My Body, This Paper, This Fire

My Body, This Paper, This Fire
by Michel Foucault

On pages 56-59 of Histoire de lafolie [Madness and Civilization] I
said that dreams and madness have neither the same status nor the
same role in the development of Cartesian doubt: dreams allow me to
doubt this place where I am, this sheet of paper I see, this hand I hold
out; but madness is not an instrument or stage of doubt; for "/ who am
thinking cannot be mad." Madness is therefore excluded, contrary to
the skeptical tradition, which made it one of the reasons for doubting.
To sum up Derrida's objection to this thesis, it is no doubt best to
quote the passage where he gives most energetically his reading of
Descartes.
Descartes has just said that all knowledge of sensory origin could deceive
him. He pretends to put to himself the astonished objection of the
imaginary nonphilosopher who is frightened by such audacity and
says: no, not all sensory knowledge, for then you would be mad and it
would be unreasonable to follow the example of madmen, to put forward
a madman's discourse. Descartes echoes this objection: since I am
here, writing, and you understand me, I am not mad, nor are you, and
we are all sane here. The example of madness is therefore not indicative
of the fragility of the sensory idea. So be it. Descartes acquiesces to
this natural point of view, or rather he pretends to be sitting back in this
*This essay appears as an appendix in the 1972 edition of Histoire de fa folie (PariS:
PIon) but is not included in the English translation (Madness and Civilization). It is a
response to Jacques Derrida's critique of the Histoire in "Cogito and the History of
Madness" (see footnote a). This translation, by Geoff Bennington, has been slightly
amended.
39 4
natural comfort the better, the more radically and the more definitively
to spring out of it and unsettle his interlocutor. So be it, he says, you
think that I would be extravagant to doubt that I am sitting near the fire,
etc., that I would be extravagant to follow the example of madmen. I
will therefore propose a hypothesis which will seem much more natural
to you, will not disorient you, because it concerns a more common,
and more universal experience than that of madness: the experience of
sleep and dreams. Descartes then elaborates the hypothesis that will
ruin all the sensOly foundations of knowledge and will lay bare only the
intellectual foundations of certainty. This hypothesis above all will not
run from the possibility of extravagances- epistemological ones - much
more serious than madness.
The reference to dreams does not, therefore, fall short of a madness
potentially respected or even excluded by Descartes: quite the contrary.
It constitutes, in the methodical order which here is ours, the hyperbolical
exasperation of the hypothesis of madness. This latter affected only
certain areas of sensory perception, and in a contingent and partial way.
Moreover, Descartes is concerned here not with determining the concept
of madness but with utilizing the popular notion of extravagance
for juridical and methodological ends, in order to ask questions of principle
regarding only the truth of ideas. ([Derrida's footnote] Madness,
theme or index: what is significant is that Descartes, at bottom, never
speaks of madness itself in this text. Madness is not his theme. He treats
it as the index of a question of principle, and epistemological value. It
will be said, perhaps, that this is the sign of a profound exclusion. But
this silence on madness itself simultaneously signifies the opposite of
an exclusion, since it is not a question of madness in this text, not even
to exclude it It is not in the Meditations that Descartes speaks of inadness
itself.) What must be grasped here is that from this point of view
the sleeper, or the dreamer, is madder than the madman. Or, at least,
the dreamer, insofar as concerns the problem of knowledge which interests
D escartes here, is further from true perception than the madman.
It is in the case of sleep, and not in that of extravagance, that the
absolute totality of ideas of sensory origin becomes suspect, is stripped
of 'objective value' as M. Gueroult puts it. The hypothesis of extravagance
is therefore not a good example, a revelatory example, a good
instrument of doubt- and for at least two reasons. (a) It does not cover
the totality ofthe field of sensory perception. The madman is not always
wrong about everything; he is not wrong often enough, is never mad
enough. (b) It is not a useful or happy example pedagogically, because it
meets the resistance of the non-philosopher who does not have the auMy
Body, This Paper, This Fire 39 5
dacity to follow the philosopher when the latter agrees that h e might
indeed be mad at the very moment when he speaks,a
Derrida's augmentation is remarkable for its depth and perhaps even
more so for its frankness. The stakes of the debate are clearly indicated:
Could there be anything anterior or exterior to philosophical
discourse? Can its condition reside in an exclusion, a refusal, a risk
avoided, and, why not, a fear? Derrida rejects this suspicion passionately.
"Pudenda origo," as Nietzsche said, about the religious and their
religion.
Let us confront Derrida's analyses and Descartes's texts.
l . T H E P R I V I L E G E S O F D R E A M S O V E R M A D N E S S
Derrida: "Dreaming is a more common, and more universal experience
than that of madness." "The madman is not always wrong about everything."
"Madness affects only certain areas of sensory perception, and
in a contingent and partial way."
Now, Descartes does not say that dreaming is "more common and
more universal than madness." Nor does he say that madmen are
only mad from time to time and on particular points. Let us listen
instead to his evocation of people who "insist constantly that they are
kings." Is the madness of these men who think they are kings, or have
a body made of glass, more intermittent than dreams?
Yet it is a fact that in the progression of his d oubt, Descartes privileges
dreaming over madness. Let us leave undecided for the moment
the problem of whether madness is excluded, merely neglected, or
taken up in a broader and more radical testing.
Scarcely has Descartes cited the example of madness only to abandon
it, than he evokes the case of dreams: "However, I must here take
into account the fact that I am a man, and consequently have the habit
of sleeping, and imagining in my dreams the same or sometimes
more unlikely things than these deranged people do when awake."
So dreams have a double advantage. On the one hand, they are
capable of giving rise to extravagances that equal or sometimes exceed
those of madness. On the other hand, they have the property of
happening habitually. The first advantage is of a logical and demonstrative
order: everything that madness (the example I have just left to
one side) could make me doubt can also be rendered uncertain by

