Subjectivism given consciousness is dependent on that consciousness. This has its philosophical basis in the writings of Descartes (see "cogito ergo sum"), and forms a cornerstone of Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy. Recently, more modest versions of metaphysical subjectivism have been explored. For example, I might hold that it is a "fact" that chocolate is tasty, even though I recognize that it is not tasty to everyone. This would imply that there are facts that are "subjective". (Analogously, one might hold that it is a fact that it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, even though this is not always the case, implying
Cogito and the History of Madness his point of departure for "Cogito and the History of Madness" is Foucault's 1961 book "Folie et déraison". Derrida's paper primarily relies on two sections of Foucault's work, the original 1961 preface in which Foucault makes a number of general comments about the book, setting forth his intentions and methodology, and two and a half pages at the start of the second chapter where Foucault links Descartes to an historical event that silenced madness at the end of the classical age. Foucault's 1961 text was heavily abridged for a popular edition in 1964 that formed the basis for Richard Howard's