n his excellent lectures on Immanuel Kant recorded in 2011, the late American philosopher Daniel N. Robinson draws his students' attention to the satirical writings of the Scriblerus Club, a group of five Tory wits (including Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift) who ridiculed pretentious erudition in the Augustan age. The Oxford professor laments that such writers are no longer around to refresh the turbid springs of philosophical debate and to "call foul" whenever philosophers try to pass off presumptuous dogma as gospel truth.
I was saddened to learn of the professor's death in 2018, for I would have liked to share my theory with him regarding the reason for this lack of wit in modern times, for its source, I believe, is very evident to anyone who recognizes the fact that the Drug War imposes unnatural restrictions on human thought. The trouble is that our science writers have yet to recognize the Drug War (and its accompanying laws) as the censorship that it most clearly is and so they continue to write endless seemingly authoritative papers on subjects ranging from depression to the nature of human consciousness, all of which are necessarily pretentious because they are written in a kind of willful ignorance of the existence of psychoactive drugs and what the effects of their use might tell us about the topics in question. Such papers, in short, are written from the point of view of a drug-hating Christian Scientist and the fact that researchers never own up to this bias, even in a fine-print disclaimer, means that such research is not simply pretentious, but it is dishonest as well. Unfortunately, modern science writers get away with this, however, because their audience is composed of what you might call stealth Christian Scientists who have been taught from birth to fear psychoactive medicine. These infantilized readers may have never heard of the drug-hating religion of Mary Baker-Eddy, but they are convinced of its chief precept that drugs are dangerous and unnecessary, at least when it comes to those that affect mood and mentation.
You simply cannot have a real Scriblerus Club in the age of the Drug War - unless the members thereof are brave enough to attack the Drug War itself, something that very few academics are prepared to do, as I have discovered many times over the past five years as I have tried in vain to pry open the tenure-conscious mouths of prominent anglophone professors on this topic.
That said, a modern Scriblerus Club could have a field day in exposing the unacknowledged Christian Science bias of modern thinkers, for most non-fiction writers today reckon without the Drug War. They write as if mind-expanding and mind-improving medicines simply do not exist, while pretending that there are simply no downsides to substance prohibition whatsoever.
See that book on El Chappo? The author glorifies the hunt for a monster, never acknowledging the fact that prohibition created such monsters out of whole cloth. See that research paper about a new kind of shock therapy for depression? The author tells us that depression has been a seemingly insoluble problem for decades, when in reality MDMA and laughing gas (not to mention coca and opium) could cheer up a depressive in real-time and for all our fearmongering are clearly better expedients than doing nothing for the sad sack and so sitting idly by as she or he self-harms and/or commits suicide. See that article about the meaninglessness of the universe? The author attempts to logically justify pessimism, while failing to even mention the fact that the consumption of many plants and fungi (and synthetics derived therefrom) routinely results in ontological epiphanies for the user, in a new feeling (indeed, a new conviction) that there is a "meaning" to life after all, albeit one that cannot be spoken in words.
Then there are the endless magazines at the checkout counter of your local food store, whose flashy articles give you a set of "easy-to-follow" steps that promise to make you a happy person in a politically correct way, that is while ignoring all the medicines that could help you achieve that goal -- none of which have to be habit-forming, by the way, if used wisely (a common-sense fact which, however, has to be stated explicitly in an age in which readers have been taught from birth to consider the safe use of psychoactive drugs as an impossibility). Such self-help articles remind me of Steve Martin's advice for becoming a millionaire: "First," he says, "get yourself a million dollars."
This is not to say that eating a healthy diet, and/or jogging, and/or getting adequate sleep (etc.) can make no positive difference in a human being's life, but rather that these activities all presuppose the motivation to do them rather than supplying that motivation, as would medicines that mother nature has provided as if specifically for that very purpose.
Of course, Immanuel Kant wrote more than a century before drug laws officially censored science, but one imagines that the western viewpoint toward psychoactive drugs has never been positive, and so a kind of self-censorship has long been in force, whose chief effect has been to refer drug-induced experience to pathology and to deny it any revelatory power viz ultimate reality. This viewpoint stands in sharp contrast to the history of tribal peoples, all of whom, as ethnobotanist Richard Schultes tells us, have used drugs for healing, religion, and the fostering of social cohesion.
