Hegel's Theory of Madness: (SUNY series in Hegelian Studies)

This book shows how an understanding of the nature and role of insanity in Hegel's writing provides intriguing new points of access to many of the central themes of his larger philosophic project. Berthold-Bond situates Hegel's theory of madness within the history of psychiatric practice during the great reform period at the turn of the eighteenth century, and shows how Hegel developed a middle path between the stridently opposed camps of "empirical" and "romantic" medicine, and of "somatic" and "psychical" practitioners. A key point of the book is to show that Hegel does not conceive of madness and health as strictly opposing states, but as kindred phenomena sharing many of the same underlying mental structures and strategies, so that the ontologies of insanity and rationality involve a mutually illuminating, mirroring relation. Hegel's theory is tested against the critiques of the institution of psychiatry and the very concept of madness by such influential twentieth-century authors as Michel Foucault and Thomas Szasz, and defended as offering a genuinely reconciling position in the contemporary debate between the "social labeling" and "medical" models of mental illness.

Table of Contents:
Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Note on the Zusatze to Hegel's Lectures Chapter One. Introduction Chapter Two. Hegel's Place in Early Nineteenth Century Views of Madness Hegel's Middle Path The Turning Point Contesting Factions Romantic and Empirical Medicine The Somatic and Psychic Schools Hegel's Speculative Philosophy of Medicine Hegel's Anthropology of Madness: The Reversion of the Mind to Nature Regression, Displacement, Dream Hegel and the Romantics Hegel, the Somatic/Psychic Controversy, and Animal Magnetism Chapter Three. Madness as the Decentering of Reason The Anatomy of Madness Withdrawal, Separation, and Decentering Feeling and Language Nature, Dream, and the Unconscious Madness and the Developed Consciousness Desire Despair Are We All Mad? Madness in Relation to Stoicism, Skepticism, and the Unhappy Consciousness The Intimacy of Madness: Christiane, Holderlin, and the Limits of an Ontology of Madness Madness and Hegel's Idealism The Quest for Unity in the Midst of Discord Idealism, Madness, and History Chapter Four. Madness and the Second Face of Desire The Two Faces of Desire 'I am I,' Narcissism, and the Death Instinct Consciousness and Self-Consciousness The Lure of a Primordial Unity The Death Instinct and the Work of Destruction The Role of Destruction in Despair and Madness The Other Face of Desire: the Power of Evolution The Fall Eden: Nature, Innocence, and Evil The Serpent and the Curse Forgetfulness Labor Chapter Five. Madness and the Unconscious Placing Hegel in Dialogue with Nietzsche and Freud The Definition of Madness: Regression, Separation, Nostalgia Hegel and Freud Features of the Unconscious Health and Illness Enter Nietzsche Illness and 'The Great Health' The Critique of Metaphysical Constructions of Reality Madness, Dreams, and Sublimation Dreams and Art Art, Sublimation, and Repression The Status of Privacy and Community The Double Center of Madness Chapter Six. Madness, Action, and Intentionality The Idea of Un-Intentionality The Anatomy of Unintentionality The Circle of Action Hegel's Critique of Anti-Consequentialism The Recoil of Action and Alienation Intentionality and Language The Unintentional and the Unconscious Madness and Unintentionality Chapter Seven. Madness and Tragedy On the Borderline: The Between-Space of Madness and 'Normalcy' The Ontology of Disunion The Broken World Madness and The Tragic Collision of Opposites Madness, Tragedy, and Despair Submersion, Darkness, and the Infernal Powers of Nature The Return to Origins, a Place Prior to Time Physis and Nomos Ajax and Antigone Issues of Patriarchy Myth and History Inversion, Ambiguity, and Guilt The Inverted World The Law of the Heart and Tragic Inversion The Unconscious Evil and Guilt Ontology and Anguish: The Logic and Horror of Evil Darkened Mirrors Chapter Eight. Madness and Society: Coming to Terms with Hegel's Silence The Absent Stage Setting Foucault and Szasz: The Social-Political 'Invention' of Madness Some Differences and Similarities The Semantics of Madness The Politics of Semantic Transformation Habeas Corpus: You Should Have the Body Decoding Hegel's Silence The Context of the "Anthropology" of Madness The Life of the Soul as Pre-History From Anthropology to Phenomenology: From Origins to History Hegel's Ontology of Madness as an 'Abbreviation'? Satisfying the Writ of Habeas Corpus: We Have the Body Therapeutics: Coercion or Liberation? Hegel's Pinelian Heritage: 'Moral Treatment' and the Imperative of Labor The Missing Link: Poverty, Destitution, Social Marginalization A Revolutionary Therapeutics? Extending Hegel's 'Middle Path': Reconciling the Social Constitution of Madness with Ontology Notes Bibliography Author Index Subject Index

About the Author :
Daniel Berthold-Bond is Professor of Philosophy at Bard College. He is the author of Hegel's Grand Synthesis: A Study of Being, Thought, and History, also published by SUNY Press.

Review :
"This book provides us with a very intelligent understanding of Hegel's view of madness, especially in its comparative strengths relative to more influential views such as Freud's. The author also helpfully relates Hegel to some very current debates about the precise status of insanity." - William Desmond, Loyola College"