The Folly of Wisdom

The Mad Fool

“No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.”[1]

3.1     Why madness is natural

I defined the natural fool as someone who is lacking in reason and knowledge.  Natural fools have no choice in their condition – they are made fools ‘by nature’.  Mad fools are also natural fools in that they lack normal reason and because there is no element of choice in their condition.  Like those we normally think of as naturals, the insane cannot voluntarily escape their condition of madness.

            The insane fit the criteria for being a natural fool in most ways.  However, there are some significant differences.  The first is that where the true natural is deficient in reason and lacks full reason; for the most part the mad fool possesses both the capacity and has the experience necessary for reason to fully flourish.  Yet despite these qualifications the insane do not possess reason, or at least do not possess the normal type of reason.  One could say that that the insane do have a type of reason and rationality, simply that these qualities are flawed or broken.  A useful analogy is that the natural, as we usually see him or her, is a clock running very slowly, unable to run at a normal speed.  The lunatic is a clock running at the normal speed but in the wrong direction, or in many directions at once.  In this sense the mad fool lies between the artificial fool and the true natural fool.  They may lack normal reason, but satisfy some of what we think of as the correct criteria for reason.  Nevertheless, the mad fool shares more with the true natural than with the artificial fool in that the mad fool does not possess normal reason.

            So plainly mad fools possesses qualities of natural fools in that they partake strongly of the irrational, yet they also bear a similarity to people of normal reason and knowledge.  While examining the natural fool it has become clear that despite the numerous individual examples of wisdom that can be emulated by rational, complex people, there is an aspect of the natural's wisdom that is not able to be so easily adopted.  Wisdom that is associated with what is most central to the natural fool's existence, namely innocence and pre-rational existence, is unattainable by anyone who has become mature in their rational faculties.  This would include qualities pointed out in the preceding chapter, such as ethical blamelessness, lack of fear and perhaps even the happiness an innocent can gain from their blissful ignorance.  A normal person trying to attain these forms of wisdom would be comparable to someone trying to regain their virginity; an ultimately futile effort.  The artificial fool is unable to instantiate most of these examples of wisdom in the same way that the natural fool does.  However, artificial fools may be able to go one step further than natural fools in their wisdom, for instance by not fearing death whilst still being aware of mortality.  Nevertheless, some of the properties of the pre-rational natural can be possessed only by the pre-rational natural.

            A possible solution to this conundrum of the natural’s wisdom being inaccessible could appear in the form of the mad fool.  Madness too taps into the realms of the irrational just as the natural does.  Hopefully, with a similar contact to the irrational the mad person might also freely draw a type of wisdom from the irrational side of reason’s border.  Since we know that the mad person is, unlike the innocent, able to cross the line between the irrational and the rational in both directions, then we can hope that the wisdom the mad person gains from their contact with the irrational may be more accessible.  Also, because the mad fool bears similarities to the true natural fool and to the normal person, they could provide us a more accessible link to the natural’s wisdom.  Hence the overarching question of this chapter is whether any wisdom that madness can derive from its contact with irrationality is able to be used or applied by the normally rational person, or whether madness’ wisdom will also be too closely tied to its origins in the irrational.  Another consideration is whether what madness wrests from its contact with the irrational can be of the same quality as that which innocence is able to derive.

3.2          Madness, reason and relativity

I earlier drew an analogy between madness and the movement of a clock.  I said the true natural fool’s reason is like a slow clock and the insane person’s is like a clock that is able to move at the right speed, but moves in the wrong direction.  What, to extend the metaphor further, determines the ‘right’ direction?  We know that over the years the criteria for judging sanity have changed.  For example, at one point the insane were grouped in with unemployed people.  At another point, comparatively recently, masturbation was seen as a sufficient sign of insanity.  Even today the definitions shift as the public perceptions of conditions such as alcoholism and eating disorders move into new spheres.  If, as I have claimed, the fool in its many incarnations is able to acquire forms of knowledge from trespassing over the borders of reason, the question of where the borders lie must be addressed, as must the question of how solid those borders are.

            So if the criteria for categorising insanity has and does change, couldn’t we argue that insanity is closer to reason than we think?  Is madness more akin to swimming against the tide than to possessing a ‘wrong’ form of reason?  Maybe reason is only a relative quality, determined by the way that the bulk of society utilises their reason.  Perhaps by saying that reason is relative we could give some credence to the claim that there is wisdom in madness’ irrationality.

            Before I deal with this last point let me make clear that heretofore there has been an unstated, yet nevertheless very real assumption that reason and unreason have objective standards.  I have implied that the dichotomy exists by talking of the natural as existing in a pre-rational way.  ‘Pre-rational’ implies both an objective dichotomy between rational and non-rational and also suggests an objective standard by which rationality is judged.  Perhaps the reason this assumption has introduced itself is because without reason and rationality having objective standards, any wisdom or knowledge the natural, or indeed any type of fool, can gain will not be of a fundamentally different type to that which we deal with in our normal ways of living.  Were reason a relative standard, then ultimately all its products would have the same status as the products of irrationality.  While it would exonerate the products of madness, it would do so by devaluing both the products of madness and the products of reason.  Neither would have objective value.  Being a relativist with regards to reason would exonerate warped reason by drawing regular reason down to the same level, almost a level of arbitrariness.

            Besides these points, prior to now I have given examples of the fool’s wisdom that are not accessible to people of a certain character, characters of reason and rationality.  Were the dividing line between the rational and the irrational, between reason and unreason to be merely a relative matter, then there would be no substantive difference between the fool and the normal person.  Any differences would simply be differences of perspective; what would count would not be the reality of the situation, but rather the standpoint the observer is looking from.

