Antonio Escohotado Espinosa (5 July 1941 – 21 November 2021) commonly called Antonio Escohotado was a Spanish philosopher, jurist, essayist and university professor. His life's work primarily focused on law, philosophy and sociology, yet extended to many other disciplines. Escohotado gained public renown for his research on drugs and for his well-known anti-prohibitionist positions. His crown jewel The General History of Drugs, is the most comprehensive book ever written regarding drugs, in any language, in all of academia. The leitmotif of his work is, in the same way, an affirmation of freedom as an antidote to fear or the constraints that push the human being towards all kinds of servitude. His thought fits into the framework of libertarian liberalism. Check out his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Escohotado
Escohotado declared more than once "to have no other stimulus than self-clarification, nor a compass other than to find out the beginning and end of all things."According to him, his work has developed as a process of self-learning of the variety of topics that he addresses by applying a method genealogical analysis, a historical approach that chronologically organizes information and is suspicious of taxonomies.
During the 1960s he trained as a jurist and philosopher fascinated by the teachings of Ortega y Gasset and Zubiri —influenced by the concepts of vital reason and historical reason—, through which he came to know Freud and especially Hegel, whose philosophy of religion he analyzed in his doctoral thesis The unhappy conscience (1972). This work together with Reality and Substance (1985) —an incursion into the field of logic and pure metaphysics— lay the foundations of a solid philosophical foundation on which the rest of his intellectual production rests. With De physis a polis (1975) he went back to Pre-Socratic thinkers, while at the same time he played a leading role in the emergence of the island of Ibiza as a countercultural focus in Spain at the end of Francoism and the democratic awakening, by founding the disco Amnesia (1976). Over the years he evolved, from a greater application to the abstract in his youth and early maturity, towards a growing interest in the data extracted from the observation of the most concrete reality, taking the option of "an observant science, cornered today for its predictive branch".
Since then and until today he has devoted himself to studying and disseminating the origin and evolution of impersonal human entities that represent complexity itself, "which are neither volitional subjects nor inert objects, but beings of a third type – such as human understanding, the family or political economy – the result of the concurrence of unlimited individual actions in some order not planned a priori. This interest in reality as an emancipatory principle of simplification places Escohotado's work at the hinge between ontology and the sciences of Man – according to Hume's expression – his interdisciplinary perspective combines a great diversity of knowledge and interests from a humanistic position. Starting from logic and metaphysics, it penetrates into epistemology and the theory of science, to later derive towards even more properly human phenomena, such as the economy and political power, gender myths and family and sexual customs, or the forms of intoxication. The common impulse in all these fields is an affirmation of human freedom as an antidote to fear, or to the impositions of authorities outside of personal responsibility.
From the underground militancy during the Franco regime, his political positions have evolved until he defined himself as "a liberal democrat", while in his work the idea matured that "any political utopia ends up being indiscernible from one or another eugenic project, a euphemism for genocidal companies." Politically, he is a singular thinker in the Spanish panorama, and not always well understood, since he is not part of the traditional left/right axis, but rather focuses on the issues of freedom/authoritarianism, rejecting utopianism and authoritarianism from pragmatic and rationalist positions. Nevertheless, he declared himself to be "the paradigm of the man of the left in Spain". Escohotado became a historian and analyst of current affairs, social practices and culture during the transition for his contemporaries through his numerous articles published first in El País and later in El Mundo and Diario 16. For example, those crimes of the State Perpetrated by the GALs, they are revealed to public opinion by Escohotado in opinion stands and essays on the sociology of political power such as Majesties, crimes and victims (1987), or The Spirit of Comedy, Anagrama Essay Award in 1992.
As the author of the book The General History of Drugs (1989), he achieved public notoriety in the last decades of the 20th century for his defense of anti-prohibitionist positions through articles and appearances in televised debates. He practiced bioassay, testing, classifying and describing the physical and subjective effects of more than thirty different psychoactive substances (crack, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis, LSD, nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, etc). This user manual after several editions would end up titled Learning from Drugs (1990–1995). He has maintained numerous controversies in the media for his opinions on sensitive issues for morals, such as drug use, prostitution or euthanasia. The same that for his followers means independence of criteria or the cultivation of free thought, is considered intellectual impertinence by his detractors, and has sometimes caused the rejection of certain academic circles that have accused him of professional intrusion, for example, after the publication of the Epistemological manifesto appeared as Chaos y Orden, Premio Espasa de Ensayo in 1999.
