is dismissed as madness at one moment, that is, the inability to acknowledge as true what had escaped doubt, returns into the philosophical game a moment later as the working of an ‘evil genius’. With this, I do not mean to imply that Descartes pretends to dismiss madness only to bring it back later in the guise of the evil genius. What I suggest is that, structurally, what the evil genius is presented as doing could also be done by madness qua non-rationality; of course at this stage, the argumentation extends from physics (senses) to metaphysics (theology). The similarity or mirroring of the structure (and not the content) of the experience of madness with agencies of doubt (for example the ‘evil genius’) continues further in the Meditations. What needs to be clarified here is the methodology in the Meditations: Descartes proceeds in a dialogue with himself, by staging and directing his arguments, each opening onto the next as steps in a process, as if each step of doubt and establishment of what cannot be doubted is yet another layer which reveals that what had just been established as true can itself be doubted. This course reaches an end when Descartes eventually proves the existence of God.

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The ‘Evil Genius’ At this level divinity is employed. In an interesting theological move, Descartes decides that even if it would have been theoretically possible for God to have us deceived about things that have so far proved stable and untouched by doubt, such as the constants of matter, time, place et cetera, it cannot be the case, since God’s benevolence nullifies the possibility that he keeps us in a state of ‘deception’ and ‘ignorance’. Cleverly, Descartes both retains the metaphysical element of divinity—as he is not willing, like others, ‘to deny the existence of God so powerful’ (1997b: 137)—and escapes from the restriction of God’s benevolence by inventing the ‘evil genius’ as the next possible agent of deception. Credit is given back to the mad, I argue, when Descartes recognizes that what he had earlier associated only with the madman’s thoughts, and outside the doubt of the sane or the dreaming, can still be put in doubt as being possibly the work of an evil god, the ‘evil genius’, this ‘arch deceiver’ (138). But Foucault is not willing to acknowledge the restoration of madness that takes place here. Instead, even if he does read the device of the ‘evil genius’ as expressing the possibility of madness, he disapproves of it because he evaluates this parallel as negative for madness. It is therefore the fact that madness is associated with an ‘evil’ and ‘deceptive’ power which further leads man away from the truth that Foucault does not like. My reading of the ‘evil genius’ is very different from Foucault’s. In reality, Descartes constructs the Cogito on the basis of a possible agent of deception which is as unfamiliar and distant as madness is. The ‘evil genius’—which is never logically solved or accounted for by Descartes— is indeed the symbol of the possibility of deception and of the severest threat to reason. Foucault, though, sees the ‘evil genius’—described as a shadow—submitted to the bright, omniscient and merciless truth of the Cogito (2010: 157). I would suggest alternatively that Descartes has the Cogito totally submit to the (possibility of the) ‘evil genius’. In no way can the Cogito obscure with any of its light the power of the ‘evil genius’, but on the contrary it acknowledges the possibility that it be completely deceived by it.

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It is for this reason that I am more sympathetic to Derrida’s reading of the ‘evil genius’, which serves to encompass rather than discredit madness. He suggests that the device of the ‘evil genius’ embraces and reflects—methodologically and structurally, and not in content obviously—the possibility of madness: ‘the recourse to the fiction of the evil genius will evoke, conjure up, the possibility of a total madness, a total derangement over which I could have no control because it is inflicted upon me—hypothetically—leaving me no responsibility for it’ (Derrida 2005: 63). The importance of this parallel between the ‘evil genius’ and madness for Derrida, or rather what justifies and legitimates this parallel, lies in the fact that what resisted doubt and consequently madness now has to let go within the total disruption and subversion that the ‘evil genius’ causes. In other words, the ‘erroneous’ things that the non-philosopher—according to Derrida—could not accept earlier as symptomatic of madness, and what Descartes himself would not let go earlier as natural and mathematical truths, are bound to be accepted now, at this later stage within the Meditation, as the work of the ‘evil genius’: ‘This time madness, insanity, will spare nothing, neither bodily nor purely intellectual perceptions’ (64). This is how Derrida’s earlier distinction between sensory and corporeal faults on the one hand, and intelligible faults on the other, is now justified. It is the ‘evil genius’ as madness which challenges intelligible or intellectual perceptions. Finally, Derrida insists, it is God alone who, by permitting me to extirpate myself from a Cogito that at its proper moment can always remain a silent madness, also insures my representations and my cognitive determinations, that is, my discourse against madness. It is without doubt that, for Descartes, God alone protects me against the madness to which the Cogito, left to its own authority, could only open itself up in the most hospitable way. (Derrida 2005: 71)

Assuming, therefore, that the Cogito is, without divine intervention, indeed hospitable to madness, the final stage of Descartes’ exercise can be read as aiming at establishing the Cogito’s distinctive qualities.

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The Debated Cogito Eventually Descartes reaches his rational victory: ‘I shall proceed by setting aside all that in which the least doubt could be supposed to exist […] until I have met with something which is certain, or at least, if I can do nothing else, until I have learned for certain that there is nothing in the world that is certain’ (1997b: 139). Upon the supposition that literally everything that he perceives is false, Descartes asks: ‘What, then, can be esteemed as true? Perhaps nothing at all, unless that there is nothing in the world that is certain’ (139), and concludes that what can be esteemed as true is the fact that even if I am completely deceived about anything in the world (this part of the argument—the even if— will prove crucial for my discussion), I still exist: this deceiver ‘can never cause me to be nothing so long as I think I am something. So that after having reflected well and carefully examined all things, we must come to the definite conclusion that this proposition: I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it’ (140). Stripping himself of all aspects of his conventionally conceived identity as body, soul and sensation, Descartes is left with thinking, which, along with the existence of God, can be understood as Descartes’ climactic discovery at the end of his argumentative process(ing) of doubt: ‘I find here that thought is an attribute that belongs to me; it alone cannot be separated from me. I am, I exist, that is certain’ (142). Having already read the Cartesian thought as that which precisely cannot bear madness, Foucault reads the Cartesian discovery as a confirmation of his own interpretation. The mad are excluded from the Cogito, because the latter is thought through and through, and for Descartes, thought, according to Foucault, is constituted upon the exclusion of madness. In this light, he furthermore argues that if Descartes does not give madness the position from which to be able to threaten the truth of the subject, even hypothetically, it is because, by definition, the constitution of the subject as a thinking subject had already excluded the possibility of being mad. Foucault believes that Descartes is certain that his grasp on truth is stronger than that of the mad: ‘Assuredly, says Descartes, “such people are insane, and I would

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be thought equally mad if I took anything from them as a model for myself ”’ (2010: 45). This conviction, Foucault states, is based on the fact that it is simply impossible for the mad to think (in the style of the Cogito) and for the thinking subject to be mad: ‘it is an impossibility of being mad which is inherent in the thinking subject rather than the object of his thoughts. […] one cannot suppose that one is mad, even in thought, for madness is precisely a condition of impossibility for thought: “I would be thought equally mad”’ (45). I claim, contrary to Foucault, that despite his conviction that he is different from the mad, Descartes never commits to any explicit certainty that his grasp on the truth is stronger than that of the mad. If anything, it is a relative perspective on truth that Descartes implicitly puts forward. So, what is the Cogito? Descartes’ answer is succinct: it is ‘a thing which thinks’ (1997b: 142), which means ‘a thing which doubts, understands, [conceives,] affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels’ (143). It is the distinctive ability of the Cogito to doubt that is important here and on which my understanding of the two manifestations of the Cogito and their implications is based. Foucault’s attempt to read the thinking and doubting as excluding the mad is clear. The following extract is an example of precisely this attempt: ‘While man can still go mad, thought, as the sovereign exercise carried out by a subject seeking the truth, can no longer be devoid of reason’ (Foucault 2010: 47). What is of interest in this quotation is the distinction Foucault formulates between ‘man’, with which Foucault carefully avoids identifying any sign of thought, and ‘thought’ as the sovereign exercise of philosophical thinking in quest of the truth, thought, in other words, which is—according to Descartes—related to or characterized by the ability to doubt. Against Foucault, I would like to stress the fact that even if we assume that the mad cannot doubt and consequently cannot engage in philosophical activity, in no way can they be seen as deprived of thought. Of course, since Foucault identifies thought with the Cogito, from which he believes the mad are excluded, he also claims that the mad for Descartes are excluded from any kind of thinking. Descartes, however, never excludes the mad from thought; on the contrary, he detaches the falsity or the correctness of the thinking from the thinking itself. Of course, he implicitly excludes the mad from

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the philosophical thought which is required to be able to doubt, formulating, in absentia, the statement: ‘I can doubt what I think, therefore I am not mad’. Foucault, therefore, may be right that Descartes would not tolerate the ‘possibility of the mad philosopher’ (2010: 139), but he is not right that the mad are not granted the status of thought. In his comparative ontological analysis of automata,4 human beings and animals in the Discourse on Method, Descartes begins by observing that while automata are able to produce a fixed number of responses, men are able to generate an infinite number of responses in an infinite number of cases or contexts. What is most important in this analysis, however, is the reference he makes in passing to the mad: ‘we may also recognise the difference that exists between men and brutes. For it is a very remarkable fact that there are none so depraved and stupid, without even excepting idiots, that they cannot arrange different words together forming of them a statement by which they make known their thoughts’ (Descartes 1997a: 108; emphasis added).5 This clearly establishes that, for Descartes, the mad (les insensés) are not excepted from thinking; they too have thoughts which they make known through language, despite the truth or the falsity of those thoughts. It is through this very irrelevance of the truth or falsity of his thoughts that Descartes proves his existence, that is by the criterion not of the correct content of his thought but of his thinking alone. I have already proposed that there is a potential structural parallel at work in the Meditations between the mad and the agencies of doubt, such as the ‘evil genius’, and my aim is to prove that these include the Cogito itself. It may not be his intention, but what Descartes does is to produce a Cogito which is a structural simulation of the mad, based in other words on the model of the mad. In a single gesture, Descartes creates two manifestations of the Cogito: the one which he constructs with the data he has access to according to his own sensory and intellectual make-up, and one which he leaves in the shadows, totally ignored and dismissed (a dismissal which Foucault does not fail to pick up), yet which he does acknowledge. The difference is that the second Cogito cannot by itself formulate and articulate the staging of the test and the eventual confirmation of its own existence as the first can, something which Derrida also points out: ‘For if the Cogito is valid even for the

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maddest madman, one must, in fact, not be mad if one is to reflect it and retain it, if one is to communicate it and its meaning’ (2005: 70). In other words, to be mad, Derrida continues, ‘is not to be able to reflect and to say the Cogito, that is, not to be able to make the Cogito appear as such for an other; an other who may be myself ’ (71). It becomes clear therefore that what confirms the detachment of the Cogito from its madness is its ability for self-reflection. Apart from Descartes’ own explicit statement that the correctness or the falsity of the content of thought plays absolutely no importance in his test, Jacques Lacan’s account of the psychotic subject will help me to further illustrate my claim regarding these two manifestations of the Cogito. What Lacan pertinently emphasises is the psychotic’s certainty of his own experience despite the recognition that this may not necessarily comply with the conventions of what is objectively or generally accepted as reality. Lacan writes this in the context of his analysis of Daniel Paul Schreber (1842–1911)6; It is important that Lacan’s account be quoted here at length in order for the similarities between the Cartesian Cogito and the Lacanian psychotic subject to be revealed. What characterizes a normal subject is precisely that he never takes seriously certain realities that he recognizes exist. You are surrounded by all sorts of realities about which you are in no doubt, some of which are particularly threatening, but you don’t take them fully seriously, […] and maintain yourselves in an average, basic […] state of blissful uncertainty, which makes possible for you a sufficiently relaxed existence. Surely, certainty is the rarest of things for the normal subject. […] [For the psychotic subject, however,] Reality is not the issue. […] He is well aware that their reality is uncertain. He even admits their unreality up to a certain point. But, contrary to the normal subject for whom reality is always in the right place, he is certain of something, which is that what is at issue—ranging from hallucination to interpretation—regards him. Reality isn’t at issue for him, certainty is. Even when he expresses himself along the lines of saying that what he experiences is not of the order of reality, this does not affect his certainty that it concerns him. The certainty is radical. The very nature of what he is certain of can quite easily remain completely ambiguous, covering the entire range from malevolence to benevolence. But it means something unshakable for him. This constitutes what is called […] delusional belief. (Lacan 1997: 74–75)

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Lacan is clear and becomes rather repetitive concerning this: even if the madman knows that what he experiences is unreal, what is important is that he is certain that this experience, no matter how unreal it is, concerns him, it is real for him, because he does experience it. The similarities with Descartes’ description of the Cogito are striking: even if the things I think I perceive are all false, ‘[l]et it be so; still it is at least quite certain that it seems to me that I see light, that I hear noise and that I feel heat. That cannot be false; properly speaking it is what is in me called feeling; and used in this precise sense that is no other thing than thinking’ (Descartes 1997b: 143); and again: ‘For it may be that what I see is not really wax, it may also be that I do not possess eyes with which to see anything; but it cannot be that when I see, or (for I no longer take account of the distinction) when I think I see, that I myself who think am nought’ (146–147). This similarity in structure of the Cartesian subject with the Lacanian (paranoiac) subject, is in effect a similarity with the subject tout-court of which psychosis is a structural possibility, on which (similarity) the conception of subjectivity in the West has been based. Therefore, the two manifestations of the Cogito (the non-mad Cogito and the mad Cogito)—which are not intentionally produced by Descartes’ hand—are to be distinguished by one criterion only: the ability to doubt or, in other words, the ability to be self-reflexive. What Lacan’s paranoiac lacks is precisely the ability to doubt the reality of his experience. It is true, though, that Descartes, Derrida argues, does not differentiate between thought and self-reflexivity, treating them as one, creating thus a solid and self-fenced Cogito which can think as long as it can say that it thinks. This, Derrida points out, is a castrated and overprotected Cogito7: ‘The Cogito is a work as soon as it is assured [as it assures itself ] of what it says. But before it is a work, it is madness. If the madman could rebuff the evil genius, he could not tell himself so. He therefore cannot say so’ (2005: 71–72). Thus, for Derrida, Descartes locates the reasonableness of reason not in the thinking but in the telling that it is thinking; this telling is thus what functions as a proof of existence because it (the telling) is the proof of self-reflexivity.

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Notes 1. For a detailed account of Foucault’s reaction to Derrida’s reading of History of Madness and how this reaction shifted, from ‘really rather positive’ to an intention to ‘destroy Derrida’s position’ and a ‘desire to wound’ him, see Peeters (2013: 130–133, 237–240). 2. ‘I must say, with all due respect to M. des Cartes, that both Foucault and Derrida over-respect the authority of the Cartesian I, which they seem to have invented in the first place, in their own ways, in the name of the Father—of modern philosophy of the rational self: in the form, in Foucault’s case, of the crushing presence of controlling reason; and in Derrida’s, of the despairing absence of pure logos. My Descartes, by contrast, […] is fairly stupid and hospitable, hospitalisable even. And that is what I respect, if nothing else’ (Lee 2005: 60). 3. Descartes is not, however, always read as the ‘bad’ figure of modern philosophy. For example, Jacques Lacan, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek are among those whose work brings a shift to this attitude which has indeed been taken for granted. 4. Automata are robot-like animal- or human-looking machines. From Greek αὐτόματον, meaning ‘acting or moving on its own’, the word ‘automata’ was first used to refer to animated figurines on cuckoo clocks. 5. In the French original: ‘on peut aussi con-naître la différence qui est entre les hommes et les bêtes. Car c’est une chose bien remarquable, qu’il n’y a point d’hommes si hébétés et si stupides, sans en excepter même les insensés, qu’ils ne soient capables d’arranger ensemble diverses paroles, et d’en composer un discours par lequel ils fassent entendre leurs pensées’ (Descartes 1983: 139–40). 6. Schreber was a German judge who was diagnosed with dementia praecox. His Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, written in 1884 from within the mental asylum, is probably the most written about work by a mad person. Psychoanalysts and philosophers who have written on Schreber’s Memoirs include Freud, Lacan, Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari, among others. 7. For a psychoanalytic account of this idea see Jacques Lacan’s ‘La Science et la vérité’ (‘Science and Truth’) (1965), where Lacan presents the Cogito both as self-reflexive as well as refuting the validity or correctness of self-reflection.

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References Boyne, Roy. 1990. Foucault and Derrida: The other side of reason. London: Unwin Hyman. Derrida, Jacques. 1994. To Do Justice to Freud: The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Critical Inquiry, 20 (2): 227–266.http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343910. Accessed 20 Sep 2010. Derrida, Jacques. 2005. Cogito and the History of Madness. In Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass. Oxon: Routledge. Descartes, René. 1983. Discours de la Méthode. Paris: Messidor/Éditions Sociales. Descartes, René. 1997a. Discourse on the Method, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. In Descartes: Key Philosophical Writings, ed. Enrique Chávez-Arvizo. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. Descartes, René. 1997b. Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. In Descartes: Key Philosophical Writings, ed. Enrique Chávez-Arvizo. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. Foucault, Michel. 1972. Histoire de la Folie à l’Âge Classique. Paris: Gallimard. Foucault, Michel. 2010. History of Madness, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. Oxon: Routledge. Güven, Ferit. 2005. Madness and Death in Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Harrison, Wendy Cealey. 2007. Madness and historicity: Foucault and Derrida, Artaud and Descartes. In History of the Human Sciences, 20 (4): 79–105. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0952695107082492. Accessed 10 Sep 2012. Lacan, Jacques. 1997. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses 1955–1956, trans. Russell Grigg, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: W. W. Norton. Lee, Kyoo. 2005. The Madness of Measuring Madness: Revisiting Foucault vs. Derrida on Descartes’s’ Madmen. In Naked Punch: The Engaged Review of Contemporary Art and Thought, vol. 4, 53–66. London: The Postanalytic Group. http://www.nakedpunch.com/site/issues/4. Accessed 17 Jan 2007. Peeters, Benoît. 2013. Derrida: A Biography, trans. Andrew Brown. Cambridge: Polity Press.

