What William James could tell us about Kant's Critique of Pure Reason if we would only listen to him
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 5, 2025
When I say that the Drug War is the great philosophical problem of our time, I am not simply referring to the fact that the prohibition mindset is based on a series of unspoken assumptions that can be easily identified and refuted by any philosopher worthy of the name. I am referring as well to the fact that the Drug War has effectively outlawed philosophical inquiry itself, particularly as regards the Kantian Critique of Pure Reason1. In a free academic world, philosophers would immediately see the relevance of William James' "anesthetic revelation 2345" to the epistemological concerns raised by the sage of Konigsberg. Kant tacitly posits a kind of one-size-fits-all sober human perception, after all. His whole philosophy is based on the assumption of this fixed point of view. Perception is always deemed to be sober perception, in apparent contradistinction to the perception of a lunatic or drunkard.
James discovered, however, that there are seemingly endless ways of perceiving the world besides that associated with, as it were, garden-variety sobriety. These states might be brought about in various ways: by meditation, by a sort of mystical predisposition, or by the use of psychoactive substances (or by some combination of these three). His own experiences under the influence of nitrous oxide led James to conclude as follows:
"Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different." --William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature 6
The question that follows is obvious -- or at least it would be had we not been brainwashed to despise altered states:
Have those who experience such altered or atypical states not, in some sense, transcended the limits imposed by the Categories of Pure Reason themselves?
This is hugely relevant to understanding, elucidating -- and perhaps even transcending -- Kant's views on metaphysics, and yet no one in the philosophical world is even discussing these things. In fact, the online biography of James at Harvard University, his alma mater, does not even mention his use of laughing gas , a substance that he urged his fellow philosophers to use as well in order to study the nature of reality writ large7.
But do such atypical perceptions have meaning, you may ask? To which I reply: that is the very question that we need to study. We cannot answer that question negatively in advance of all research without committing the fallacy of petitio principii and thereby handing an unearned victory to skeptics. For his part, William James certainly found meaning in such altered states:
"The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also..." --William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature8
And yet most philosophers have a prior commitment to the Drug War ideology of substance demonization, thanks to which they refuse to even discuss the use of psychoactive substances in connection with human perception and the Kantian critique. Thus our understanding of Kant's profound insights will remain forever limited until academics arise and throw off the shackles of censorship brought about by drug prohibition. Until then, we have a make-believe world of philosophy in America.
But then we have a make-believe world of medicine as well. Most psychiatrists and psychologists and psychoanalysts would not even have a job today had self-interested medical professionals not decided to demonize cocaine by judging it only by its worst possible uses9. Depression could never be a widespread phenomenon in a nation in which cocaine use was legal. But where is the money in that? Like the philosophers, the professionals in the medical community knew which side their bread was buttered on. This is why the depressed are never acknowledged as stakeholders in discussions about drugs in America. We are taught to associate such discussions only with juvenile delinquency and hedonism. And so the medical establishment focused exclusively on statistically rare drug misuse, thereby throwing all the depressed in the world under the bus. And so we see the sad state of affairs today: psychoanalysis and psychiatry and psychology flourish: these fields generate endless jobs for academics -- while yet ensuring that depression remains an eternal problem -- one that supposedly needs endless well-funded clinical trials to solve, when the obvious solution is actually staring us in the face.
"My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine1011
These professionals pretend to be worried about unwanted dependencies, and yet their very jobs depend on the prescription of drugs that can NEVER be kicked: drugs like Effexor12 (Venlafaxine), which has a 95% recidivism rate for long-term users who attempt to renounce the drug and which scrambles the brains of the 5% who might succeed in that task13.
The criminally mendacious Partnership for a Drug Free America 14 tried to convince us in the 1980s that drugs fry the brain15 -- but it is meds that fry the brain -- meds and drug prohibition itself, which has turned most academics into Drug War Zombies, faithful supporters of the Drug War party line of substance demonization. In fact, drug prohibition literally fries the brain by outlawing substances whose use could make brain-damaging shock therapy unnecessary for the severely depressed. And so we live in a world full of academic Don Quixotes: professionals who may be brilliant on many subjects but who become gullible grade-schoolers whenever the topic turns to drugs. In the case of philosophers, this strategically inculcated ignorance is so profound that they are rendered blind to the otherwise obvious revelatory corollaries suggested above. But what can we expect? They have been indoctrinated since grade-school in the drug-hating propaganda of the prohibitionist, and what they learn in youth is never forgotten, but is rather accepted henceforth as unspoken truth. Schopenhauer highlighted this depressing psychological fact in 'The World as Will and Idea,' when he criticized the theologians of his time for indoctrinating children in religious ideology:
"For their invaluable prerogative of being imparted to children gives them the surest guarantee of the permanent possession of the mind, for thereby their dogmas grow into a kind of second inborn intellect, like the twig upon the grafted tree..." 16
Just so do Drug Warriors turn modern academics into children, by singling them out in grade-school for indoctrination in the drug-hating ideology of Mary Baker Eddy17.
