Michel Foucault defines the modern psychiatric hospital as an institution of power that excludes and disciplines those who are deemed immoral, perverse, or abnormal in society. Rather than a facility for healing, as Foucault has taught us, the psychiatric hospital operates more as a punitive method of the body. But what is not considered in Foucault’s historical account of the psychiatric institution are the epistemological preconditions that allowed for its original formation. Drawing on the Kyoto School philosophers’ critique of modernity, this article will discuss how the biomedical model underlying modern psychiatric care is rooted in a prior epistemological duality that was developed even earlier within Western intellectual history—a duality we will call the “epistemology of nihilism.” Foucault’s political technology of the body is therefore a symptom of the epistemology of nihilism, that which leads to consequences beyond mere panoptical surveillance. This article will discuss such consequences, in particular the mechanization of human life derived from the excesses of scientific technology, in the service of introducing a new way of thinking about the limits of psychiatric treatment in today’s world.

米歇尔·福柯 (Michel Foucault) 将现代精神病院定义为一种权力机构，它排斥和惩戒那些在社会中被视为不道德、反常或不正常的人。正如福柯告诉我们的那样，精神病院不是治疗设施，而是作为一种惩罚身体的方法运作。但是，福柯对精神病学机构的历史描述中没有考虑的是允许其原始形成的认识论先决条件。借鉴京都学派哲学家对现代性的批判，本文将讨论现代精神病学护理背后的生物医学模型如何植根于更早在西方思想史上发展起来的先验认识论二元性——我们将这种二元性称为“虚无主义认识论” . ”因此，福柯关于身体的政治技术是虚无主义认识论的一种症状，它导致的后果超出了单纯的全景监视。本文将讨论这些后果，特别是由于过度的科学技术而导致的人类生活机械化，以引入一种新的思考方式来思考当今世界精神病治疗的局限性。