Lotus and Pharmakon: Drugs in the Dialectic of Enlightenment

This essay explicates the position of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment on the problem of drugs. At the focus of my analysis are the passages in “Excursus I: Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment” which interpret the Homeric myth of the Lotus-eaters in terms of the modern phenomenon of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 159 - 184
Main Author: Shmugliakov, Pioter
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: University of Warsaw 01.01.2025
Subjects:
critical theory
dialectic of enlightenment
drugs
horkheimer and adorno
jacques derrida
ISSN:2544-302X, 2544-302X
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This essay explicates the position of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment on the problem of drugs. At the focus of my analysis are the passages in “Excursus I: Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment” which interpret the Homeric myth of the Lotus-eaters in terms of the modern phenomenon of substance abuse. Since the Dialectic reads the Odyssey as the fundamental history of subjectivity, the indictment of drugs the authors recognize in the myth acquires, as it were, a transhistorical status. Building upon the work of Jacques Derrida and applying his notion of the pharmakon as a metaphysical concept of the drug, I show that the Dialectic reveals a much more ambivalent picture. The backbone of my argument is a structural comparison between the book’s treatment of the Lotus and its interpretations of the myths of the Sirens and Circe, standing, on this account, for art and sex respectively.
ISSN:2544-302X
2544-302X
DOI:10.14394/eidos.jpc.2025.0009