ABSTRACT
The imaginative grip of modernist epistemology affects our seeing and being in the world in incalculable ways. Framing philosophical thought since Descartes, madness and delusion are emblematic of this influence, providing a foil for analyses of knowledge, belief, rationality and sound reasoning, and helping to demarcate philosophical skepticism. But the influence has been reciprocal and iterative. This role in the theory of knowledge has in turn affected conceptions of madness and disorder, framing the very categories by which we know them. The location of delusion at the center of severe mental disorder reflects a legacy, arguably traceable to Greek philosophical ideas, and certainly integral to modernist thought, whereby the very essence of humanity lies with our ability to reason. As this suggests, one of the most vital foci in Western thinking, at least in modern times, has been this nexus where delusion, madness and rationality meet.