METAPHYSICS AND DRUGS
Since my fellow philosophers will not speak up for fear of violating Drug War orthodoxy, here are some further thoughts of my own on what the insights of William James might tell us about the possibility of a true metaphysics. I write here in the spirit of someone attempting to start a long-overdue conversation as opposed to someone speaking ex-cathedra or pretending to provide the final word on this subject.
In his Prolegomena18 to his Critique of Pure Reason19, Kant emphasizes his interest in rational truth, by which he implicitly means the rationality of a "sober" mind, as that word is normally understood by the intoxiphobic culture of the west. Like most westerners even today, he was unaware of the power of psychoactive medicines to promote mental states in which we seem to transcend the limits imposed by the Kantian categories themselves. His ignorance on this subject leads him to rashly conclude that future progress in metaphysics can only be made by clear-eyed academics like himself, hard-nosed realists who constantly bear in mind his 12 categories whereby human perception is limited. Yet the truth is that the indigenous world has been using psychoactive medicines for millennia to obtain states of consciousness in which those categories do not necessarily apply: timeless and telepathic worlds in which the ego itself seems to disappear and in which the subject-object distinction is transcended20.
Kant maintains that all truth (to the extent that human beings can meaningfully use that term) must be determined by contemplating "objects of possible experience,21" and yet there is another kind of truth of which indigenous people have been aware for millennia. This is the kind of experiential truth that is intuited under the influence of certain mystical states, states that are typically facilitated with the help of psychoactive medicine. In some of these states, the inebriate becomes convinced with apodictic certainty -- not of the existence of any particular creature or object -- but rather of the existence of a world in which the limits of the Kantian categories are transcended, not with arguments depending on the blunt tool of the forever-incomplete language of Homo sapiens but by a sort of experiential logic, a sort of word-free proof, as it were. Such "proofs" are sometimes so compelling that even professed materialists of the western world are converted into believers of a kind after undertaking such a psychoactive journey.
The western world is quick to slander such states as lunacy. This is why the western medical establishment originally ignored the obvious inspirational potential of LSD and classified it as a psychomimetic instead, a drug that could be used by budding psychiatrists to help them experience the supposedly discrete pathology known as human madness. These westerners were thereby presupposing the existence of an objective way of seeing the world against which the LSD experience could be judged, a world in which the sober perceptions facilitated by default brain chemistry were supposed to present us with Reality writ large. They failed to realize that this presupposition ran counter to both the Kantian and Bergsonian view of human perception and experience, namely, that our sober minds perceive what they need to perceive for practical purposes and that those perceptions (and the experiences generated thereby) can tell us nothing about how the world "really" is -- or about what Kant would call the world of noumena. Of course, it is not clear that Kant or Bergson, as westerners themselves, would have made this connection between their own theories and the problematic nature of the drug-bashing of the west, since they both wrote under the apparent assumption that experience and "sober" experience (our experiences under the influence of our default brain chemistry) were one and the same thing.
Fortunately, there is at least one western philosopher who clearly saw the connection between altered states and the limits of the sober mind, and that was William James. James was one of those converts of whom I spoke above. His originally materialist view of the world was changed forever by his experiences under the influence of nitrous oxide.
"One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. " --William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature22
James actually encouraged philosophers to use nitrous oxide to study the nature of ultimate reality (which is yet another reason why the FDA has no business outlawing laughing gas , a substance which is already shamelessly unavailable as a practical matter for the suicidally depressed2324). "No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded,25" from which it follows that no account of metaphysics -- or about the very possibility of such a science -- can be final which ignores the apparent power of psychoactive medicines to help us transcend thelimitations of the Kantian categories altogether (albeit not on a rational basis but on an experiential one). Nor can we gainsay this dictum by adverting to the supposed unreality of the perceptions of the intoxicated mind, since such a criticism presupposes our knowledge of an objective reality behind appearances, a knowledge that the Kantian Critique itself tells us is impossible for human beings to obtain.
Of course, I cannot prove a negative. I cannot assure you that no other philosophers have seen the connections of which I write. There are no doubt exceptions in academia to the code of silence inspired by drug prohibition and the War on Drugs. Yet I can assure you of this: I am the only philosopher who formally protested on behalf of academic freedom against the FDA's recent attempts to criminalize the use of laughing gas 262728. I felt so strongly about this issue that I wrote personal letters to over one hundred well-known philosophers (both in England and America), encouraging them to emulate my protest on behalf of academic freedom. The response surely tells us all we need to know about the state of modern philosophy: Not only did these philosophers fail to take up the gauntlet, but they ignored my letters entirely.