dreams. In their power to make uncertain, dreams are not outdone by
madness; and none of the demonstrative force of madness is lost by
dreams when I need to convince myself of all that I must call into
doubt. The other advantage of dreams is of a quite different order:
they are frequent, they happen often; my memories of them are recent,
it is not difficult to have access to these vivid memories which
they leave. In short, this is a practical advantage when it is no longer a
question of demonstrating, but of performing an exercise, and calling
up a memory, a thought, a state, in the very movement of meditation.
The extravagance of dreams guarantees their demonstrative character
as an example: their frequency ensures their accessibility as an
exercise. And it is indeed this quality of accessibility which preoccupies
Descartes here, certainly more so than the demonstrative quality,
which he mentions once and for all, as if to make sure that the hypothesis
of madness can be abandoned without regret. On the other
hand, the theme that dreams happen very often returns several times.
"I am a man, and consequently I am in the habit of sleeping," "how
many times has it happened that I have dreamed at night," "what
happens in sleep," "thinking about it carefully I remember having
often been mistaken while asleep."
I am afraid that Derrida has confused these two aspects of dreaming.
It is as if he had covered them both with one word that joins them
together by force: "universal." If they could be described as "universal,"
dreams would happen to everyone and about everything.
Dreams would indicate that everything could be doubted by everyone.
But this forces the words; it goes far beyond what Descartes's text
says; or, rather, it falls far short of the peculiarities of that text; it
effaces the clear distinction between the extravagance of dreams and
their frequency; it erases the specific role of these two characteristics
(demonstration and exercise) in Descartes's discourse; it omits the
greater importance accorded to habit than to extravagance.
But why is it important that dreams should be familiar and accessible?
2 . M Y E X P E R I E N C E O F D R E A M S
Derrida: "The reference to dreams constitutes, in the methodical order
which here is ours, the hyperbolical exasperation of the hypothesis of
madness."

Before re-reading the paragraph on dreams,1 let us keep in mind w ha t
has just been said: "But just a moment-these are madmen, a n d I
should be no less extravagant if I were to follow their examples."
The discourse then runs as follows: a resolution on the part of the
meditating subject to take into consideration that he is a man, that he
does sometimes sleep and dream; the appearance of a memory, or
rather of a multitude of memories, of dreams that coincide exactly,
point by point, with today's perception (sitting here, fully dressed, beside
the fire); and yet, a feeling that there is a difference between this
perception and that memory, a difference not only noted but brought
about by the subject in the very movement of his meditation (I look at
this paper; I shake my head, I reach out my hand to make the difference
between waking and sleeping stand out sharply); but then come
further memories, at a second level (the sharpness of this impression
has often formed part of my dreams); with these memories, the vivid
feeling that I am awake disappears; it is replaced by the clear vision
that there is no certain index that can separate sleep and waking; an
observation that provokes in the meditating subject an astonishment
such that the lack of differentiation between waking and sleeping provokes
the near certainty of being asleep.
It is clear that making sleep and waking into a theme for reflection
is not the only consequence of the resolution to think about dreaming.
In the very movement that proposes it and makes it vary, this theme
takes if.fect in the meditating subject in the form of memories, sharp
impressions, voluntary gestures, felt differences, more memories,
clear vision, astonishment, and a lack of differentiation very close to
the feeling of being asleep. To think of dreams is not to think of something
external, whose causes and effects I could know, nor is it to
evoke no more than a strange phantasmagoria, or the movements of
the brain which can provoke it; thinking about dreams, when one
applies oneself to it, is such that its effect is that of blurring the perceived
limits of sleeping and waking for the meditating subject at the
very heart of his meditation. The subject who thinks of dreaming is
thereby disturbed. Applying one's mind to dreams is not an indifferent
task: perhaps it is indeed in the first place a self-suggested theme; but
it quickly turns out to be a risk to which one is exposed. A risk, for the
subject, of being modified; a risk of no longer being at all sure of being
awake; a risk of stupor, as the Latin text says.
And it is here that the example of dreaming shows another of its