12 Derrida and Madness

The Ahistorical Emergence of Reason and Madness Very early in ‘Cogito and the History of Madness’, Derrida recognizes Foucault’s own acknowledgement of the challenges and the limits that his project—to let madness speak for itself—faces, a recognition, however, which for Derrida does not remove any of the project’s guilt. The awareness of the problem, Derrida implies, does not constitute its solution, and proceeds with his polemic reflected in the extract below and especially in his almost demeaning insistence on the repetition of the word ‘itself ’: In writing a history of madness, Foucault has attempted—and this is the greatest merit, but also the very infeasibility of his book—to write a history of madness itself. Itself. Of madness itself. That is, by letting madness speak for itself. Foucault wanted madness to be the subject of his book in every sense of the word: its theme and its first-person narrator, its author, madness speaking about itself. Foucault wanted to write a history

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of madness itself, that is madness speaking on the basis of its own experience and under its own authority, and not a history of madness described from within the language of reason […] [nor of a] madness made into an object and exiled as the other of a language and a historical meaning which have been confused with logos itself. (Derrida 2005: 39)

Derrida pauses at the verb ‘attempted’ to parenthetically praise Foucault’s attempt for its bravery, but at the same time to establish its infeasibility, implying thus the distinction that I made in Chap. 8, namely that between Foucault’s philosophical intention and his philosophical act. According to Derrida, however, Foucault is in error concerning both his intention and his actual philosophical project. Yet, while proving Foucault wrong in terms of his project’s feasibility seemed an easy task, proving Foucault’s intention wrong, despite its merit, is much more complicated: ‘Formidable and infinitely difficult problems that haunt Foucault’s book, more present in his intentions than his words’ (Derrida 2005: 51). Despite Foucault’s admission that writing a history of ‘madness itself ’ is a doubly impossible task, Derrida keeps coming back to that phrase, which, justifiably, he treats as the paradigm of Foucault’s tacit intention embedded in History of Madness. Derrida’s view on this is very clear: ‘The expression “to say madness itself ” is self-contradictory. To say madness without expelling it into objectivity is to let it say itself. But madness is what by essence cannot be said’ (51). It is in this fashion that Derrida will continue to prove the unsurpassability of reason by simply trying to show (a) that one cannot oppose reason from within reason, and (b) one has access to nothing else but reason or, rather, one is nothing else but reason. The power of reason, or as Derrida writes, ‘[t] he unsurpassable, unique, and imperial grandeur of the order of reason […] is that one cannot speak out against it except by being for it’ (42). What we, the prisoners of reason, can do to or against reason is reduced to ‘strategems [sic] and strategies. The revolution against reason […] can be made only within it, […] [and] it always has the limited scope of what is called […] a disturbance’ (42). Any protest against reason, such as Foucault’s project for example, only disturbs reason, but in no way does it pose any threat to it. This idea of the philosophical act as a

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disturbance to reason is characteristic of all the philosophers I discuss in this book, yet the value or the point of this ‘disturbance’ is not acknowledged by all. And the way they acknowledge or do not acknowledge this value is related to the degree of their commitment to autobiographical philosophy. With his complete identification of life and philosophy, Nietzsche irreversibly transgresses what is conventionally rational or reasonable, a transgressive act which is mimicked by Bataille in the context of his rational exercise of inner experience and finally a transgression which is theorized less by Foucault than by Derrida. In other words, what a disturbance to reason does is open up a space where a sense of fulfilment of an ethical demand metonymically pleaded by Nietzsche’s madness is noted, as well as a certain sense of satisfaction as to what can be done within the otherwise restricted and rigid domain of reason. In the context of the unsurpassability of reason, and in a strategic manner, Derrida begins his own project of undermining the Foucauldian edifice by dismantling all the important and vulnerable terms that feature in History of Madness, for example, the ‘archaeology of silence’. Derrida attacks this aspect of ’s project on both fronts, namely the archaeological method as well as the implication of the concept of silence: ‘is not an archaeology, even of silence, a logic, that is, an organized language, a project, an order, a sentence, a syntax, a work?’ (41), and should we not ‘inquire […] about the source and the status of the language of this archaeology, of this language which is to be understood by a reason that is not classical reason?’ (41). What Derrida points to and eventually blames Foucault for is how he even tried to locate the ‘decision’ which divides madness and reason historically, that is, the moment of the capture of madness by reason. This act, Derrida implies, is unfair to the Classical Age. Through challenging the concept of archaeology, Derrida is at the same time challenging Foucault’s reliance on the concept of history, which for Derrida is a purely rational construct. Foucault too would see history as a rational construct, but would not accept a parallel reading between history and his archaeology or genealogy.1 But Derrida would insist on this parallel reading and question whether such a project, or whether any archaeological project, is even possible. In total opposition to Foucault, Derrida, for whom the division between madness and reason is not historically traceable,

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challenges Foucault’s historical or archaeological perspective by introducing the distinction between exteriority and interiority. In his effort to establish this view of interiority, Derrida will try to show that what Foucault considers to be an historical ‘act of force’, which divides reason from madness, is nothing more than an internal self-division; in other words, the break between reason and madness happens outside the dimension of what we now understand as history, which, too, is a result of this internal break. It is for this reason that Derrida will also suggest that we understand this act not with the term ‘decision’ (Foucault’s term) but with the term ‘dissension’. But to make sense of what this dissension entails, we need to take into account the key distinction Derrida draws between reason and logos. Logos ‘preceded the split of reason and madness’ and ‘within itself permitted dialogue between what were later called reason and madness (unreason), permitted their free circulation and exchange, just as the medieval city permitted the free circulation of the mad within itself ’ (Derrida 2005: 45). According to Derrida, then, what we should be attempting to do is to summon the first dissension of logos, which, he will show, is internal in the sense that it is characteristic of its very nature. Dissension, therefore, is a self-generating or ‘self-dividing’ act (46). Rejecting an external gesture which divides reason from madness, Derrida also denies that the Classical Age should be considered any more guilty for this division than any other historical period. He acknowledges that there is a certain difference between the Middle Ages (as well as before that) and the Classical Age, but it should be understood as a ‘socioeconomic epiphenomenon’ (48). And even if he is happy to admit that Classical reason was more oppressive to madness than medieval reason, he nonetheless argues that these cannot be completely different. They both partake in this ‘archaic reason’, this logos, which is a ‘unitary foundation [and which] is much more ancient than the medieval period’ (46) or any other historically identifiable period. Logos is a more archaic and general sphere from which the reason—and madness—originate. ‘The reason and madness of the classical age had a common root. […] this logos which is in the beginning, is not only the common ground of all dissension, but also—and no less importantly—the very atmosphere in which Foucault’s language moves’ (46).

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Nonetheless, Foucault seems not to perceive this logos in its totality as an untraceable mythical and non-historical origin which was around much before the Middle Ages. Even if we are to accept that something happened after the Middle Ages which constituted a break with the Greek understanding of reason and madness, it is only a ‘late’ and ‘secondary’ occurrence in an already established ‘logico-philosophical heritage’ (47). Derrida’s argument regarding the untraceability of the historical moment during which the dissension has happened develops into one at the core of which lies the distinction between history and historicity.

History vs. Historicity I would claim that the core of Derrida’s argument against Foucault, which also reflects the two philosophers’ methodological differences, lies in precisely this distinction, one between history and historicity. According to Derrida, we are immersed in the domain of reason, and this immersion is, contrary to Foucault’s historical orientation, what constitutes the possibility of history itself. For Foucault, this immersion of man in reason, which is associated with and relative to the exclusion of madness, may be sought in the margins of history. For Derrida, however, it lies outside history. Its origin is not historical, it is mythical, a locus of origin which precisely cancels out any concept(ion) of origin. And if this immersion cannot be traced historically, then, it, simply, cannot be traced. This aspect of the debate, between Foucault’s margins of history and Derrida’s historicity, which is an essential one, begins with Foucault’s reference to the Socratic/Greek logos, which had no contrary, that is, which did not exclude its other. In the 1961 Preface to History of Madness, Foucault claims that despite the fact that what ‘comes down to us [from the Greeks is] already enveloped in the reassuring dialectics of Socrates’, it is safe to assume that ‘the Greek Logos had no opposite. European man, since the depths of the Middle Ages, has had a relation to a thing that is confusedly termed Madness, Dementia, or Unreason’ (Foucault 2010: xxix). But if we accept that the Greek logos (unlike

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classical reason) had no contrary, Derrida protests, then we would have to assume that ‘the Greeks were in the greatest proximity to the elementary, primordial, and undivided Logos’. Then, we would have to admit that either the Socratic dialectic is reassuring or that the Greek logos had no contrary. ‘For if the Socratic dialectic is reassuring […] it is so only in that it has already […] assimilated and mastered as one of its moments, “enveloped” the contrary of reason; and also only in that it has […] reassured itself into a pre-Cartesian certainty, a sophrosyne…’ (Derrida 2005: 48). Derrida’s priority remains to show that it is not the Classical Age which excluded madness but that madness has been excluded all along. In effect, if it is the Classical Age that Foucault identifies with the moment of the capture of madness, Derrida seems to imply, understandably, then Foucault should have elaborated more on the period before rather than on the period after this capture: ‘If dissension dates from Socrates, then the situation of the madman in the Socratic and post-Socratic worlds […] perhaps deserves to be examined first’ (50). The classical crisis so important for Foucault, is for Derrida secondary and ‘has neither absolute privilege nor archetypal exemplarity’ (50–1). To establish the distinction between history and historicity, and to show that the exclusion madness is to be sought not in Descartes but at another, mythical point or space, Derrida resorts to the concept of the degree zero or zero point, which denotes that original point without origin, challenging our understanding of linearity, teleology, oppositions and distinctions. Derrida’s degree zero or zero point is the point from which meaning is triggered and produced. It is the point which is not ahistorical, Derrida clarifies, and yet not historical; this is the dimension of historicity, not history. It is the point at which one is simultaneously given voice and is forever muted in the sense that one cannot speak against the totality (or the voice) which traps one. It is this point which makes possible the effort—which is bound to fail—to escape from this totality or voice, and which makes possible the exercise of the disturbance of reason. Mad or not, Derrida argues, one is trapped within one’s voice. ‘From its very first breath, speech, […] is able to open the space for discourse only by emprisoning [sic] madness’ (74). The Cogito, therefore, mad or not, is constituted out of this simultaneity of

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the acquisition of voice and of muteness. ‘The misfortune of the mad, the interminable misfortune of their silence, is that their best spokesmen are those who betray them best’ (24).

Derrida’s Acknowledgement of Foucault’s Pathos After elaborating on his claim about the impossibility of Foucault’s archaeology of silence, Derrida acknowledges Foucault’s intention or willingness to remain within a discourse which is not supported by an ‘absolute reason or logos’ (2005: 43), in other words, to remain in what Foucault calls ‘relativity without recourse’ or a ‘language without support’ (2010: xxxv). Once Derrida acknowledges this, he continues to account for the fact that Foucault’s ‘impossible’ book was nonetheless written, by attempting to detect what makes this relativity or language without recourse possible. ‘Who wrote and who is to understand, in what language and from what historical situation of logos, who wrote and who is to understand the history of madness? For it is not by chance that such a project could take shape today’ (Derrida 2005: 45). So, why today? Derrida seems to imply that if one were to continue Foucault’s first project, that is, the socio-historical analysis of the perception or construction of madness, one would observe an improvement, in other words, a certain degree of liberation of madness from the constraints of reason and more specifically from the discourse of positive psychiatry. And if this improvement, liberation and ‘dislocation’ of madness from unreason is what makes Foucault’s project possible ‘today’, is it not the same improvement, liberation and dislocation that should, perhaps, also account for the inflation in the discourses on madness that Felman records, or even the impact that the ‘Nietzsche event’ has had on the twentieth-century philosophy? However, Foucault does not acknowledge that a dislocation or rupture in the unity of madness and unreason has taken place before him to make his project possible, nor does he acknowledge, Derrida argues in his later text ‘To Do Justice to Freud: The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis’ (1994), how much he owes to psychoanalysis, of which he has little (positive) to say.

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Still, Derrida’s question about what makes Foucault’s language without recourse possible remains. To answer it, Derrida retreats to and praises an ‘element’, ‘factor’ or ‘space’ which he claims is outside the logos of the book: this is Foucault’s pathos: One could perhaps say that the resolution of this difficulty is practiced rather than formulated. By necessity. I mean that the silence of madness is not said, cannot be said in the logos of this book, but is indirectly, metaphorically, made present by its pathos—taking this word in its best sense. A new and radical praise of folly whose intentions cannot be admitted because the praise [éloge] of silence always takes place within logos, the language of objectification. “To speak well of madness” would be to annex it once more. (Derrida 2005: 44)

So, Foucault does not just ‘speak well’ of madness but he ‘makes its silence present’, and he does this not by what he says ‘in this 673-page book’ (37) but by its pathos. Interestingly, Derrida uses the passive voice (the silence of madness is made present), but if this making present happens in Foucault’s book, what precisely is Foucault’s part in, or contribution to it? Surprisingly, Derrida does not linger on this highly ambiguous Greek word (‘πάθος’) apart from the fact that we have to take it ‘in its best sense’ (44), nor does he make much of its multiplicity of meanings, varying from passion, intense feeling, sensation and emotion to suffering and disease (‘pathology’), pity and compassion (‘apathy’; ‘empathy’; ‘sympathy’). It is, I believe, a combination of all these meanings of the term which are indeed at work in History of Madness. Foucault’s pathos encompasses his enthusiasm, intense willingness and compassion on the one hand, and madness as the realm of affect, pathology and suffering on the other. By necessity, pathos is a condition; it is affective; it is not about saying, articulating, formulating, but about practising. And this is the closest Foucault comes to the insertion of bios qua affect into logos. Moreover, it is around the concept of pathos that one should focus for an evaluation of Foucault’s response to the demand that madness makes and for an understanding of how his pathos makes up for what has been identified as the lack of the autobiographical in his work. Pathos opens up the space where the philosophical response is to be made. It stands as a

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prerequisite of a response, an ethical philosophical response. It is Foucault’s pathos which provides him with the language which enables him to ‘stat[e] the difficulty of stating’ (Derrida 2005: 44), the language which is available only to ‘someone for whom [this task] is meaningful and before whom appears’ the oppression of madness by reason (44). We are led to read this pathos as an expression of the intuition, the sensitivity and the willingness to place oneself in that ‘uncomfortable region’ (Foucault 2010: xxvii), or that ‘strange position’ (Rovatti 2002: 14), and to make oneself sensitive and vulnerable to the pathos of madness. The possibility of Foucault’s philosophical inquiry is, therefore, dependent on his willingness to ‘lend an ear’ to something which may very well be absolutely silent. To respond to madness ethically is not to remain mute but to engage with the possibility of this muteness, an engagement which is made in fear and discomfort.

Notes 1. See Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’ (1971).

References Derrida, Jacques. 1994. “To do Justice to Freud”: The History of Madness in the Age of Psychoanalysis. In Critical Inquiry, vol. 20, no. 2, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas, 227–266. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343910. Accessed 20 Sept 2010. Derrida, Jacques. 2005. Cogito and the History of Madness. In Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass. Oxon: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. In Language, CounterMemory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Serry Simon, ed. Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca Cornell UniversityPress. Foucault, Michel. 2010. History of Madness, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. Oxon: Routledge. Rovatti, Pier Aldo. 2002. Astride a Low Wall: Notes on Philosophy and Madness. In Plí: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, vol. 13, trans. Lorenzo Chiesa, 13–25. Foucault: Madness/Sexuality/Biopolitics.

