Per una genealogia della follia, tra sapere medico e potere politico : un percorso a partire da Michel Foucault

The technological and postmodern reality in which we live is a disciplinary society that removes whatever is labelled as madness, which is considered not only a pathology, but also a moral sin that must be redeemed. The biopolitical power and the medical knowledge take relevant decisions on patients lives, by drawing inspiration from a thought that sustains the superiority of the rationality over the irrationality or the madness. This sharp division is found out not only in the modern age, but it can be spotted also in the philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. However, throughout the history of thought, there is no shortage of counter-trends in the ways of conceiving the madness, traceable, for instance, in the Archaic period, but especially in some key contributions, essential for understanding the themes of the body and the disease, offered by authors such as Nietzsche and Foucault.