            It would be good for my arguments to prove that the difference between the rational and the irrational is based on objective grounds.  To do so would make the wisdoms I have mentioned previously, wisdoms based on elements of the irrational, more significant.  However, this particular task is too large for this project.  I think it will suffice to make clear that this underlying premise does exist and to note that I am taking this as a necessary presupposition.

            Nevertheless, there are many reasons to think this presupposition apt.  I shall briefly mention one of the major arguments for the relativity of rationality and outline a brief counter in support of the claim that rationality is objective.  Foucault in Madness and Civilisation, following his general aims of producing an archaeology of ideas, examines the history of madness.  In it he points out that what we call madness has over time not always been the same thing.  He gives instances of madness’ classification changing in the form of those who were confined in madhouses in the classical period, “which mingled madmen and libertines, invalids and criminals”[2].  These shifting classifications help reinforce the idea that the values of rationality are protean.

            However, this latter argument is not a completely logical one[3].  It does not logically follow from the existence of different classifications of reason over time that reason is a relative quality.  The most that can be said is that the argument strengthens the position, but does not conclusively prove it.

            This by no means invalidates the relativists’ or even the sceptics’ claims about reason.  However, when dealing with the wisdom of the mad fool I at the very least need to establish some definition to sequester madness away from reason.  Whilst Foucault is apt in pointing out that definitions of madness have changed, I feel confident that some elements of madness’ definition has not changed.  The insane lack proper reason, but while what ‘proper reason’ is might have changed, the criteria that the insane do not possess it has remained comparatively unchanged.  This said, I feel somewhat comfortable taking the current beliefs and assumptions of what madness is as my definition and delineation.  I do not believe these criteria will remain unchanged.  I do not believe these criteria for defining madness should remain unchanged.  Nevertheless, for the purposes of my argument I shall take them as the correct way of defining madness, simply bearing in mind that could be incorrect.

3.3     Mad wisdom and normal wisdom – similarities and differences

Saying the mad person is wise because sanity and insanity are relative reduces both the wisdom gained from reason and the wisdom gained from unreason.  To do insanity justice we must go one step beyond this.  Madness, as a concept, has frequently been linked with acts of great genius, great creativity and great insight; more frequently than can be explained by simply saying that the insight of madness is due to people who go against the grain occasionally being right.  Whatever the explanation is for the link, it must take the very nature of madness itself as the source of the link between madness and genius.  The wisdom of madness should not be that we are merely mistaken about whether madness is actually insane, it should be something intrinsic to the nature of madness itself.  Hence, when I talk about the wisdom of madness I shall make no mention of this sort of ‘coincidental’ wisdom and shall instead be concerned with wisdom that can be seen as intrinsic to madness or to what we in our current time conceive of as madness.

            However, while we should investigate mad wisdom as being fundamentally different from sane wisdom, there is an interesting similarity that should be drawn out.  Normal, sane wisdom is wisdom that benefits from the influence of reason, rationality and knowledge.  As opposed to being a deficiency of reason, sometimes madness can be an excess of reason applied in an unusual way.  Madness can be sanity taken to extremes, using the tools of sanity in strange ways.  In Madness and Civilisation Foucault describes the logic of madness as a logic that is entirely correct, yet not entirely complete.  Its flaw is that it starts with an unusual or incorrect set of premises.  Madness takes these premises to their correct conclusions with exacting rigour, but fails to question those premises.  Foucault puts it forward that “the ultimate language of madness is that of reason”[4] and that the “marvellous logic of the mad […] mocks that of the logicians because it resembles it so exactly”[5].  Foucault’s description of madness is a reminder that madness can be an inherently paradoxical mixture of pure insanity and healthy dollops of reason.   It is this mixture that can make madness so compelling and also so threatening to the normal mind.  It also goes towards proving how closely madness and reason can be – after all, they share a language; the language of reason.  This helps to show that if the tools normal thought and madness use aren’t entirely disparate; madness, inspiration and genius need not be entirely exclusive.

3.4          Madness and genius – historical links

A link exists in public perceptions between madness and wisdom.  As can be seen from the quote heading this chapter, the awareness of this link has been present for some time.  Even into antiquity madness has been viewed somewhat superstitiously, most likely due to its, at the time, entirely inexplicable nature.  Through the middle ages the insane were seen as being ‘touched’ by God, indicating that they had beheld a truth too great and too powerful to be contained within the sane mind.  Going even further back in time one can see the similarities between what would now be deemed madness and great religious feeling.  Shamanistic rituals involving trance-like states, speaking in tongues, manic movements and even fits are reminiscent of madness’ grip, and clearly associate communion with the divine with these states of divine madness.

            If the comparison can go in one direction, that many religious prophets possess qualities more usually associated with the insane, it can also go in the other direction.  Madness, with its visions and fits is similar to states of oneness with divinity.  Linking the two together in this fashion leads one to ask what it is about insanity and insane states of being that lend themselves towards religious epiphanies.  Perhaps, as evinced in the Shamanistic traditions, altered states of consciousness are the route to achieving closeness to God.  As in the Gnostic tradition, perhaps normal forms of knowledge and perception are not helpful to religious pursuits, rather apprehension of 'higher' truths must be gained through a different mode of thought than the normal, a mode closer to the type of reason employed by mad people than to sane reason.

            Madness has also been seen as granting more than just religious epiphanies.  It has also been linked to great acts of philosophical, artistic and scientific genius.  Vincent Van Gough, Jonathan Swift and Friedrich Nietzsche are obvious examples of people whose genius were matched by their flirtations with insanity.  So what can it be that motivates these historical examples of the wisdom of madness?

            I have said that madness uses the tools of the sane mind, tools of reason, intuition and creative thought in unusual ways.  A reasonable assumption to take is that if certain portions of the mind are working without the restraints imposed by the normal mind and by the normal reasoning processes, then those portions may also be working in a fashion that is (a) non-standard and hence able to achieve results a normally functioning mind may not and (b) unrestricted, and hence able to go to lengths not possible to the normal mind.  This could well be one of the sources of madness’ erratic brilliance.

