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ject is the basis of his critique of the bad faith of so-called authentic
being (whether under the sign of consciousness or of unconscious–
ness) , which rejects the claims of civilization or society. For what is
the consequence of standing completely outside of civilization
(assuming that such a stance is possible) , but madness?
Yet the doctrine that madness is health , that madness is libera–
tion and authenticity, receives a happy welcome from a conse–
quential part of the educated public . And when we have given
due weight to the likelihood that those who respond positively to
the doctrine don't have it in mind to go mad, let alone insane - it
is characteristic of the intellectual life of our culture that it fosters
a form of assent which does not involve actual credence - we
must yet take it to be significant of our circumstance that many
among us find it gratifying to entertain the thought that aliena–
tion is to be overcome only by the completeness of alienation,
and that alienation completed is not a deprivation or deficiency
but a potency.
Trilling speaks of such an advocacy as cant, and he satirizes its claim
to authenticity by inviting us to imagine what true and false means
in this discourse. "The falsities of an alienated social reality are re–
jected in favor of an upward psychopathic mobility to the point of
divinity.... "
And indeed, the argument for authentic unified being produces
its own divisions, that is to say, contradictions. Trilling, for in–
stance, acutely notes that Marcuse is not willing to give up on the
idea of character, which depends on the traditional role of the fam-
ily. Marcuse is distressed by "the devolution of the power of the
.,
superego," the result of the diminished authority of the family, which
in turn results in a failure in individual development. Trilling wryly
wonders whether "some Hegelian device will properly resolve the
contradiction between Marcuse's predilection for the strongly de-
fined character-structure that necessity entails and his polemical
commitment to a Utopia which will do away with necessity ."
One of the implicit objects of Trilling's critique is an early work
of Foucault,
Madness and Civilization.
David Cooper, R. D . Laing's
collaborator, cites with approval Foucault's characterization of mad–
ness as "the [true
1
voicing of the realization that I am (or you are)
Christ." So it comes as something of a surprise to discover that in his
last work,
The History of Sexuality,
Foucault offers us a critique of the
