Lecture | Psychedelic Humanities and Moral Psychopharmacology

Twenty-first century psychopharmacology has grown increasingly concerned with the moral effects of psychoactive substances, from antidepressants and oxytocin to MDMA and cocaine. Psychedelics have emerged as an especially interesting case in this literature because their moral effects turn out to be highly context-dependent. The historical and ethnographic archives show that psychedelics have been harnessed to a wide variety of ethical and political projects, from preparing for violent conflict in Amazonia to rethinking the Holocaust in Dutch psycholytic therapy of “concentration camp syndrome” and from advocating for world peace to rites of passage in American right-wing militias.

This chapter highlights the fact that psychedelics frequently inform two kinds of ethical projects that could be considered amoral in that they seek to go beyond the moral order. First, psychedelic culture has been a happy hunting ground for charismatic prophets who offer leadership in moments of societal crisis while positioning themselves outside of conventional morality, acting as if they were a law unto themselves. Second, psychedelic mysticism revolves around drug-induced unitive experiences that not only dissolve the demarcation of self and other but also of good and evil. The original psychedelic culture, which emerged in the mid-20th century, leaned toward this indeterminate pole of the ethical economy of valuation. By contrast, the psychedelic renaissance shifts the field toward the determinate pole by issuing ethics codes, setting up watchdog organizations, and creating institutional structures to fend off the threats of guruism.

With Nicolas Langlitz, Professor of Anthropology and founder and head of the Psychedelic Humanities Lab.