privileges: dreams may well modify the meditating subject to this extent,
but they do not prevent him, in the very heart of this stupor, from
continuing to meditate, to meditate validly, to see clearly a certain
number of things or principles, in spite of the lack of distinction, however
deep, between waking and sleeping. Even though I am no longer
sure of being awake, I remain sure of what my meditation allows me
to see: this is just what is shown by the following passage, which
begins, precisely, with a sort of hyperbolic resolution, "let us suppose,
then, that we are asleep," or as the Latin text says more forcefully,
"Age somniemus." Thinking about dreams had led me to uncertainty;
uncertainty, through the astonishment it provoked, led me to the
near-certainty of being asleep; this near-certainty is now made by my
resolutions into a systematic pretense. The meditating subject is put
to sleep by way of artifice: "Age somniemus," and on this basis the
meditation will be able to develop anew.
We can now see all the possibilities furnished by the dream's property
of being, not universal, certainly, but modestly habitual.
I. It is a possible, immediately accessible experience, the model for
which is put forward by countless memories.
2. This possible experience is not only a theme for meditation: it is
really and actually produced in meditation, according to the following
series: thinking of the dream, remembering the dream, trying to separate
the dream from waking, no longer knowing whether one is
dreaming or not, acting voluntarily as though one were dreaming.
3. By means of this meditative exercise, thinking about dreaming
takes effect in the subject himself: it modifies the subject by striking
him with stupor.
4. But in modifying him, in making of him a subject uncertain of
being awake, thinking about dreams does not disqualify him as meditating
subject: even though transformed into a "subject supposedly
asleep," the meditating subject can safely pursue the progression of
his doubt.
But we must go back and compare this experience of dreams with
the example of madness which immediately precedes it.
3 . T H E ' G O O D ' A N D T H E ' B A D ' E X A M P L E
Derrida: "What must b e grasped here is that from this point of view the
sleeper, or the dreamer, is madder than the madman."
 399
For Derrida, madness is not excluded by Descartes: it is simply neglected.
Neglected in favor of a better and more radical example. The
example of dreams extends, completes and generalizes what the example
of madness indicated so inadequately. To pass from madness to
dreams is to pass from a "bad" to a "good" instrument of doubt.
Now I believe that the opposition between dreams and madness is
of a quite different type. We must compare Descartes's two paragraphs
step by step, and follow the system of their opposition in detail.
I. The nature of the meditative exercise. This appears clearly in the
vocabulary used. In the madness paragraph, a vocabulary of comparison.
If I wish to deny that "these hands and this body are mine," I
must "compare myself to certain deranged people" (comparare) but I
would be extravagant indeed "if I followed their examples" (si quod
ab iis exemplum ad me tran�errem: if I applied to myself some example
coming from them). The madman: an external term to which I
compare myself.
In the dream-paragraph, a vocabulary of memory. "I am in the
habit of imagining in my dreams"; "how many times has it happened
that I . . ."; "thinking carefully about it, I remember." The dreamer:
that which I remember having been; from the depths of my memory
rises the dreamer that I was myself, that I will be again.
2. The themes of the meditative exercise. They appear in the examples
that the meditating subject proposed by himself .
. Examples of madness: thinking one is a king when one is poor;
imagining one's body is made of glass or that one is a jug. Madness is
the entirely other; it deforms and transports; it gives rise to another
scene.
Examples of dreams: being seated (as I am at this moment); feeling
the heat of the fire (as I feel it today); reaching out my hand (as I
decide, at this moment, to do). The dream does not shift the scene; it
doubles the demonstratives that point to the scene where I am (this
hand? Perhaps a different hand, in image. This fire? Perhaps a different
fire, a dream). Dream-imagination pins itself onto present perception
at every point.
5. The central test of the exercise. This consists in the search for
difference; can I take these proposed themes into account in my meditation?
Can I seriously wonder whether my body is made of glass, or
whether I am naked in my bed? If I can, then I am obliged to doubt
400
even my own body. On the other hand, my body is saved if my meditation
remains quite distinct from madness and dreams.
Distinctfrom dreams? I put it to the test: I remember dreaming that
I was nodding my head. I will therefore nod my head again, here and
now. Is there a difference? Yes -a certain clarity, a certain distinctness.
But, and this is the second stage of the test, can this clarity and distinctness
be found in the dream? Yes, I have a clear memory that it
was so. Therefore what I supposed was the criterion of difference
(clarity and distinctness) belongs indifferently to both dreams and
waking perception; so it cannot make the difference between them.
Distinct from madness? The test is immediately carried out. Or,
rather, looking more closely, the test does not take place as it does in
the case of dreams. There is, in fact, no question of trying to take
myself to be a madman who takes himself to be a king; nor is there
any question of wondering if I am a king (or a captain from Tours)
who takes himself to be a philosopher shut up in a room to meditate.
What is different with madness does not have to be tested, it is established.
Scarcely are the themes of extravagance evoked than the distinction
bursts out like a shout: "sed amentes sunt isti."
4. The dJect of the exercise. This appears in the sentences, or rather
in the decision-sentences, which end both passages.
Madness-paragraph: "But j ust a moment-these are madmen"
(third person plural, they, the others, istE) ; "I should be no less extravagant
if I followed their example": it would be madness (note the
conditional) even to try the test, to wish to imitate all these delights,
and to play the fool with fools, as fools do. Imitating madmen will not
persuade me that I am mad (as thinking of dreams will in a moment
convince me that I am perhaps asleep); it is the very project of imitating
them that is extravagant. The extravagance applies to the very
idea of putting it to the test, and that is why the test fails to take place
and is replaced by a mere registering of difference.
Dream-paragraph: the sentence " these are madmen" corresponds
to "/ am quite astonished" (obstupescere: the stupor of indistinctness
responds to the shout of difference); and the sentence "I should be no
less extravagant if . . ." is answered by "my astonishment (stupor) is
such that it is almost capable of convincing me that I am asleep." The
test that has been effectively tried has "taken" so well that here I am
(note the present indicative) in uncertainty as to whether I am awake.
And it is in this uncertainty that I decide to continue my meditation.
 40 1
I I w o u ld b e mad to want to act the madman (and I abandon the
I c I ( 'n ) ; hut lo think about dreaming is already to have the impression
of h( ' i n g asleep (and that is what I shall meditate on).
I I i s extraordinarily difficult to remain deaf to the way these two
pn rngraphs echo one another. Difficult not to be struck by the comp
l( ' x system of oppositions which underlies them. Difficult not to recogn
ize in them two parallel but different exercises: that of the demens,
< l n d that of the dormiens. Difficult not to hear the words and sentences
con front each other on both sides of the "however," the importance of
w h ich Derrida so deeply underlined, though I think he was wrong not
(0 a nalyze its function in the play of the discourse. Difficult indeed, to
say simply that among the reasons for doubt, madness is an insufficient
and pedagogically clumsy example, because the dreamer is in
any case much madder than the madman.
The whole discursive analysis shows that the establishment of
Ilonmadness (and the rejection of the test) is not continuous with the
(est of sleep (and the observation that one is perhaps asleep).
But why this rejection of the test of the demens? From the fact that it
does not take place, can one draw the conclusion that it is excluded?
After all, Descartes speaks so little, and so briefly, about madness
4 . T H E D I S Q U A L I FI C A T I O N O F T H E S U B J E C T
Derrida: "What is significant is that Descartes, at bottom, never speaks
of madness in this text . . . it is not a question of madness in this text,
not even to exclude it."
On several occasions Derrida wisely points out that in order to understand
Descartes's text properly it is necessary to refer to the original
Latin version. He recalls - and he is quite right-the words used by
Descartes in the famous sentence: "But just a moment: these are madmen
(sed amentes sunt istt), and I should be no less extravagant (demens)
if I were to follow their examples." Unfortunately, he takes the
analysis no further than this simple reminder of the words.
Let us return to the passage itself: "How could I deny that these
hands and this body are mine, except by comparing myself to certain
deranged people . . . ?" (The term used here is insant). Now what
are these insani who take themselves to be kings or jugs? They are
amentes; and I should be no less demens if I were to apply their examples
to myself. Why these three terms, or rather why use firstly the

