Postgraduate Module Descriptor

PHLM013: Philosophy and Psychedelics

This module descriptor refers to the 2023/4 academic year.

Indicative Reading List

This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.

Key text: Hauskeller, C., & Sjöstedt-Hughes, P. (2022) Philosophy and Psychedelics (London: Bloomsbury)

Benjamin, W. (1927–34) On Hashish

Boothroyd, D. (2006) Culture on Drugs: Narco-cultural Studies of High Modernity

De Quincey, T. (1821) Confession of an English Opium Eater

Hofmann, A. (1979) LSD: My Problem Child

Huxley, A. (1956) Heaven and Hell

James, W. (1902) The Varieties of Religious Experience

Jay, M. (2019) Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic

Kopenawa, A. (2019) The Falling Sky.

Lundborg, P. (2014) Note Towards a Definition of a Psychedelic Philosophy

O’Dowd, L.O. (2019), ‘De-essentializing the notion of the Feminine in Psychedelic Research: Western Women, Ayahuasca and Possibilities for Transformation’, in Papaspyrou, M., Baldini, C., and Luke, D., eds. Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine (Rochester: Park Street Press), pp. 182-194.

Partridge, C. (2018) High Culture: Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World

Shanon, B. (2002) The Antipodes of the Mind

Shulgin, A. & Shulgin, A. (1990) Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story

Suzuki, D. T. (1971) Religion and Drugs

Thompson, S. J. (2014) From ‘Rausch’ to Rebellion: Walter Benjamin’s On Hashish and the Aesthetic Dimensions of Prohibitionist Realism

Zaehner, R. C. (1972) Zen, Drugs, and Mysticism