Kant’s Early Diagnosis

This paper deals with a poorly understood text written by Immanuel Kant at the beginning of his academic career: the Essay on the Maladies of the Head (Versuch über die Krankheiten des Kopfes, 1764). In it, commenting on a sojourn by a religious fanatic and a boy in his hometown whilst elaborating upon some insights drawn from Rousseau’s philosophy, Kant views the development of mental illness as resulting from the process of “civilization,” on the one hand, and from the malfunctioning of our mental faculties, on the other. Following a careful analysis of the text, I conclude that Kant viewed mental illness as arising from the constraints of civilization and the very existence of mentally ill people in shared social life as providing a clue as to the origin and formation of modern civilization. Put differently, the specificities of mental derangement provide evidence of previous phases of human history and thus offer valuable insights into the genesis and transformation of society.