Deviations in the dark. About bats, veterans, visionaries and philosophers

Abstract

This article explores psychosis not primarily as a medical disorder but as a phenomenon that calls for understanding rather than explanation. While psychiatry and neuroscience focus on causal, biological or psychological mechanisms, such approaches fail to capture what it is like to be psychotic. Through three figures of thought – the bat, the veteran, and the visionary – I aim to develop a plural, imaginative, and philosophical understanding of madness. Drawing on Thomas Nagel’s notion of the “single point of view,” the bat symbolizes the limits of empathy and the need for narrative multiplicity. The veteran reveals the moral and social dimensions of trauma and conflict underlying psychosis. The visionary represents the blurred boundary between madness, spirituality, and insight. The final sections argue that psychosis involves “perplexity” and “hyperreflection,” concepts closely related to philosophical wonder and reflection. Madness, then, can be viewed as a proto- or hyper-philosophy: a radical questioning of meaning and reality. This article concludes that psychiatry requires not only doctors and patients but also sages – philosophers – to engage madness as a “livable deviation in the dark.”