            This could also be related to Foucault’s way of thinking about madness by saying that the “marvellous logic of the mad”[6] could, through its application of reason to unreasonable things, also be a source of occasional brilliance.  Richard Pearse’ first forays into the realm of building a flying machine branded him with the nickname “Mad Dick”, but he took what was, at the time, a mad proposition and brought it to its logical conclusion in the first working airplane and his subsequent first flight.  Foucault’s view also allows madness to venture into realms of thought in a very non-standard way to achieve non-standard conclusions.

3.5     First type of wisdom – madness and creativity

Creativity is an excellent example of a positive thing that can come out of madness.  Often the creative process is seen as the interaction between reason and something less reasonable, less expressible than reason itself.  Friedrich Schiller, in some of his personal correspondence gives concrete form to this idea.  As Schiller puts it, in a “creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect h]as withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude.  You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators.”[7]

            The process Schiller describes is a brainstorming process, the uncritical influx of ideas, with an associated filtering process that occurring after the initial uncritical invasion.  Yet, fascinatingly, Schiller characterises it as a type of temporary madness.  Part of his mind is given free reign for a time, with this madness constituting an essential part of the creative process.  However, also significant is his stressing that this madness is “momentary and passing”.  While his creative process takes advantage of the benefits of madness, if I can rather cavalierly call them that, it is also essential that the interpretation and filtering of his creativity be conducted by his intellect, by his watchers of the gate.  Creativity snatches ideas and meaning from the jaws of the irrational.

            To Schiller at least, having his ideas filtered by the conscious intellect is an essential part of the process.  In his poetry they cannot remain in a primordial state, a state more like that of the passing madness that spawned the ideas.  Yet in some instances of later art and poetry the filter of the intellect is not seen as essential to the creative process.  The post-modern movement gives vivid examples of what creative thought can produce when reason takes a back seat to the pure outpourings of creativity.  Unfettered expression, as the post-modernists point out and even embrace, has an interesting effect on the meaning produced by such works or artistic expression.  Rational ideas produce stable, coherent meaning.  Creative ideas, when carefully ordered and filtered, produce the same; this is art with a telos, an end.  Creativity when expressed without limitation may be vivid and powerful, it may also express meaning, however it does not have a unified telos.  This has a levelling effect on the meaning conveyed by art produced in such a way, bringing the expression of meaning and the absence of meaning to the same plane in the form of the artistic piece.  In short, controlled madness may generate stable, coherent meaning, but unfettered madness fails to do this.  It may generate a species of meaning, but this meaning is unformed, protean and unstable.

            To illustrate, picture yourself watching television.  Clasped firmly in your sister’s ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) paws is the remote with which she switches channels as soon as her attention span runs out; approximately every three seconds.  Taken in isolation, each channel is meaningful and comprehensible.  However, as the channels blur across your vision, all chance of extracting some sense from the images and the blare of sound is lost.  It is like “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / signifying nothing.”[8].  Signification may exist, but it is lost to an extent in the blur of madness.

3.6          Second type of wisdom – madness and freedom

The post-modernists do not take this extreme, unfettered and unfiltered creativity as a negative thing.  To the contrary, a number of postmodern thinkers see escaping these limits on normal meaning as extremely positive.  It allows them to explore new areas with their artistic efforts, areas usually inaccessible due to the strictures imposed by making their work conform to rigid standards of meaning and of structure.  Post-modernism is a liberation, but it is also restrictive.  It can allow new, more liberated expression, but at exactly the same time it makes that expression almost meaningless due to its very freedom.  Similarly, when it comes to interpreting post-modern expression, almost any interpretation can be valid and true.  Post-modern expression can be given form through interpretation, but that form is an artificial addition to a protean mass.  If one listens to a tale told by an idiot, there can appear to be form and purpose.  However, that form is created just as much, if not more, by the audience than by the speaker herself.

            Michel Foucault also envisions the proliferation of meaning as a liberation.  To him it is a freedom from normal patterns of thought.  It is freedom from “wisdom and from the teaching that organized it”[9] – most certainly a very unusual type of freedom.  Perhaps what Foucault is implying is that madness brings with it a freedom from conventional forms of wisdom and knowledge.  By being free from these thing the mad mind is able to explore other areas and to act in ways the normal mind is unable to.  However, if the ability to explore newer realms of wisdom is only bought at the expense of the wisdom that comes from pursuing a rational path to knowledge, then it is doubtful if it is worth having.

3.7     Can we emulate mad wisdom?

Foucault does not characterise the proliferation of meaning and mad knowledge as the complete negation of meaning.  To the contrary, it is still a type of knowledge, “madness fascinates because it is knowledge”[10].  Foucault describes it as lying beyond the “forbidden limits of knowledge”[11].  While Foucault does not explicitly describe those limits, perhaps we can surmise from the subject matter that these limits are the limits of sanity and meaning, since this knowledge is not forbidden to the fool, who exists beyond these limits.  This, in turn, means that the wisdom of madness is completely inaccessible to the normal seeker after knowledge.  They require the seeker to be of a certain type; a natural or a mad fool.  As Foucault describes it: “this knowledge, so inaccessible, so formidable, the Fool, in his innocent idiocy, already possesses.”[12]  The “man of reason and wisdom perceives only fragmentary and all the more unnerving images of it, the Fool bears it intact as an unbroken sphere”, a sphere filled with knowledge that is invisible to normal eyes.

            Foucault does not explicitly state what that knowledge is.  How could he?  If this is a type of knowledge that can only be possessed by the insane or the innocent then how can it be communicated at all to the rational thinker, assumedly the audience for his books along with the French?  So all we can gather at this point is that these two extreme types of mentalities apparently possess this forbidden knowledge, and that it is not a normal instance of knowledge.  Perhaps, even at this early juncture, we can make a tentative surmise.  The innocent is a being whose apprehension of reality lacks the complicated structures of meaning and surmise.  The innocent does not impose on their perceptions the baggage of knowledge or interpretation beyond that of the most basic kind.

