Meanwhile, folk explanations of what today is often called mental illness were given in terms of the influence of spirits and demons, as well as the actions, lessons, warnings and spells of the gods. With the Greeks the Hippocratian tradition began, in which physicians tried to explain deviations from the average mental and bodily behaviour in natural terms, with the four humoral elements blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. In his seminal work Madness in Civilisation the American sociologist Andrew Scull examines the way madness has been both an ineradicable aspect of any ordered human society, a haunting image of fear and terror, as well as a fascinating realm that inspires and attracts artists and thinkers. But from Wittgenstein to Nietzsche, some of our greatest philosophers have experienced periods of madness and yet, their philosophy is just as vital in spite of, or possibly because of, this madness, writes Wouter Kusters. Of course, madness can be dangerous and damaging. Once upon a time the mad were thought to have access to divine truth, but now madness is just a symptom of unhealthy neurobiology and any realisations come to in altered states are ignored. The medicalisation of madness in our physicalist age has consequences.
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