term insanus, then the couple amens-demens? When it is a matter of
characterizing them by the implausibility of their imagination, the
madmen are called insani: a word that belongs as much to current
vocabulary as to medical terminology. As far as the signs of it are
concerned, to be insanus is to take oneself to be what one is not, to
believe in fancies, to be the victim of illusions. As for its causes, it
comes from having the brain gorged with vapor. But when Descartes
wants no longer to characterize madness but to affirm that I ought not
to follow the example of madmen, he uses the term demens and
amens: terms that are in the first place juridical, before being medical,
which designate a whole category of people incapable of certain religious,
civil, and judicial acts. The dementes do not have total possession
of their rights when it comes to speaking, promising, pledging,
signing, starting a legal action, etc. Insanus is a characterizing term;
amens and demens are disqualifying ones. In the former, it is a question
of signs; in the others, of capacity.
The two sentences: In order to doubt my body, I must "compare
myself to certain deranged people," and "but just a moment-these
are madmen," are not the proof of an impatient and annoyed tautology.
It is in no way a matter of saying, "one must be mad or act like
madmen," but, "these are madmen and I am not mad." It would be a
singular flattening of the text to sum it up as Derrida does: "since I am
here . . . I am not mad, nor are you, we are all sane here." The development
ofthe text is quite different: to doubt one's body is to be like
those with deranged minds, the sick, the insani. Can I follow their
example and at least feign madness for my own part, and make me
uncertain in my own mind whether I am mad or not? I cannot and
must not. For these insani are amentes; and I would be just as demens
as they, and juridically disqualified if I followed . . .
Derrida has obscurely sensed this juridical connotation of the
word. He returns to it several times, insistently and hesitantly. Descartes,
he says, "treats madness as an index of a question of principle
and epistemological value." Or again: "Descartes is concerned here
not with determining the concept of madness but with utilizing the
popular notion of extravagance for juridical and methodological ends,
in order to ask questions of principle regarding only the truth of
ideas." Yes, Derrida is right to emphasize that it is a question of right
at this point. Yes, he is right again to say that Descartes did not want to
"determine the concept of madness" (and who ever made out that he

did?). But he is wrong not to have seen that Descartes's text plays on
the gap between two types of determinations of madness (medical on
the one hand and juridical on the other). Above all, he is wrong to say
hastily that the question of right posed here concerns "the truth of
ideas," when in fact, as is clearly stated, it concerns the qualification
of the subject.
The problem can, then, be posed thus. Can I doubt my own body,
can I doubt my actuality? The example of madmen, of the insani invites
me to do so. But comparing myself to them and acting like them
implies that I, too, will become demented, incapable and disqualified
in my enterprise of meditation: I should be no less demens if I followed
their examples. But if, on the other hand, I take the example of
dreaming, if I pretend to dream, then dormiens though I am, I will be
able to continue meditating, reasoning, seeing clearly. Demens I shall
be unable to continue: at the hypothesis alone I am obliged to stop,
envisage something else, see if another example allows me to doubt
my body. Dormiens, I can continue with my meditation; I remain
qualified to think, and I therefore make my resolution: "Age somniemus,"
which leads to a new stage of meditation.
It would have to be a very distant reading which could assert that
"it's not a question of madness in this text."
Alright, you say. Let us admit, in spite of Derrida, that it is necessary
to pay such great attention to the text, and to all its little differences.
For all that, have you demonstrated that madness is well and
truly excluded from the progress of doubt? Does not Descartes refer to
it again with reference to the imagination? Will it not be a question of
madness when he discovers the extravagance of painters, and all the
fantastic illusions they invent?
5 . T H E E X T R A VA G A N C E O F P A I N T E R S
Derrida: "What [Descartes] seemed previously to exclude . . . as extravagance,
he here admits as a possibility in dreams . . . Now, within
these representations, these images, these ideas in the Cartesian sense,
everything may be fictitious and false, as in the representations of those
painters whose imaginations, as Descartes expressly says, "are extravagant
enough to invent something so new that its like has never been
seen before."
It will indeed be a question of madness several more times in the rest
of Descartes's work. And its disqualifying role for the meditating subAesthetics,
Method, and Epistemology
ject will in no way prevent meditation from bearing on it, for it is not
for the content of these extravagances that madness is put out of play;
that only happens for the subject who wants "to play the fool" and
meditate at the same time, when in fact it is a matter of knowing if the
subject can take madness in hand, imitate it, feign it, and risk no
longer being sure whether or not he is rational. I think I have made
this point: madness is excluded by the subject who doubts as a means
of qualifying himself as doubting subject. But it is not excluded as an
object of reflection and knowledge. Is it not characteristic that the
madness talked of by Descartes in the paragraph studied above is
defined in medical terms, as the result of a "brain deranged or gorged
with the black vapors of bile"?
But Derrida could insist and stress the fact that madness is found
again in the movement of doubt, mixed up with the imagination of
painters. It is manifestly present as is indicated by the word "extravagant"
used to describe the imagination of painters: "If it is possible
that their imagination is extravagant enough to invent something so
new that we have never seen anything like it . . . certainly at the
very least the paints [couleurs] with which they compose it must be
real." Derrida has realized perfectly what is odd about the expression:
"their imagination is extravagant enough." So well has he realized it
that he underlines it in his quotation as the peg on which to hang his
whole demonstration. And I subscribe wholly to the necessity of isolating
these words and keeping them well to one side.
But for a different reason- simply because they do not appear in
Descartes's text They are an addition by the translator. The Latin text
says only: "siforte aliquid excogitent ad eo novum ut nihil . . ."; "if
perhaps they invent something so new." It is curious that in support of
his thesis Derrida should have spontaneously chosen, retained and
underlined what precisely is only found in the French translation of
the Meditations; curious, too, that he should insist, and assert that the
word "extravagant" has been "expressly" used by Descartes.
It does not appear, then, that the example of dreaming is for Descartes
only a generalization or radicalization ofthe case of madness. It
is not as a feeble, inferior, "unrevealing," "ineffectual" example that
madness is distinguished from dreaming; and it is not for its lesser
value that, once evoked, it is as if left to one side. The example of
madness stands against that of dreaming; they are confronted the one