On a professional level, he has also served as a translator for more than forty titles. Among others, he has translated the works of Newton, Hobbes, Jefferson and Bakunin, he has especially divulged the work of Thomas Szasz and that of Ernst Jünger. He served until his retirement in 2013 as professor of Philosophy and Methodology of Social Sciences at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology of the UNED. Until very recently he has been immersed in the study of the history of the communist movement with the writing of The enemies of commerce. A Moral History of Property (2008–2014), a three-volume monograph. In 2019, he was awarded the Juan de Mariana Prize for his defense of "freedom in response to the coercions that end up subjecting the individual to all kinds of slavery."
List of published works
Marcuse, Utopia and Reason (Marcuse, utopía y razón, 1968, Alianza Editorial).
The Unhappy Consciousness, an essay about Hegel's philosophy of religion La conciencia infeliz. (Ensayo sobre la filosofía de la religión de Hegel, 1971, Revista de Occidente).
From Physis to Polis (De physis a polis, 1982, Anagrama).
Reality and Substance (Realidad y substancia, 1986, Taurus).
Philosophy and Methodology in the Sciences (Filosofía y metodología de las ciencias, 1987, UNED).
Majesties, Crimes and Victims (Majestades, crímenes y víctimas, 1987, Anagrama).
The General History of Drugs (Historia general de las drogas 3 volúmenes, 1989, Alianza). Translated partially or completely into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Bulgarian and Czech. Online access to parts of the book cited by the author.
The Book of Poisons (El libro de los venenos, 1990, Alianza)
The Spirit of Comedy (El espíritu de la comedia, 1991, Anagrama Essay Award – Premio Anagrama de Ensayo).
Learning from drugs: uses and abuses, prejudices and challenges (Aprendiendo de las drogas: usos y abusos, prejuicios y desafíos, 1995, Anagrama). This volume was published earlier under the name: El libro de los venenos in 1990 and in 1992 as Para una fenomenología de las drogas.
Whores and Wives: Four Myths about Sex and Duty (Rameras y esposas: cuatro mitos sobre el sexo y deber, 1993, Anagrama).
Drugs: Yesterday and Today (Las drogas: de ayer a mañana, 1994, Talasa).
Brief History of Drugs: From the Stone Age to the Stoned Age, 1999, Park Street Press (Historia elemental de las drogas, 1996, Anagrama).
The Question of Cannabis: A constructive proposal on hashish and marihuana (La cuestión del cáñamo: una propuesta constructiva sobre hachís y marihuana, 1997, Anagrama)
Portrait of a Libertine (Retrato del libertino, 1997, Espasa-Calpe).
The General History of Drugs (in English, Graffiti Militante Press, 2015) includes the appendix: "Phenomenology of drugs" 1999, Espasa-Calpe. Online at Google Books here.
Chaos and Order (Caos y orden, 1999, Premio Espasa de Ensayo 1999).
Sixty weeks in the Tropics (Sesenta semanas en el trópico, 2003, Anagrama).
The Enemies of Commerce (Los enemigos del comercio, 2008, Espasa-Calpe). Online access to the Spanish book here.
The Enemies of Commerce II (Los enemigos del comercio II, 2013 Espasa-Calpe). Online access to the Spanish book here.
Facing Fear (Frente al miedo, 2015, Página Indómita).
The Enemies of Commerce III (Los enemigos del comercio III, 2017 Espasa-Calpe).
My Private Ibiza (Mi Ibiza privada, 2019 Espasa-Calpe).
Prologues
Más allá del nihilismo: Meditaciones sobre Ernst Jünger, de Enrique Ocaña, Editum, 1993.
Nuestro derecho a las drogas, de Thomas Szasz, Anagrama, 1993.
Drogas y cultura de masas, de Juan Carlos Usó, Taurus, 1996.
Mr. Nice, de Howard Marks, La Cañamería Global, 2000.
"Rememorando a Sasha Shulgin", en PIHKAL y TIHKAL (edición en castellano), de Alexander Shulgin y Ann Shulgin, Editorial Manuscritos, 2015.
El rebaño: Cómo Occidente ha sucumbido a la tiranía ideológica, de Jano García, La Esfera de los Libros, 2021.
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