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Deeper Learning with Psychedelics: Philosophical Pathways through Altered States
Through a philosophical lens, this book explores the powerful educational capabilities of classic psychedelics.
Finalist for the 2024 F oreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Education category
In both clinical and informal settings, psychedelics users often report they have undergone something profound and even life-altering. Yet there persists a confounding inability to articulate just what has been imparted. Informed by multidisciplinary emerging research, this book provides an account of the specifically educational aspects of psychedelics and how they can render us ready to learn. Drawing from indigenous peoples worldwide who typically revere these substances as "plant teachers" and from canonical thinkers in the western tradition such as Plato, Spinoza, Kant, and Heidegger, the author proposes an original set of categories through which to understand the educational capabilities of "entheogens" (psychedelics with visionary qualities). It emerges that entheogens' real power lies not in destabilizing and decentering-"turning on and dropping out"-but as powerful aids in restoring and reenchanting our shared worlds.
Finalist for the 2024 F oreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Education category
In both clinical and informal settings, psychedelics users often report they have undergone something profound and even life-altering. Yet there persists a confounding inability to articulate just what has been imparted. Informed by multidisciplinary emerging research, this book provides an account of the specifically educational aspects of psychedelics and how they can render us ready to learn. Drawing from indigenous peoples worldwide who typically revere these substances as "plant teachers" and from canonical thinkers in the western tradition such as Plato, Spinoza, Kant, and Heidegger, the author proposes an original set of categories through which to understand the educational capabilities of "entheogens" (psychedelics with visionary qualities). It emerges that entheogens' real power lies not in destabilizing and decentering-"turning on and dropping out"-but as powerful aids in restoring and reenchanting our shared worlds.
354 pages, Hardcover
Published June 1, 2024
About the author
David J. Blacker
10 books6 followersDavid Blacker is Professor of Philosophy of Education and Legal Studies at the University of Delaware and is the author of The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame.
Blacker has given over sixty presentations at scholarly conferences and other academic venues. Among these are invited public lectures at the University of Cambridge, University of London, Westminster University, University of Edinburgh, McGill University, Columbia University, the MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art (Rome), and Haus der Kulturen der Welte (Berlin).
He was selected by the University of Illinois’s Center for Advanced Study for its prestigious campus-wide MillerComm Lecture Series. Additionally, his work provided an early resource for the Occupy movement and he has appeared on numerous podcasts and radio shows such as The C-Realm, The Extraenvironmentalist, and The Majority Report (selected by listeners as a “Best Interview of the Year”).
Blacker has given over sixty presentations at scholarly conferences and other academic venues. Among these are invited public lectures at the University of Cambridge, University of London, Westminster University, University of Edinburgh, McGill University, Columbia University, the MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art (Rome), and Haus der Kulturen der Welte (Berlin).
He was selected by the University of Illinois’s Center for Advanced Study for its prestigious campus-wide MillerComm Lecture Series. Additionally, his work provided an early resource for the Occupy movement and he has appeared on numerous podcasts and radio shows such as The C-Realm, The Extraenvironmentalist, and The Majority Report (selected by listeners as a “Best Interview of the Year”).
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