Rationality
Foucault emphasizes that the modern man communicates with the insane through
the reasonable limits set by society through the appropriate language of a specialist,
through the eyes of a doctor and its scientific training. On the other hand, stands the
alienated man who has broken his relationship with logic. The two conditions
coexist.
A common component between an insane and a sane person, is the confrontation of
unknown risks such as phobias. But the fear of death and fear of insanity dominate
the human thought. They are unknown factors that frighten us and make us more
introverted. Therefore, those two situations might be equated, but in that case, only
the madman has the additional fear of a stigma. Logic, is shrinking even more under
the pressure of the society.
Foucault wrote that «Rationality, lying in different spheres of life in modern
societies, tried to impose the ideal of Order and logical clarity that the philosophical
tradition had identified as Logos, in contrast to the confusion and passion. But it
hasn’t occurred only as science, but also as bureaucracy, as compulsion, as a violent
state, as a concentration camp. [...] "The« rational man » adopts the refusal as a way
of being: chooses disbelief, is exhausted in doubt, disdains any excess, condemns the
body and life because he is afraid of their consequences, criticizes the Reason which
he has invented and all these due to the fear of witnessing himself exceed what is
permitted”.
Our reasoning and mental health cannot be accredited through Rationality, because
a person who functions inside a certain belief system, needs to stand off it in order
to realize his own reasoning. If madness affects the whole belief system of a human
being, along with the rules that allow all the rational processes, how is it possible for
him to find a way out?
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