            On the other extreme from the innocent natural fool is the madman who possesses the kind of thinking described by Foucault in the early part of Madness and Civilisation, one who perceives relationships “so numerous, so intertwined, so rich, that they can no longer be deciphered [….]  Meaning is no longer read in an immediate perception, […] between the knowledge which animates it and the form into which it is transposed, a gap widens.”[13]    Here Foucault points out that because of the proliferation of signs, meanings and attributes, the initial, simple meaning of an object is removed.  Analysis and over analysis of perceptual objects, a characteristic of the “meddling intellect”[14], is that it can destroy the original meanings contained in the objects of its gaze through the imposition and discovery of additional meaning – “we murder to dissect”[15].

            So the innocent and the insane do have one apparent similarity.  They both live in worlds that are, for them, without the structure of meaning.  While they approach a meaningless world from different directions, one through lack of meaning, the other through an overabundance of it, their end positions are very similar.

            This interpretation of the mad fool’s wisdom explains why this type of knowledge would not be available to the normal intellect except in “fragmentary and all the more unnerving images of it”.  A knowledge of the world’s meaninglessness is impossible to contain in the usual seeker of knowledge – it is an item of wisdom that destroys all other wisdom, a knowledge that consumes other knowledge.  While I can describe it, apprehending it in the fullest sense would involve adopting the positions of either the mad person or the natural fool.  Seeing the world as bereft of meaning and reason is not something that can be done if such a perception is held as an item of knowledge.  It is, in effect, saying that the world does have something that can be known about it, namely that there is nothing that can be known about it.  It is a contradictory proposition.  The fool, however, does not hold this piece of information as an item of knowledge.  Rather it is an item of raw perception, entirely intrinsic to the fool’s outlook on life, an intact sphere of wisdom.

3.8          Seeing the world through insane eyes

Prior to now I have claimed that the wisdom of folly lies, if anywhere, in its close ties to the lack of rationality.  The true natural fool lacks rationality through being wholly pre-rational.  Natural fools lack the ability to reason and the capacity to retain what they could reason.  In reality very few lack reason or knowledge completely, but we can say that the natural possesses less of these qualities than the regular person and can exhibit some elements of wisdom because of this diminishment.  The natural fool would, in their extreme, look out into the world around them and perceive no meaning in what they see.  As William James said of children, one of the classic instances of natural fool, that “To the infant the world is just a big, booming, buzzing confusion.”[16]  Without reason and knowledge, perception, arguably, remains unformed.  What gives our perceptions form and meaning to us is the activity of our brain judging and sorting perceptual data.  Since natural fools, for the most part, lack reason to an extent, their perceptions would be similarly unformed.  To draw an analogy, if you knew next to nothing and possessed minimal reason and were to look into the sky to find shapes in the clouds, you would probably be unable to perceive any.  If we were to take the example to its complete extreme, if one were to not add any rational perception to your surroundings, you might not even be able to perceive the cloud from the sky surrounding it.  Having said this, the latter example would almost certainly not be of a natural fool since they lack reason to an extent, and this example is of an almost impossible extreme.  Perhaps it might be an example of a catatonic person, someone whose reason has turned completely inwards but whose perceptions appear to be functioning normally, in which case the outside world may appear as a meaningless, undifferentiated blur; but even this is a contentious claim.  Suffice it to say that the working of reason on the world around us is an important part if the perceptual process.

            Some instances of the mad fool also reach this point, although from a different direction.  Looking out into the insane fool perceives a multitude of meanings, a buzzing confusion of sounds and sights.  Without proper reason to filter their perceptions mad fools reach a similar, although not identical, place to that of the true natural fool.  To draw the same analogy, looking into the clouds to find shapes they might make out a multiplicity of images.  They might think the images real.  They may even be unable to see the actual cloud past the multiplicity of images and shapes.  In short, the mad fool reaches the same place as the natural fool, unable to determine a stable, proper meaning to their perceptions, but reaches it through a different route: the route of excess of meaning rather than the route of deficiency.

            The wisdom Foucault ascribes to the natural innocent fool and the mad fool is that of perceiving the world as bereft of meaning through perceiving a surplus of meaning.  In Madness and Civilisation he argues for this proposition in this way: he describes madness as being similar to a person who is dazzled by bright light; their reason is dazzled.  Dazzlement is produced by seeing too much light, where light in this case is something similar to knowledge or meaning.  While most people see light and darkness, and, in parallel, their wisdom perceives things and the absence of things, the ‘dazzled’ mad person sees only the darkness and void.  The insane person sees the same daylight as the sane one, but they take from it vastly different things.  The insane one sees “nothing in it [daylight], he sees it as void, as night, as nothing.”[17]  In Foucault’s account, the multiplicity of meaning has the same effect as a dearth of meaning: it creates a void of meaning.  In response to the bedazzling of the senses, the insane person turns inwards.  Seeing nothing but void outside themselves, they create personal universes within themselves, worlds of fantasy, dream and hallucination that are not just as real to them as the outside world, but more real.

