Abstract
Based on a dialogue with Michel Foucault’, the article tackles the analytical and moral aspects of the problem of the “understandability” of madness. The analytical aspects involve the issue of whether madness is understandable or, at least, to what extent it may be rendered understandable to an external point of view. The moral aspects concern the normative attitudes that one may legitimately assume in face of “mad” experiences, discourses and practices, especially when they appear opaque, at least at first glance, to “normal” schemes of interpretation. The discussion is intercrossed with a critique - of a more general scope, but also applicable to Foucault - of the tendency within certain currents of philosophy, social science and psychology to neglect “Apollonian” modalities of madness on behalf of its “Dyonisian” forms, be they pathologized as “regressions” or celebrated as subversive of psychic devices of power.
Keywords:
Madness; Schizophrenia; Hermeneutics; Michel Foucault; Apollo and Dyonisus