IS THERE A PLACE FOR PSYCHEDELICS IN PHILOSOPHY?
Common Knowledge September 1, 2016 Nicolas Langlitz 12 citations
This essay, based on anthropological fieldwork on the revival of hallucinogen research and the epistemic culture of neurophilosophy, examines two philosophical engagements with psychedelic drugs. Thomas Metzinger's evidence-based philosophy of mind uses hallucinogens to operationalize questions about consciousness, contributing to a divide between modern and premodern thought, yet his neurophilosophical reanimation of philosophy as cultura animi bridges to Aldous Huxley's perennial philosophy. The sixteenth-century philosophia perennis emerged from a nonmodern philosophy of religion aiming to heal cultural fractures that defined modernity. The essay argues that neurophilosophy and ethnographic studies of consciousness cultures could serve as critical correctives in a contemporary rearticulation of perennial philosophy.