Ted's review
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
by Michel Foucault
Ted's review
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault
Ted's review
rating:
While it seems that Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 are widely considered Foucault's great achievements as a philosopher-cum-social-scientist, Madness and Civilization is the most enjoyable and coherent book, and it's also the least pretentious. It's straight social history with an eye to modern-day relevancy, and it does an amazing job of showing how our ideas about reason and unreason were formed in the 17th and 18th centuries. But most importantly -- for the enjoyment level -- the great poet and translator Richard Howard created this English version, and it's simply gorgeous. It reads like great literature, which it is.
