Storia stupefacente della filosofia. Oppio, Lsd e anfetamine da Platone a Friedrich Nietzsche

We are used to thinking of philosophers as the ultimate expression of the intellect, descended among us by divine grace. At least, that is how we are taught at school and university. But An Addictive History of Philosophy is also the history of the weaknesses and vices of the titans of thought, of their yielding to pleasures and hedonism. In an entertaining and enjoyable book, but at the same time very thorough (full of notes and with a substantial bibliography), Alessandro Paolucci recounts the relationship of some of the founders of Western philosophy with drugs and alcohol, a look at the times they betrayed Apollo for a fling with Dionysus. Nietzsche’s opium, Plato’s hallucinogenic herbs, Freud’s cocaine, Sartre’s corrected (read: amphetamine-added) aspirin: what if these moments of ‘ir- rationality’ were decisive for their worldviews? What if their yielding to imperfection gave them a broader view of human destiny and the meaning of existence?