with the other and opposed according to a whole system of differences
which are clearly articulated in Descartes's discourse.
And I am afraid that Derrida's analysis neglects many of these differences.
Literal differences between words (compararelreminiscere;
exemplum transJerreito persuade; conditional/indicative). Thematic
differences between images (being beside the fire, holding out one's
hand and opening one's eyes/taking oneself to be a king, being covered
in gold, having a body made of glass); textual differences in the
disposition and opposition of paragraphs (the first plays on the distinction
between insanus and demens, and on the juridical implication
of demens by insanus; the second plays on the distinction "remembering
being asleep/being persuaded that one is asleep," and on the real
passage from the one to the other in a mind that applies itself to such a
memory). But, above all, differences at the level of what happens in"
the meditation, at the level of the events that follow one another; acts
carried out by the meditating subject (comparison/reminiscence); f{{­
Jects produced in the meditating subject (sudden and immediate perception
of a difference/astonishment- stupor- experience of a lack of
distinction); the qualification of the meditating subject (invalidated if
he were demens; validated even if he were donniens).
It is clear that this last set of differences controls all the others; it
refers less to the signifying organization of the text than to the series
of events (acts, effects, qualifications) which the discursive practice of
meditation carries with it: it is a question of the modifications of the
subject by the very exercise of discourse. And I have the feeling that if
a reader as remarkably assiduous as Derrida has missed so many
literary, thematic or textual differences, then this is through having
misunderstood those differences which are the principle of these others;
namely, the "discursive differences."
�
We must keep in mind the very title of "meditations." Any discourse,
whatever it be, is constituted by a set of utterances which are produced
each in its place and time, as so many discursive events. If it is
a question of a pure demonstration, these utterances can be read as a
series of events linked one to another according to a certain number
offormal rules; as for the subject of the discourse, he is not implicated
in the demonstration - he remains, in relation to it, fixed, invariable
and as if neutralized. On the other hand, a "meditation" produces, as
so many discursive events, new utterances that carry with them a
4 0 6
series of modifications of the enunciating subject: through what is
said in meditation, the subject passes from darkness to light, from
impurity to purity, from the constraint of passions to detachment,
from uncertainty and disordered movements to the serenity of wisdom,
and so on. In meditation, the subject is ceaselessly altered by his
own movement; his discourse provokes effects within which he is
caught; it exposes him to risks, makes him pass through trials or
temptations, produces states in him, and confers on him a status or
qualification he did not hold at the initial moment. In short, meditation
implies a mobile subject modifiable through the effect of the discursive
events that take place. From this one, one can see what a
demonstrative meditation would be: a set of discursive events which
constitute at once groups of utterances linked one to another by formal
rules of deduction, and series of modifications of the enunciating
subject which follow continuously one from another. More precisely,
in a demonstrative meditation the utterances, which are formally
linked, modify the subject as they develop, liberating him from his
convictions or on the contrary inducing systematic doubts, provoking
illuminations or resolutions, freeing him from his attachments or immediate
certainties, including new states. But, inversely, the decisions,
fluctuations, displacements, primary or acquired qualifications
of the subject make sets of new utterances possible, which are in their
turn deduced regularly one from another.
The Meditations require this double reading: a set of propositions
forming a system, which each reader must follow through ifhe wishes
to feel their truth, and a set of modifications forming an exercise,
which each reader must effect, by which each reader must be affected,
if he in turn wants to be the subject enunciating this truth on
his own behalf. And if there are indeed certain passages of the Meditations
which can be deciphered exhaustively as a systematic stringing
together of propositions - moments of pure deduction -there exist on
the other hand sorts of "chiasmas," where the two forms of discourse
intersect, and where the exercise modifying the subject orders the
succession of propositions, or controls the junction of distinct demonstrative
groups. It seems that the passage on madness and dreaming is
indeed of this order.
Let us take it up again now as a whole and as an intersection of the
demonstrative and ascetic schemas.

1 . The immediately preceding passage presents itself as a practical
syllogism. . . /" -� I ought to be wary of somethmg that has deceIved me once )
My senses, through which I have received the truest and---Surest
things I possess, have deceived me, and more than once
I ought therefore no longer to trust them.
Clearly, it is here a question of a deducive fragment whose import
is completely general: all that I have taken to be the most true falls
under the sway of doubt, along with the senses which furnished it. A
fortiori, there can therefore remain nothing that does not become at
least as doubtful. Need I generalize any further? Derrida's hypothesis,
that the (ineffectual) example of madness, and the (effectual) example
of dreaming are summoned to operate this generalization, and to
carry the syllogism of doubt farther forward, can thus not be retained.
But then by what are they summoned?
2. They are summoned less by an objection or restriction than by a
resistance: there are perceptible things that "one cannot rationally
doubt." It is the word "plane' that the translator renders by "rationally."
What then is this "impossibility," given that we have just established
a completely binding syllogism? What, then, is this obstacle
that opposes our doubting "entirely" "wholly," "completely" (rationally?)
given that we've just performed a rationally unassailable piece
of reasoning? It is the impossibility of this subject's really effecting
such a generalized doubt in the exercise which modifies him; it is the
impossibility of constituting oneself as universally doubting subject.
What is still a problem, after a syllogism of such general import, is the
taking-up of the advice of prudence into effective doubt, the transformation
of the subject "knowing he must doubt everything" into a subject
"applying his resolution-to-doubt to everything." We see why the
translator has rendered "plane' as "rationally": by wanting to carry
through this qualification "rational" that I brought into play at the
very beginning of the meditations (and in at least three forms: having
a sufficiently mature mind, being free of cares and passions, being
assured of a peaceful retreat). If I am to resolve myselfto doubt everything
thoroughly, must I first disqualifY myself as rational? If I want to
maintain my qualification as rational, must I give up carrying out this
doubt, or at least carrying it out in general terms?
The importance of the words "being able to doubt completely" consists
in the fact that they mark the point of intersection of the two

discursive forms-that of the system and that of the exercise: at the
level of ascetic discursivity, one cannot yet doubt rationally. It is thus
this level that will control the following development, and what is
involved in it is not the extent of doubtful things but the status of the
doubting subject, the qualificative elaboration that allows him to be at
once "all-doubting" yet rational.
But what, then, is the obstacle, the resistance point of the exercise
of doubt?
3. My body, and the immediate perception I have of it? More exactly
an area defined as "the vivid and the near" (in opposition to all
those "distant" and "weak" things which I can place in doubt without
difficulty): I am here, wearing a dressing gown, sitting beside the
fire -in short, the whole system of actuality which characterizes this
moment of my meditation. It is of the first importance that Descartes
here involves not the certainty that one may have in general of one's
own body but, rather, everything that, at this precise instant of meditation,
resists injact the carrying-out of doubt by the subject who is
cUlrentlymeditating. Clearly, it is not certain things that in themselves
(by their nature, their universality, their intelligibility) resist doubt
but, rather, that which characterizes the actuality of the meditating
subject (the place of his meditation, the gesture he is in the process of
making, the sensations that strike him). If he really doubted all this
system of actuality, would he still be rational? Would he not precisely
be renouncing all these guarantees of rational meditation which he
gave himself in choosing, as has just been said, the moment of the
undertaking (quite late in life, but not too late: the moment that must
not be allowed to slip past has come), its conditions (peace and quiet,
with no cares to form distractions), its place (a peaceful retreat). If I
must begin doubting the place where I am, the attention I am paying
to this piece of paper, and this heat from the fire which marks my
present moment, how could I remain convinced of the rational character
of my undertaking? In placing this actuality in doubt, am I not at
the same time going to render impossible all rational meditation and
remove all value from my resolution to discover the truth at last?
It is in order to reply to this question that two examples are called
on, side by side, both of which force one to call into doubt the subject's
system of actuality.
4. First example: madness. Madmen indeed are completely d eluded
as to what constitutes their actuality: they believe they a re

