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Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization and Jurgen Habermas’ “The Critique of Reason as an Unmasking of the Human Sciences: Michel Foucault” offer vastly different stances towards critical historiography. Foucault chooses to outline the history perception and treatment of insanity in European history. In doing so, his examination attempts to break down conventional ideas of structural causation. Habermas’ approach, in contrast, does not agree with the Foucauldian system of historiography. His debate thus challenges Foucault’s analysis by exposing his logical flaws. But even though the crux of this “Foucault/Habermas Debate” lies in the two thinkers’ fundamental disagreements over the proper approach to historical interpretation, both critics have serious flaws in their arguments.

Since Foucault does not accept the notion of universal knowledge, and in this case, the history of madness, he is not chiefly interested in how insanity is transformed. Rather, he is concerned in “investigating the politics” [1] behind this transformation, namely the cultural, economic, and political forces that are involved. “Power” is illustrated as the mechanism in shaping the perception of insanity. Foucault illustrates the emergence of the human sciences, particularly the field of medical psychiatry, as the instrument that interpreted the meaning of insanity, and the emergence of its experts ultimately determined what constituted “normality.”[2]

Hence, to Foucault, the history of insanity cannot be easily historicized. Hence, he is not interested in large causal chains, for in Madness and Civilization, he challenges the structural approach in plotting the development of madness. The chronology of insanity in Europe is examined in five stages[3]; in fact, there is no clear demarcation as to when each epoch begins or ends. Instead, Foucault demonstrates that the perception and treatment of madness in Europe was a development in which it was a complementary “reflection” of reason.[4] As reason and rationality became more pronounced during the era of the Enlightenment, insanity and ideas associated with “unreason” subsequently became more stigmatized. But Foucault is careful not to draw a linear causal relation; instead, he illustrates that psychiatry and the human sciences was a part of larger societal power relations. In short, to understand insanity, it is necessary to first observe how reason and human nature were built within a larger cultural context.

Prior to the era of Enlightenment, according to Foucault, the insane were relatively unconfined. It was common for the insane to be discarded at sea in “ships of fools.” Foucault goes as far as saying that madness had a “romantic identification,” vividly illustrated in seventeenth century literature.[5] Yet, “madness” changed during the classical age, and subsequently, it was condemned to be a source of idleness and poverty. The proliferation of medical workhouses in the seventeenth century onwards served to contain the “shame” rather than rehabilitate them.[6]

The romantic notion that madness once eventually gave way to a reviled association with “passion and delirium,” which were symptoms of irrationality. And when illness could not be easily categorized (such as hypochondria and hysteria) in this age of reason, theorists simply lumped them with madness. With the birth of modern psychiatry, the asylum was used to confine and “organize” the madman’s guilt and restore his or her morality; “regulatory reason” no longer subjugated only madness, but eventually the “social body of the entire population.”[7] Thus, in tracing the genealogy of madness, Foucault argues that to understand history (in this case, insanity), one must “renounce the convenience of terminal truths.”[8] Foucault illustrates that the physical symptoms of insanity did not radically change; rather, the social, political, and economic structure of society altered, and with it, the “interpretation” of insanity. And in Habermas’ words, Foucault attempts to looks at history as a “if into a kaleidoscope,” and explains that after looking at such bizarre shapes and accidental provenances in the end, “the only thing that lasts is power.”[9]

Despite a rather sympathetic summary of Foucault’s arguments, Jurgen Habermas nonetheless disputes the Foucauldian logic and method of analyzing discourse, especially the “critique of reason in the form of a historiography of the human sciences.”[10] Despite Foucault’s antiscientific approach, his own historiographical exploration of madness is inconsistent because it is both “erudite” and “positivistic.”[11] Another major inconsistency in Foucault’s argument is his relationship between discourses and practices. Because Foucault uses both an inductive “top down” approach as well as a deductive “up down” approach, and as a result of his refusal to resolve this discrepancy, Habermas questions whether his reasoning is a model of circular causality, interplay of structure and event, or that of base to superstructure.

Furthermore, even though Foucault attempts to “destroy” historiography by challenging conventional structuralism, arguing that cultural, economic, and political forces are the culprits that shape knowledge, Habermas argues that Foucault falls into his own trap, for his ideas and values are the very products of his environment. As Habermas points out, Foucault himself was influenced by politics, for his motives for taking up his theory of power were due to his disillusionment in Marxist orthodoxy. Habermas stresses that Foucault realizes this flaw, particularly in his analogy of the famous picture Las Meninas, where both subject (painter/historian) and object (models/events) are simultaneously representing and being represented. Hence, Habermas argues that Foucault recognizes the fact that his own historiography could also be subjective, and can never escape his own critique, his arguments fail to “leave behind modernity’s presentist consciousness of time.”[12]

In contrast to Foucault, Jurgen Habermas is more congenial to the notion of a universally valid truth. He disagrees with Foucault’s reliance on power relations as the rational for disputing global historiography. While Foucault is highly suspicious of the historian, particularly his or her arbitrary interpretations and oversimplification of documents, Habermas contends that studying history nonetheless requires an obligation to studying the “truth” of historical facts despite the risk they be tainted with preconceptions. Moreover, if one ignores the past, then history itself would be rendered meaningless, or in Habermas’ words, “Why fight?”

Of the two critics, Foucault’s reasoning is less persuasive. Because of his vagueness in language and concepts, it is a simpler task to challenge his argument. In particular, his knowledge of economics and gender relations is highly suspicious. Foucault reasons that…

Yet, Habermas’ critique is not without its blemishes. As Rajchman points out, Habermas assumes that Foucault’s flaw lies in his inability to provide a response to his own paradoxical situation. Yet, Habermas must to first demonstrate that Foucault is actually responding to the question Habermas is posing in order to justifiably contend that Foucault “didn’t answer it.”[13] It could very well be the case that Foucault’s main intention is challenge his audience to break out of the traditional mode of structural thinking rather than actually concerning himself as to whether he is entrapped in his own reasoning or not. If this is the case, then Habermas’ critique is substantially weakened.

Hence, to examine and understand both critics’ arguments, it is essential to also recognize their flaws. Both offer vastly different positions in critical historiography. While Foucault wants to break down the structural approach – to divorce the historian from his documents – Habermas prefers to maintain trust in a universal code of truth and the reliance on the historian’s analysis of facts. While both have legitimate points in their contentions, we must be aware that both are equally liable to their own flaws of reasoning. But to better understand knowledge and its relationship to modernity, it is important to recognize yet scrutinize both sides of the argument. Hence, instead of asking, “Why fight,” it would be more prudent to inquire, “Why not fight?”

[1] “Introduction.” Foucault contra Habermas p. 9.

[3] Middle Ages (Pre-madness and madness), Renaissance, Classical, and the Nineteenth century (the beginning of modern psychiatry).

[5] Foucault, 28. (In Shakespearean plays such as “MacBeth,” “Hamlet,” “King Lear,” as well works by

Cervantes).