Spirit Of Delirium. Foucault Crazy History Of Archeology

In ancient Greek, madness was studied preliminarily by human beings. Socrates divided it into madness of soul and madness of body. Madness is always the co-phenomenon of human civilization. There are few philosophical studies on madness in China but fruitful achievements in western science world. One of the most important fruits is Foucault's the history of madness of classical age. It's a big and complicated book with many views and scopes. Foucault developed his ideas with two clues: one is how the reasonable men expelled, imprisoned and exposed the mad men in alienation; one is how the reasonable men identified and sensed the mad men. The first is the main part in Foucault's study but the second is also indispensable. Only in the separated and paralleled relationship between how to treat the mad and how to identify the mad, madness can show all its meanings. Foucault found that the classical age identified the mad by three steps: unworkable in economy, unworkable in senses and then unworkable soul in delirium. Delirium is at the bottom of the classical identification of madness. This article will focus on Foucault's concept on delirium. Foucault said, Delirium is such a deep and dark power that connect reasonlessness, madness and mad beings into sole identification. Foucault developed his studies on delirium through three parts: first, differentiated messy senses and delirium soul; secondly, analyzed the structural features of the delirium; thirdly, analyzed how delirium affected the mad persons' living. Foucault said, "delirium is the base of madness, it is the enough and necessary condition of madness." This article will begin with the explanation of this important proposition and try to expose the inside relationship and integrity of the thoughts in this book. Madness is not born by nature but by civilization. To study the mad is to study the human beings. This article is trying to help human beings know themselves better by the efforts to explain the phenomenon of madness through the study on Foucault's concept of delirium.