In 'The World as Will and Idea,' Schopenhauer criticizes "the jest of philosophy taught in the universities" wherein Kantian insights are ignored in conformance with religious dogma. Plus ça change. The jest continues to this day, albeit for different reasons. Modern philosophers refuse to connect the dots between Immanuel Kant 29 and William James, not thanks to their adherence to religious dogma but because they have a prior commitment to the substance-demonizing ideology of the War on Drugs. They have a knee-jerk disdain for psychoactive substances that has been drilled into them since childhood when they were first indoctrinated in Christian Science dogma disguised as drug education. It will be said that many tenured philosophers may know better in their "heart of hearts," but if that is so, it is clearly "more than their jobs are worth" to be honest on this subject. The proof is extant in their roaring collective silence. In other words, truth is not their goal in life, as Schopenhauer insists that it must be for any true philosopher, but rather safety and job security. The fact that such self-censorship is understandable "on a human level" should not prevent us from pointing out that it is still dead wrong, that academics should not feel obliged to cower ignobly like this in any supposedly free country. This, of course, is just one of the endless reasons why we must finally drive a stake through the heart of prohibition ideology once and for all, for the inevitable consequence of a drug-blaming Weltanschauung is to outlaw academic freedom itself.
I end this essay with an observation targeted at those philosophers who (God help us) actually believe that drug prohibition is preferable to academic freedom (although in my opinion, such a belief should disqualify them for tenure in any democratic country). The observation is merely this: that statements such as "Fentanyl 30 kills!" and "Crack kills!" are philosophically identical to the statement "Fire bad!" All such statements would have us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity.
There are plenty of "prima facie" reasons for believing that we could eliminate most problems with drug and alcohol withdrawal by chemically aided sleep cures combined with using "drugs" to fight "drugs." But drug warriors don't want a fix, they WANT drug use to be a problem.
I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."
Outlawing opium wOutlawing opium was the ultimate government power grab. It put the government in charge of pain relief.
as the ultimate government power grab. It put the government in charge of pain relief.
Trump supports the drug war and Big Pharma: the two forces that have turned me into a patient for life with dependence-causing antidepressants. Big Pharma makes the pills, and the drug war outlaws all viable alternatives.
It's just plain totalitarian nonsense to outlaw mother nature and to outlaw moods and mental states thru drug law. These truths can't be said enough by us "little people" because the people in power are simply not saying them.
Wonder how America got to the point where we let the Executive Branch arrest judges? Look no further than the Drug War, which, since the 1970s, has demonized Constitutional protections as impediments to justice.
Most enemies of inner-city gun violence refuse to protest against the drug prohibition which caused the violence in the first place.
The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?
I can't imagine Allen Ginsberg writing "Howl!" while under the influence of mood-damping drugs like Inderal and Prozac -- but then maybe that's the point: the powers-that-be do not want poets writing poems like "Howl!"
I just asked New York Attorney General Letitia James how much she was getting paid to play Whack-a-Mole. I pointed out that the drug war created the gangs just as liquor prohibition created the Mafia.
This is hugely relevant to understanding, elucidating -- and perhaps even transcending -- Kant's views on metaphysics, and yet no one in the philosophical world is even discussing these things. In fact, the online biography of James at Harvard University, his alma mater, does not even mention his use of laughing gas , a substance that he urged his fellow philosophers to use as well in order to study the nature of reality writ large7.
Just so do Drug Warriors turn modern academics into children, by singling them out in grade-school for indoctrination in the drug-hating ideology of Mary Baker Eddy17.
In 'The World as Will and Idea,' Schopenhauer criticizes "the jest of philosophy taught in the universities" wherein Kantian insights are ignored in conformance with religious dogma. Plus ça change. The jest continues to this day, albeit for different reasons. Modern philosophers refuse to connect the dots between Immanuel Kant 29 and William James, not thanks to their adherence to religious dogma but because they have a prior commitment to the substance-demonizing ideology of the War on Drugs. They have a knee-jerk disdain for psychoactive substances that has been drilled into them since childhood when they were first indoctrinated in Christian Science dogma disguised as drug education. It will be said that many tenured philosophers may know better in their "heart of hearts," but if that is so, it is clearly "more than their jobs are worth" to be honest on this subject. The proof is extant in their roaring collective silence. In other words, truth is not their goal in life, as Schopenhauer insists that it must be for any true philosopher, but rather safety and job security. The fact that such self-censorship is understandable "on a human level" should not prevent us from pointing out that it is still dead wrong, that academics should not feel obliged to cower ignobly like this in any supposedly free country. This, of course, is just one of the endless reasons why we must finally drive a stake through the heart of prohibition ideology once and for all, for the inevitable consequence of a drug-blaming Weltanschauung is to outlaw academic freedom itself.
There are plenty of "prima facie" reasons for believing that we could eliminate most problems with drug and alcohol withdrawal by chemically aided sleep cures combined with using "drugs" to fight "drugs." But drug warriors don't want a fix, they WANT drug use to be a problem.