whose brains are impaired by such an unrelenting vapor of black bile that they steadfastly insist they are kings when they are utter paupers, or that they have heads made of clay, or that they are gourds, or that they are made of glass. But such people are mad, and I would appear no less mad were I to take their behavior as an example for myself." (Meditations, 1-P4)

If you think about it, you could wonder whether or not being "mad" in the terms of Descartes description opens you up to more abstract conceptions of the self. Descartes isn't really all that sane if he is to doubt everything, and having a head of clay is more rational at some point than being aware of oneself only through the fact that he is deceived by another. LOL!

Another point to make in regards to Descartes and "madness" is the frustration he implies in doubting his senses. An implication of anger as well? Maybe.

"Mad" is ambiguous as between angry and crazy. But, sometimes it is used to mean both together.

Madness means to be possessed of all your faculties in a world where all are mad...

So, that means that someone who believes he is Napoleon, and who calls for the Empress Josephine (while he is locked way in some asylum) has all his faculties, and the warden of the asylum is mad. I see.

I don't see having a few delusions is enough to classify one as mad...I really think that componant; of thinking you are well, and everyone else sick puts you on the far side of mad every day...What if the mad try to help the well as the well have tried to help the sick: With lobotomies, and electro shock treatments and anti psychotics...There would be an uproar...And what if they tried the other remedies for madness; the prison, the stake, or the guillotine???People, if they were sane would cry bloody murder...But if WE were sane in the ideal, we would cry bloody murder at the misery the disturbed are generally subjected to because we refuse to dispell ourselves of our own illusions, and delusions, and take responsibility for the humane treatment of the adle brained among us...No sane person can think himself well...Mental illness is too general... To be sane means to suffer the pains of others, and it is to give voice to the mute, living and dead, and pain too is a form of madness, so to be sane means to feel unwell, to doubt reason, and at times, to abandon hope for humanity... No one can be sane without feeling sad...The mad for all their misery are seldom without hope...To be realistic is to be reasonable, and no one can suffer the prospect of a heartless modern society, that can only act out of its pain, cannot admit its pain, and cannot cure it nor fully deny it... That; reasonably, rationally, and emotionally is a cause for pain among the sane..

The well think themselves unwell, or at least, doubt their sanity, and I have never seen this quality in anyone I thought mad...

Well pretty much so. Thinking you are Napoleon, and acting that way ain't good.

Did you ever see The Ruling Class with Peter O'Tool...

Yes, as a matter of fact. But I don't remember it.

Peter as Jack is suppose to replace his father, who died in a exercise of fetishism, in the House of Lords...He comes back from the asylum as Jesus, and they don't know what shall be done until they bring a dark Jesus from another asylum, Who drives the Jesus out of him, and he instead becomes Jack the Ripper, advocating for executions in the house of Lords while killing everyone he can in his personal life...