dressed when they are naked, kings when they are poor. But can I
take up this example on my own account? Is it through this that I shall
be able to transform into an effective resolution the proposition that
we must doubt everything which comes to us from dreams? Impossible:
"isti sunt dementes," that is, they are juridically disqualified as
rational subjects, and to qualify myself among them, following them
("transfer their example to me") would disqualify me in my turn, and
I should not be able to be a rational subject of meditation ("I should be
no less extravagant" . . . ) If one uses the example of madness to
move from systems to askesis, from the proposition to the resolution, it
is quite possible to constitute oneself as a subject having to call everything
into doubt, but it is impossible to remain qualified as a subject
conducting rationally his meditation through doubt to an eventual
truth. The resistance of actuality to the exercise of doubt is reduced by
too strong an example: it carries away with it the possibility of meditating
validly; the two qualifications "doubting subject" and "meditating
subject" are not in this case simultaneously possible.
That madness is posited as disqualificatory in any search for truth,
that it is not "rational" to call it up to carry out necessary doubt, that
one cannot feign it even for a moment, that this impossibility is immediately
obvious in the assignation of the term demens: this is indeed
the decisive point at which Descartes parts company with all those for
whom madness can be in one way or another the bringer or revealer
of truth.
5. Second test: dreaming. Madness has therefore been excluded,
not as an insufficient example but as an excessive and impossible test.
Dreaming is now invoked: because it renders the actuality of the subject
no less doubtful than does madness (one thinks one is sitting at
table and one is naked in one's bed); and because it offers a certain
number of differences with respect to madness -it forms part of the
virtualities of the subject (I am a man), of his frequently actualized
virtualities (I often sleep and dream), of his memories (I clearly remember
having dreamed), and of his memories, which can return as
the most vivid of impressions (to the point where I can compare my
present impression validly with my memory of my dream). From
these properties of dreaming, it is possible for the subject to conduct
the exercise of a calling into doubt of his own actuality. First stage
(which defines the test): I remember having dreamed what I now
perceive as my actuality. Second stage (which for a moment appears

to invalidate the test): the gesture I make in the very instant of my
meditation to find out if I am asleep indeed appears to have the clarity
and distinction of waking perception. Third stage (which validates the
test) : I remember not only the images of my dream, but also their
clarity, as great as that of my current impressions. Fourth stage
(which concludes the test) : at one and the same time I see manifestly
that there is no certain mark for distinguishing dream from reality;
and I am so surprised that I am no longer sure whether at this precise
moment I am asleep or not. These two sides of the successful test
(uncertain stupor and manifest vision) indeed constitute the subject
as if.{ectively doubting his own actuality, and as validly continuing a
meditation that puts to one side everything that is not manifest truth.
The two qualifications (doubting everything that arrives through the
senses and meditating validly) are really effected. The syllogism had
required that they be simultaneously in play; the subject's consciousness
of his actuality had formed an obstacle to the accomplishment of
this requirement. The attempt to use the example of madmen as a
base had confirmed this incompatibility; the effort made to actualize
the vividness of dreams showed, on the one hand, that this incompatibility
is not insurmountable. And the meditating subject becomes
doubting subject at the end of opposing tests: one that has constituted
the subject as rational (as opposed to the disqualified madman), and
one that also constituted the subject as doubting (in the lack of distinction
between dreaming and waking).
Once this qualification of the subject has finally been achieved
("Age somniemus" ), systematic discursivity will once again be able to
intersect with the discourse of the exercise, take the upper hand, place
intelligible truths under examination, until a new ascetic stage constitutes
the meditating subject as threatened with universal error by the
"great trickster." But even at that stage of the meditation, the qualification
as "nonmad" (like the qualification as "potential dreamer") will
remain valid.
It seems to me that Derrida has vividly and deeply sensed that this
passage on madness has a singular place in the development of the
Meditations. And he transcribes his feeling into his text, at the very
moment at which he attempts to master it.
I. In order to explain that the question of madness should appear at
this precise point of the Meditations, Derrida invents an alternation of
 4 1 1
voices that would displace, reject, and drive out of the text itself the
difficult exclamation: "but just a moment- these are madmen."
Derrida did indeed find himself faced with a knotty problem. If, as
he supposes, it is true that this whole movement of the first meditation
operates a generalization of doubt, why does it pause, if only for a
moment, over madness or even over dreaming? Why take pains to
demonstrate that vivid and recent sensations are no less doubtful than
the palest and most distant ones, once it has been established, in general
tenns, that what comes via the senses must not be trusted? Why
make this swerve toward the particular point of my body, this paper, ·
this fire? Why make a detour toward the singular trickeries of madness
and dreaming?
Derrida gives to this deviation the status of a break. He imagines a
foreign intervention, the scruple or reticence of a straggler worried by
the movement overtaking him and fighting a last-minute rearguard
action. Descartes has scarcely said that we must not trust the senses
when a voice would be raised, the voice of a peasant foreign to all
philosophical urbanity; he would, in his simple way, try to broach, or
at least to limit the thinker's resolution: "I'm quite happy for you to
doubt certain of your perceptions, but . . . that you are sitting here,
by the fire, saying these things, holding that paper in your hands and
other things of the same nature."z You'd have to be mad to doubt
them, or rather, only madmen can make mistakes about such certain
things. And I'm certainly not mad. It is at this point that Descartes
would take over again and say to this obstinate yokel: I'm quite prepared
to admit that you're not mad, since you're unwilling to be so;
but remember that you dream every night, and that your nightly
dreams are no less mad than this madness you refuse. And the naive
reticence of the objector who cannot doubt his body because he does
not want to be mad wou�d be conquered by the example of dreaming,
so much "more natural," "more common," "more universal."
Derrida's hypothesis is a seductive one. It resolves with the utmost
nicety his problem, which is to show that the philosopher goes directly
to the calling into question of the "totality of beingness" [la
totalite de l'etantite], that this is precisely the form and philosophical
mark of his procedure; if he happens to stop for a moment at a "beingness"
as singular as madness, this can only be if some innocent tugs at
his sleeves and questions him; by himself he would never have lingered
among these stories of jugs and naked kings. In this way the
41 2
rejection of madness, the abrupt exclamation "but just a momentthese
are madmen" is itself rejected by Derrida and three times enclosed
outside philosophical discourse: first, since it is another subject
speaking (not the philosopher of the Meditations but the objector raising
his scarcely refined voice); second, because he speaks from a
place which is that of nonphilosophical naIvete; and, finally, because
the philosopher takes over again and by quoting the "stronger," more
"telling" example of dreaming disarms the objection and makes the
very man who refuses madness accept something far worse.
" But it is now clear what price Derrida has to pay for his skillful
hypothesis. The omission of a certain number of literal elements
(which appear as soon as one takes the trouble to compare the Latin
text with the French translation); the elision of textual differences (the
whole play of semantic and grammatical opposition between the
dream paragraph and that on madness): finally, and above all, the
erasure of the essential discursive determination (the double web of
exercise and demonstration). Curiously, by imagining that other naive
objecting voice behind Descartes's writing, Derrida has fudged all
the text's differences; or, rather, in erasing all these differences, in
bringing the test of madness and that of dreaming as close together as
possible, in making the one the first faint failed draft of the other, in
absorbing the insufficiency of the one in the universality of the other,
Derrida is continuing the Cartesian exclusion. For Descartes, the
meditating subject had to exclude madness by qualifying himself as
not mad. And this exclusion is, in its turn, no doubt too dangerous for
Derrida: no longer for the disqualification with which it threatens the
philosophizing subject but for the qualification with which it would
mark philosophical discourse; it would indeed determine it as "other"
than the discourse of madness; it would establish between them a
relationship of exteriority; it would send philosophical discourse
across to the "other side," into the pure presumption of not being mad.
Separation, exteriority, a determination from which the philosopher's
discourse must indeed be saved if it is to be a "project for exceeding
every finite and determinate totality." This Cartesian exclusion must
then be excluded because it is determining. And Derrida is obliged to
proceed to three operations to do this, as we can see: first, he affirms,
against all the visible economy of the text, that the power of doubt
specific to madness is a fortiori included in dreaming; second, he
imagines (to account for the fact that there is any question of madness

