Philosophy of Madness and Lived Experience, with Sofia Jeppsson

Philosophy of Madness is a rising philosophical subfield. There are diverging opinions and many unclarities surrounding its relationship to other subfields, most notably Philosophy of Psychiatry. In a chapter for a forthcoming Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Zsuzsanna Chappell and I tentatively define Philosophy of Madness thus: In a narrow sense, it is philosophy about madness, done by openly mad philosophers, which centres madpeople’s experiences. In a wider sense, one or both of the first two conditions could be absent. The author might identify as sane, neurodivergent-but-not-mad, or neither. The text might use mad insights, mad intuitions, etc., applied to a topic other than madness itself. In any case, wider or narrower, the centring of madpeople’s experiences is crucial, if Philosophy of Madness is going to be anything other than a new, edgy name for the same old Philosophy of Psychiatry.When discussing Philosophy of Madness in a narrow sense, the topic naturally connects to the lively debate about involving people with lived experience in research projects and academic writing. What role can and should they play? Psychologist Jasper Feayerts (Ghent University) and I are starting up a research group about this matter. There may be little that you necessarily need LE people for, little that is impossible to achieve for a thoroughly sane research group. Nevertheless, involving LE people could remain important if doing so makes certain pitfalls much more likely to be avoided.One necessary difference between the madperson and the sane academic studying them, which the madperson is more likely to take into account, is this: the madperson can’t declare themself a hopeless case and proceed to walk away from themself to other topics. They must continue to live with themself, and find some way to do so. This is something that I and Elliot Porter have written about in different papers on agency and moral responsibility, but the difference is relevant for many other topics as well.