«To Re-Establish the Misled Reason»

Philippe Pinel and the Curability of Madness in Antonio Rosmini’s “Antropologia al servizio della scienza morale”

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role played by Philippe Pinel’s Traité medico-philosophique sur l’aliénation mentale (1800), a fundamental text in 19th century European psychiatry, in Antonio Rosmini’s discussion of mental alienation, as it is developed in Antropologia in servizio della scienza morale (1844). As a secondary objective, our analysis aims at understanding whether Rosmini’s use of the Traité can help modify the critics’ assessment of Pinel’s figure and work, with particular regard to Michel Foucault’s well-known thesis in Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (1961).