13 Derrida and Autobiographical Philosophy

The Autobiographical Ethos of Deconstruction It would not be an exaggeration to say that Derrida’s philosophy is immersed in a writing which can be called autobiographical, a claim that needs to be differentiated from his own, namely that all writing is autobiographical. In a talk given at New York University in 1996, and in a tone of complete distrust of the ‘authority’ of the conventional biographer who forcefully stabilizes a ‘life image’ of a philosopher and fixes it as the ‘truth’, Derrida suggests that a rigorous interpretation of a philosopher’s work is a more valuable or valid biography than the former type: ‘sometimes the one who reads a text by a philosopher—for instance, a tiny paragraph—and interprets it in a rigorous, inventive and powerfully deciphering fashion is more of a real biographer than one who knows the whole story’ (1996). But this can only be fully understood if it is read alongside what Derrida says during a radio interview with Catherine Paoletti in 1998, which appeared a year later in Sur Parole. In this interview, Derrida agrees that his texts seem to gradually become ‘more and more autobiographical’ consisting of ‘acts of remembering, confessions, reflections on the possibility or impossibility © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_13

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of confession’, et cetera, and explicitly expressing that ‘every text is in a way autobiographical’ (10). He hastens to make clear, however, that a rough distinction between his early and his later work in terms of the presence of the autobiographical is not possible because their difference is one of ‘a modulation, a transformation of the tone and the regime/ mode of autobiography’ (10) and not of the absence/presence type. To further establish that such a distinction between autobiographical and non-autobiographical texts does not hold, Derrida draws from his 1990 text Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, in which he tries ‘to show to what extent even drawings which are not self-portraits are self-portraits’ (10). Indeed, in Memoirs of the Blind, Derrida appears to challenge the distinction between self-portrait and non-self-portrait by trying to widen the scope of what is identified as the former (self-portrait), an effort which is motivated by the fact that ‘what is called a self-portrait depends on the fact that it is called “self-portrait”’ and, consequently, it is justified to ‘call just about anything a self-portrait […] by which I can be affected or let myself be affected’ (1993b: 65). To arrive at this, however, Derrida turns to an analysis of a perspectival positioning of the artist, the drawn model and the seeing spectator in order for the conditions of the self-portrait to be met. Derrida thus ‘inserts’ into the process of selfmaking or into the distance between the artist’s eyes and the canvas, the other qua the spectator, who is or serves as ‘the condition of [the artist’s] sight’ ‘according to the law of an impossible and blinding’—as well as binding—‘reflexivity’ (62): we, as spectators or interpreters, must imagine that the draftsman is staring at one point, at one point only, the focal point of a mirror that is facing him; he is staring, therefore, from the place that we occupy, in a face to face with him: this can be the self-portrait of a self-portrait only for the other, for a spectator who occupies the place of a single focal point, but in the center of what should be a mirror. (Derrida 1993b: 60–62)

The other qua spectator is inserted into the work and ‘is essentially prescribed by the work’ by way of its performance, which consists in ‘striking the signatory blind’, ‘making him, the subject’, as well as making

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himself the subject who both sees the work and is in the work: ‘If there were such a thing, the self-portrait would first consist in assigning, thus in describing, a place to the spectator, to the visitor, to the one whose seeing blinds’ (62). The ethos of deconstruction is thus an autobiographical ethos: a putting of the self on the line. Contrary to the traditional view of autobiography as the space of emergence of the subject, the space in which the subject is disclosed and revealed in full presence, for Derrida it is the space where the subject is lost by giving itself to the other in order to emerge. In other words, autobiography needs to be seen from two perspectives: as the space where the incompleteness of the subject is generated and established, and as the space of the encounter with the other; for Derrida, the two are interconnected. Interestingly, Foucault aims at the same loss of the subject, the same displacement or evacuation of the subject from the text, which is done justice not when it emerges in its glorious authority but only when it is ‘experienced’ and when its discourse develops in the ‘anonymity of a murmur’ (Foucault 1998b: 222). The difference between the two, however, is that Foucault seems to be intimidated by the presence of the autobiographical in the text, which risks being confused with facilitating access to the subject. Even if the subject is eventually to emerge through its absence from the text, Foucault does not allow it the opportunity to become vulnerable through the textual practice. Derrida, on the other hand, puts the subject in the text, which thus becomes autobiographical and which can also accommodate the other that is indispensable for the constitution of subjectivity: ‘Autobiography, for Derrida, is the compulsion to respond to an other, dead or alive, who provokes in him something singular’ (Kronick 2000: 1001). This implies that until the subject opens up and gives itself to the other as a response to the other, the subject does not exist: I just spoke of a ‘pledge’ [gage] or an ‘engagement’ of oneself in a strange autobiography; yes, but the self does not exist, it is not present to itself before that which engages it in this way and which is not it. There is not a constituted subject that engages itself at a given moment in writing for some reason or another. It is given by writing, by the other: born […] by being given, delivered, offered, and betrayed all at once. (Derrida 1995: 347)

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This is why writing for Derrida acquires the quality of the sacred, to recall Bataille’s term; in other words, the quality of what necessarily entails the lowest and the highest, the loss and the gain, annihilation and existence. Writing is thus the space in which the moment of the subject’s loss is enacted, which is at the same time the moment of its constitution. Writing acquires the quality of the sacred, which for Derrida also establishes the status of the other as sacred (as the ultimate other as well as the ultimately indispensable); the centrality of the space of writing Derrida holds for the other. Joseph Kronick pertinently insists on the fact that, for Derrida, autobiography—and his work in general—needs to be perceived as a response to ‘some request, invitation, demand, or signature’ (2000: 997) as Derrida himself demanded from us in relation to Nietzsche. Autobiography is to be understood as a practice which ‘embraces the ethical imperative of the promise or pledge that precedes the self ’ (998). It is in this light that Derrida explains his continuous engagement with authors and philosophers in his work: ‘There is always someone else, you know. The most private autobiography comes to terms with great transferential figures, who are themselves and themselves plus someone else’ (Derrida 1995: 353). This accompaniment by the other, this constant supplement of an other, obviously takes a number of guises in Derrida’s thought: from the specificity and the singularity of some one to the generality of the historical and the cultural, to the manifestation of a trauma or a wound. When Derrida talks about his circumcision, prominent as a theme in his Circumfession (1991), he explains how ‘[i]n order to speak of even the most intimate thing, for example one’s “own” circumcision, one does better to be aware that an exegesis is in process, that you carry the detour, the contour, and the memory inscribed in the culture of your body, for example’ (1993a: 353). The specific example of circumcision allows Derrida to introduce the body into the scene of writing and entail it in the act of being given to the other. Kronick notes this: ‘The body, not just the subject, is the site of transference’ (2000: 1000). In other words, in that experience of relating to the other and receiving the violence or the danger that such an encounter may entail, the body too is involved: the spectator blinds the self-portraitist with the same stroke that the self-portraitist gouges out his model’s eyes;

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it is only by assuming blindness and assigning his sight to the other that ‘the subject (at once model, signatory, and object of the work)’ (Derrida 1993b: 62) is constituted. Through the stroke of blindness the model becomes both the subject and the object of the work as becomes the circumcised through the stroke of the knife: Circumcision means […] a certain mark that, coming from others and submitted to in absolute passivity, remains on the body, visible and no doubt indissociable from the proper name which is likewise received from the other. It is also the moment of the signature (the other’s as well as one’s own) by which one lets oneself be inscribed in a community. (Derrida 1995: 341)

Might a connection be detected here between circumcision and madness? Is it possible that the mark of circumcision which remains as a ‘memory without representation’ has the same effect as the mark of madness, that ‘obscure belonging of man to madness’ which Foucault proposes in the form of an ‘ageless memory’ which ‘lives on obstinately as unhappiness’ (Foucault 2010: 542), even if the pathological is eradicated? Yes and no. Both (circumcision and madness), it seems, involve the subject in a relation with the other, in which relation the implication of the mark or the memory lacerates in order to constitute. But while for Derrida this is true for the other in general, for Foucault the other is only, in this case, the mad. While for Derrida, however, circumcision enters the philosophical discourse, for Foucault madness is what paradigmatically is excluded from it. I, therefore, agree with Kronick when he argues that ‘[c]ircumcision serves as the trope for a philosophical discourse that remains open to what Derrida refers to as the wound of the trauma of singularity. He calls for a philosophical discourse that holds up to this trauma, lets itself be interrupted by it but not destroyed by it’ (2000: 1005–1006). The way Bataille treats madness, however, seems to work better than does Foucault’s for the parallel attempted here, since he calls for a philosophical discourse which reflects the trauma or the possibility of the trauma of madness. Moreover, like Derrida, Bataille lets this trauma permeate and infect the text. For both, the trauma of singularity qua circumcision or madness is brought into

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the philosophical discourse, while for Foucault, and this is his ardent criticism of philosophy, this is precisely denied. In Circumfession, Derrida’s circumcision features not just as a theme but as the experience and the trauma which make his work possible: ‘my own skin thus torn off in the very place, along the crural artery where my books find their inspiration, they are written first in skin’ (1993a: 227–228). The circumcision occurs and recurs within Derrida’s texts and stains them with blood, as do his tears (due to the fact that the text was written over the course of Derrida’s mother’s declining health and death): ‘the admission I owe the reader, in truth that I owe my mother herself for the reader will have understood that I am writing for my mother’ (25). In it, Derrida tries—from the lower third of the book’s page—to invalidate Geoffrey Bennington’s attempt—made from the upper two thirds of the page—to provide a comprehensive explication of Derrida’s work. This invalidation, made in the form of a confession and with full affection—‘it’s as though Geoff, very close, pronounce it Djef, because I love him and from my admiration without memory …’ (13)—draws from the autobiographical, namely the bodily as well as the pathetic (emotional) to counter Bennington’s purely logical account: ‘I wonder if those reading me from up there see my tears’ (38), those from up there, first and foremost Geoffrey Bennington, who— godlike—receives Derrida’s confession. ‘I owe it to autobiography to say that I have spent my life teaching so as to return in the end to what mixes prayer and tears with blood’ (20).

‘Maintaining’ an Architecture of Life This epiphanic realization that Derrida confesses in Circumfession regarding the insertion of the bodily and the affective in the logical, is to be reflected—the future dimension is important—in a book that Derrida refers to in an interview he gave to Le Nouvel Observateur, which was included in the 1985 book Derrida and Différance, edited by David Wood and Robert Bernasconi. Here, Derrida speaks about the ‘unreadable’ book he ‘plans’ to ‘write’, a book which is as unreadable as it is unwriteable, yet written, and which will be written after this

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interview, playfully pointing towards the relation between life and writing as well as the non-linearity of this relation. This book is all about ‘an interminable remembering, still seeking its own form: it would be not only my story’ (Derrida in Wood and Bernasconi 1988a: 73), and also: ‘… But, all the same, the accumulation of dreams, projects, or notes must weigh upon what one writes in the present’ (74). It should be clear that this ‘book’ that Derrida talks about in this interview does not refer to a specific book that Derrida has written or that he will write, metonymically standing for life despite the fact that the word (‘life’) is never used in the entire interview. The book ‘would be not only my story, but also that of the culture, of language, of families, and above all, of Algeria …’ (73); this life already entails the work in which the biographical is encrypted: ‘What was your father’s name?’: ‘Well, then. He had five names. All of the family names are encrypted, along with several others, in La carte postale, and they are often unreadable even to those who bear them, set in the lower case, as you might do for “joy” or “faith.”…’ (74). Here there appears to be at work a significant degree of metonymic encrypting, a device which, perhaps, Derrida saves for talking not so much about himself and his story but about other people for whom he feels the responsibility to protect. Yet, this ‘book’ contains everything and it should be understood as the very coming together of Derrida’s work and his life: my story and the story of a culture which is a culture inscribed—with circumcision—in the body. But the reader may be tempted to ask whether and if so how, madness creeps into this ‘book’ of Derrida, this story and this life. By association or metonymy, I propose a reading of this ‘book’ alongside an architectural project which Derrida, too, discusses, which will illuminate further the structure of this book and its implications. Describing this book, Derrida explains: ‘What I write resembles, by my account, a dotted outline of a book to be written, in what I call—at least for me—the “old new language,” the most archaic and the newest, unheard of, and thereby at present unreadable’ (73). It is this ‘dotted outline’ I would like to concentrate on and eventually show how Derrida draws from the architectural and the spatial to talk about the textual, which needs to be understood as the bio-philosophical.

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In ‘No (Point of ) Madness—Maintaining Architecture’ (1986),1 Derrida analyses Bernard Tschumi’s urban-environmental architectural project constructed in the Parc de la Villette in Paris, called Folies— the title obviously is not to be overlooked: ‘folies’ being the French for ‘madnesses’—which was begun in 1982 and completed in 1998. The special thing with this open-park architectural design is that it, too, consists of a ‘dotted outline’, equally fixed in its specificity but permanently open (see Appendix A). The Parc de la Villette is ‘a discontinuous building but a single structure nevertheless’. It is precisely the idea of the accommodation of two not necessarily compatible things that Derrida finds fascinating: despite the discontinuity, incoherence or playfulness of the points (see Appendix B), a (single) structure emerges. ‘A system of dispersed “points”—the red enameled steel folies that support different cultural and leisure activities—is superimposed on a system of lines that emphasizes movement through the park’ (Bernard Tschumi Architects’s website) (see Appendix C). What fascinates Derrida is the integral flexibility and destabilizing quality of these ‘points’. He observes: ‘A dissociated series of “points,” red points, constitutes the grid [trame], spacing out there a multiplicity of matrices or engendering cells whose transformations will never let themselves be pacified, stabilized, installed, identified in a continuum’ (2008: 98). These red points, foundations for the whole project but themselves divisible and transformable, give the project a structure, but only through their discontinuity: ‘Divisible themselves, these cells also point to instants of rupture, discontinuity, disjunction. But simultaneously, […] the point of madness gathers together what it has just dispersed; it gathers it as dispersion. It gathers into a multiplicity of red points’ (98–99). What interests Derrida here is that the same movement which suspends disorder, dissociation, chaos, or madness, also stops them: What then, is a point, this point of madness? How does it stop the madness? For it suspends it, and, in this movement, brings it to a halt, but as madness. […] What maintains together does not necessarily take the form of a system; it does not always depend on an architectonic and does not have to obey the logic of synthesis or the order of syntax. The now (maintaining) of architecture would be this maneuver to inscribe the disand make it into a work as such. (Derrida 2008: 99)

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Here Derrida is drawing our attention to this double act, this impossibility, which he calls ‘both the task and the wager, the concern of the impossible: to give dissociation its due, but to put it to work as such in the space of a gathering’ (99–100). The now—the ‘maintaining’ of the work but not as a rigid system—is to be in this space of gathering, as such. I suggest that the now, as that which resists the confines of architectural fixation, also stands for the negative, the dissociation, madness, hence the metonymy. What Derrida finds admirable about this project is the fact that it gives dissociation its due by putting it into (the) work, which he identifies as the bet and the wager in and of the project. Derrida values Tschumi’s acknowledgement of the project’s difficulty and quotes him when he says: ‘At La Villette, it is a matter of forming, of acting out dissociation… This is not without difficulty. Putting dissociation into form necessitates that the underlying support (the park, the institution) be structured as a gathering system. The red point of the Folies is the focus of this dissociated space’ (Tschumi in Derrida 2008: 100). Madness acquires central stage both in Tschumi’s conception of the project as well as Derrida’s preoccupation with it. Tschumi’s and Derrida’s titles—Folies and ‘No (Point of ) Madness—Maintaining Architecture’—respectively, reflect this. Derrida concentrates, of course, on these red enamelled steel footholds which he reads as a multiplicity of small ‘madnesses’, which—we may want to also recall Bataille here— must not be overly threatening for a structure to be maintained. These follies ‘are not on the road to ruin […]. They do not amount to the “absence of the work” […]. Instead, they make up a work [font oeuvre], they put to work. How? […] Through a certain adventure of the point’ (Derrida 2008: 90) which is enough to ‘cause meaning to tremble’. The follies have the power to ‘awaken, perhaps, an energy in it [the edifice] that was infinitely anaesthetized (93). This transgressive energy definitely creates a new space in which the norms of the structure are present yet not dominating. These norms ‘will not have presided over the work [oeuvre]; Tschumi has folded them into the general mise en oeuvre’ (94). This is precisely what Derrida seems to be after in this essay, namely, to show that giving the negative its due implies making it the threatening yet not completely destructive collaborator of the norm. This may also be seen as the principle of the deconstructive act, which is not

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about a demolition or a total collapse of the oeuvre but about keeping the negative, the follies folded mise en oeuvre. ‘Deconstructions would be weak if they were negative, if they did not construct, and above all if they did not first measure themselves against that which is most solid in institutions’ (98). And again, in his essay ‘A “Madness” Must Watch Over Thinking’, Derrida writes: ‘To say that all this is deconstructible does not amount to disqualifying, negating, disavowing, or surpassing it, […] but of thinking its possibility from another border’ (1995: 357). We are led to accept, therefore, that this alternative oeuvre is a rethought project, one which is permeable, letting the follies undo it and threaten it with chaos, yet use the norms to keep it structured. This is the now (maintenant) of the work and the maintained work, a work which is not only architectural but also autobiographical. Through the philosophicalarchitectural study of Tschumi’s park, Derrida metonymically offers an outline of the ‘book’ and the ‘life’ to come both graphed onto a dotted grid of which the structure maintains and is maintained by the adventurous play of madnesses and norms.

Note 1. First published in a bilingual edition in Bernard Tschumi’s La Case vide: La Villette, a boxed set containing essays and plates (London: Architectural Association, 1986).

References Derrida, Jacques. 1993a. Circumfession, trans. Geoffrey Bennington. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1993b. Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1995. A “Madness” Must Watch Over Thinking. In Points…: Interviews, 1974–1994, trans. Peggy Kamuf et al., ed. Elisabeth Weber. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Derrida, Jacques. 1996. Talk at Conference ‘Thinking Lives: The Philosophy of Biography and the Biography of Philosophers’. New York University. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=80a7sA4NcTI. Accessed 10 Aug 2012. Derrida, Jacques. 1988a. An Interview with Derrida. In Derrida and Différance, ed. David Wood and Robert Bernasconi. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 2008. No (Point of ) Madness—Maintaining Architecture. In Psyche: Inventions of the Other, vol II, trans. The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, ed. Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1998b. What is an Author. In Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, vol. 2, trans. Robert Hurley et al., ed. James D. Faubion. Bath: The Bath Press. Foucault, Michel. 2010. History of Madness, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. Oxon: Routledge. Kronick, Joseph G. 2000. Philosophy as Autobiography: The Confessions of Jacques Derrida. Modern Language Notes 115 (5), 997–1018, Comparative Literature Issue. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3251174. Accessed 10 Feb 2012.

