What Can't We Solve When We Call Something Madness?
Dismissing events as madness absolves us of the responsibility to think, to analyze, and to act. But the world has never been truly mad—only complex, layered, and difficult to comprehend.
My friend and I are walking while drinking coffee and talking. At one point during the conversation, I say, “Okay, we are drowning in cultural stuffs, but we should also do a project on current events.” She sighs deeply and says, “The world has lost its mind,” and steps back to the previous topic. I agree with her and retreat to a safer spot. Why would the world lose its mind? Hasn't history always been filled with irrationality, cruelty, and contradictions? If we label something as madness, are we not avoiding the effort to understand it? News, articles, books, magazine covers, movies immediately come to my mind. Some say that almost every event that happens in the world is incomprehensible, crazy, inhumane. But the ones who do all these things are still humans, and this struggle for humanity is as old as humans.
Saying that Russia is acting crazy, Israel is losing its mind, or that a group of crazy people are running a country in Afghanistan pushes the subject to be discussed so far away that you first need to have an intensive psychoanalysis session to solve the issue. Because when a definition is given to something, that thing is framed. It doesn’t matter whether the framing is meaningful or meaningless. It is enough if it corresponds to a sufficient emotion, a feeling. Once something is found, it is no longer easy to change it.
In other words, calling an event, situation, concept or thought mad means blurring that event, situation, concept or thought to the fullest extent possible. The other must be understood. The other can remain the other by accepting its existence; likewise, being the other means existing in Levinas and does not mean something bad. However, this does not mean legitimizing the other's actions.
When evaluating Russia's war policies in Ukraine, it is possible to try to understand it not only as a threat but also in its historical, political and psychological aspects with a Levinasian approach. This means understanding Russia's fears, imperial past, ideological motivations and security concerns. It can be said that in its discourses towards Ukraine, Russia does not accept Ukraine as a real other (ignores its existence) but sees it as an extension of its own identity. This creates a serious problem in terms of Levinasian ethics. According to Levinas, the other is not part of our imaginations or ideology, but an independent subject with an existence of its own.
It is one thing to say that the Taliban see women as second-class citizens is madness, it is another to say that they see women this way because they do not know the world, cannot live life and therefore are hostile to life (Of course, we cannot fully elaborate on this issue here). The latter also carries responsibility and action.
Dismissing events as madness absolves us of the responsibility to think, to analyze, and to act. But the world has never been truly mad—only complex, layered, and difficult to comprehend. I think that everyday philosophy should be included in every major problem, so that instead of appearing as gigantic mountains, the problems appear as shattered rocks.