At Chacruna: Should Psychedelic Humanities Promote Psychedelic Humanism?

Nicolas Langlitz

Psychedelia is becoming more diverse. Among the new viewpoints mushrooming at conferences and on panels is psychedelic humanism. When German social scientist Henrik Jungaberle first proposed it as a topic for us to discuss at a virtual event of his MIND Foundation, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, I thought he misspoke. He must have meant psychedelic humanities. I had just published an article on how I conceived of the extension of the psychedelic revival from the medical sciences to humanist scholarship (Langlitz, 2019). By “humanist,” I didn’t mean scholarship committed to the ethics of humanism that attaches prime importance to human rather than divine matters but scholarship that belonged to the branch of learning concerned with human culture, especially philosophy, history, literature, and the arts. The misunderstanding was quickly resolved. I learned that Jungaberle himself was working on a book on psychedelic humanism and thus we had found a topic for our conversation, which I also want to raise with Chacruna readers: Should psychedelic humanities promote psychedelic humanism?.. continue reading.