Part V Responding to Madness: Autobiographical Philosophy

14 Post-Nietzschean Possibilities and Responsibilities

Lending an Ear to Nietzsche Roughly situated within structuralism and most importantly in the wake of post-structuralism, post-Nietzschean philosophy has taken up Nietzsche’s belief in ‘being as an empty fiction’,1 devoid of the religious, political, social, sexual or psychological identities which are forced upon the individual and then assumed by the individual. This new space that Nietzsche inaugurated with his contribution to an intuitive rationality, this new conception of perceiving the world and human existence paved the way for certain strains of twentieth-century French philosophy, which appear as that which Nietzsche had anticipated and wished for from the philosophers of the future who will necessarily be ‘tempters’ (Nietzsche 1997: 30), ‘very free spirits’ (31), ‘critics’ and ‘men of experiments’ (81) who ‘will avow among themselves a delight in denial and dissection, and a certain considerate cruelty, which knows how to handle the knife surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds’ (82). By extension, and against Nietzsche, using this new space of philosophical activity, those philosophers of the future (including Bataille, Klossowski, Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida) who have been responsible for what is © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_14

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known as the Nietzsche Renaissance have also sought to shift the way in which madness is conceived, bringing with it madness studies in philosophy as a space of philosophical endeavor, in other words, a new philosophical ethics specific to madness. Simply put, madness acquires a new status: from something threatening and irrelevant which should be avoided, to something threatening but extremely relevant; in other words, madness becomes something which it is necessary to acknowledge, hear and relate to. But if this new space and new ethics is specific to a certain reading of Nietzsche and a response to Nietzsche, then particular attention needs to be given, first, to the grounds and the implications of this act of hearing and reading, and second, to the implications of hearing and reading Nietzsche. The metaphor of the ear has been widely used to elicit attention to the importance of hearing and responding, from Erasmus personified and talking folly—‘be pleased to lend me your ears, and I’ll tell you’ (2003: 5)—to Nietzsche’s frustrated ‘no one has my ears!’ (2008: 137), to Foucault’s plea—‘[w]e need to strain our ears’ (2010: xxxii)—and Derrida’s pun term ‘otobiography’ (1988), which plays with the homonyms of ‘autos’ (self ) and ‘otos’ (ear). It is this term that I will briefly concentrate on here in order to explore the ethics of hearing and its relation to autobiography. Derrida’s pun term needs to be read in the context of his understanding of voice (speech) as the inscription, the writing on the ear, and which seeks to emphasize the importance of the reception of the philosophical text for its validation. It is, therefore, the h-ear-ing of the other which signs the text, not the author’s hand. It is in this light that the importance of the ‘Nietzsche event’ should be understood, especially since it is constituted of what the ear of the other—in this case the post-Nietzschean philosophers—perceive and hear and more importantly how they choose to respond to it because reading entails the responsibility of response by default. But before I elaborate further on this response that the ‘Nietzsche event’ initiates, which will point to the relevance and value of autobiographical philosophy, it is of the essence to turn once more to Nietzsche in order to see first whether he values this element of the other’s hearing and what he expects from his reader.

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The reference to the ear in Nietzsche takes the form of an extended metaphor which is constructed on the basis of the size of one’s ear in relation to the rest of the body and the regrettable invisibility of the body in case the ear is disproportionately big. As it will become clearer as this analysis unfolds, one may quickly be alerted to the possibility of some ethical concern that Nietzsche’s interpretation of this metaphor may bear. To consider this possibility, one needs to ask whether Nietzsche acknowledges the demand of the other’s signature that Derrida insists on and what Nietzsche, as the benefactor of the signature, makes of this demand. What does hearing Nietzsche mean for Nietzsche? With his emphasis on individual becoming, which rarely attempts to include the becoming of the other, Nietzsche could be said to be overlooking the ethical implications of this stance. In defence of Nietzsche, one could, perhaps, note that for him, overlooking the other would only mean standing on your own feet first in order to then be able to look at the other; in no way would it mean an extinction of the other as some would perhaps hurry to imply. As the fashion of considering Nietzsche’s thought as anticipating Nazism is over, so is the need to defend him, which was nonetheless justified in the first couple of decades after the Second World War, Bataille’s defence of Nietzsche remaining one of the most passionate. New efforts, therefore, to save Nietzsche from Nazi readings are, I believe, in risk of becoming clichéd and obsolete, as would be new Nazi interpretations of Nietzsche. In spite of this, however, concerns about Nietzsche’s ethical stance independent of Nazi accusations may still be raised. For example, Nietzsche’s demand to be heard—‘Listen to me’ (2007a: 71)—may arguably suggest that Nietzsche needs the other only for his ear. The priority is not hearing the other but being heard, which seems to be a requirement for and a manifestation of constituting one’s individuality and selfhood: ‘I am the one who I am! Above all, do not mistake me for anyone else’ (71). Being heard—and arguably understood—necessarily implies an other which is, however, appropriated in an enormous ‘ear as big as a person!’ (2008: 109). The implication of this metaphor is interesting as Nietzsche is able to see the rest of the body, the rest of the other, only when the ears are small enough indicating the ability to perceive subtleties and nuances, things that appear similar but yet are different. When the ear is enormous and

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hence insensitive to difference, whatever else exists beyond it is of no interest to Nietzsche whatsoever: ‘beneath the ear something was moving that was pitifully small and pathetic and thin. […] the gigantic ear sat upon […] a human being’ (109). So, in ‘On Virtue that Makes Small’ from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche asks twice: ‘But why do I speak where no one has my ears!’ (136 and 137), an idea which is also repeated in the Preface of Ecce Homo in the form of a ‘discrepancy between the greatness of my task and the smallness of my contemporaries’, which ‘is apparent from the fact that people have not listened or even looked at me’ (2007a: 71). But does what Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science, namely that the one who writes may not always want to be understood, contradict his demand to be heard? Does being heard also mean being understood? He writes: ‘It is not by any means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it impossible to understand: perhaps that was part of the author’s intention—he did not want to be understood by just “anybody”’ (1974: 343). Emphasized by Nietzsche himself, the key word here is clearly ‘anybody’. Nietzsche does not seek to be understood by ‘just “anybody”’ or too quickly, reinforcing his wish that he not be misunderstood. How can ‘anybody’ hear the unheard-of, acknowledging both the unconventionality of his task as well as the possibility of being understood only posthumously? Yet, it is Nietzsche’s demand to sign with his name through the name of the other that concludes Ecce Homo: ‘Have I been understood?—Dionysus versus the crucified…’ (2007a: 151). Yet, this conclusion encompasses both the demand (to be understood) as well as the element of near-impossibility that the fulfilment of such a demand (the reader’s signature) entails. What the reader is called upon to understand is not a straightforward thing; it is ‘madness’. This paradox—of the demand and the implicit acknowledgement of the impossibility of the demand—is also observed by Paul Van Tongeren, who attempts to account for it by suggesting that what Nietzsche tries to communicate is precisely the fact that his philosophy is not communicable: My philosophy, Nietzsche writes to Overbeck on 2 July 1885, ‘if I have the right to call such that which maltreats me down into the roots of my being, is not communicable anymore, at least not in print’ (Nietzsche in Van Tongeren 2000: 40). Three years later, however,

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Nietzsche seems to have moved beyond the resignation articulated in his 1885 letter to Overbeck and resumes hope in his readership. In a letter to Meta von Salis on 14 November 1888, he writes: ‘This Homo, you will understand, is myself, including the Ecce; my attempt to shed a little light and terror as regards myself seems to have been almost too successful’ (1996: 324). Interestingly, however, this letter precedes the publication of the book, which ‘has taken wing and is already flying, unless I am deceived, in the direction of Leipzig …’ (324), that is, to the publisher. But Nietzsche has himself wishfully reconstructed the reader’s reaction: ‘That this [“Why I Am a Man of Destiny”] is indeed true is proved so strongly, that, at the end, the reader is left sitting before me as a mere “mask,” mere “feeling heart”’ (1996: 324).2 My concern here is whether Nietzsche forces a mask on his readers, onto which he projects feelings of approval, sympathy, appreciation and admiration. It may be argued that this paradox and this ambiguity remain unresolved. What exactly does the other’s signature involve for Nietzsche? It is clear that he wants to be illuminated, comprehended, understood, not mistaken. But the key here is how this understanding (the reader’s signature) should be conceived. Does understanding, for Nietzsche, imply a blind allegiance, or just enough comprehension in order to be able to be critical? But then again, does a substantial degree of comprehension not presuppose a certain degree of agreement? Derrida attaches the implication of political action or reaction to the signing of Nietzsche’s texts, and reminds us that we really commit ourselves to the signature we are granted the moment we interpret ‘his message and his legacy politically’ (1988: 51), a demand, which is, of course, not specific to Nietzsche’s text but all texts based on ‘the structure of textuality in general’ (51). The attachment of political—and necessarily ethical—responsibility to the act of hearing already implies an understanding of hearing not as passive or compliant but as active: ‘To hear and understand it, one must also produce it’ (51).3 Reading thus becomes a re-production and an event on its own, which is entrusted to us ‘politically and historically’ (51). In other words, to read is to write, and to write is to write and understand responsibly. How much of an allegiance do understanding and writing responsibly imply, then? Nietzsche points out in the Preface to Ecce Homo

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that ‘nothing is being “preached” here, nobody is demanding that you believe’ (2007a: 73). Nietzsche’s own emphasis on ‘believe’ is the key to the understanding of ‘understanding’ in ‘Have I been understood?’ in Ecce Homo’s last sentence. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche quotes himself from Zarathustra—and signs his quotation too—and reminds us that the true Zarathustrian must learn to ‘guard [himself ] against Zarathustra! Even better: be ashamed of him!’ (2008: 59). Specifically, Nietzsche— through Zarathustra—addresses his disciples thus: Alone I go now, my disciples! You also should go now, and alone! Thus I want it. […] The person of knowledge must not only be able to love his enemies, but to hate his friends too. One repays a teacher badly if one remains a pupil only. And why would you not want to pluck at my wreath? […] You had not yet sought yourselves, then you found me. […] Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you. (Nietzsche 2008: 58-59)

One may detect some tension here: on the one hand, we undoubtedly read a version of understanding which does not match Derrida’s argument of the otobiographical contract, but, on the other hand, one could easily argue that even this denial that Nietzsche demands from his critical disciples is only a condition and a presupposition of a close reading of the teacher’s teaching, of the one for which Derrida argues. What is suggested here is that the only thing Nietzsche demands is for people to believe not in him—he prefers to be a fool rather than a saint—but in themselves. However, the paradox pursues because to be able to believe in themselves presupposes a very accurate understanding of Nietzsche, in the form of believing Nietzsche, not in Nietzsche: ‘This—it turns out—is my way—where is yours?’ (2008: 56). For this reason, therefore, I am not inclined to read the ‘mask’ (Larve) that Nietzsche forces onto his readers as a mirror which would reflect what Nietzsche would like his readers to feel. I suspect, instead, that role-playing may be at work here: Nietzsche becomes his own reader—‘I tell myself to myself ’ (157)—a masked reader of ‘[t]his Homo […] including the Ecce’ (1996: 324). Besides this possibility of Nietzsche’s role-playing, the emphasis, nevertheless, falls on the readership of Ecce Homo. What the masked

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reader encompasses is probably the bewilderment, the loss of voice that the effect of the book—the terror—brings about, that terror to which Nietzsche himself falls prey. And it is upon this effect that Nietzsche regards what he did in Ecce Homo as ‘almost too successful’ (324). But there is something more in Nietzsche’s tone in this letter to Meta von Salis of 14 November 1888 that deserves attention here; there is something condescending in the choice of words and even the syntax, as well as in the double use of the term ‘mere’ (bloss noch): ‘the reader is left sitting before me’,4 powerless and bewildered, failing to comprehend the incomprehensible that I am and say, as Van Tongeren proposes, yet sympathetic: ‘sitting before me as a mere “mask,” mere “feeling heart”’ (1996: 324). What I am trying to suggest regarding Nietzsche’s position, which is deeply ambiguous, is the fact that just as Derrida calls for this ethical demand for the other’s hearing and signature without reducing the other’s interpretation to a meaning, so Nietzsche too calls for a sympathetic reader who will be committed enough to engage with his philosophy, believe Nietzsche (not in Nietzsche), go along with him up to a point, but then take his or her own path behind the mask, wear their own mask that Nietzsche will likely not want to know about. It seems to me that this mask that post-Nietzschean philosophers choose to wear, as a result of their own reading, hearing and ‘understanding’ Nietzsche, is one which bears the weight of an assumption of responsibility—which is not exactly the same as what Joanne Faulkner calls duty5—to respond to Nietzsche and to madness. This assumption of the responsibility to respond does not have to be read as contrary to Nietzsche’s ethics of generosity and the concept of sponsorship that Peter Sloterdijk sketches in his Nietzsche Apostle (2007). The concept of generosity, akin, perhaps, to Nietzsche’s ‘megalomania’ and ‘narcissism’, encompasses Nietzsche’s ‘extraordinary talent to speak about himself, his mission, and his writings in the highest of tones’ (2013: 47). But which is the significance and the relevance of the concepts of generosity and sponsorship for us here? ‘History,’ Sloterdijk claims, ‘splits into the time of the economy of debt and the time of generosity. Whereas the former thinks of repayment and retaliation, the latter is interested only in forward-donating’ (59). So, while the thinkers of debt—Sloterdijk mentions Jesus and Buddha as examples—would expect something back in

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the sense of the high degree of normativity inherent in their teachings, the generous thinkers would not, as I have tried to show earlier with my emphasis on the distinction between believing Nietzsche and believing in Nietzsche. The work of the generous thinkers, then, should be better understood as a gesture of sponsorship or a ‘giving of an unreciprocable gift with no strings attached’ (57). If anything, Sloterdijk suggests, Nietzsche’s ‘gift’ or ‘sponsorship’ consists in inspiring one to become a sponsor himself, in producing ‘forwards-donating’. In my opinion, Bataille’s, Foucault’s and Derrida’s reading of Nietzsche betray an engagement with Nietzsche which transcends the distinction which Sloterdijk introduces between base or debt economy on the one hand and generosity or sponsorship on the other (57). Clearly, Bataille and Foucault explicitly, but also Derrida in more implicit ways, express a sense of owing a debt to Nietzsche, wondering how they can pay him off for going mad in their place, and their philosophical work—in different ways—attests to this. While I acknowledge the point Sloterdijk tries to make with his reference to figures with dogmatic and normative thought systems, I am not as concerned as he is with the idea of looking back as a way of moving forward. The term ‘debt’ is, perhaps, inadequate to accommodate what I am proposing here, which is not far from the idea of expressing one’s gratitude rather than paying back a debt. So, when the beneficiary acknowledges and appreciates the gift or the sponsorship and chooses to respond to the sponsor—a response which Nietzsche has taught us should not be a blind allegiance—then this choice to respond or the response itself does not necessarily compromise the value of the sponsorship as sponsorship nor does it turn it into an ‘ordinary gift’ which demands reciprocation. Bataille, Foucault and Derrida are happy to receive Nietzsche’s ‘takeand-run gifts that take the form of aphorisms, poems and arguments’ (57) and use them to sponsor others in turn. The sense of responsibility that the ‘Nietzsche event’ instils in these philosophers does not classify Nietzsche’s philosophy as an example of base or debt economy. If anything, I feel there is something potentially concerning in associating the demand made upon the reader by normative and dogmatic texts with the way readers hear and choose to respond to what they read.

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But my enquiry here is even more precarious, perhaps, because the sponsorship in question is not of a purely intellectual (logical) nature. As I tried to illustrate in the Introduction and in Chap. 1, what makes this a special case is precisely the fact that we have to deal with an event, a bio-philosophical phenomenon encompassing both Nietzsche’s philosophy as well as his own madness. What makes this a precarious case is the fact that the very presence of the bios in the gift or sponsorship seems to open this inquiry up to accusations of ‘moralism’ such as Naoko Saito’s who writes that ‘the performativity of disclosing one’s self in the name of the narrative often carries with it an air of moralism, where the listener is forced to listen, on pain otherwise of being accused of being insensitive. This is a form of violence to the ear of the other’ (2009: 253). In my opinion, the issue here calls for a terminological and consequently a conceptual relocation of the question of listening, more than a defence against this criticism as it is. I propose, therefore, to approach the act of listening to someone—in this case someone who is disclosed and exposed in the text—not as a moral but as an ethical imperative.6 Derrida has painstakingly showed us that one is already immersed in a responsibility to listen and respond to the other; writing the autos (self ) is automatically a writing on the otos (ear) which it (the ear) cannot help but listen. As Kronick puts it, to respond to an other is a ‘compulsion’ (2000: 1001). In this sense, to use Saito’s word, perhaps one is indeed ‘forced’ to listen, but this, of course, is not to be understood in moral(istic) terms. And in the case of post-Nietzschean philosophy’s engagement with the ‘Nietzsche event’, the compulsion to respond entails a response to madness by reconceptualising itself in relation to madness.

