Foucault, Madness and Civilization, 85-116

Chapter 4 Concerning Passion and Delirium showcases the fundamental reasons for the behavior of the mad of the era and the people controlling them.  Foucault shows us that one way madness was characterized was through our minds inability to overcome our passions. They considered the excesses of eating and drinking, corporeal vices, to be the worst causes of all madness.  “The possibility of madness if therefore implicit in the very phenomenon of passions.”  (88) I found that meant that madness for men is linked to his weaknesses and self-perception, the leading causes of our passions.    Foucault then talks of the imagination, for which he explains to us that madness is beyond the imagination, he says that “madness is no more than a derangement of the imagination.” (93)  He also gives us his thoughts on delirium and shows that in the classical age there were two forms thru hallucination and language. Delirium is what Foucault says is the most accurate definition of madness in the classical age.