            To make the point more explicitly, the mad person could be wise in actually perceiving this surplus of information and hence in perceiving the world as void (to the extent that it is possible to perceive an absence).  It could be that the mad person is correct in their apprehension of reality.  They perceive that there is meaning in the world, however that meaning is multiple, disparate and lacks coherence and unity.  The mad person’s perception of the world is of a buzzing, booming confusion.  This confusion may be constructed from elements that are, in themselves, antithetical to a void of meaning, namely out of meaningfulness itself, but the effect it produces is still one that reduces coherent meaning into chaos.  If this view of the world is correct, then living in any other state than madness could be tantamount to denying the true nature of the world.  This wisdom of madness relies on an a nihilistic account of the world.  However, it does not rely on a completely sceptical account of the world.  It requires for its validity that there not be a unified meaning to world, or at least that no such unity is available to us; it does not require that the world be completely without meaning.  To use the cloud analogy again, perhaps it is actually correct to think that there is a multitude of shapes in the cloud, and distinguishing the cloud from the sky itself is not necessarily the most important distinction.  In short, by apprehending a multiplicity of meaning in the world, the insane person could well have an accurate apprehension of the world.  Imposing unity and coherence on it could be a futile and pointless task.

            Foucault goes on to say that when mad people are confronted with this proliferation of meaning, they construct their own worlds, worlds with internal validity but not external validity.  However, from this passage regarding dazzlement can be drawn something less in accord with what I have been saying up to this point: the mad person does not in actuality live in a universe without stable meaning.  They may perceive it as such, and for them it may be impossible to tell the difference, but they are, Foucault argues, blind to that which surrounds them.  Just because they cannot see a meaningful and coherent universe does not mean that it does not exist beyond the reach of their senses.  Rather than being an insane sage who perceives the true nature of the universe and is destroyed by it, Foucault’s mad person is blinded to the universe, and from this blinding perceives only nonsense.

            So in Foucault there is a tension between whether he thinks the way the mad person perceives the world, i.e. as meaningless due to a proliferation of meaning, is an apt one and his claim that the mad person only perceives the world as meaningless as an error, by being dazzled by the world around them.

            Yet still we must wonder about the intact sphere of knowledge Foucault attributes to the fool in earlier passages.  By attributing this to the fool, Foucault seems to be implying that dazzled perception of  the world is not entirely incorrect.  We know that Foucault was not only speaking of the true natural fool in these passages regarding the sphere of knowledge since he points out that “madness fascinates because it is knowledge”[18], and yet he has described it as an absence of knowledge, a blinding to the truths of the world.  In addition, his description of the insane as blinded by the daylight seems strongly reminiscent of the daylight present in Plato’s myth of the cave; however, instead of seeing the daylight of truth that lies outside the cave, the mad person is dazzled by the light and sees only the shadows dancing on the insides of their eyelids.  Foucault emphasises that the unreason the mad person experiences stands in the same relationship to reason as dazzlement does to daylight.  Dazzlement is not the product of too little daylight/reason; it is the product of too much.  Again, this emphasises a link between madness and a perception of a nihilistic truth, a truth too much for them to handle.

            Still, Foucault does make strong value judgements by comparing this vision of madness to the experience of Cartesian doubt.  Foucault points out that through the use of Cartesian doubt, Descartes was able to block out the world, metaphorically closing his eyes to all outside distractions that prevented him contemplating reason itself, the purest form of the daylight Foucault describes.  So here Foucault gives an example of something beyond any knowledge he might ascribe to the mad person; Descartes, in Foucault’s account, has seen the daylight clearly, and returned with sanity intact.  Disturbingly, Descartes method sounds very similar to Foucault’s description of the workings of the mad mind, with an external blindness accompanied by an internal searching for truth; however, the fundamental difference remains: Descartes search was for a truth that exists beyond himself, to be discovered within himself.  It should be noted that Descartes’ internal search was only a thought experiment, a hermeneutic attempt designed for the purpose of pure inquiry.  In the process of this he did not actually remove his normal awareness of the phenomenal world, as the insane fool does.  The purpose of Descartes’ inquiry was to find a stable, coherent ground for his account of epistemology.  The mad fool, in contrast, does not find a stable grounding.

            Nevertheless, Foucault does give some relevance to the images created by the fervid imagination of the insane.  While they may not map directly onto the world, he does seem to credit them with a deeper meaning.  The images so created have a stirring and evocative power over the mind and the imagination.

The fantastic images it [madness] generates are not fleeting appearances that quickly disappear from the surface of things.  By a strange paradox, what is born from the strangest delirium was already hidden, like a secret, like an inaccessible truth, in the bowels of the earth.

Ibid., Pg 20.

There is no doubt that madness and the images of madness to indeed invoke a certain fascination in the observer; “sanity calms, but madness is more interesting”[19].  If creativity can spring from, as Schiller has it, a temporary madness, then the fascination for the products of this madness must also tell us something about ourselves.  Foucault describes madness as a dazzlement, as seeing all the world as darkness, the familiar metaphor of light as knowledge and dark as the unknown – hence Goethe’s famous last words: “mehr licht!”[20]  Yet even in the normal, sane and rational person of Foucault’s account there is still both daylight and night time.  The sane person is not completely blind to the darkness in the world or unaware that meaning may not exist.  While their world does not entirely consist of this darkness, it is, to an extent, accessible to them.  It is indeed a fine line between madness and sanity.

            Perhaps it is because the ‘darkness’ of unreason is accessible even to the sane that the images and creations of insanity can appeal to us.  They have a direct link to a part of the mind that exists in even the sanest of us.  These secret, hidden concepts are not ripped from the depths of the earth, but rather torn from within ourselves, something it might be harder for us to accept – “the animal that haunts his nightmares and his nights of privations is his own nature”[21].  This seems strongly reminiscent of the Freudian id, and indeed of the Jungian demand for reconciliation between the ego and the shadow self – humanity needs to accept that within itself lies a being of both madness and animal innocence, for with such acceptance comes more understanding and better control.  As so many thinkers have said in the past, self-knowledge is a step towards true wisdom.