Nietzsche, Madness and Post-Structuralism This responsibility to lend an ear becomes all the more imperative when one considers Nietzsche’s texts in the sense that, as Derrida argues, Nietzsche writes in a way which paradigmatically defers meaning, making the relevance of Nietzsche’s philosophy to post-structuralist philosophical, ideological and methodological principles all the more obvious.

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Nietzsche’s text and its interpretation remain open, without a signature, pending. Nevertheless, one should not confuse the act of the reader’s signature as a closure of the text in any way. The act of signature is not an indicator or stamp of a definite and single meaning but rather the marker of the acknowledgement of and engagement with the other, which in effect translates into the assumption of responsibility demanded by the text itself, in which the autos and the bios are already inscribed. For Derrida, therefore, the act of signature and the assumption of responsibility do not contradict his argument that meaning remains necessarily deferred, which is the case with all writing. What makes Nietzsche’s writing special and paradigmatically deconstructive is its style. With the employment of the metaphor of ‘truth as woman’ in Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles (1978), and through what becomes a non-essentializing feminist gesture, Derrida engages in a discussion which aims to account for Nietzsche’s text which manifests the tendency for selfdestruction. To account for his choice of the metaphor of the woman, Derrida points out that ‘[t]here is no such thing as the essence of woman[;] because woman averts, she is averted of herself. Out of the depths, endless and unfathomable, she engulfs and distorts all vestige of essentiality, of identity, of property’ (1979: 51). This is exactly the case with Nietzsche’s text: just as ‘[t]here is no such thing as a woman, as a truth in itself of woman in itself […], there is no such thing either as the truth of Nietzsche, or of Nietzsche’s text’ (101–103). To illustrate this, Derrida embarks on an analysis of a sentence—‘I have forgotten my umbrella’—which was ‘found, isolated in quotation marks, among Nietzsche’s unpublished manuscripts’ (123). Derrida hypothetically yet convincingly uses this sentence to refer metonymically to Nietzsche’s work in general: ‘The hypothesis that the totality of Nietzsche’s text, in some monstrous way, might well be of the type “I have forgotten my umbrella” cannot be denied’ (133). What Derrida is really after with this sentence is, first, to show that it is one of which the meaning remains ‘in principle inaccessible’ (125), and, second, by applying metonymy, to save all texts from the oppression of fixed and definite meaning. I would argue that the importance of madness as a philosophical paradigm especially in the twentieth-century French philosophy may too have to be read in terms similar to Derrida’s evaluation of the sentence ‘I have

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forgotten my umbrella’ and Nietzsche’s work in general, which further reinforces the relevance of madness in relation to the ‘Nietzsche event’. Just like Nietzsche’s sentence and work implicate the reader in a demand that they be read from a position in which the possibility of absolute meaning is compromised, which is technically a position of ‘powerlessness (impouvoir)’ (127), madness too needs to be understood in terms of the same demand. It is the same indeterminacy which madness forces the philosopher to come to terms with, and which effectively puts him in the same position of powerlessness or vulnerability. A significant strand of contemporary French philosophy roughly associated with post-structuralism constitutes itself on the same structure, namely upon the condition that the fixity and universal validity of meaning is avoided and reading (and therefore meaning) remains ‘undecidable’. Madness offers itself as a paradigm for a philosophical space which presupposes that one approaches it with the same willingness to tolerate undecidability. This is why Nietzsche is so important. ‘I have forgotten my umbrella’ then, functions like madness. This is, of course, not an ontological but a structural claim articulated on the basis of a metaphor. Madness—like the ‘umbrella’ sentence—‘is structurally liberated from any living meaning, it is always possible that it means nothing at all or that it has no decidable meaning […] not because it withholds some secret. Its secret is rather the possibility that indeed it might have no secret’ (132–133). It seems to me that what Bataille, Foucault and Derrida, as readers of the ‘Nietzsche event’, share is a willingness to consider the possibility that if the sentence ‘I have forgotten my umbrella’ really means something, it could very well be that it means nothing. Is this structural liberation ‘from any living meaning’ (131) not philosophy’s (only) way to maintain an ethical relation to madness?

Madness: The Perspective of Non-Perspectives Ecce Homo begins with Nietzsche assuming the persona of the ‘disciple of the philosopher Dionysus’ (2007a: 71; emphasis added). Assuming the persona of Dionysus himself, Ecce Homo finishes. Being Dionysus, his life

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comes to an end. There is undoubtedly a progression at work; Nietzsche gradually gives into the seductive force of chaos (Klossowski 1997)7 by living ‘life as an enigma’ and opening up to a ‘world full of dangers’, a lifestyle which ‘calls for bravura and virility’ (Kofman 1994: 64). Nietzsche’s constant seeking for more justifies this spirit and courage. This is the life Nietzsche leads and writes. For Nietzsche, it is only by embracing the cosmic contradictions and the metaphoricity of our conceptual reality, as well as by reading the world as a neutral and amoral space consisting of a multiplicity of fragments, that one may become what one is. But this implies that the self which is not yet versed in this lifestyle needs to be overcome, transcended. Nietzsche’s Übermensch8 (‘Overman’, ‘Superman’ or ‘Superhuman’, all of which bear different connotations)— an ideal which he sets as a goal for his readers and humanity in general—is the man who has achieved precisely this. So, becoming what one is being more than one while finding oneself implies losing oneself first. Living, this constant strife through oppositions, is man’s destiny, which should be seen as a process of learning and experimentation, where one applies one’s instinct (intuition) so that one turns necessity—as necessity of contingency—into the most desired experience (amor fati). For Nietzsche, this striving is fleshed out in writing, which becomes the milieu of logos, which had already included bios. He becomes the philosopher who not only thinks his philosophy but also lives it. Ecce Homo, therefore, is the product of this fleshing out, where the most subjective claims to be read as objective, a manifestation of the impersonality of the text. Ecce Homo thus inaugurates a new philosophical genre, autobiographical philosophy. Committing oneself to this philosophical genre simulates the risk that is entailed in the total dissolution of the limits between logos and bios and between the empirical and the theoretical manifestation of existence. Such a dissolution, illustrated in Nietzsche’s case through the near-complete overlap of life and work (see Fig. 2.2 in Chap. 2), would result in an illusory unity which could be mistaken for the arrival at an ἐαυτός (self) and identified as the telos (end) of becoming. Such a mistake or illusion would amount to madness. Autobiographical philosophy, in the way it accommodates both bios and logos, in a single gesture confirms the philosophers’ recognition that they (like the work) are constantly in progress, and establishes their ethical stance towards the philosopher whose life and work coincidentally or incidentally merged.

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Nietzsche’s madness has generally been perceived as the great rupture, the great collapse, a break between the philosopher’s active and productive life and thought, and a state of inactivity, of passivity, silence, absence, nothingness and meaninglessness which has nothing to do with what preceded it. In an attempt to do justice to Nietzsche’s thought, I propose that his going mad should rather be interpreted as yet another perspective of his own becoming. Even in his mental absence, during the period from his mental collapse in 1889 until his death in 1900, Nietzsche continues to live his philosophy from just another standpoint, from the perspective of non-perspectives, wearing the mask of chaos. This is the way, I suggest, that he would have looked at his madness had he been aware of it.

Notes 1. It should be noted, however, that more recent Continental thought has been working against this belief. See, for example, the work of Alain Badiou, François Laruelle and Quentin Meillassoux. 2. ‘Dieser homo bin ich nämlich selbst, eingerechnet das ecce; der Versuch, über mich ein wenig Licht und Schrecken zu verbreiten, scheint mir fast zu gut gelungen. Das letzte Capitel hat zum Beispiel die unerquickliche Überschrift: warum ich ein Schicksal bin. Daß dies nämlich der Fall ist, wird dermaßen stark bewiesen, daß man, am Schluß, bloß noch als “Larve” bloß noch als “fühlende Brust” vor mir sitzen bleibt’ (The Nietzsche Channel). 3. See Roland Barthes’ distinction between texte lisible (readerly text) and texte scriptible (writerly text) in his S/Z (1970) and especially The Pleasure of the Text (1973). 4. ‘das man […] vor mir sitzen bleibt’ (The Nietzsche Channel   ). 5. See Joanne Faulkner’s Dead Letters to Nietzsche: or, the Necromantic Art of Reading Philosophy (2010), for a discussion about the relation between Nietzsche’s philosophy and its claim upon the reader. In her psychoanalytically oriented analysis, Faulkner focuses on Nietzsche’s reader and explores in detail the ‘manner in which Nietzsche’s texts affect readers in their subjectivity: producing in them a sense of belonging to his philosophical project, and thus investing them with a duty to it’ (2010: 6).

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Employing psychoanalytical principles, Faulkner shows how ‘Nietzsche’s writing brings to life in its reader a certain kind of subjectivity’, defined by the tension between the reader’s ‘most ideal image’ and a feeling of excess and displacement, in other words an image which falls short of its ideal. Upon the formation of their subjectivity, the Nietsche’s reader’s task becomes ‘to service his philosophical task’ (5 and 6). 6. For a distinction between morality and ethics see: Angelos Evangelou, ‘Georges Bataille’s “Ethics of Violence”’ (2010); Robert Piercey, ‘Not Choosing between Ethics and Morality’ (2001); Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1993). 7. See Chap. 3 (One Is Many: ‘My Hypothesis: The Subject as Multiplicity) and Chap. 7 (Nietzsche’s Madness and Nietzsche’s Inner Experience). 8. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883).

References Derrida, Jacques. 1979. Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles, trans. Barbara Harlow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1988. Otobiographies: The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name. In The Ear of the Other, trans. Peggy Kamuf, ed. Christie McDonald. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Evangelou, Angelos. 2010. Georges Bataille’s Ethics of Violence. In Skepsi, vol. 3, no. 2: Pharmakon: Literature and Violence. pp. 51–64. Faulkner, Joanne. 2010. Dead Letters to Nietzsche: Or, the Necromantic Art of Reading Philosophy. Athens: Ohop University Press. Foucault, Michel, 2010. History of Madness, trans. J. Murphy and J. Khalfa. Oxon: Routledge. Klossowski, Pierre. 1991. Sade My Neighbor, trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University. Klossowski, Pierre. 1997. Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, trans. Daniel W. Smith. London: The Athlone Press. Kofman, Sarah. 1994. Explosion I: Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, trans. Duncan Large. Diacritics 24 (4): 51–70. The John Hopkins University Press. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/465358. Accessed 19 January 2009.

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Kronick, Joseph G. 2000. Philosophy as Autobiography: The Confessions of Jacques Derrida. Modern Language Notes, vol. 115, No. 5, 997–1018. Comparative Literature Issue. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3251174. Accessed 10 Feb 2012. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science, trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1996. Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. In ed. C. Middleton, trans. C. Middleton. Indianapolis: Hackett. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1997. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. H. Zimmern. New York: Dover. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2000. The Birth of Tragedy. In The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, trans. R. Speirs, ed. R. Geuss and R. Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2007a. Ecce Homo. In The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, trans. J. Norman, ed. A. Ridley and J. Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2008. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Piercey, Robert. 2001. Not Choosing between Ethics and Morality. In The Philosophical Forum 32 (1): 53–72. Saito, Naoko. 2009. Ourselves in Translation: Stanley Cavell and Philosophy as Autobiography. In Journal of Philosophy of Education 43 (2): 253–267. Sloterdijk, Peter. 2013. Nietzsche Apostle, trans. S. Corcoran. Frankfurt: Semiotext(e).

15 Being ‘in the Distance of Madness’

Visiting the Literature vs. Philosophy Debate Indispensable to a discussion of philosophy, madness and their relation is a consideration of language to which Derrida pays the utmost attention. Derrida affirms that oeuvre (work, text, language) is necessarily meaning in general, with the aspect of generality pointing to the distinction that Derrida has made between history and historicity, logos and reason for its understanding. With the dissension or self-dividing act of logos, emerge, at the same time, language and reason. Once we move beyond this moment of dissension, and we are already (this) beyond, then silence (madness in general) gives way to language and normality, to meaning in general. Derrida explains that ‘to make a sentence is to manifest a possible meaning. By its essence, the sentence is normal. […]

This phrase is taken from the following extract from Foucault’s History of Madness: Before the Classical Age, ‘we had a deep and pathos-filled relationship to mental illness, one that we ourselves found difficult to formulate, but which was impenetrable to anyone else, and what was perhaps our closest truth. It will be said not that we were distant from madness, but that we were in the distance of madness’ (Foucault 2010: 543). © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_15

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It carries normality and sense within it, and does so whatever the state, whatever the health or madness of him who propounds it […]. In its most impoverished syntax, logos is reason’ (2005: 65). And if meaning is fleshed out in language, then non-meaning (madness) and silence are what generally bear and haunt language. Madness is silence against which language can emerge. In other words, the relation between silence and language, madness and reason, non-sense and meaning is one of bearing, of making possible, and of haunting. For this reason, the act of evoking madness—the significance of which this book sought to make clear—needs to be done within a realm which is not identical with the all-meaningful space of language (the language of the jailer), but rather a realm which challenges, disturbs and disrupts the absoluteness of meaning and its illusion of totalization. The result of this will be akin to a keeping of balance which reminds one of the acrobatic games of Bataille’s inner experience as well as of the communication between the follies and the structured grid in Tschumi’s architectural design. In ‘Tympan’ (1972), Derrida explores a way or technique which aims to make philosophy tremble, yet still make sense. This balance, according to Derrida, is found in a philosophical language which seeks to make logos λοξός (loxōs: oblique), a gesture which implies a production of not a direct or ‘frontal’ attack but sideways ‘textual maneuvers [sic]’ (1982: xv). But how is this obliqueness of the logos to be understood? What can infect with obliqueness the straight, vertical and frontal quality of logical, ‘truth-telling’ language in its practice of signification? The answer is philosophy’s other, its ‘first paradigmatic field of alterity’ (Smith 2005: 49), that ‘transgressive space of reflection that was closed off to philosophy. […] the “Other” of philosophy, the neglected dimension of the rational enterprise’ (Carrette 2000: 49): literature. The usefulness of summoning this other (literature)—which just like any other, is much closer than we want to admit—when philosophy’s relation to madness is explored is instrumental, for the evocation of madness can take place only ‘in the realm of the possible and in the language of fiction or the fiction of language’ (Derrida 2005: 66). Derrida’s explicit reference to fiction as well as his assignment of fictional or fictive characteristics to language open up the question of truth-making

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philosophy’s potential insufficiency for this evocation of madness and of the antagonism that may come from literature. And when it comes to the post-Nietzschean philosophers I discuss in this book, who all had a profound respect and love for literature, these questions become all the more compelling. The young Derrida becomes interested first in literature and then in philosophy because of ‘something that literature accommodates more easily than philosophy’, an idiomatic writing which he describes as a ‘property you cannot appropriate; it somehow marks you without belonging to you. It appears to others, never to you—except in flashes of madness which draw together life and death, which render you at once alive and dead’ (Derrida in Wood and Bernasconi 1988a: 73). Similarly, in an interview with Pierre Dumayet in 1958, Bataille expresses his admiration for literature because, by assuming the uncensored yet culpable perspective of a child,1 it allows us to see ‘the human perspective in its entirety’; it allows us, that is, to see ‘human nature under its more violent aspect’ (1958: 07:48–08:06). Foucault would of course agree with both Derrida and Bataille and express his appreciation of literature in more explicit terms. What Derrida refers to as this ‘idiomatic’ writing, which unlike any other kind of writing communicates the incommunicable in ‘flashes of madness’—the textual combines here a certain metaphysical aura: an ‘inaccessible purity’—Foucault refers to ‘the being of literature’ (2010: 548). This being of literature originates from the parallel that Foucault draws between the language of madness and the language of literature which find common expression in works such as those of Raymond Roussel and Artaud. Like madness, literature too becomes a double language. Literature relates language only to itself by undermining itself in the sense that it is dismissive of the meanings it produces. In other words, the connection that Foucault pursues here points to the self-referential nature of literary language which is not defined by its content or by what it refers to. On the contrary, the being of literature ‘is related to auto-implication, to the double and the void that is hollowed out within it. In that sense the being of literature […] attains the region where, since Freud, the experience of madness has been enacted’ (2010: 548).