in spite of everything) that it is someone else who excludes madness,
OIl his own account and following the oblique line of an objection;
finally, he removes all philosophical status from this exclusion by
denouncing its naive rusticity. Reverse the Cartesian exclusion and
make it an inclusion; exclude the excluder by giving his discourse the
status of an objection; exclude the exclusion by rejecting it into
prephilosophical naIvete: Derrida has needed to do no less than this
to get through Descartes's text and reduce the question of madness to
nothing. We can see the result: the elision of the text's differences and
the compensatory invention of a difference of voices lead Descartes's
exclusion to a second level; philosophical discourse is finally excluded
from excluding madness.
2. But madness does not allow itself to be reduced in this way. Even
supposing that Descartes was "not speaking" of madness, at the point
in his text where it is a question of insani and dementes, supposing
that he gave way for a moment to a yokel in order to raise such a
crude question, could it not be said that he proceeds, albeit in an
insidious and silent manner, to exclude madness?
Could it not be said that Descartes has de facto and constantly
avoided the question of madness?
Derrida replies to this objection in advance: Yes indeed, Descartes
fully faces up to the risk of madness; not as you pretend in a prefatorial
and almost marginal way with reference to some business about
jugs and naked kings, but at the very heart of his philosophical enterprise,
at the precise moment where his discourse, separating itself
from all natural considerations on the errors of the senses or the engorgements
of the brain, takes on its radical dimension in hyperbolic
doubt and the hypothesis of the evil genius. That is where madness is
called into question and faced up to; with the evil genius I indeed
suppose that I am even more radically mistaken than those who think
they have a body made of glass - even go so far as persuading myself
that two and three do not perhaps add up to five; then with the cogito I
reach that extreme point, that excess with respect to any determination
which allows me to say, whether mistaken or not, whether mad
or not, I am. The evil genius would indeed be the point at which
philosophy itself, in the excess proper to it, risks madness; and the
cogito would be the moment at which madness is erased (not because
of an exclusion but because its determination when faced with reason
would stop being pertinent). According to Derrida, then, we should

not attach too much importance to this little farce of the peasant who
interrupts at the beginning ofthe text with his village idiots: in spite of
all their motley, they do not manage to pose the question of madness.
On the other hand, all the threats of Unreason would be at play beneath
the far more disturbing and gloomy figure of the evil genius.
Similarly, the taking up by dreams of the worst extravagances of madmen
at the beginning of the text would be an easy victory; on the other
hand, after the great panic of the evil genius, we should need no less
than the point of the cogito (and its excess with respect to the "totality
of beingness") to make the determinations of madness and dreams
appear to be nonradical. The great solemn theater of the universal
trickster and of the "I think" would repeat the still natural fable of the
madman and the sleeper, but this time in philosophical radicality.
To hold such an interpretation, Derrida had to deny that it was a
question of madness at the point where madness was named (and in
specific, carefully differentiated terms); now he has to demonstrate
that there is a question of madness at the point where it is not named.
Derrida puts this demonstration into operation through two series of
semantic derivations. It is enough to quote them:
Evil genius: "total madness," "total panic," "disorder of the body" and
"subversion of pure thought," "extravagance," "panic that I cannot master."
Cogito: "mad audacity," "mad project," "project which recognizes
madness as its freedom," "disorder and inordinate nature of hyperbole,"
"unheard-of and singular excess," "excess tending toward Zero
and Infinity," "hyperbolic point which ought to be, like all pure madness
in general, silent."
All these derivations around Descartes's text are necessary for the evil
genius and the cogito to become, as Derrida wishes, the true scene of
confrontation with madness. But more is needed: he has to erase from
Descartes's texts themselves everything showing that the episode of
the evil genius is a voluntary, controled exercise, mastered and carried
out from start to finish by a meditating subject who never lets
himself be surprised. If it is true that the hypothesis of the malign
genius carries the suspicion of error far beyond those illusions of the
senses exemplified by certain madmen, then he who forms this fiction
(and by the very fact that he forms it voluntarily and as an exercise)
escapes the risk of "receiving them into his belief," as is the case and