It is interesting to note, however, that psychoactive drug use could play a decisive role in "proving" Kant's ideas about the world of noumena, not by proving its existence in any logical way, of course, which is a task for which the human being, as Kant reminds us, is simply not constructed. We can, however, use drugs in such a way as to become viscerally convinced of the existence of such an ineffable world. Of course, even that experience will not bring understanding of the noumenal world, but it may at least hint at the deeper nature of truths that are well beyond our human powers to formulate. This idea about the ineffability of ultimate reality is a theme running through the writings of all the saints and has been echoed many times by the participants in the psychedelic-fueled rituals at Eleusis, not to mention the drug-user reports of researchers like Stanislav Grof and James Fadiman. Given their potential role in corroborating Kantian metaphysics (at least to the limited extent that such a corroboration is possible), such substances should be used by anyone who wishes to earn the title of "philosopher" in academia. Who knows? Someday philosophers may be required to FAIL a drug test to become tenured at any self-respecting institution of higher learning.
Meanwhile, we should recognize that Drug War ideology does not censor science impartially but rather it privileges the philosophy of materialism. It does this by outlawing precisely those substances whose use might make us doubt such a world view. In this way, the Drug War suppresses potential evidence in favor of the viewpoints of the philosophers from Berkeley to Bergson who have grounded our reality in qualities and perceptions rather than in the organized data of quantitative physics.
These are just some of the points I would have made in an effort to convince Professor Robinson that a revised Scriblerus Club would have its work cut out for it, for we live in a Dark Ages, wherein we are blind to endless possibilities that would be readily apparent to us were we to simply stop pretending that psychoactive substances do not exist. I would, in short, have advocated the creation of a new Scriblerus Club and humbly have nominated myself as a member.
EPILOGUE: Whenever you think that an idea is too crazy to have been tried, check the Internet. No doubt someone has tried it. I started this article under the assumption that I was the first to contemplate reviving the Scriblerus Club for our times; however, a Google search reveals that the task has already been accomplished, at least nominally speaking, at the dot-com domain known as Martin Scriblerus, the name of the putative author of the 18th-century memoirs of Jonathan Swift and company. Unfortunately, the modern authors ignore the Drug War like everybody else, which is a shame, because they could clearly benefit from using MDMA in order to calm themselves the f--- down and stop hating on immigrants and refugees - especially the ones at the Mexican border who are there because of the Drug War itself.
I cannot quite decide what the site is about, partly because the headlines broach such a wide variety of unrelated topics, and partly because the writing does not interest me enough to justify my prying deeper. Let's put it this way: the Jonathan Swifts of the world have nothing to worry about. The authors were obviously raised on The Simpsons and/or Rick & Morty and have come to believe that snarkiness is the ne plus ultra of human achievement.
There was one serious article on the front page, however, concerning the tragic death of a raccoon named Anna on the 18th of August 2017. (I think we all remember where we were when THAT happened.)
Immanuel Kant
Anyone familiar with the philosophies of both Immanuel Kant and William James should understand that philosophers have a duty to investigate what we westerners call 'altered states' and hence have a duty to disdainfully deride and denounce the outlawing of psychoactive substances. Kant's basic message, as inspired by Hume, is that we cannot understand ultimate realities in words, but as James insists in "The Varieties of Religious Experience," it is our duty as philosophers to try to understand such realities EXPERIENTIALLY, i.e., with the help of psychoactive substances such as nitrous oxide.
"No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded."
This is why it is a shame that I am the only philosopher in the world who contacted the FDA to protest their recent plans to begin treating nitrous oxide as a "drug" and so further discourage its use in metaphysical research. Alas, such goal-driven substance use is already considered unthinkable by most academics thanks to their brainwashed fealty to the drug war ideology of substance demonization. Thus I was the only philosopher in the world who spoke up on behalf of the legacy of William James and on behalf of academic freedom, for that matter, by pleading with the FDA to refrain from further marginalizing an already vastly underused substance. (In a sane world, the suicidal would be given laughing gas kits in the same way that we provide epi pens for those with severe allergies.)
But then this is the point of my entire website and the hundreds of essays that it contains: to demonstrate to the world that the drug war and prohibition are a cancer on the body politic and not just a matter of a few laws set up to discourage hedonists. For the idea that we should hate psychoactive substances is itself a metaphysical notion peculiar to the western mindset and not some logical truth that any unbiased mind must accept. Unfortunately, scientists seem to know, as it were subconsciously, that the drug war is a good thing, for it is clearly biased in the name of the materialism which they themselves profess. In the wake of the technological revolution, science is feeling omniscient, and so it naturally wants to avoid dealing with drug effects and the variability of human emotions. They cannot be quantified, as behaviorist materialism requires. So philosophers and scientists alike see a benefit in drug laws that outlaw substances that facilitate mystical feelings and ontological intimations: "Good riddance to such namby-pamby data," says the materialist in their "heart of hearts."
