Angelos Evangelou

Post-Nietzschean Possibilities and Responsibilities

Evangelou underlines Nietzsche’s influence on madness studies in philosophy and analyses their post-structuralist bearings. Assuming a broadly Derridean perspective, Evangelou argues for the symbolic value of the philosophical gesture that autobiographical philosophy allows, a gesture which remains deeply embedded in a response to the ‘Nietzsche event’. When seen from this perspective, he argues, responding to Nietzsche implies a response to madness and describes this response in terms of lending an ear. Evangelou stresses the ethical and symbolic implications of this gesture (lending an ear to the ‘mad’) whose significance needs to be acknowledged despite the possibility that what one lends an ear to may be incomprehensible or completely silent. Evangelou also evaluates Nietzsche’s own understanding of the economy of hearing and understanding him.

Nietzsche’s Intuitive Movement in a Labyrinth of Contradictions and Masks

Evangelou situates Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo within the philosopher’s wider conceptual framework. Continuing from the previous chapter, Chap. 2 offers a valuable outline of Nietzsche’s key philosophical concepts which are essential for one’s grasp of his understanding of and attitude toward the relation between life and work, and toward madness. Evangelou focuses on Nietzsche’s evaluation of the conditions of sickness and health, the concepts of intuition, necessity, amor fati, becoming, his praise of contradiction and multiplicity, as well as his use of ‘masks’.

Nietzsche and Autobiographical Philosophy

Evangelou offers a close analysis of Nietzsche’s last work: Ecce Homo. He explains why he treats this text as Nietzsche’s paradigmatic work of autobiographical philosophy by pointing to the convergence of bios (life) and logos (work; philosophy) that the text embodies and reveals. Departing from this analysis, and drawing from the basic principles of autobiographical writing, Evangelou defines the genre of autobiographical philosophy. The latter is demarcated in comparison to related yet different genres or approaches such as ‘philosophical autobiography’, ‘philosophy of life’ and Stanley Cavell’s understanding of the relation between the philosophical and the autobiographical. Evangelou turns once more to Ecce Homo in order to illustrate the dynamic relation between Nietzsche’s life and work in conjunction with the gradual deterioration of his mental state.

Heterogeneity , Inner Experience and the ‘Ethics of Vulnerability’

Evangelou introduces and elucidates a number of Bataille’s key concepts such as homogeneity, heterogeneity and inner experience. In the context of Bataille’s conceptual framework, Evangelou argues, the importance of rendering one’s self vulnerable is apparent. Drawing from this, Evangelou formulates what he calls the ‘Ethics of Vulnerability’ and evaluates its crucial implications for his understanding of one’s (ethical) relation to madness as well as for the practice of autobiographical philosophy.

Bataille and Autobiographical Philosophy

Evangelou introduces Bataille and his ostensible kinship to Nietzsche. He argues that more than any other philosopher Bataille commits himself to autobiographical philosophy and reads his trilogy Summa Atheologica—consisting of Inner Experience, Guilty and On Nietzsche—as a second case study of autobiographical philosophy. Through his commitment to this specific philosophical practice, Bataille opens up to madness in the sense that he not only discusses madness philosophically but also takes upon himself the task of getting as close to madness as possible. Evangelou also illustrates and evaluates Bataille’s understanding of identity and subjectivity especially in relation to his own version of putting on ‘masks’, namely his use of pseudonyms.

Bataille and Madness

Evangelou focuses on Bataille’s acknowledgement of the importance of madness for philosophy despite its dismissal by Nietzsche and explores Bataille’s philosophizing about madness in relation to the concepts of inner experience and the extreme limit of the possible. He elucidates and evaluates Bataille’s proposition that one should open up to madness without plunging into it using one’s intuition, a gesture which Evangelou compares to ‘an exercise in acrobatics’. He argues that Bataille imitates the Nietzschean insertion of bios into the work, by creating a space which puts not only the text but also the philosopher at risk. Evangelou claims that this rendering of the (philosophical) subject vulnerable is Bataille’s idea of a response to the demand that Nietzsche’s going mad raises for us.

Derrida and Madness

Evangelou explores Derrida’s main criticism of Foucault’s project and his objection that Foucault—or anyone—could let madness speak for itself. He illustrates how the justification of Derrida’s objection relies on his key distinction between history and historicity, which is what enables him to argue that both madness and reason emerged (as distinct from each other) at the same time; this is an ahistorical emergence. Whatever madness is, then, it is not to be blindly attributed to an oppressive act of reason as Foucault claims. Apart from tracing Derrida’s attempt to prove the unsurpassability of reason, Evangelou explains Derrida’s insistence that the philosophical act is just a disturbance to reason and evaluates his praise of Foucault for his pathos.

Derrida and Autobiographical Philosophy

Evangelou evaluates the presence of the autobiographical in Derrida’s work and suggests that, following the lineage of Nietzsche and Bataille, Derrida fits into autobiographical philosophy as someone who inserts the bios into his work. With this gesture, Derrida, like Bataille, simulates the Nietzschean model and renders himself vulnerable. Evangelou also explains how madness becomes a philosophical paradigm which acquires significance in Derrida’s philosophy and which is at the core of the very conception of deconstruction. Drawing from Derrida’s theorization of architecture and specifically his analysis of the architectural design of Parc de la Vilette in Paris, Evangelou offers an analysis of Derrida’s treatment of madness through the architectural analogy and in relation to the concept of maintenance.

Foucault and Autobiographical Philosophy

Evangelou evaluates the absence of the autobiographical in Foucault’s philosophy. The philosopher who first positions madness within philosophical discourse in a systematic way in order to do it justice remains unconvinced about the usefulness of this rendition of vulnerability exercised within the philosophical discourse to any meaningful response to madness. This is because of his assumption that no philosophical language can do justice to madness in the way the latter deserves. Evangelou argues that while excluding the autos from the work may be seen as a radical eradication of the autos, in reality it secures the safety of the bio-philosophizing subject. Compared to the intensity and the pathos present in History of Madness, Foucault arguably remains a little too cocooned on the side of reason.

History of Madness : Is There Such a Thing as Madness?

Evangelou engages in a critical reading of Foucault’s History of Madness in which Foucault traces the historical shift in perceptions of madness from the Middle Ages through to the Classical Age and the twentieth century. Apart from presenting Foucault’s evaluation of Nietzsche (his work but especially his madness), Evangelou also attempts to expose a tension between Foucault’s argument that madness is, on the one hand, a sociocultural construction without any definite essence of its own, and, on the other hand, relative to the self-understanding of reason. Evangelou argues that there emerges in History of Madness the idea of ‘madness itself’, in the guise of a voice of madness, to which Foucault feels obliged to grant permission, and which undermines Foucault’s other, non-essentializing argument.