Applied Mysticism: A Drug-Enabled Visionary Experience Against Moral Blindness
Intellectuals such as William James and Aldous Huxley have thought it possible to develop a technique to apply to this world the mystical-type insights gained during drug-enabled experiences. Particularly, Huxley claimed that the visionary experience triggered by psychedelics could help us rethink o...
| Published in: | Zygon |
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| Subtitles: | DRUG‐ENABLED MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES |
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Open Library of Humanities$s2024-
[2019]
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| In: |
Zygon
Year: 2019, Volume: 54, Issue: 3, Pages: 731-755 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
James, William 1842-1910
/ Huxley, Aldous 1894-1963
/ Psychedelic experience
/ Moral conditions
/ Improvement
/ Mysticism
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| Further subjects: | B
Morality
B Mysticism B Imagination B Technology B Günther Anders B Psychedelics |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Intellectuals such as William James and Aldous Huxley have thought it possible to develop a technique to apply to this world the mystical-type insights gained during drug-enabled experiences. Particularly, Huxley claimed that the visionary experience triggered by psychedelics could help us rethink our relationship with technology and promote a much-needed cultural change. In this article, we explore this hypothesis. To do so, we build a philosophical framework based on Günther Anders's philosophy of technique, presenting human beings as morally blind when facing technological development. Mystical experiences are then proposed as a means to improve our moral faculties-and psychedelic drugs as tools to enable them. We finally explore the empirical feasibility of such a hypothesis by thoroughly reviewing the recent scientific literature on the nature of the psychedelic experience, concluding that the long-term effects in the personality domain openness and in nature relatedness point to the emergence of a morally improved agent, thus providing substance to an application of mysticism. |
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| ISSN: | 1467-9744 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Zygon
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/zygo.12544 |