And so the drug war outlaws precisely those substances whose use conduces to a non-materialist view of the world, one in which we have intimations about the supposedly "unknowable" world of the noumena. And why is the noumena unknowable to us? First, thanks to the merely pragmatic nature of our perceptions as explained by Kant. But also thanks to the inherent limitations of that incomplete and fallible communication system that we call human language, whose inevitable shortcomings and vagaries seem to bar us from definitively saying anything that could not, at least in theory, be plausibly gainsaid in that same inherently malleable language.
These limitations of human language contrast tellingly, however, with the vivid experiential convictions about reality that are communicated by substance use according to the trip reports of the psychonauts of all ages. We can debate the ontological significance of such experiences, of course, but let us remember that it was precisely such "use" that opened James' mind to a world of potential realities of whose existence he had previously been blissfully unaware. Why? Because of his previous self-satisfied acceptance of materialist principles.
Unfortunately, modern philosophers have ceded their job of metaphysical investigation to psychonauts like James Fadiman, Alex Gibbons and Jim Hogshire. Not that there is anything wrong with the research of these latter truth seekers, but it is a shame that philosophers are not working with them to promote human progress and philosophical understanding. And so if metaphysics is dead in the 21st century, it is because today's philosophers have abandoned the pursuit of truth in the name of supporting America's hateful and superstitious war on psychoactive substances.
According to Kant, we can know nothing about the noumenal world, or ultimate reality, but this claim is not true*. In making that claim, Kant was unaware of the metaphysical insights provided by psychoactive drug use. There is such a thing as "experiential proof" inspired by such use -- an absolute conviction that is felt "in every fiber of one's being," as opposed to having been "proven" for one syllogistically in the fallible and eternally insufficient communication method that we call human language.
This is Kant's Holy Grail, had he only realized it, a way to move forward with metaphysical research: by looking for experiential proof of ultimate realities rather than merely logical ones.
A critic might say, yes, but metaphysics cannot be based on experience. But by that word, one has always meant sober experience. That implicit qualification was itself established before we understood the fallibility of the senses. The transcendent experience I reference here is of another kind, being contemplated in the mind and not processed through the sense organs typically associated with experience.
*Kant's claim could be salvaged, perhaps, by specifying the type of "knowledge" that we're talking about here. My point is simply that Kant seemed unaware of the power of psychoactive drugs to inspire states that provide us with convictions with respect to the noumenal world. Whether the source of those convictions is "knowledge" properly so-called is an interesting question, but one well beyond the scope of these comments and unnecessary for their rational evaluation.
The drug war has created a whole film genre with the same tired plots: drug-dealing scumbags and their dupes being put in their place by the white Anglo-Saxon establishment, which has nothing but contempt for altered states.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
The UN of today is in an odd position regarding drugs: they want to praise indigenous societies while yet outlawing the drugs that helped create them.
I agree that Big Pharma drugs have wrought disaster when used in psychotherapy -- but it is common sense that non-Big Pharma drugs that elate could be used to prevent suicide and obviate the need for ECT.
Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.
Rick Strassman reportedly stopped his DMT trials because some folks had bad experiences at high doses. That is like giving up on aspirin because high doses of NSAIDs can kill.
Drug warriors do not seem to see any irony in the fact that their outlawing of opium eventually resulted in an "opioid crisis." The message is clear: people want transcendence. If we don't let them find it safely, they will find it dangerously.
Unfortunately, the prohibitionist motto is: "Billions for arrest, not one cent for education." To the contrary, drug warriors are ideologically committed to withholding the truth about drugs from users.
We should be encouraging certain drug use by the elderly. Many Indigenous drugs have been shown to grow new neurons and increase neural connectivity -- to refuse to use them makes us complicit in the dementia of our loved ones!
Scientists cannot tell us if psychoactive drugs are worth the risk any more than they can tell us if free climbing is worth the risk, or horseback riding or target practice or parkour.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Immanuel Kant on Drugs: aka how the drug war censors philosophy, published on February 20, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
n his excellent lectures on Immanuel Kant recorded in 2011, the late American philosopher Daniel N. Robinson draws his students' attention to the satirical writings of the Scriblerus Club, a group of five Tory wits (including Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift) who ridiculed pretentious erudition in the Augustan age. The Oxford professor laments that such writers are no longer around to refresh the turbid springs of philosophical debate and to "call foul" whenever philosophers try to pass off presumptuous dogma as gospel truth. 
You have been reading an article entitled, Immanuel Kant on Drugs: aka how the drug war censors philosophy, published on February 20, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