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Literature offers us the experience of the ‘outside’ precisely because it is an experience of a language which, like madness, folds back upon itself, says nothing but its own implication. This experience of the outside, through modern literature, gives the individual (the reader) the opportunity of desubjectivation; in other words to be other than itself, the negative of the self, which as a result will bring about the death of the subject, the death of the all-knowing I, the I which is the author of texts and of a life. All four philosophers I discuss in this book agree with this idea of desubjectivated subjectivity. It needs to be remembered, however, that an ‘annihilation’ of the I in a Bataillean, as well as in a Foucauldian, sense does not mean a permanent obliteration of the I, even if permanent obliteration needs to be internalized as a possibility. Both madness and modern literature, then, allow the subject to experience its own ruin (desubjectivation), by suffering the void, the hollow and the absence of meaning inherent in them. Literature’s advantage, then, or superiority over philosophy, when it comes to expressing the muteness, the hollowness, the void and the fire2 that madness is, has hardly been disputed and it is not my intention to do so here. Not least because of its literariness3—those distinctive qualities and characteristics which make texts literary—to which the Russian Formalists paid the utmost attention, literature has always managed to better accommodate paradoxes, impossibilities and transgressions while maintaining meaning. This is a superiority which is granted to literature—paradoxically—‘not because it can more, but rather because it can less’ (Hill 1997: 102). Hill’s enigmatic statement which was made in the context of his reading of Blanchot implies that the very ‘power’ of literature for which it has been praised results not from power but powerlessness. Once more, this needs to be read in relation to the significance of the concept of vulnerability. If literature, then, as this space which is further away from a position of authority, and because of the nature of its language, can with so much ease reproduce the hollowness of a madness which means nothing, it means it is more adequate to express an interruption in representation and comprehensibility, and thus provide, by approximation, a more ‘accurate’ picture of madness. This connection (between literature and madness), of course, has not remained unnoticed. The significance

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of madness in the context of literary studies and the arts in general has long been explored in a number of ways and applied in several hypotheses which investigate madness as the paradigm of mental illnesses such as melancholia, depression, mania, schizophrenia, et cetera, and its relation to the factor and the role of inspiration, creativity and the aesthetic effect.4 These explorations are primarily inspired by and rooted in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German literary and artistic movement of Romanticism, which, after the rationalism of the Enlightenment, relocated the emphasis on the subjective, the imaginary, the fantastic, the mystical and the irrational, all significant active forces in the processes of inspiration and creation. Consistent with this acknowledgement of literature’s ability to better accommodate the reverberations of madness, Shoshana Felman argues for a parallel between writing and madness on the basis of a quality they both share: ‘an irreducible resistance to interpretation’ (2003: 254). Borrowing from literature, Felman calls this effect of writing ‘the literary thing’ and understands it as ‘a thing that resists’, for which no science of language or of psychoanalysis or any other science can account. ‘The literary thing is always […] the residue of explanation, the excess, or the remainder, of interpretation’ (260). But does ‘the literary thing’ escape the boundaries of the literary? Is ‘the literary thing’ specific only to literary works or is it possible that we find it in philosophical works as well? Felman is initially rather ambiguous about this: on the one hand, she draws the line between literature and philosophy—‘the term madness is itself pathos, not logos; literature, and not philosophy’ (52)—and, on the other, she treats ‘the literary thing’ as something more general which could also apply to philosophy: It seemed to me that it was through madness that one could best “apprehend” the literary thing, that is, not “comprehend” it … it was to the literary thing, and to it alone, that the question of madness could be posed: to the literary thing in Nerval, Flaubert, Balzac, and James, but also in Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault. For the literary thing inhabits—traverses— theoretical texts, too. But it says something other than the theory. It says theory’s own madness: it testifies to something like a silence, out of which theory speaks. (Felman 2003: 260)

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It becomes clear from this extract that Felman’s intentionally one-sided term, ‘the literary thing’—for the thing which resists interpretation—is meant to refer to that thing in philosophy which reminds it of its relation to its other: literature. Following thus from Derrida and Felman, who call for a philosophy that should enact the language of fiction or the language of feigned madness, I have sought to enquire—without discrediting literature— about the philosophy which acknowledges and works together with its literary thing, enquire, in other words, about the symbolic significance of this acknowledgement and practice especially in the context of responding to the ‘Nietzsche event’. And if literature can communicate to us madness through ‘flashes’ because, as Hill tells us, it has less power and less authority than philosophy, how, then, can philosophy reconstruct the experience of the limit despite its authority, and consequently despite its restrictions? Do this authority and these restrictions that philosophy faces in its attempt to evoke madness not make its task more difficult than that of literature? So, if, and despite its authority, philosophy grants itself a position closer to madness by intentionally bearing vulnerability, should philosophy not be given credit for it? But on which grounds does this intentional bearing itself vulnerable happen?

Philosophizing ‘in the Distance of Madness’ Ferit Güven remarks that madness has always concerned philosophy because philosophy relies upon negativity. Contrary to philosophy’s selfunderstanding as the agent of rationality par excellence, madness ‘is one of the notions that philosophy has always relied upon in constituting its identity’ (2005: 2). This is, of course, a Foucauldian line of reasoning: ‘Rendering a rational account (logos) of the world requires a delimitation of logos itself ’ (4). In other words, philosophy concerns itself with madness in the sense that it delimitates itself against madness and confirms its own status as non-madness. The division of logos within itself—the dissension—which results in the distinction between reason and madness is the condition for philosophical thought and philosophical reflexivity: the division ‘is necessary for logos to know itself ’ (4).

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Once the dissension of logos has taken place, the unsurpassability of reason is established. What we can do to reason, necessarily through reason, only amounts to a disturbance, or a state of ‘panic’, as Nancy puts it (2007: 19). In no way should this, however, lead to a debilitating defeatism. My aim in this section is to recapitulate and ascertain the philosophical value of this disturbance. In her attempt to reconcile but also criticise the tension inherent in Foucault’s project, in other words, the tension between talking madness and talking about madness, Felman aims to decrease the (mythical) gap between what can and what cannot be said, and to revaluate the importance, the role and the quality of the former: ‘as if we had already understood what it means to talk about madness and all that remained for us to do was to comprehend the incomprehensible—to listen to the inaudible speech of madness, in itself ’ (2003: 14). Felman’s optimistic position is a direct response to Foucault’s reproach of philosophy for its talking about madness which—for Foucault—equates capturing madness in its positivistic discourse. Felman proposes, instead, that we should not be disheartened because of our rational—or ‘cultural’ as she calls it—predicament, and that we should have faith in what happens when one talks about madness. If anything, she claims, not all talking about madness should be lumped together and condemned as inadequate, but, on the contrary, since talking about madness is all we can do, at least we should do it properly. But what can philosophy do and on which grounds? How does philosophy talk about madness properly? These grounds need to be sought in the very understanding of the structure or status of thought and of its relation to madness. For this, of course, a brief return to Descartes via Derrida and his reading of the Cogito is of the essence. By replacing Foucault’s ‘I who think, I cannot be mad’ with the Cogito which ‘is valid even if I am mad’, Derrida argues that madness is not excluded from thought but is just one case of thought. The certainty thus far implied in the Cartesian motto ‘I think, therefore I am’ is—irrespective of Foucault’s protest—not immune to madness. Madness belongs to thought as an internal potentiality. Consequently, as the product of thought and reason, philosophy too is confronted and threatened with the same possibility: it would, perhaps, be enough to think of philosophy’s constant risk of being reduced to nonsense.

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Departing from this understanding of Cogito, therefore, in his interview with François Ewald, Foucault’s assistant at the Collège de France, titled ‘A “Madness” Must Watch Over Thinking’ (1991), Derrida makes clear that both reason and madness influence thought. Taking his distance from Foucault, and taking a more psychoanalytically oriented position, Derrida here shows that thought is not identified with reason, but is the end result of both forces: reason and madness. In this interview, which is not really about madness but about a more general understanding of the ethic and practice of deconstruction with a very articulate expression of Derrida’s interest in and concern for the other, madness assumes the role of that unsettling agency or authority which ensures that any idea of subjectivity is seen as a work in progress which involves, constantly, an inclusion of the other. In other words, he tries to show that the relation with the other cannot be based on prescriptions and norms, but should ‘be invented at every moment’ in the act of offering hospitality to the other without reducing or appropriating it. It is this relation that Derrida tries to explain when he writes that ‘a certain “madness” must keep a lookout over every step, and finally watch over thinking, as reason does also’ (1995: 363). The reader should identify here the same principle which Derrida articulates in his analysis of the ‘follies’, the red enamelled steel points of Bernard Tschumi’s architectural project, by reiterating the importance of the individual discontinuous ‘madnesses’ to maintain the structure without locking it in a state of dominating rigidity or inflexibility. But what is it that enables one to offer hospitality to the other, an idea so deeply rooted in the ethics of deconstruction? Once more, Derrida’s reading of the Cogito as that which distinctively self-reflects may help in this enquiry. As Derrida also confirms in the Memoirs of the Blind with the concept of mirroring or of looking at the one who is looking at us, the law of reflexivity is at work (1993b: 62). Indeed, it is the possibility or the condition of self-reflexivity which enables one to relate to the other as well as to the self as other. This relation to alterity, which Derrida reads as a response, is one which restores meaning in the face of the possibility of, and hospitality to, madness: ‘It is through this relationship to the other as an other self that meaning reassures itself

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against madness and nonmeaning. And philosophy is perhaps the reassurance given against the anguish of being mad at the point of greatest proximity to madness. This silent and specific moment could be called pathetic’ (Derrida 2005: 72). This is a crucial claim which envelops philosophy’s relation to madness in a single gesture. The ethical stance of opening up to the other is what can only reassure one against madness. And if it is through this ethical stance that meaning—as it reassures itself against madness—is constituted, then philosophy, which carries out the very reassurance against madness, also assumes the ethical responsibility towards the other. The moment when philosophy’s reassurance is needed the most is when one experiences pathos in a twofold sense: first, when one is in a state of anguish and fear of going mad, and second, when one is empathetic to the suffering, incomprehensibility or muteness of the mad other. One would be justified in asking, perhaps, whether Foucault, who is credited by Derrida for his pathos, fulfils both of these two conditions. Foucault’s deep and genuine empathy with the suffering and the marginalisation of the mad has been established, but does he ever experience the anguish of being mad? Did Derrida mean different things with Foucault’s pathos on the one hand, and the pathetic experience as is articulated in the passage cited above on the other? Or is it possible that Derrida is being rather generous with his praise in his otherwise harsh critique of Foucault? But while offering reassurance, and maintaining structure and meaning, philosophy cannot remain unaffected by allowing a certain madness watch over it. As the ‘madnesses’ are nested in Parc de la Vilette, Derrida is calling for madness(es) to be nested in philosophy too. This is not an impossible task considering that Derrida attributes philosophy with the double and balancing role of being itself at the greatest proximity to madness yet securing and reassuring meaning. But has philosophy always been true to this potential? Not always, and this is an answer which implies that this question should be positioned at a temporal level. The position philosophy takes and the attitude it expresses in relation to madness change through time or within its ‘temporal rhythm’ (Derrida 2005: 74). In other words, philosophy oscillates between hyperbole (madness) and finite structures (history), between

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crises and reassurances. Very diligently Derrida distinguishes thought— of which the mad are also part—from finite-thought, of which the mad are deprived, a distinction which reflects the two manifestations of the Cartesian Cogito outlined in Chap. 11. The moments of this temporal rhythm that Derrida understands as moments of crisis, then, are the moments that philosophy—as finite thought—does not recognize itself as thought. Yet this crisis qua the betrayal of itself as thought is, nonetheless, ‘an essential and necessary period of its movement’ (76). The moments of reawakening, on the other hand, consist of philosophy’s opening up to thought which already encompasses madness. And for a philosopher to belong to a moment of reawakening is to philosophize in the distance of madness: ‘I philosophize only in terror, but in the confessed terror of going mad’ (76). And according to Jean-Luc Nancy, Derrida does precisely this. ‘Derrida appears to me’, Nancy writes, ‘as someone who has had one day, and probably every time he speaks and thinks, the experience of that dementia which constitutes the most remarkable and the most terrible present modern man has managed to give himself: the coincidence with oneself takes place through a collision whereby the substance and the subject break against each other’ (2007: 22–23). Clearly, the same thing could, of course, be said about Nietzsche and Bataille. What differentiates modern French philosophy from other philosophical moments, therefore, is the fact that it acknowledges not only the ability of thought to self-reflect, but most importantly the ethical implications of this ability when put in use philosophically; philosophy thus becomes the space where the view of the subject (autos) as a trace without origin is also articulated. The moment of the ‘Nietzsche event’, and by this I mean both his philosophy and his madness, (a) confirms the acknowledgement that self-thinking comes with the experience of meaninglessness, and (b) raises the demand that philosophy after him reflect this relation, a reflection which implies that philosophy is confronted with ‘the necessity of the impossible’ (24).

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Notes 1. ‘I think there is something essentially infantile in literature. […] it’s a profound and fundamental truth that you can’t really understand what literature means if you don’t approach it from the child’s point of view which is not to say from a lower perspective’ (Bataille 1958: 05:13– 05:49). 2. ‘Literature and madness, therefore, would belong to what Blanchot called “the work of fire,” namely, that, which culture destines for destruction and reduces to cinders, that with which it cannot live, and that with which it makes an eternal conflagration’ (Pelbart 2000: 204). 3. See Roman Jakobson, Modern Russian Poetry: Velimir Khlebnikov (1921). 4. See Louis A. Sass, Madness and Modernism (1992); Walter Morgenthaler, Madness and Art: The Life and Works of Adolf Weolfli (1992); Barry Panter, Creativity & Madness: Psychological Studies of Art and Artists (1995); Natalia Tamruchi, An Experience of Madness: Alternative Russian Art in the 1960s–1990s (1995); Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (1996); Lars Ellstrom, Divine Madness: On Interpreting Literature, Music and the Visual Arts (2002); Shlomo Giora Shoham, Art, Crime and Madness: Gesualdo, Caravaggio, Genet, Van Gogh, Artaud (2002); Daniel Nettle, Strong Imagination: Madness, Creativity, and Human Nature (2002); José Guimón, Art and Madness (2006); Gemma Blackshaw and Leslie Topp (eds), Madness and Modernity: Mental Illness and the Visual Arts in Vienna 1900 (2009); Simon Cross, Mediating Madness: Mental Distress and Cultural Representation (2010).

References Bataille, Georges. 1958. Georges Bataille: Literature and Evil. Interview with Pierre Dumayet. Archives INA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiwNekNJGA&feature=related. Accessed 20 June 2010. Carrette, Jeremy R. 2000. Foucault and Religion: Spiritual Corporality and Political Spirituality. London: Routledge. Derrida, Jacques. 1982. Tympan. In Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass. Padstow: TJ International.

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Derrida, Jacques. 1988a. An Interview with Derrida. In Derrida and Différance, ed. David Wood and Robert Bernasconi. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1993b. Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1995. A “Madness” Must Watch Over Thinking. In Points…: Interviews, 1974–1994, trans. Peggy Kamuf et al., ed. Elisabeth Weber. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 2005. Cogito and the History of Madness. In Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass. Oxon: Routledge. Felman, Shoshana. 2003. Writing and Madness: Literature/Philosophy/ Psychoanalysis, trans. Martha Noel Evans and Shoshana Felman, with the assistance of Brian Massumi. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 2010. History of Madness, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. Oxon: Routledge. Güven, Ferit. 2005. Madness and Death in Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hill, Leslie. 1997. Blanchot: Extreme Contemporary. London: Routledge. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2007. Mad Derrida: Ipso facto cogitans ac demens. In Adieu Derrida, trans. Celine Surprenant, ed. Costas Douzinas. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pelbart, Peter Pál. 2000. The Thought of the Outside, the Outside of Thought. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 5 (2): 201–209. www. research.uvu.edu/albrecht-crane/486R/Peter%20Pal%20Perbart.pdf. Accessed 1 April 2012. Smith, James K.A. 2005. Jacques Derrida: Live Theory. New York: Continuum.