3.9          Forbidden knowledge?

Not all the historical associations and links with mad knowledge and wisdom that Foucault draws are positive.  In fact, near the very beginning of his analysis he points out that historically the wisdom and the knowledge involved in or from madness was a forbidden knowledge.  Madness was seen as a punishment for delving too deeply into the search for understanding.  Madness and the images of madness were associated with the apocalypse and the end of the world.  When Foucault makes reference to the possibility of madness being able to produce a certain type of truth, he characterises that truth as forbidden and difficult to obtain.  It is a truth that must be “‘torn from the bowels of the earth’”, and is “forbidden wisdom” [22].  His descriptions seem reminiscent of mythological quests to steal knowledge from the gods.  Foucault takes the forbidden nature of this knowledge to mean that it is knowledge that “presages both the reign of Satan and the end of the world”[23].  This idea Foucault derives from his analysis of concepts of madness during the Renaissance; he is not necessarily endorsing the view, only presenting it.

            Why, we might wonder, was it thought that the wisdom involved in madness would herald such cataclysm?  One answer might be that the rule of madness, by necessity, removes all possibility of the rule of reason and sanity.  Civilisation and its fruits appear to rest on these qualities.  Hence, associating the apocalypse with the death of reason is not completely counter-intuitive.

            One thing that has been clear in Foucault’s writing heretofore is that the wisdom of madness requires the bearer of such knowledge to inhabit the role of natural fool or mad fool.  Knowledge of this type is not available to the sane inquiring mind except as glimpses and reflections, it can only be held complete by the fool.  The nature of the fool dismisses all except the most basic possibility of reason.  Reason and the wisdom of the fool as described by Foucault are incommensurable, so the rule of madness’ forbidden wisdom is also the rule of chaos and the death of the old reason that guides and shapes our lives.  Saying that the wisdom of the fool presages the end of the world is not as far-fetched as it sounds – if the end of the world be taken as the death of the world of the Enlightenment, then this prediction is apt.  The feared apocalypse could simply be the apocalypse of reason and the destruction of its products.

            Another related possibility for characterising the wisdom of madness as forbidden is simply that of fear of the unknown.  Since the wisdom of madness is inaccessible to the purely rational mind, it has the qualities of being unknown and unknowable without major personal changes.  Hence, it is the perfect target of fear for the rational mind, especially since it also contains within itself the seeds of destruction for the rational mind.  It is a forbidden knowledge because it is entirely antithical to the normal point of view.

            Madness and attitudes towards madness, as Foucault depicts them, are the products of the period they exist in.  The face of madness in the Renaissance is vastly different to that which we perceive today.  What Foucault portrays are aspects of madness.  While these aspects may be strongly rooted to the period in which they emerge, this does not negate their value in understanding madness.  It does, however, explain the inconsistencies occasionally present in depictions of madness.  Essentially, we must hope, these are only apparent contradictions and not indicative of some deeper flaw.  For instance, the Renaissance view of madness shows it to be an irrational, animal quality and a herald of the end of days; a contact between rational humanity and the darker sides of our soul[24].  Later views see madness as a punishment for moral failings, and more an indication of criminal tendencies, idleness and other character weaknesses than an essential, but feared, part of every human being[25].

            In summation, the wisdom of madness is seen as apocalyptic, destructive and forbidden in that it is incommensurate with normal forms of knowledge and wisdom.  It may be wisdom, but it does not allow the possibility of normal wisdom.  This is due to its close relationship to the irrational.  Associated with this idea that people ruled by their irrational natures are dangerous is the Platonic view of the tripartite soul.

3.10          Madness and passion

Heretofore I have some historical accounts of madness as presented by Foucault.  Another historical account that is even more prevalent portrays madness as an imbalance between the different parts of the soul or of the psyche.  This account has been immensely influential on contemporary accounts of madness.  In this account the insane person is one who has had their “sovereign reason”[26] overthrown by the other components of their mind.  Foucault makes the observation that madness is “one of the forms of Passion – the ultimate form, in a sense, before death”[27].  His observation strikes a chord with Plato’s theory of the nature of the soul.  To Plato the soul has a tripartite structure represented by three qualities: reason, spirit and desire.  An imbalance in these qualities leads to an imbalanced person.  Someone ruled too much by reason is a machiavel, someone ruled too much by their spirit and passions is something of a firebrand, while someone controlled by their base desires partakes too much of the animal side of their nature.  According to the Platonic view this mental balancing act was formulated as the source of a healthy mind, a sane personality, and, above all else, a very human mind ruled by the very quality which makes it uniquely human, reason[28].  If reason does not take its rightful place as the ruler of the mind, then that mind lacks both humanity and an essential sane balance.

            This view of the mind has been extremely influential right up until the present day.  Even when we compare the Freudian and Jungian models of the psyche to the Platonic model, the similarities outweigh the dissimilarities.  In both there is an overriding conscious and reasoning mind, the overt ruler of the rest of the mind, whose duties include the restraint and monitoring of the less human parts of the mind, the base desires and the id, or even of the Jungian shadow self.  The major difference lies in their respective evaluations of the role of reason in human nature – to Aristotle reason is what sets humans apart from the animals.  To Freud, denial of animal nature is a source of mental discomfiture, and can itself lead to mental imbalance.  To Freud and to the Greeks, imbalance can be the source of many ills, one of which is madness.

             Madness, then, can often be an extreme form of passion and unfettered emotion culminating in an almost animal state.  While passion can be a sane emotion, in the sense Foucault uses it to mean extremes of passion and unruly passion, it is most certainly not.  In Foucault, the extreme of passion represents the lowest point the human mind can sink “before death” [29].  It is the last venturing of the human mind into the “realm of animality” [30].  However, the realm of passion and animality is not completely inhuman.  Madness, he says, is “the lower limit of human truth, a limit not accidental but essential” [31].  It may be the lowest point, but Foucault indicates that this point is still not irredeemable.  It may be a long decent into madness, but it is still a mode of being open to salvation.  In the course of Foucault’s archaeology of ideas he says that one historical view was that not only were humanity’s sins forgiven on the cross and the path to salvation made clear, but so too was madness shown to be redeemable.  Jesus Christ’s passage on the earth was one that passed through all the states open to humanity.  Without question, human passion and human unreason would be included in that passage, and since Jesus showed that “death had been sanctified […], madness, in its bestial nature, had also been sanctified.” [32].