misfortune of madmen. He is tricked, but not convinced. Perhaps everything
is illusion, but no credulity attaches to it. No doubt the evil
genius tricks far more than does an engorged brain; he can give rise
to all the illusory decors of madness, but he is something quite different
from madness. It could even be said that he is the contrary of
madness: since in madness I believe that an illusory purple covers my
nudity and my poverty, while the hypothesis of the evil genius permits
me not to believe that my body and hands exist. As to the extent of the
trap, it is true that the evil genius is not outdone by madness; but, in
the position of the subject with respect to the trap, there is a rigorous
opposition between evil genius and madness. If the evil genius takes
on the powers of madness, this is only after the exercise of meditation
has excluded the risk of being mad.
Let us reread Descartes's text. "I shall think that the sky, the air, the
earth, colors, figures, sounds, and all other external things are nothing
but illusions and daydreams" (whereas the madman thinks that
his illusions and daydreams are really the sky, the air and all external
things). "I shall consider myself as having no hands, no eyes . . . but
believing falsely that 1 have all these things" (whereas the madman
believes falsely that his body is made of glass, but does not consider
himself as believing it falsely). "I shall take great care not to receive
any falsity into my belief' (whereas the madman receives all falsities).
It is clear: faced with the cunning trickster, the meditating subject
behaves not like a madman in a panic at universal error but as a no
less cunning adversary, always alert, constantly rational, and remaining
in the position of master with respect to his fiction: 1 shall prepare
my mind so well for all the ruses of this great trickster that however
powerful and cunning he may be, he will be unable to catch me out.
How far we are from Derrida's pretty variations on themes: "total
madness, total panic which I am unable to master, since it is inflicted
by hypothesis and I am no longer responsible/or it. " How is it possible
to imagine that the meditating subject should no longer be responsible
for what he himself calls "this painful and laborious design"?
Perhaps we should ask how it is that an author as meticulous as Derrida,
and as attentive to texts, could have been guilty of so many omissions
but could also operate so many displacements, transpositions,
and substitutions? But perhaps we should ask this to the extent that in

his reading Derrida is doing no more than revive an old tradition. He
is, moreover, aware of this; and this conformity seems, justifiably, to
comfort him. He shies in any case from thinking that the classical
interpreters have missed through lack of attention the singularity of
the passage on madness and dreaming.
On one fact at least I am in agreement: it is not as an effect of their
lack of attention that, before Derrida and in like manner, the classical
interpreters erased this passage from Descartes. It is by system. A
system of which Derrida is the most decisive modern representative,
in its final glory: the reduction of discursive practices to textual traces;
the elision of the events produced therein and the retention only of
marks for a reading; the invention of voices behind texts to avoid
having to analyze the modes of implication of the subject in discourses;
the assigning of the originary as said and unsaid in the text to
avoid placing discursive practices in the field of transformations
where they are carried out.
I will not say that it is a metaphysics, metaphysics itself or its closure
which is hiding in this "textualization" of discursive practices. I'll
go much farther than that: I shall say that what can be seen here so
visibly is a historically well determined little pedagogy. A pedagogy
that teaches the pupil there is nothing outside the text, but that in it, in
its gaps, its blanks and its silences, there reigns the reserve of the
origin; that it is therefore unnecessary to search elsewhere, but that
here, not in the words, certainly, but in the words under erasure, in
their grid, the "sense of being" is said. A pedagogy that gives conversely
to the master's voice the limitless sovereignty that allows it to
restate the text indefinitely.
Father Bourdin supposed that, according to Descartes, it was impossible
to doubt things that were certain, even if one were asleep or
mad. With respect to a well-founded certainty, the fact of dreaming or
of raving would not be pertinent. Descartes replies very explicitly to
this interpretation: "I do not remember having said anything of the
sort, nor even having dreamed it while asleep." Indeed - nothing can
be clearly or distinctly conceived of which is not true (and at this
level, the problem of knowing whether or not the conceiver is dreaming
or raving does not need to be asked). But, Descartes adds immediately,
who then can distinguish "what is clearly conceived and what
only seems and appears to be so"? Who, then, as thinking and meditating
subject, can know whether he knows clearly or not? Who, then,

is capable of not deluding himself as to his own certainty and of not
being caught out by it? Except precisely those who are not mad?
Those who are "wise." And Descartes retorts, with Father Bourdin in
his sights: "But as only the wise can distinguish what is clearly conceived
from what only seems and appears to be so, I am not surprised
that this fellow can't tell the difference between them."
N OT E S
a Translations of the passages quoted from Derrida are taken, with some modifications, from the
version by Alan Bass in Writing and Difef rence (London: Routledge, 1978). The translation of the
French words "extravagance" and "extravagant" poses some problems: Bass habitually, but not
exclusively, uses "insanity" and "insane," and it is true that the French words carry an overtone
of madness absent from most uses of the English cognate forms. However, in the discussion of
the "extravagance" of painters, the translation "insanity" is clearly excessive, and Bass resorts
to the English "extravagance." I have preferred to use this form throughout in the interests of
consistency and clarity and have modified Bass's version of Derrida accordingly. - Ed.
I use this term paragraph out of amusement, convenience, and fidelity to Derrida. Derrida says
in a picturesque and jocular manner: "Descartes starts a new paragraph" [va a la ligne). We
know this is quite mistaken.
2 I am quoting Derrida. In Descartes's text, these things it is so difficult to doubt are characterized
not by their "nature," but by their proximity and their vividness - by their relation to the meditating
subject.