There occurred a brief and heated debate between Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida concerning the nature of madness and error in Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. The gloss of the debate turned upon whether the Cogito (“I think, therefore I am.”) constitutes itself on the exclusion of madness, as Foucault claims, or whether as Derrida claims the method goes as far as to radicalize the case of madness in the form of universal doubt. The debate was as intensely personal as it was subtle and profound.
In the debate Foucault claimed that, apropos to the historical scene in the seventeenth century, Descartes must exclude madness, passing it over for the device of the evil deceiver. To Foucault this exclusion was the symbolic equivalent of the first wide scale internment of the mad at this very same point in history. Derrida claimed against this that a text such as the “Meditations” has no outside, no place to intern madness, no absolute meaning or referent, and certainly no clue to the profound center of Descartes’ thought. Madness, Derrida said, was passed over like the other errors because it was not radical enough.
To cast the debate in categorical terms, Foucault’s position implies a categorical difference between madness and error in Descartes; madness is not a type of error, or a multitude of errors. Delusions are not just really big mistakes, and hallucinations are not just perceptual errors, they are something of another order. Errors still belong to the order of the rational and the reasonable, while madness is another thing altogether, without reason and, for Descartes, without any philosophical weight or merit. Derrida’s position implies that the difference between madness and error is only one of degree and not type. Madness, he claims, is discussed seriously alongside other examples of error, thus madness only differs in degree, in its extravagance.
Here I will introduce what I contend are two parallel cases, if not historical antecedents of madness and error. Blasphemy and heresy, and treason and dissent are two diametric categories that turn on the same specific difference as madness and error. The first thing to notice in considering these sets of categories is that the difference is most certainly one of degree. Blasphemy and treason are always a more serious crime, incurring a more severe punishment. The difference is also one of type, as each is held to a different standard of legal evidence. The Roman Catholic Church has long taught that heresy is a sin against the Church and blasphemy a sin against God. The heretic proffers misinterpretations and non-canonical doctrines, while the blasphemer strikes against God and defiles his name. The heretic is merely in error, but you’d have to be mad to blaspheme.
There are, however, heresies that are so bad, so evil, that they amount to blasphemy. Deleuze and Guattari: “There are heresies that are more than heresies and profess pure treason.” One only has to consider the cases of communist dissidents who were convicted of treason during the Red Scare, or the heretical Knights Templar who were convicted of blasphemy during the Inquisition.
History tells us how the Church has attempted to persuade the heretic to accept canon and pledge allegiance to the Holy See, or how the state persuades dissidents to moderate their views and tow the party line. Yet no one persuades the mad that their hallucinations and delusions are not real, or tries to bring a traitor back into the fold, or gives the blasphemer anything but the harshest of punishments, even if he recants.
Error, heresy and dissent raise question involving opinions, interpretations and matters of contention. They are entirely relative matters, conditioned and mediated. Madness, blasphemy and treason involve an all out betrayal of a given authority, a turning away from or even against reason, God or state. Something in them is considered inimical or evil. Thus it is possible to say that in madness, blasphemy and treason we have crossed a limit which is absolute, while error, dissent and heresy are merely relative.
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant draws a distinction between simple negation and the negation of infinite judgment. As Zizek puts it, it is one thing to say that something is not human; it is entirely another to say that something is inhuman. While error represents simple negation, madness implies the negation of infinite judgment. Were Descartes to instrumentalize madness in the method of doubt, he would be forced to posit not only a cosmic illusion and the simple negation of perception, but a cosmic delusion invoking the infinite judgment.
If as Kant says the infinite judgment is epistemologically more fruitful, why does Descartes remain with the simple negation of illusion? Taking cosmic delusion as a starting point creates a difficult epistemic problem beyond what it tells us affirmatively. Being absolute,cosmic delusion cannot be countermanded by a priori logic alone. Here we are in Eastern territory, where the illusion is produced by the mind, and the delusion must be unraveled by a practice.
Illusion for Descartes is not manufactured by the mind; a situation which would threaten the Cogito, for there would be no clear and distinct ideas of a self or I to think. It may even be that the self does not exist and its thoughts are delusions. The Cartesian subject must have his Cogito, and the madman botches even that, saying “I am King; it is so every time I think, speak or utter it.”
The device of the deceiver can galvanize the role of the a priori in pure reason by distributing thought and perception along two entirely different lines as a function of its absolute. These lines follow the cleavage between mind and matter, a cleavage which is identical to the contour between thought and perception, and can lead one to an absolute God. Madness has quite the opposite effect; persisting in non-being along both lines and widening the tear between mind and matter, its’ absolute ensures epistemic failure by synthesizing reason and perception in a single series of the false or illusory. Thus with the two possibilities of believing reality to be an illusion (methodical doubt) and believing one’s illusion to be a reality (madness) we have a different instrumentalization of the absolute (deceiver or madman) and a different epistemic operation, resulting in incompatible results.
Descartes follows the predictably Christian line on reality, the diabolical and the illusory. Embracing the acetic ideal, he turns away from the things of the world like a good Christian, detaching himself from the things of worldly existence on the supposition that it may be a diabolical creation. When Derrida says that madness is radicalized in the form of the evil deceiver, he means to emphasize that the illusion suffered under the deceiver’s diabolical influence is universal. Descartes invents a diabolical traitor who renders our perception of the external world false but cannot threaten the Cogito. Thanks to the meditations we discover that the origin of the world is divine and not diabolical. No devil will haunt our days, and the master of illusion is defeated. The devil is, after all, the original traitor, the perennial blasphemer and the consummate madman.
The Journal of Magnus Opium 