Dr Angelos Evangelou, Associate Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature, has just published a new book entitled Philosophizing Madness from Nietzsche to Derrida (Palgrave, 2017).

Drawing connections between madness, philosophy and autobiography, Angelos’s book addresses the question of how Nietzsche’s madness might have affected his later works. It also explores why continental philosophy after Nietzsche is so fascinated with madness, and how it (re)considers, (re)evaluates and (re)valorises madness.

To answer these questions, the book analyses the work of three major figures in twentieth-century French philosophy who were significantly influenced by Nietzsche: Bataille, Foucault and Derrida, examining the ways in which their responses to Nietzsche’s madness determine how they understand philosophy as well as philosophy’s relation to madness.

Out of this analysis of their engagement with the question of madness emerges a new conception of “autobiographical philosophy”, which entails the insertion of this vulnerable subject into the philosophical work, to which each of these philosophers adheres or resists in different ways.

For more details, please see the publisher’s page here.