            This latter redemption shows two things, both well worth taking to heart.  The first is that madness, in all its extremes, is still a human affliction.  It may bring us to the edges of human nature, but nevertheless it still remains a part of human nature.  Madness may carry with it a low form of truth, but it is still a truth.  The second point is that madness and the wisdom of madness are redeemable parts of human nature.  Indeed, because they remain parts of human nature, they partake of human truth, and in doing so are able to share in human redemption.  Madness is not an aspect of being that should be denied, but a quality that must be acknowledged for its redemption to take place.

            Taking Madness and Civilisation as a whole, Foucault develops a number of points about what wisdom the mad might possess, points that I hope I have successfully drawn out.  His analysis is more concerned with tracing trends than with establishing commonality, but nevertheless some points do emerge throughout that show at least the semblance of coherence.  The first is that the wisdom possessed by the insane, or by the innocent, can only be held by the same.  It is a wisdom that stems from their condition, and cannot be emulated in the normal mind without changing the status of that mind.  It is always a dangerous knowledge, or at least is perceived as such by those who do not possess it, a position which is justified since that knowledge is almost antithetical to the normal way of reasoning.  One cannot understand the knowledge of madness without instantiating madness itself: “while the man of reason and wisdom perceives only fragmentary and all the more unnerving images of it [mad wisdom], the Fool bears it intact”[33].  Finally, madness, in some accounts, is an imbalance of the mind.  It is an imbalance between what is usually seen as the darker parts of the mind and the reasonable, rational part.  One aspect of madness’ wisdom is that it embraces these darker parts.  This could be a form of wisdom since these other aspects of the mind are still intrinsic parts of the whole.

            These points about mad wisdom point towards much of it being inaccessible to the normal mind.  For instance, for me to perceive the world as containing a multiplicity of meaning that through its plurality negates normal meaningfulness then I must either be insane, or I will soon be insane.  It may be possible to hold this view as a separate item of knowledge, but to actually perceive the world this way would be stressful to the sane mind which craves coherence and pattern.  Nevertheless, there are some things we can take away from this contact with madness.  One point could be a certain humility with regards to the knowledge we have.  Another might be to value the less rational parts of our minds as still intrinsic to our being.  Another could be to see, if not perceive, then contemplate that the perception of a unity or an existent meaning surrounding us could be a false one and that the mad person sees reality more correctly.

            The possible wisdom of madness up to this point seems very similar to the wisdom expressed in the true natural fool.  Both instantiate the wisdom they possess and their wisdom cannot be emulated in a one-to-one way.  Another common ground is their respective perceptions of the world.  The innocent fool sees the world without the filter of the intellect and hence sees it without value judgements and without imposing meaning onto it from the outside.  The mad person also envisages the world without coherent meaning because they have been blinded by an overabundance of meaning.  However, instead simply letting it wash over them without adding judgements and meaning, the mad person overburdens it with meaning, meaning that results only from within themselves.  In this portrayal, the mad person and the innocent come from vastly different starting points, yet are ending up in similar places.  Both see the world as lacking meaning in some respects.

            Is it possible for this perception of the world as lacking meaning to properly exist in the normal mind?  I shall turn now to a philosopher who deals with this concept of existential nihilism.  The question at the fore now is to what extent a normally rational person can perceive the world in the same way as the natural or mad fool and what conclusions that perception would lead a normally rational person to.

3.11          Camus and the absurd

Camus would agree that the natural and mad fool are wise in a number of ways.  First, he thinks that the natural and mad fools’ perception of the world as being without unified meaning is correct.  He also believes that human beings possess an inherent desire for there to be unified meaning in the world, a singular purpose to our existences.  The disjunction between the desire for unity and the apparent lack is what he calls ‘the absurd’.

            To elaborate: the absurd describes a fundamental quality of human existence.  It is the gap that exists between a certain human expectation of the world and the way that the world actually is.  The human expectation is for unity, unity of reason and unity of meaning in the world itself; we have a “nostalgia for unity”[34], which might be understood as a kind of nostalgia for the unity that characterises the uncomprehended experience of our pre-rational states.  The way the world is, Camus claims, is without this fundamental unity.  It is a “ravaged world in which the impossibility of knowledge is established, in which everlasting nothingness seems the only reality”[35].  Reason and meaning may exist in the larger world, but they either do not exist as a unity, or they do not exist as a unity within human perception, which, for Camus and the other existentialists who also take the subjective human viewpoint as the most important, amounts to much the same thing – “The world itself, whose single meaning I do not understand, is but a vast irrational” [36].  Note that in this latter quote it is not the failure of the world to provide a unitary meaning that matters, but rather the failure of the human subject to perceive that unity.

            Between these two disjointed elements of human existence lies the experience of what Camus calls ‘the absurd’.  The absurd exists only in and because of the disjunction of these two elements: humanity’s desire for unity of meaning, and its frustration in not finding it.  If either of these two elements is removed, the absurd is also removed: “to destroy one of its terms is to destroy the whole” [37].

            It is interesting that Camus uses the term ‘absurd’ to describe this condition, since it implies an element of ridicule.  In his account human beings are absurd beings and as such are faintly ridiculous.  Camus’ portrayal has them as ludicrous beings, striving constantly for a goal that is unattainable, except through self-deception.  In this sense, all of humanity are fools, desiring that which is unattainable and experiencing throughout the absurdity of their own existence.  The fool of this account is made a fool by the very quality of their existence, the very irrationality that lies at the base of their existence.  What characterises this fool is not their madness or their simplicity, rather they are characterised by their irrationality.  I stated earlier that the wisdom of the fool lies in their relationship with the irrational.  In the case of Camus, wisdom exists in recognising the irrationality of the surrounding world and not denying it.  The natural and mad fools perceive the world as lacking meaning.  But is this enough in Camus’ account to constitute wisdom?

