Topic: Religion and Psychedelics

Catalog description

This course examines the relationship between religion and substances classed as "psychedelic" or "entheogenic." The relationship will be analyzed historically and philosophically, taking into account the role these substances have played in different traditions, the history of these substances under colonial regimes and post-colonial regimes, the philosophical issues raised by such substances, and the politics of their adoption, appropriation, and use in modern cultural contexts, including psychotherapeutic research. Throughout, attention will be paid to the various and diverse values attributed to these substances and the mental states they produce, and how that value is inextricably bound up with ritual structures, lineages of authority, and conceptual presuppositions about mind, human life, and human flourishing. Courser Rotation: NYC: Spring