Person/Jacques Derrida/Essay/63/Cogito and the History of Madness

• Cogito and the History of Madness

  • Summary

    • "Cogito and the History of Madness" is Jacques Derrida's 1963 paper responding to Person/Michel Foucault/Book/History of Madness.
    • Derrida questions Foucault's reading of Descartes, especially whether the Cartesian "cogito" (I think) excludes madness or instead must pass through a more radical threat to reason.
    • The paper was presented in 1963, published in Revue de metaphysique et de morale, revised for Writing and Difference, and translated into English by Alan Bass in 1978.
    • The essay helped initiate a major exchange between Derrida and Foucault around madness, reason, and the conditions of philosophical discourse.

  • Notes

    • Derrida opens with two quotes that frame madness as a limit case for reason, choice, and writing.
    • Person/Søren Kierkegaard's line, "The instant of decision is madness," refers to how a real decision appears only where reason no longer clearly identifies the superior option.
    • Person/James Joyce's line about Book/Ulysses "In any event this book was terribly daring. A transparent sheet separates it from madness" places daring writing at a threshold near madness: a work of original writing is separated from madness only by a fragile boundary.
    • These prepare Derrida's examination of whether philosophy can mark madness as an "outside" without depending on that outside from within reason's own operation.
    • Derrida's dispute with Foucault centers on whether Descartes excludes madness too quickly or whether the evil demon hypothesis already admits a more radical disturbance of reason.