Our Society Is Not One

My Point Is Not That Everything Is Bad, But That Everything Is Dangerous, Which Is Not Exactly The Same As Bad.

In The Middle Ages And The Renaissance, Man's Dispute With Madness Was Dramatic Debate In Which He Confronted The Secret Powers Of The World; The Experience Of Madness Was Clouded By Images Of The Fall And The Will Of God, Of The Beast And The Metamorphosis, And Of All The Marvelous Secrets Of Knowledge

Modern Society Is Perverse, Not In Spite Of Its Puritanism Or As If From A Backlash Provoked By Its Hypocrisy; It Is In Actual Fact, And Directly, Perverse.

We Should Not Be Content To Say That Power Has A Need For Such-and-such A Discovery, Such-and-such A Form Of Knowledge, But We Should Add That The Exercise Of Power Itself Creates And Causes To Emerge New Objects Of Knowledge And Accumulates New Bodies Of Information. ... The Exercise Of Power Perpetually Creates Knowledge And, Conversely, Knowledge Constantly Induces Effects Of Power. ... It Is Not Possible For Power To Be Exercised Without Knowledge, It Is Impossible For Knowledge Not To Engender Power.

For Millenia, Man Remained What He Was For Aristotle: A Living Animal With The Additional Capacity For A Political Existence; Modern Man Is An Animal Whose Politics Places His Exitence As A Living Being In Question.