Two Registers of Madness in Enlightenment Britain. Part 2

Abstract

In Part 1 of this essay, I argued that in Augustan and Georgian England it was widely understood that madness could have two more-or-less distinct meanings. `Moral' madness was the subject's own fault, and he/she remained accountable for actions commissioned under its effects. The `morally' mad individual's thoughts and actions were understood to be self-directed; at base, in moral madness, delusional ideas arose in the mind, and by definition remained within the moral province of the individual. By contrast, in `real' madness, the sufferer was the passive recipient of body-based sickness. Correspondingly, he/she was understood to be innocent, but paid for this exculpation of moral accountability by surrendering full personhood. In Part 2, I shall examine various ways in which eighteenth-century Britons approached and assessed insanity's two meanings. I shall then remark on the late eighteenth-century attempt to develop a psychological (i.e., moral) rendering of insanity's characteristics and its treatment.