16 Conclusion

This book has sought to explore a very specific connection: madness in relation to philosophy which is also autobiographical. While I acknowledge that this discussion already finds its way within the madness studies in philosophy, at the same time it is an attempt to also reflect on their very grounds. I have attempted to account not only for the interest of the twentieth-century French philosophy in madness, which is deeply rooted in the reading of Nietzsche, but also for the way this philosophy expresses it. Nietzsche’s impact to the madness studies in philosophy is momentous. He raises himself to the status of a bio-philosophical metaphor with a symbolic value which propels the demand—not in Sloterdijk’s understanding of a debt or base economy—for a response. Nietzsche’s becoming a metaphor—reflected in what I call the ‘Nietzsche event’—consists of three things spanning through the domains of logos and of bios. First, Nietzsche’s philosophy articulates one of the most instrumental anti-Enlightenment critiques with his insistence on intuitive rationality and non-essentializing, multi-perspectival subjectivity, second the way he inserts bios qua the autobiographical in his philosophy, and third, the fact that he goes mad. The argument I put forward is that, despite the fact that Nietzsche does not philosophize madness, the ‘Nietzsche © The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8_16

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event’ raises the demand that madness be addressed philosophically. The bleeding of Nietzsche’s philosophy into his life and vice versa is offered as a paradigm of the most ethical philosophical gesture towards alterity in general, which is prioritized as one of the most urgent philosophical questions in contemporary philosophy. It needs to be clarified that the significance of Nietzsche’s madness that I propose here does not imply a biological reductionism but rather a reading of his madness as is appropriated into its symbolic value and put into use—good use—by his successors; a use which facilitates the insertion of madness qua alterity (due to its quality as other, marginal and silent) into the philosophical agenda which necessarily implicates philosophical thinking. The comparative trajectory from Nietzsche through to Bataille, Foucault and Derrida was designed to show precisely how they contributed to a philosophical discussion of madness which was previously negated both by and in philosophical discourse. But what are the grounds of this implication? How do they ask about madness and which are the implications of this question? Following Rovatti’s logic, the one who asks a question is necessarily put into (the) question, in the twofold sense that he is put into the very question he is asking—in this case ‘What is madness?’—as well as he, or his being and his subjectivity is put into question. Seen, then, from this perspective, the very asking of this question is attached to something fundamentally ethical. The question about madness raises the demand that the one who asks the question (a) approach the question from a position where he allows himself to be put in question—this is necessarily a position of vulnerability—and (b) respond. This is the demand that those who ask the question about the ‘Nietzsche event’, in other words, the readers of the ‘Nietzsche event’, have to fulfil. But if the ‘Nietzsche event’ is not a singular thing but a combination of more than one factors, then responding to it will necessarily have to reflect this bio-philosophical amalgam. In other words, to respond to the ‘Nietzsche event’ is to respond (a) to Nietzsche’s philosophy— which does not mean blindly following or reproducing it but critically engaging with it—(b) to his hyperbolical gesture of the merging of bios and logos, and (c) to Nietzsche’s going mad which metonymically, of course, stands for madness (in general). What unites all of the

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figures considered in the present work is their recognition of the necessity that the philosophical subject be put in a position of vulnerability. Nietzsche’s ‘destruction’ (madness) calls for an equivalent ‘destruction’ of the post-Nietzschean philosophical subject, which responds to this call by rendering itself vulnerable and destructible; in other words, the only way for the constitution of the philosophical subject is the philosopher as a desubjectivated subject. Bataille commits himself to the ethics of vulnerability, Foucault ‘destroys’ himself through anonymity and desubjectivation consistent to Blanchot’s ethics of discretion, and Derrida emphasizes how subjectivity is constituted only through the self-obliterating but self-constitutive opening to the other. Yet, if a philosopher is now understood in terms of both logos and bios—to be consistent with the response to the ‘Nietzsche event’—then, surely, this desubjectivation or vulnerability needs to reflect both (logos and bios). It seems to me that the philosophical gesture which allows the philosopher to assume a position of vulnerability in terms of both logos and bios, as well as respond to the ‘Nietzsche event’ is the one which implicates and involves the bios (life) of the philosopher in his logos (work). This type of philosophy, autobiographical philosophy, offers the philosopher the platform through which an ethical relation to madness is facilitated. This echoes Bataille’s, Derrida’s, Felman’s and Rovatti’s understanding that philosophy’s ethical response to madness is not muteness but an engagement with the possibility of this muteness. Of all philosophical genres, autobiographical philosophy, as the space which allows for a blurring of the realms of logos and bios, may be the one in which the philosopher is placed in the greatest proximity to madness. It is the space in which the philosophical subject submits to the laws of textuality, and in which the complete merging of text and life could potentially take off. This putting of oneself under the threat of madness becomes literal in the case of Nietzsche but is only taken up by later philosophers for its symbolic value in their attempt to philosophize madness in the distance of madness. Autobiographical philosophy has been treated as the philosophy which is the most open and most hospitable to madness. It is important to clarify, however, that this putting of the self (autos as well as bios) in the work (text; logos) does not madden. It only allows the philosopher better to imitate Nietzsche

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in the destructive process of his own total insertion into the text. Autobiographical philosophy enables the philosopher to bring the self into the text and to work there its becoming vulnerable and even its ‘annihilation’ (in the Bataillean sense of the term), followed by its immediate reconstitution in order to be able constantly to put itself at risk, and constantly meet the demand that the ‘Nietzsche event’ lays before us. So, on the one hand, Bataille, Foucault and Derrida all depart from similar tenets: (a) madness should not be betrayed, in other words, one should assume an ethical position towards it, (b) philosophy should constitute itself as a response to the philosophical metaphor that is the ‘Nietzsche event’, and (c) the philosophical subject should be rendered vulnerable. On the other hand, their propositions vary in methodology and content. For example, not all of them understand or try to reach vulnerability in the same way. Bataille and Derrida, faithful to the Nietzschean insertion of bios into logos, enact the ethical response by implicating their bios within their philosophy, committing themselves to autobiographical philosophy, while Foucault’s suspicion of philosophy does not allow him to commit to this writing style. In other words, while for Bataille and Derrida this response to and engagement with madness is inherent in the making of philosophy, for Foucault it is an illusion. More explicitly than any other philosopher—and more daringly than Foucault—Bataille reflects on one’s attraction to madness, which allows one to ‘flirt’ with the paths of the mind which are rationally less familiar, strive for the forbidden, the unknown, the impossible, try to see and hear what others cannot, undergoing the most extreme anguish as well as a sense of liberation. This, however, Bataille distinguishes from the actual condition of madness, which deprives one of the flexibility not only to move through but also to be aware of such paths. Contrary to Nietzsche’s views on madness, but inspired by the way Nietzsche related to his bios, which means to his life and philosophy, Bataille investigates this ‘flirting’ with madness and attempts to articulate the possibility of an experience which entails one relating to madness yet remaining at a safe distance from it in order to be able to return and to resubmit the self and the text in this position of vulnerability. This is what Bataille describes as ‘inner experience’. Bataille’s response to the ‘Nietzsche

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event’, therefore, is paradigmatic. He explicitly reads Nietzsche’s madness as a ‘gift’ and asks how one is to return it. What is particularly important in Bataille is that he engages with these questions on a philosophical-theoretical level (logos) as well as on a practical-applied level (bios). He inscribes the (auto)biographical in his writing through which both body and text serve to respond to the ‘Nietzsche event’. Foucault’s persistence that no philosophical gesture can achieve a meaningful response to madness results from his understanding of both philosophy and of its limits as well as of madness. Foucault describes the capture of madness by reason as a process of filtering, of distillation, of squeezing,1 after which there remains something, which could be referred to by terms denoting a certain intangibility and elusiveness, such as an ‘echo’, a ‘murmuring’, a ‘reverberation’, or a ‘vapour’. Understood in this way, this something or the truth of madness cannot be expressed by a discourse which claims to express truth qua rationality, a territory, though, which for Derrida and Bataille is not so solid or unyielding. For Foucault, however, the distinction is clear: philosophy qua thought and reason can only silence madness. Foucault wants us to step outside philosophy and ‘bend down towards this murmuring of the world’ (xxxii) and to ‘listen to its […] utterances’ (516; emphasis added), made ‘audible’ not in the language of philosophy (the discourse of the truth) but in literature and the arts. Foucault’s mistrust of and ‘casual indifference towards philosophy’ are well documented (Foucault in Peeters 2013: 238). Perhaps his admiration for Nietzsche and the fact that he classifies him along with literary authors such as Raymond Roussel and Artaud is due to Nietzsche’s transgressive and literary language, in which is allowed the enactment of madness. What Foucault seems to miss, however, is that Nietzsche’s as well as Bataille’s language which he also praises, despite their transgressive and unconventional style, are still philosophical. Foucault’s suspicion of philosophical discourse as paradigmatically rational, therefore, restricts him from committing to the twentiethcentury philosophical tradition of autobiographical philosophy, which is marked by the intention to ‘reconstruct’ or ‘re-enact’ the ‘Nietzsche event’ as a response to it, and he is only left to enunciate his response to the ‘Nietzsche event’ in the way History of Madness paradigmatically

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showcases. His refusal to insert his bios (the autobiographical) into his text, however, should not be confused with a missing intention to render himself (as the philosophical subject) vulnerable. In fact, any connection between philosophy and madness Foucault sees as being possible only when the autos (qua bios) is absent, not present. If the philosopher is unable to respond to madness in a meaningful way because of the inevitable rational limitations of philosophical discourse, then the only meaningful response to madness is achieved upon the condition of the philosopher’s eradication from the text. This reflects the importance of the absence of the autos which will have to accompany, necessarily, an absence of the bios. It is in this respect that, despite being structurally similar, Foucault’s and my argument are very different. And if Foucault’s decision to see vulnerability as the absence of the autos from the text is already, in a way, autobiographically oriented, still, the implications of this are quite different from my understanding of the ethical character of autobiographical philosophy. Does his refusal to practise autobiographical philosophy not legitimate our turning of his criticism of Erasmus in History of Madness back onto himself and claim that he observes madness ‘from a distance that ensures that he is never drawn in’ (Foucault 2010: 24)? Contra Foucault, who dismisses philosophy’s efforts to open up to madness as acts of bad faith, I consider the validity as well as the philosophical value of what philosophy has proved to be able to do; this, in Rovatti’s words referring to Derrida, is ‘the oscillation of thought between the normality of repatriation and the mad audacity of finding itself “out of position”’ (2002: 18). I read Bataille and Derrida as seeking to reproduce an ‘idiomatic’ writing in philosophy by embracing the fiction of philosophy. Philosophy’s potentiality to render itself vulnerable, which is relevant and significant for how philosophy responds to madness ethically, is best realized in autobiographical philosophy. It is in this light and for this reason that Bataille and Derrida—admittedly, the former more openly and intensely than the latter—produce a philosophical writing which necessarily involves the body (bios) as much as it involves the rational (logical) activities traditionally associated with philosophical writing. The claim about the involvement of bios is related to the space that opens up with autobiographical philosophy.

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The inscription of bios into logos through the text also implies that the philosophical text is called to assume bodily qualities which would allow it to make itself vulnerable to madness. It is therefore a twofold effect with a single gesture. Autobiographical philosophy accommodates ‘the fear of going crazy’ applied to both the bios of the philosopher as well as his work which becomes the textual reflection of this putting of the bios under threat. Even though this threat is calculated, it is a threat nonetheless, and it is the symbolic significance of this gesture that Bataille and Derrida, unlike Foucault, accept. The insertion of the autobiographical in philosophy, Smith points out in Derrida and Autobiography (1995), is associated with an exposure to threat qua an exposure to chance. ‘By “accommodating” chance […] [t] he relative forfeit of the absolute leads to philosophy’s increased specificity or singularity, even marginality and eccentricity; philosophy surrenders its monopoly at the centre of reason, becomes more idiomatic, exposed to an autobiographic drag upon itself ’ (1995: 24). But what is this accommodation of chance if not an acknowledgement of the necessity to keep philosophy—through the insertion of the autobiographical, of bios—closer to the condition of its self-destruction while saving it from achieving complete self-destruction nonetheless?

Note 1. ‘reason holds non-reason [in its grip] to extract its truth as madness’ and ejects it as ‘fault or sickness’ (Foucault 2010: xxviii).

References Foucault, Michel. 2010. History of Madness, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. Oxon: Routledge. Peeters, Benoît. 2013. Derrida: A Biography, trans. Andrew Brown. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Rovatti, Pier Aldo. 2002. Astride a Low Wall: Notes on Philosophy and Madness, trans. Lorenzo Chiesa. In Plí: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy 13: 13–25. Foucault: Madness/Sexuality/Biopolitics. Smith, Robert. 1995. Derrida and Autobiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Appendix A

Fig. A.1  Three-level drawing of the Parc de la Villette site illustrating how the surfaces, the points (follies) and the lines created by buildings, plants or other spaces come together. Copyright Bernard Tschumi Architects

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8

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Appendix B

Fig. B.1  A digital representation of the parts of a point (folie) which illustrates its potential for its own undoing and rupture. Copyright Bernard Tschumi Architects

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8

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Fig. B.2  A photograph of a real point (folie) on site. Copyright Bernard Tschumi Architects

Appendix C

Fig. C.1  Grid of points (follies) superposed on the Parc de la Villette site. Copyright Bernard Tschumi Architects © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8

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Aristotle. 1884. Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics, trans. Harris Rackham, ed. F. Susemihl. Leipzig: Teubner. http://www.kennydominican. Accessed 14 Aug 2012. Artaud, Antonin. 1968. A Letter to the Medical Directors of Lunatic Asylums. In Antonin Artaud: Collected Works—Volume One, trans. Victor Corti. London: Calder & Boyars. Bataille, Georges. 1973a. Georges Bataille: Œuvres complètes, vol. V. Paris: Gallimard. Bataille, Georges. 1973b. Georges Bataille: Œuvres complètes, vol. VI. Paris: Gallimard. Bataille, Georges. 1979. The Psychological Structure of Fascism, trans. Carl R. Lovett. New German Critique 16: 64–87. http://www.jstor.org/­stable/487877. Accessed 15 Mar 2010. Bataille, Georges. 1986c. Sacrifice. In Georges Bataille: Writings on Laughter, Sacrifice, Nietzsche, Un-Knowing, October, vol. 36, 61–74. http://www.jstor. org/stable/i231779. Accessed 15 Mar 2010. Bataille, Georges. 1988c. The Accursed Share, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Zone Books. Bataille, Georges. 1989a. Le Petit. In Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, ed. Denis Hollier. Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

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Index

A

Abnormal 24, 50, 59, 64, 140, 143, 147 Absence of an oeuvre 169, 171, 173–175, 177 Absurdity 76 Acéphale 95, 102 Action 33, 52, 54, 55, 65, 81, 88–90, 99, 101, 102, 106, 107, 115, 122, 123, 126, 128, 154, 176, 189, 202, 207, 233, 260 Act of force 208 Adorno, Theodor 80, 82 Alterity 10, 80, 246, 252, 258 Amor fati (love of fate) 5, 25, 128 Angoisse (anguish) 109 Anguish 69, 89, 91, 93–95, 97, 109, 110, 113–115, 118, 121, 127–130, 253, 260 Annihilation 50, 99, 101, 125, 126, 176, 218, 248, 260

Anonymity 98, 158, 164, 165, 168, 175, 217, 259 Anti-psychiatry 64, 145, 155 Aphorisms 77, 80, 166, 167, 236 Apollonian 124, 139 Archaeology of silence 188, 207, 211 Architecture 81, 220, 222, 223 Arrogance 25, 33, 34 Artaud, Antonin 139, 154, 158, 162, 169, 172–176, 247, 255, 261 Asylum 72, 141, 145–147, 169, 202 Autobiography 2, 4, 15–17, 20–22, 27, 28, 32, 33, 39, 40, 42, 43, 58, 93, 97, 98, 157–159, 161, 216–218, 220, 230, 263 absence of the autobiographical 7, 140, 158, 168 autobiographical discourse 28 autobiographical genre 16 autobiographical philosophy 2, 4–8, 15, 16, 23, 26–30, 32, 34, 36–38, 71, 87, 89, 93, 125,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 A. Evangelou, Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57093-8

277

278     Index

131, 157, 158, 162, 177, 207, 215, 230, 240, 259–263 autobiography studies 20 auto-bio-logico-graphical 39, 41, 42, 76, 124 Author 7, 16, 17, 21, 24, 38, 68, 89, 100, 157, 160, 164–168, 176, 205, 248 Authorial self 21 Autos (self ) 20–22, 230, 237, 259 B

Balance 11, 39, 123–125, 139, 153, 246 Barthes, Roland 19, 21, 24, 42, 43 Bataille, Georges 4, 87, 98–102, 177, 242 Baudrillard, Jean 43 Becoming 21–23, 26, 52, 56, 57, 59, 65, 69, 70, 78, 88, 92, 99, 114, 131, 140, 163, 164, 172, 231, 240, 241, 257, 260 Beyond the limit 92 Biographemes 19, 22, 42 Biographical 15, 19, 38, 71, 93, 95, 96, 159, 163, 168, 221, 261 Biographical space 38 Biography 20, 67, 159, 160, 161, 215 Biological 3, 38, 50, 66, 67, 75, 81, 125, 258 Biological reductionism 3, 258 Bio-power 147 Bios (life) 21, 22, 41, 87, 259 Blanchot, Maurice 7, 98, 158, 169 Body 2, 19, 20, 22, 26, 38, 39, 43, 49, 50, 59, 65, 93, 106, 108, 146, 147, 161, 165, 190, 197, 218, 219, 221, 231, 261, 262

Borderline 38 Boundary 120 Brain 64, 66 C

Cavell, Stanley 4, 28, 32, 35 Cervantes, Miguel de 139, 154 Chance 25, 54, 55, 89, 93, 97, 116, 122, 128, 129, 163, 164, 211, 263 Chaos 58, 59, 80, 123, 124, 175, 222, 224, 240, 241 Choice 19, 34, 53, 55, 59, 68, 87, 106, 125, 128, 129, 137, 164, 235, 236, 238 Christianity 50, 51 Circularity 24, 26, 188 Circumcision 218−221 Clinical 34, 35 Cogito 7, 11, 150, 187–191, 195– 202, 205, 210, 251, 252, 254 constitution of the Cogito 188, 190 non-mad Cogito 201 mad Cogito 201 Collapse 4, 15, 39, 42, 59, 63, 66, 73, 78, 89, 122, 124, 127, 130, 174, 175, 179, 192, 193, 224, 241 Communication 31, 34, 38, 87–91, 95, 108, 124, 126, 127, 131, 147, 174, 246 Confession 23, 190, 216, 220 Confinement 141–146, 148, 154 Consciousness 20, 21, 29, 31, 55, 122, 123, 140, 141, 143, 148 Consistency 23, 57, 74, 138, 172 Contestation of action 89, 90 Continental Philosophy 80

Index     279

Contingency 52, 53, 183, 240 Contradictions 4, 59, 80, 127, 153, 164, 175, 178, 191 Corpus 8, 38, 39, 41, 73, 130, 131 Critchley, Simon 19, 43 Critical theory 1 Crucified, the 42, 55, 57, 78, 99, 232 Cynics, the 2, 16 D

