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How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
an open letter to Professor Daniel A. Bonevac of the University of Pittsburgh
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
March 13, 2024
Good evening, Professor Bonevac.
I am a 65-year-old philosopher in Basye, Virginia, writing to thank you for your fascinating discussion of Immanuel Kant 1 's Critique of Pure Reason2 on the YouTube video posted in 20173.
I would like to suggest an idea that you may never have heard before, namely that there is another potential source of knowledge of which Kant seems to have been unaware, and that is the knowledge (both metaphysical and practical) that all tribal societies have claimed to receive via the use of those psychoactive substances which in the west we denigrate as "drugs"4. It will be argued that these states are "hallucinations," but this is surely just a Christian Science prejudice, for the filter theory of perception espoused by William James5 and Aldous Huxley6 suggests that the world that we see "on" psychoactive substances is but another aspect of that "real world out there" (the raw and "unprocessed" world of the physicist) which to Whitehead is but an inchoate world of atomic potential7.
I would argue, in fact, that a full understanding of Kant (and his potential limitations as an "intoxiphobic westerner8") cannot be undertaken without a thorough discussion of the philosophy of drug-induced states. As just one example, I took part in a "spirit walk" using peyote in Arizona in 2019, during which I saw (with eyes closed) a neon-green slide show of Mesoamerican imagery. The mere fact that the consumption of a cactus should bring about such culturally specific visions (when consumed in tribal territory, no less) should be fodder for endless philosophical discussions about metaphysics and the possibility (contra Kant) of gaining knowledge about the noumenal world. The goal of the vision, after all, appeared to be to teach me something, and indeed such plant substances are generally referred to as "teachers" by tribal healers9. At least in the tribes' minds, these drugs are definitely providing knowledge, albeit a kind of knowledge for which Kant does not seem to have made any allowance in his Critique of Pure Reason.
Unfortunately, the modern trend in academia is to "reckon without the Drug War10" and so to ignore the philosophical hints that such experiences seem to me to supply in such abundance, starting with the idea that there may be a third type of knowledge beyond both sensibility and understanding, knowledge that we acquire by obtaining surreptitious glimpses through the temporarily opened "doors of perception"11. As radical as this idea may sound, it really is just a restatement of what William James himself said about altered states over a hundred years ago in "The Varieties of Religious Experience":
"No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded"12.
I would argue then that the Drug War and prohibition are limiting our knowledge of Kant. And it is getting worse. The FDA is now seeking to regulate James's pet substance, nitrous oxide13, like any other drug and thus to place it too off limits to scientific (and philosophic) investigation. It is as if the government were thereby stacking the decks in favor of Kant by making it illegal to undertake experiments that might challenge his views about how we can know things as human beings.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
Author's Follow-up: October 27, 2024
I know, I'm as startled as you are that the Herr Professor did not quite see his way clear to respond. If you live in his vicinity, do me a favor and make sure he's okay! This is just not like him, right?
Americans are far more fearful of psychoactive drugs than is warranted by either anecdote or history. We require 100% safety before we will re-legalize any "drug" -- which is a safety standard that we do not enforce for any other risky activity on earth.
Drug testing labs should give high marks for those who manage to use drugs responsibly, notwithstanding the efforts of law enforcement to ruin their lives. The lab guy would be like: "Wow, you are using opium wisely, my friend! Congratulations! Your boss is lucky to have you!"
We've got to take the fight TO the drug warriors by starting to hold them legally responsible for having spread "Big Lies" about "drugs." Anyone involved in producing the "brain frying" PSA of the 1980s should be put on trial for willfully spreading a toxic lie.
Our government treats drugs like uranium and spends hundreds of billions of dollars trying to scare us about them.
The Drug War is the legally enforced triumph of human idiocy. We have rigged the deck so that our dunces can be right. The Drug War is a superstition. Indeed, it is THE modern superstition.
In the 19th century, author Richard Middleton wrote how poets would get together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses."
Outlawing opium was the ultimate government power grab. It put the government in charge of pain relief.
Drug warriors have harnessed the perfect storm. Prohibition caters to the interests of law enforcement, psychotherapy, Big Pharma, demagogues, puritans, and materialist scientists, who believe that consciousness is no big "whoop" and that spiritual states are just flukes.
The government causes problems for those who are habituated to certain drugs. Then they claim that these problems are symptoms of an illness. Then folks like Gabriel Mate come forth to find the "hidden pain" in "addicts." It's one big morality play created by drug laws.
Billboards reading "Fentanyl kills" encourage the creation of racist legislation that outlaws all godsend uses of opiates. Kids in hospice in India go without morphine because of America's superstitious fear of opiates.
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
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