Henry David Thoreau's Rationality

The separation between spirit and nature is Enlightenment’s existence. Without this split, the bourgeois economy would collapse, along with its hierarchy and division of labor; thus, the Enlightenment would cease to exist. Along with its existence, the bourgeois economy’s rationale may fall to unreason, to the mad. Enlightenment seeks to maintain a strong hold upon reason with knowledge, only by dispelling unreason. Reason is obtained through subjugation, that of the rational and irrational, that of the norm and that of the mad. It is through distinguishing the mad from the norm that permits us to identify what unreason is; what irrational is, what knowledge is not. And through distinguishing itself from the rational, may the bourgeois economy repress the irrational, the …show more content…
It is the ill-founded beliefs and mistaken judgments, by which the madman is repressed. It is through the madman’s subjugation that grants the bourgeois economy data on the irrational. Data, which does not accumulate capital, is data, which must be sent back for fixation. Similar to man’s domination over nature, anything that cannot be calculated and reduced into numbers is illusion. Calculation is the reformatory, which the madman is sent to, for the sake of his data’s potentiality of accumulating capital. Once fixed, may his capital be of use to the economy, but until then, he is put aside as an illusory subject. Thus, giving in to its calculability, the madman and the bourgeois man is nothing more than exploited capital. The madman is as blinded as we are. When our capital falls prey to commodities, we learn how to behave like normal people. The madman’s capital, which is flawed, is what makes his behavior flawed as well. By not falling prey to commodities, he is sent