L'origine irrationnelle de la raison : une interprétation de « Cogito et histoire de la folie » de Jacques Derrida

Abstract

Starting from the hypothesis that the global ecological crisis we are experiencing is a crisis of rationality itself and not simply the effect of irrational policies, we argue that this crisis requires us to learn how to think the irrational origin of reason. Indeed, by distinguishing reason and rationality, the former being a human capacity, the latter the dialectic by which this capacity unfolds its full power by externalizing itself as history, we can specify that rationality reveals a paradox: it multiplies its own effects, particularly technical ones, in the very gesture by which it attempts to limit them. According to this paradox, which we call the paradox of the hubris of rationality, rationality cannot truly limit itself. Rationality is therefore the removal of the limits of reason. However, if it were not absolutely necessary for reason to appear, if at least this necessity cannot be simply or totally rational, that is to say, understood, reproduced and posited by rationality itself as a moment in its history, then we must consider that its very emergence is an irrational one. To glimpse a limit to the hubris of rationality, we would need to be able to present the irrationality of its emergence on Earth. But this is not obvious, because this origin still needs to be understood, and therefore approached through reason. How is it possible, within the order of rationality, to access the irrationality of its origin, that is to say, the contingency of an event which establishes rational and historical necessity? We believe that the work of Jacques Derrida, particularly where it engages with the theme of madness, allows us to develop an answer to these questions. It is also significant that this theme first appears in a reading of Descartes, who, as we know, is the symbol of modern Western rationality and the “naturalistic ontology” that underpins it. Thus, by offering an interpretation of “Cogito and the History of Madness” that goes beyond the famous “Cartesian quarrel” between Foucault and Derrida, our aim is twofold: we wish to begin to reconstruct the trajectory of this theme in Derrida’s work, while also highlighting the potential relevance of his work today.