foucault's madness part two

(of many):

"...at a deeper level, we find a rigorous organization dependent on the faultless armature of a discourse. This discourse, in its logic, commands the firmest belief in itself, it advances by judgments and reasonings which connect together; it is a kind of reason in action. In short, under the chaotic and manifest delirium reigns the order of a secret delirium. In this second delirium, which is, in a sense, pure reason, reason delivered of all the external tinsel of dementia, is located the paradoxical truth of madness."

Foucault, Madness and Civilization

Connection: to Derrida's sense, in "Faith and Knowledge: Two Sources of Religion at the Limits of Reason Alone," of the inevitable proximity (the link) between fundamentalist and hypercritical thought. And with due caution to the distinction between religion and madness, as well as due attention to their shared discursive borders, see also Timothy Clark (on representing enthusiasm): “Ideas that sound a little like accounts of aporias in deconstructive thinking merge in bizarre ways with notions that rest on a religious or magical world view" (from The Theory of Inspiration).