Death 7, 15, 38, 42, 50–53, 56, 57, 66, 89–91, 95, 97, 99, 101, 106, 108, 109, 126, 128, 138, 165–168, 178, 181, 187, 220, 241, 247, 248 Death of the author 7, 167, 168 Debate 7, 63, 138, 139, 159, 187–190, 209, 245 Decadence 26, 52, 72, 73 Decadent 26, 49, 50, 54, 59, 72, 78, 79 Deconstruct 3 Deconstruction 8, 21, 168, 215, 217, 252 Definition 10, 16, 17, 42, 65, 115, 148, 173, 197 Degenerate 24, 50, 79, 123 Degeneration 32, 72, 113, 145 Deleuze, Gilles 5, 11, 12, 43 Dementia 66, 191, 202, 209, 254 Demonic possession 64 Depersonalization 27 Depression 89, 95, 97, 121, 249 Déraison (unreason) 142 Derangement 69, 72, 141, 196 Derrida, Jacques 4, 5, 7, 8, 19, 38, 39, 43, 55, 56, 58, 89, 125,

162, 178, 187, 189–194, 196, 199, 201, 206–213 Descartes, René 7, 35, 187–201 Desire 107–109, 114, 119, 122, 127, 131, 142, 151, 152, 163, 164, 202 Désoeuvrement (absence of oeuvre) 168, 169, 172 Destruction 44, 51, 52, 90, 101, 124, 174–176, 255, 259 Desubjectivation 6, 248, 259 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) 64, 65 Diagnose 67 Dilthey, Wilhelm 16, 28–31, 44 Dionysian 52, 70, 124, 139 Dionysus 42, 53, 55, 57, 74, 78, 99, 174, 178, 232, 239 Disciple 99, 239 Discontinuity 222 Discourse 1–3, 7, 9, 28, 34, 35, 38, 51, 64, 77, 79, 80, 95, 97, 106, 116, 145, 148, 153, 158, 164, 196, 199, 210, 211, 217, 219, 220, 251, 258, 261, 262 Disease 75, 77, 212 Dissension 208–210, 245, 250, 251 Dissolution 4, 19, 41, 91, 95, 124, 126, 131, 240 Distance 27, 37, 39, 59, 98, 107, 140, 143, 150, 162, 168, 216, 245, 250, 252, 254, 259, 260, 262 Divine inspiration 64 Doubt 17, 23, 35, 64, 73, 74, 76, 91, 95, 100, 121, 122, 152, 163, 181, 190, 192, 194–201, 219

280     Index

Dreams 193 Dynamis 38, 39, 41 E

Ear 8, 38, 150, 182, 213, 229, 230–232, 237 Eccentric 23, 42, 75, 77 Ecstasy 91, 95, 97, 115 Ecstatic laughter 88 Ego 58 Empathy 162, 212, 253 Enlightenment 3, 79–82, 249, 257 Epileptic 69, 81 Erasmus, Desiderius 5, 140, 155, 162, 230, 262 Eros (love; creation) 51 Eroticism 95, 108, 178 Eternal return 53, 55, 124 Ethics of discretion 7, 168, 259 Ethics of vulnerability 6, 85, 105, 107, 108, 130, 157, 259 Evil 80, 87, 190, 194–195, 199, 201 Evil genius 190, 194–196, 199, 201 Exercise in acrobatics 11, 120 Existentialist 5 Expenditure 101 Extreme limit of the possible 88, 92, 110, 118, 121, 126, 130 F

Face 57, 58, 73, 99–101, 158, 163–165, 174–176, 179, 216, 252 Fading of logos 119 Feelings 17, 25, 29, 65, 88, 93, 97, 119, 123, 233 Felman, Shoshana 1, 8, 175, 211, 249–251, 259

Filth 89, 108 Finite-thought 254 Folie (madness) 138, 154, 267, 268 Folly 72, 81, 155, 191, 212, 230 Foucault, Michel 4, 21, 43, 64, 137, 155, 158, 159, 169, 172 Free spirit 49, 229 Free will 53, 54 French Revolution 82, 143 Freud, Sigmund 102, 146, 147, 155, 187, 202, 211, 247 G

Gaze 144, 147 Genius 63, 69, 79, 81, 174, 190, 194–196, 199, 201 Genre 2, 15, 16, 20, 27–29, 37, 137, 240, 259 God 70, 101, 107, 114, 140, 145, 162, 178, 194–197 Gogh, Vincent van 139, 169, 173, 174, 176, 255 Goya, Francisco 139 Grammē (line) 38 Graphē (writing) 21, 38 Gusdorf, Georges 16, 20, 21 H

Hardship 49, 51, 59, 119 Headaches 66, 68 Health 49–52, 66, 68, 75, 90, 143, 147, 161, 220, 246 Hearing 8, 23, 230, 231, 233, 235 Heraclitus 18, 52, 53, 55 Heterogeneity 6, 9, 10, 59, 90, 92, 101, 105, 106

Index     281

Heterogeneous 22, 59, 79–81, 92, 105–107, 109, 113, 128, 130, 131 History and historicity 209, 210, 245 Histrionic 42 Hölderlin, Friedrich 139, 181 Homogeneity 90, 92, 99, 101, 105, 107, 165, 168, 175 Horkheimer, Max 80, 82 Human entirety 95, 105, 107, 113, 114, 122, 128, 131 I

Identity 17, 19, 25, 26, 56, 69, 80, 100, 131, 143, 148, 158, 159, 163, 164, 158, 181, 197, 238, 250 Idiots 199 Illness 9, 18, 51, 64, 65, 72, 73, 121, 122, 138, 144, 146–148, 150, 155, 183, 202, 249, 255 Impersonal 21, 22, 25–27, 32, 42, 96–98, 131, 240 Impersonality 21, 25, 27, 32, 42, 98, 240 Impossible, the 29, 117–120, 128, 223, 254, 260 Incoherence 89, 122–124, 222 Individuality 69, 97, 106, 143, 231 Influence 18, 49, 64, 155, 158, 172, 252 Inner experience 6, 11, 31, 88, 90–94, 97, 100, 101, 105, 107, 109, 110, 114, 115, 117, 118, 120–131, 178, 207, 242, 246, 260

Insanity 64, 66, 68, 72–75, 121, 191, 193, 194, 196 Inscription of bios into logos 2, 4, 263 Insertion of bios into logos 28, 125, 260 Instrumental reason 3 Internment 141, 144, 169 Interruption of becoming 69 Intoxication 124 Intuition 19, 32, 33, 49, 50, 54, 59, 60, 116, 120, 128, 129, 149, 192, 213, 240 I (personal pronoun) 16 Ipse 90–92, 99–101, 108, 114, 131 Ipseity 91, 101, 108, 130 Irrationality 70, 80, 139 K

Kant, Immanuel 29, 123 Kierkegaard, Søren 5 Klossowski, Pierre 56, 58, 59, 69, 123, 124, 178, 182, 229, 240 Kofman, Sarah 3, 23, 24, 39, 56, 60, 78, 81, 240 Kristeva, Julia 43 L

Labyrinth 12, 23–27, 68, 74, 77, 78, 81, 110, 165, 169, 233, 241 Lacan, Jacques 43, 200, 201, 249 Laing, R.D. 64, 155 Language 2, 3, 5, 11, 16, 32, 35, 42, 64, 71, 79, 115, 122, 147, 150, 165, 168, 174, 178, 179, 180, 183, 206, 211, 212, 221, 245

282     Index

Laughter 88, 94, 96, 101, 108, 159 Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life) 4, 16, 28 Lejeune, Philippe 16, 17, 20 Lend an ear 150, 213, 237 Lepers 141 Letter 12, 18, 23, 25, 27, 42, 46, 66, 74, 78, 81, 88, 165, 166, 169, 233, 233 Letting go 90, 117, 126 Liberated 8, 77, 78, 147, 239 Liberation of style 76 Life 2, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 28, 29, 38, 42, 50, 67, 88, 128, 161, 221 Line 32, 36, 38, 55, 106, 147, 155, 166, 174, 187, 210, 217, 221, 222 Literary theory 30, 162, 249 Literary thing, the 8, 249, 250 Literature 9, 10, 17, 64, 80, 139, 169, 175, 177, 181, 182, 245, 247, 248, 250, 261 Logico-philosophical 3, 209 Logos (reason; language) 3, 79, 115, 208, 212, 250, 259 Loneliness 49, 114 Loss 22, 35, 36, 42, 56, 58, 59, 69, 101, 118, 123, 128, 142, 143, 182, 217, 229, 235, 240 Lucidity 68, 69, 78 Lyotard, Jean-François 43, 202 M

Madness advocate of madness 121, 126 discourses on madness 1, 138, 144, 149, 152, 211

do justice to madness 7, 158 exclusion of madness 139, 143, 191, 192, 197, 209 feigned madness 3, 79, 250 literature of madness 139 mad language 79 madnesses 222–224, 252, 253 madness itself 7, 120, 125, 149, 151, 152, 188, 205, 206 madness of Nietzsche 4, 65, 73, 122 madness studies in philosophy 137, 230, 257 mad philosopher 80, 177, 180, 181, 199 Nietzsche’s coming madness 74, 76 Nietzsche’s madness 3, 59, 64, 66, 67, 73–75, 79, 81, 93, 112, 114, 122, 177, 207, 241, 258, 261 perception of madness 138, 140, 141, 148, 150 phenomenon of madness 1, 9 plunging into madness 124 psychologization of madness 146 real madness 114, 120, 162 relating to madness 80, 260 simulating madness 114 submission to madness 124 tantamount to madness 113, 114, 122 Mania 78, 429 Manic-depression 64, 74 Masking 57, 58, 79, 100 Masks 04, 40, 55, 57, 79, 99, 158 Medicine 144 Megalomania 235 Melancholia 249

Index     283

Mental health 68, 161 Mental hospitals 143 Mental illness 9, 64, 65, 72, 73, 121, 138, 144, 149, 150, 245, 249 Mental sickness 49 Metaphor 2–4, 22, 26, 35, 56, 71, 80, 114, 152, 176, 181, 230, 231, 238, 257, 260 Metonym 3 Migraines 123 Morality 50, 71–73, 79, 80, 141, 142, 146, 242 Myself 9, 17, 18, 21, 24, 25, 34, 57, 73, 77, 89, 93, 95, 108, 117, 121, 123, 164, 196, 201, 216, 233 Mystical experience 91 Myth 80, 94, 167 N

Name 5, 26, 38, 52, 55, 80, 98, 100, 101, 106, 164–166, 191, 219, 221, 232 Narcissism 235 Necessity 17, 27, 32–34, 37, 44, 52, 59, 66, 71, 81, 96, 97, 107, 114, 118, 121, 127, 131, 163, 212, 240, 259, 263 Nerves 64, 68, 109 Neuroses 106 Neutrality 33, 56, 57, 167 Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzschean tradition, the 5 Nietzsche event, the 3, 4, 8, 11, 78–81, 125, 211, 230, 236, 239, 250, 258–261 No face 158, 163–165 Non-action 101

Non-philosopher 192, 193, 196 Normativity 29, 30, 236 Nudity 101 O

Objectivity 26, 28, 145, 147, 206 Oeuvre 161, 165–169, 171–177, 223, 245 Olney, James 16, 20, 21 Opposites 52 Oppression 144, 213, 238 Ordinary language philosophy 32, 33, 35 Organic 51, 57, 65 Oscillation 7, 11, 101, 153, 262 Otobiography 89, 230 Otos (ear) 230, 237 Overcoming 41, 69, 78 P

Pain 42, 53, 66, 90, 109, 118, 123, 130, 174, 237 Paralysis 65, 68, 78, 113 Paralysis progressive 58 Paranoiac 201 Parc de la Villette 222, 266, 269 Pathetic 220, 253 Pathological 23, 68, 72, 146, 219 Pathos 7, 178, 212, 213, 249, 253 Personal 18, 25, 26, 28, 33, 36, 94, 96, 98, 159–161, 164 Perspective of non-perspectives 241 Perspectives 52, 55, 69, 217, 241 Philosopheme 38, 42 Philosophers of the future 5, 81, 229 Philosophy philosophical, the 1–4, 18, 25, 28, 30, 63, 71, 75, 88, 122,

284     Index

153, 177, 220, 230, 254, 260–261 philosophical act 7, 153, 206 philosophical act as a disturbance to reason 206 philosophical autobiography 4, 28 philosophical genre 2, 16, 37, 240, 259 philosophical intention 7, 153, 206 philosophical language 7, 158, 177–183, 246 philosophical metaphor 3, 4, 257, 260 philosophizing ‘in the distance of madness’ 250 philosophizing madness 8 Physical sickness 49 Physiology 26 Piety 94, 106 Pinel, Philippe 141, 144 Planning 88, 98 Plato 5, 126 Poetry 35, 89, 154 Positive psychiatry 141, 143, 211 Positivism 29, 80, 145 Post-Nietzschean 4, 81, 230, 235, 237, 247, 259 Post-structuralist 19, 21, 237 Power 30, 32, 41, 51, 55, 69, 81, 90, 96, 105, 117, 127, 130, 177, 195, 248 Powerlessness 115, 239, 248 Pre-collapse 78 Pre-Socratic philosophers 52 Prisons 141, 159 Project 8, 21, 51, 65, 88, 99, 138, 151, 206, 251, 252 Pseudonyms 55, 99–101

Psyche 64, 138 Psychiatric 9, 23, 42, 65, 146, 160, 169 Psychiatry 64, 65, 141, 143, 145– 147, 151, 175, 211 Psychoanalysis 35, 64, 121, 146, 155, 182, 211, 249 Psychology 29, 64, 137, 146, 182 Psychopathology 147 Psychosis 42, 77, 201 Punctuation 77 Punishment 142, 145 R

Rational faculties 6, 91 Religion 64, 73, 82 Revaluation of values 52 Rhythm 153, 253, 254 Risk 1, 6, 11, 22, 34, 37, 38, 49, 89, 106, 108, 129, 161, 168, 240, 260 Romanticism 3, 249 Romantic undertone 3 S

Sacred, the 54, 94, 105, 106, 142, 218 Sacrifice 101, 102, 106, 124, 125, 168, 169, 177 Sade, Marquis de 102 Safe distance 39, 140, 162, 260 Sane 24, 195 Schizophrenia 11, 64, 249 Schopenhauer, Arthur 18, 57, 73 Schreber, Daniel Paul 200 Science 24, 31, 51, 64, 106, 107, 144, 150, 202, 232, 249

Index     285

Science of heterology 106, 107 Self-reflexivity 24, 201, 252 Sensory errors 190, 193, 194 Shakespeare, William 139, 154 Sickness 49–52, 66, 72, 73, 109, 110, 113, 145, 147, 263 Signature 37, 38, 167, 218, 219, 231–233, 235, 238 Silence 11, 36, 89, 116, 151, 154, 168, 174, 176, 182, 188, 207, 211, 212, 241, 245, 246, 249, 261 Simulate 8, 177, 240 Sloterdijk, Peter 11, 235 Somatic 65, 67, 122, 123 Sovereign communication 95, 108 Space of inner experience 92, 107, 117, 120, 129, 131 Spirit 19, 20, 25, 49–52, 75, 88, 89, 97, 99, 106, 146, 229, 240 Stoics, the 2, 16, 30 Strength 26, 49, 50, 68, 93, 109, 110, 123 Style 3, 42, 67, 76–80, 89, 149, 166, 198, 238, 260, 261 Subject as multiplicity 17, 19, 55, 158, 179, 242 Subjectivation 6 Subjectivity 11, 21, 26, 39, 43, 93, 98, 129, 130, 152, 159, 167, 179, 180, 181, 201, 217, 241, 242, 248, 252, 257, 258, 259 Suffering 50, 65, 74, 90, 107, 108, 110, 115, 118, 123, 130, 179, 212, 248, 253 Summit 49, 56, 90, 105, 117, 119, 120, 127, 130 Surrender 10, 97

Symbol 3, 10, 128, 144, 145, 172, 174, 175, 195 Symbolic 3, 4, 8, 10, 19, 34, 37, 39, 101, 114, 120, 125, 180, 250−259, 263 Symptomatic 42, 57, 74, 75, 77, 90, 196 Symptomatic of madness 57, 75, 77, 196 Symptoms 76, 147 Syphilis 66, 67 Szasz, Thomas 64 T

Taste 16, 26, 49, 138, 175 Thanatos (death; destruction) 51 Therapeutic 36, 182 Threat 4, 6, 69, 129, 195, 206, 259, 263 Transgression 15, 79, 162, 177, 178, 180, 181, 207 Truth 3, 9, 20, 68, 75, 79, 80, 108, 119, 120, 142, 146, 147, 149, 151–154 Tschumi, Bernard 222, 224, 252, 266–269 Tuke, William 141, 144 Turin 39, 42, 59, 65, 74, 76, 122, 124 U

Übermensch 114 Unhealthy 51, 124 Unmasking 57, 58, 100, 101 Unreason 70, 72, 124, 137, 141– 144, 148, 149, 174, 191, 208, 209, 211

286     Index

Unsurpassability of reason 188, 206, 207, 251 V

Violence 89, 99, 106, 109, 110, 114, 139, 169, 218, 237, 242 Virility 92, 93, 240 Vitalism 44, 51 Vulnerability 5–7, 10, 11, 23, 34–37, 68, 71, 90, 93, 94, 101, 107, 108, 130, 140, 157,

158, 162, 180, 239, 248, 250, 258–260, 262 Vulnerable 8, 51, 71, 77, 89, 97, 108, 129, 162, 182, 207, 213, 217, 250, 259, 260, 262, 263 W

Weakness 18, 49, 50, 109 Will to power 32, 51 Wound 107–108, 93, 240