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Sartre and the Drug Connection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Carole Curtis-Haynes
Carole Curtis-Haynes
Affiliation:
Helston Cornwall
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Extract

Sartre's experimentation in February 1935 with the drug mescalin has been well documented by Simone de Beauvoir in her book The Prime of Life.1 She recalls that Sartre experienced under the influence of the drug not exactly hallucinations, ‘but the objects he looked at changed their appearance in the most horrifying manner:’ [POL 209]. The residual effects of this nightmarish experience left Sartre, not only for several days ‘in a state of deep depression’ [POL 210], but also produced moods that ‘recalled those that had been induced by mescalin.’

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 70 , Issue 271 , January 1995 , pp. 87 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1995

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References

1 The Prime of Life, Beauvoir, Simone de trans. Peter, Green (London: Penguin Books, 1965). Referred to in text as POL.Google Scholar

2 Nausea, Sartre, Jean-Paul trans. Robert, Baldick (London: Penguin Books, 1965). Referred to in text as N.Google Scholar

3 Being and Nothingness, Sartre, Jean-Paul trans. Barnes, Hazel E. (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1958). Referred to in text as BN.Google Scholar

4 Solomon, Robert, C. From Rationalism to Existentialism (England: Harvester Press, 1978) pp. 247.Google Scholar

5 Murdoch, Iris Sartre: Romantic Realist (London: Penguin Books, 1989) pp.51.Google Scholar

6 Warnock, Mary The Philosophy of Sartre (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1965) pp. 96–97.Google Scholar

7 Salvan, Jacques To Be and Not to Be (Detroit, USA: Wayne State University Press, 1962) pp. xxxi.Google ScholarPubMed

8 Azzi,Marie-Denise, Boros ‘Representation of Character in Sartre's Drama, Fiction, and Biography’ The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.) The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. XVI (Carbondale, USA: Southern Illinois University, 1981) p. 466.Google Scholar

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Francis, Claude and Gontier, Fernande Simone de Beauvoir Trans. Lisa Nesselson (London: Minerva Paperback, 1992), p. 140.Google Scholar

12 Sartre, Jean Paul Altona and Other Plays trans. Sylvia and George Leeson (London Penguin Books, 1962) pp. 125.Google Scholar

13 Sartre, Jean Paul Words trans. Irene Clephane (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1967).Google ScholarPubMed

14 Murdoch op. cit., pp. 42–43.Google Scholar

15 Huxley, Aldous The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1960), p. 46.Google Scholar

16 Huxley op. cit., p. 26.Google Scholar

17 Huxley op. cit., p. 22.Google Scholar

18 Huxley Ibid.

19 Huxley op. cit., p. 45.Google Scholar

20 Huxley op. cit., p. 69.Google Scholar

21 Huxley op. cit., p. 108.Google Scholar

22 Huxley op. cit., p. 45.Google Scholar

23 Huxley Ibid.

24 Although Beauvoir states in relation to one such attack that ‘doctors have told me that the mescalin could not possibly have provoked this attack’ [POL 211], it is my contention that the mescalin experience did indeed in its residual effects provoke this and other similar attacks, although no doubt partly precipitated by, what Beauvoir goes on to call Sartre's ‘fatigue and tension engendered by his philosophical research work’ [Ibid]. It did more therefore, than Beauvoir admits viz. merely furnish Sartre ‘with certain hallucinatory patterns.’ [Ibid]. While I do not deny that Sartre was predisposed to bouts of depression and chronic anxiety before he experimented with mescalin, I do deny that these bouts were in any way on a par with the post-mescalin attacks, or that they could have lead to his metaphysical analysis in the absence of mescalin.

25 Huxley op. cit., pp. 47–8.Google Scholar

26 Huxley op. cit., p. 39.Google Scholar

27 Murdoc op. cit., p. 49.Google Scholar

28 Murdoc op. cit., p. 51.Google Scholar

29 Warnock op. cit., p. 99.Google Scholar

30 Warnock op. cit., p. 97.Google Scholar

31 Warnock op. cit., p. 105.Google Scholar

32 Examples of Roquentin's description of the overwhelming weight and mass of Brute existence will also be found to have expression in Sartre's later philosophical work Being and Nothingness where Sartre describes Being-in-itself as ‘solid, massive’ etc. It is interesting to speculate that these descriptions regarding the nature of Being-in-itself may also have emanated from Sartre's mescalin experience and its residual effects. I do not, however, insist upon this, for this is not my main charge. I merely speculate so that others may make up their own minds. There are certainly enough passages in Nausea descriptive of the weight and mass of Brute existence that have parallels with those to be found in Being and Nothingness to offer at least tentative evidence for such a thesisGoogle Scholar

33 Warnock op. cit., p. 101.Google Scholar

34 Huxley op. cit., p. 108.Google Scholar

35 Huxley Ibid.

36 Huxley Ibid.

37 What is, for Huxley, metaphysically revealed in these mescalin induced visions of Heaven need not concern us here. Suffice to say that his subsequent ontology regarding the true nature of being is very different from Sartre's.

38 Cooper, David, E. Existentialism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 54.Google Scholar

39 Marcel, Gabriel quoted by Murdoch op. cit., p. 49Google Scholar