{"id":41884,"date":"2020-04-13T01:00:56","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T05:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=41884"},"modified":"2020-04-12T09:33:16","modified_gmt":"2020-04-12T13:33:16","slug":"qotd-foucaults-ship-of-fools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/04\/13\/qotd-foucaults-ship-of-fools\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Foucault&#8217;s &#8220;Ship of Fools&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>And so, Foucault tells us, in the fifteenth century there is a sudden emergence of a complex of artistic and philosophical themes linking madmen, the sea, and the terrible mysteries of the world. These culminate in the &#8220;Ship Of Fools&#8221;:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Renaissance men developed a delightful, yet horrible way of dealing with their mad denizens: they were put on a ship and entrusted to mariners because folly, water, and sea, as everyone then knew, had an affinity for each other. Thus, &#8220;Ships of Fools&#8221; crisscrossed the seas and canals of Europe with their comic and pathetic cargo of souls. Some of them found pleasure and even a cure in the changing surroundings, in the isolation of being cast off, while others withdrew further, became worse, or died alone and away from their families. The cities and villages which had thus rid themselves of their crazed and crazy, could now take pleasure in watching the exciting sideshow when a ship full of foreign lunatics would dock at their harbors.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This was such a great piece of historical trivia that I was shocked I&#8217;d never heard it before. Some quick research revealed the reason: <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=jKBmAE4uFbIC&#038;pg=PA207&#038;lpg=PA207&#038;dq=%22ship+of+fools%22+foucault&#038;source=bl&#038;ots=xsD3M8G2ML&#038;sig=L_t5I9QjeINhfMJO-gbxxLRw43I&#038;hl=en&#038;sa=X&#038;ved=0ahUKEwjfnovy4bPYAhVJqFQKHSAHD_k4ChDoAQhKMAc#v=onepage&#038;q=%22ship%20of%20fools%22%20foucault&#038;f=false\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">it is completely, 100% false<\/a>. Apparently Foucault looked at an allegorical painting by Hieronymus Bosch, decided it definitely existed in real life, and concocted the rest from his imagination.<\/p>\n<p>Foucault apologists try to rescue this, say that he was just being poetic in some way. He wasn&#8217;t. Page 8 in my copy: &#8220;Of all these romantic or satiric vessels, the <em>Narrenschiff<\/em> [Ship Of Fools] is the only one that had a real existence \u2014 for they did exist, these boats that conveyed their insane cargo from town to town.&#8221; He really, really doubled down on this point. As far as I can tell, this is just as bad a failing of scholarship as it sounds \u2013 and surprising, since everything else about the book gives the impression of Foucault as an incredibly knowledgeable and wide-ranging scholar.<\/p>\n<p>Scott Alexander, <a href=\"http:\/\/slatestarcodex.com\/2018\/01\/04\/book-review-madness-and-civilization\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Book review: Madness and Civilization&#8221;, <em>Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2018-01-04.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And so, Foucault tells us, in the fifteenth century there is a sudden emergence of a complex of artistic and philosophical themes linking madmen, the sea, and the terrible mysteries of the world. These culminate in the &#8220;Ship Of Fools&#8221;: Renaissance men developed a delightful, yet horrible way of dealing with their mad denizens: they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,62,66,7,41],"tags":[86,347,906,703,61],"class_list":["post-41884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-europe","category-health-science","category-history","category-quotations","tag-criticism","tag-debunking","tag-mentalhealth","tag-middleages","tag-ships"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aTy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41884"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56373,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41884\/revisions\/56373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}