Justin Garson's Madness: A Philosophical Exploration offers a conception of madness that infuses hope to those whose lives are touched by it...By successfully marshalling the tools of philosophy, psychiatry, and history, Garson offers new conceptual resources for making sense of madness and loosens the grip of the madness-as-dysfunction model in contemporary psychiatry...Garson's analysis is rich, compelling, and even poetic.

Autorentext
Justin Garson is a professor of philosophy at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. His main interest is in exploring how biology can help us make progress on traditional problems of human nature. He has authored or co-authored dozens of scholarly articles on the philosophy of science, the history of neuroscience and medicine, and biodiversity conservation. He is the author of The Biological Mind: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge, 2015; second edition forthcoming), A Critical Overview of Biological Functions (Springer, 2016), and What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Klappentext

Since the time of Hippocrates, madness has typically been viewed through the lens of disease, dysfunction, and defect. In Madness, philosopher of science Justin Garson presents a radically different paradigm for conceiving of madness and the forms that it takes. In this paradigm, which he calls madness-as-strategy, madness is neither a disease nor a defect, but a designed feature, like the heart or lungs. The book will be essential reading for philosophers of medicine and psychiatry, historians and sociologists of medicine, and mental health service users, survivors, and activists, for its alternative and liberating vision of what it means to be mad.

Inhalt

• Introduction

• Part I: The Dual Teleology of Madness

• Chapter 1: Hippocrates and the Magicians

• Chapter 2: The Suffocation of The Mother

• Chapter 3: Madness as Misuse and Defect

• Chapter 4: An Infinitely Wise Contrivance

• Part II: Madness and The Sound Mind

• Chapter 5: A Temporary Surrogate of Reason

• Chapter 6: The Mountebanks of The Mind

• Chapter 7: The Miracle of Sanity

• Chapter 8: Delusion as Castle and Refuge

• Chapter 9: A Salutary Effort of Nature

• Chapter 10: The Biologization of Kant

• Part III: Madness and The Goal of Evolution

• Chapter 11: The Strategies of Wish-Fulfillment

• Chapter 12: Madness as Creativity and Conquest

• Chapter 13: From Retreat to Resistance

• Chapter 14: Confronting the Wounded Animal

• Chapter 15: The Darwinization Of Madness