            At this point, let me draw the parallel between this account and the account Foucault gives of certain types of madness.  Foucault claims that madness can involve seeing the world as void and then denying that void by constructing a false reality.  This, Foucault proposes, is one possible cause for and strategy of madness.  Yet, this is also much like what Camus would call defeating the absurd by denying one of its premises.  Since the absurd involves both the experience of lack of unity and meaning and the human desire for such unity, this account of madness seems to be a reaction to an experience of the absurd.  This type of madness, which is a sort of escapism through the construction of a false reality, denies the experience of the absurd through its creation of false reality, thus negating the absurd.  This kind of madness, if such it is, might be very prevalent.

            Yet this strategy does not sit well with Camus.  While this strategy, and others like it (Camus gives the example of religion as a strategy that denies the absurd through the false acceptance of a unified reality) may successfully help solve the problem of the absurd, there are no rational reasons for this leap from the absurd to a unified, yet unproven system of belief, apart from the desire to solve the problem of absurdity.  As a strategy, though, it does solve, or at least dodge, the problem of the absurd.

            The natural fool also manages to avoid the problem of the absurd.   The natural may do so by not feeling the need for a unity of meaning that other, more complicated people, experience.  This latter claim is somewhat debateable, especially given Jacques Lacan’s account of an infant’s reactions to perceiving itself in a mirror.  Lacan claims that infants take great enjoyment from seeing themselves in mirrors because the image they see is unified, complete and a natural part of the environment around it.  However, the infants personal perception of themselves is as a fragmented being.  The infant’s perceptions go from “a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic”[38].  So, even for infants as young as “six months old”[39] there exists a craving for completeness, a completeness that extends from the child to the world around it.  Hence, the natural fool may well perceive a need for unity, a need they can not satisfy.

            Nevertheless, there is an observation that the natural is closer to attaining unity of meaning than others.  That unity may be seen as a closeness with the natural world, a closeness impossible for the more rational person to achieve.  By achieving closeness to their environment, perhaps the natural fool has succeeded in attaining the unity of meaning that eludes the more rational person.  Even if this is so, it still does not answer the problem of the absurd sufficiently for Camus.  It must still be dealt with by the rest of us in a manner which, he hopes, maintains the experience of the absurd: “the only condition of my inquiry is to preserve the very thing that crushes me”[40].  Camus does not give explicit reasons for this demand.

            Later in the book there emerges other reasons for absurdity to be maintained, although it remains to be answered whether they exist only as side effects of continuing the futile struggle, or whether they are the major reasons for prolonging the struggle.  Camus points out the experience of the condemned person who evinces an “unbelievable disinterestedness with regard to everything except the pure flame of life”[41]; this experience is very similar to that of the absurd person who takes the fact of their absurdity as the paramount fact of their lives.  To them, life is an absurd existence, absurd in its lack of meaning and absurd in its sheer futility.  However, what elevates it is its very struggle with the absurd.  Camus claims that through this struggle, this revolt, life achieves, perhaps not meaning, but quantity.  Every instant of existence stands out and becomes larger than it would otherwise have been, it stands out more.  It becomes a ‘great’ thing in that each instant is taken in revolt against the very universe.  The absurd hero is a Sisyphus, struggling against a fate he will never conquer, but taking the struggle as everything.  Perhaps he is also a Zarathustra, striding down from his mountain heights with the death of god hanging around him like a shroud, only to confront lives on the plains that are perhaps even more devoid of meaning than his own.

            The absurd hero is certainly a fool in more than one respect.  The most important, and that which relates to the types of fools I have dealt with heretofore, is the absurd hero’s relationship to irrationality.  The absurd hero bases his or her existence on an irrational choice.  The absurd hero is confronted, as are the natural and the mad fools, by a world that lacks meaning for them.  Seeing this lack they decide to live a life in revolt, engaged in action that is futile for the sole purpose of embracing and enhancing that futility.

            As Camus puts it, the absurd hero is one who revolts against the absurd through embracing the subject of absurdity: life.  Absurd heroes live life in the fullest so as to deny its futility.  They are a fool in that they take what is irrational, living a meaningless universe, and embrace it.  They embrace the one, most fundamentally irrational element of their existence.  By doing this they show that, like the natural and mad fools, there is wisdom in some elements of the irrational.  Through embracing the irrational they are able to live in spite of it, in revolt with the irrational through embracing it.

3.12          Conclusion

While both the natural fool and the mad fool help to illustrate the limits of reason and the ways in which wisdom can arise from irrationality, the wisdom of both of them is incompatible with reason.  In its purest forms, the wisdom of the mad or natural fool is just not accessible to one who is in possession of normal rationality and sanity.  Though I think there is wisdom, and even a very odd form of knowledge to be found in the irrational, I do not think these should be considered to the exclusion of the knowledge and wisdom that reason can generate.  The knowledge and wisdom that stems from reason has had a very long and well thought out history.  It would make no sense to deny this wisdom simply on the grounds that there can be wisdom in the irrational.

            The answer to the issue of making the wisdom of reason and the wisdom of folly compatible may lie in the artificial fool.  The artificial fool, I shall claim, partakes of both the irrational and the rational.  The artificial fool plainly values aspects of foolishness, but is also at heart a creature of reason.  Hence it makes sense to look towards the artificial fool to see if there is a way to reconcile the wisdom based on reason with the wisdom based on unreason and the irrational.  Hopefully the artificial fool will be able to instantiate some of the wisdom displayed in the natural and insane fools and perhaps even build upon it using the tools of reason.