Queen Mary and Westfield College London University PhD Thesis ...

Lockean psychology and enlightened utilitarianism:
'I was resolved to guard myself against a Passion which makes such Havock in the Brain,
and produces so much Disorder in the Imagination. For this Reason, I have endeavoured
to keep down the secret Swellings of Resentment, and stifle the very first suggestions of self-
esteem; to establish my Mind in Tranquility, and over-value nothing in my own, or in another's
Possession'93.
Passion conceived as a cause of madness, and madness deployed as a warning against
the consequences of passion, belonged, of course, to a tradition much older than the classical
period. Here, Foucault's analysis of what was distinctive about the classical relation of passion
to madness is of particular value. Foucault astutely observed how passion was not just a cause
of madness, in the Age of Reason, but was a potentiality which exposed the fragility of the
entire natural and rational order 94 . By becoming delirium (via Lockean psychology), passion
converted madness into chaos. Defining man's place within the natural order, and the mental
faculties which distinguished him from brute creation, natural philosophy cilarified the lesson of
the madman for rational society, as the inversion of its equation, as human nature debased95.
Yet, while there is little disputing the importance of Foucault's thesis, that, in the classical age,
madness was 'shown' only 'on the other side of bars' and 'under the eyes of a reason that no
longer felt any relation to it and that would not compromise itself by too close a resemblance'96,
he overestimated the aloofness of the classical response to madness and denied the scope of
the experiential didactic of visiting the insane. In many respects, in point of fact, Augustans
experienced madness more often and at much closer proximity than had the r forbears. Prior to
the seventeenth century, madness was more frequently neglected, than experienced or empathised
with, in the parishes and by the governing elites of England. As Porter has recently argued,
Foucault exaggerated the proportion of the mental y ill in early modern England who were
incarcerated and exhibited 97. He 'barely mentions Locke, and underplays the influence of
Ibtd, 223-5.
Madneu, 88.
On the other hand, one must bear in mind, here, Mullan's argument concerning the smbiguity of passion',
and the heightening of this ambiguity, during the period, with 'the elevation of sensibility'. As Mullan maintains,
passion demanded vigilance' rather than 'suppression'. I-li. contention that injunctions 'Ibsolutely to suppress
passion' were 'rare in the medical texts of the eighteeth century', is, however, more accurMe for the latter, than
the earlier, part of the century. See John Mullan, SenE,meni and Sociab,lii. The LangiLage of Feehng in the
Etghteenth Ccntry (Oxford, Clarendon, 1988), 232-5.
96 Madness, 70
Porter, 'Foucault'. great confinement', in IJi.lorg of the Human Sciences, vol. 3, No 1, 47-54.
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