As 2024 promises to be a raucous election year in the United States, we will be taking up the theme of democracy today. While the idea of democracy remains a guiding influence for many in the world struggling against various forms of authoritarianism in places such as Ukraine, Venezuela, Myanmar, or Hong Kong, the view of democracy looks less appealing within the Western democracies themselves. On the one hand, the polarization of party politics has shaken liberal confidence in democratic institutions, and both the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States blame each other for exploiting the legal apparatus to persecute political enemies. On the other hand, democratic decision-making and action have been undermined by the managerial bureaucracies that dominate within government and corporations. How serious are these threats to democracy and how might our democracies address the threats that both digitally enhanced demagoguery and managerial bureaucracy pose to their survival? Our upcoming Telos-Paul Piccone Institute conference in New York on March 22–23, 2024, will address the topic of “Democracy Today,” and we invite your submissions of paper proposals. Please see our call for papers here.

Approaches

Drugs and Altered States

by Ernst Jünger

Translated by Thomas Friese
Edited and with an Introduction by Russell A. Berman

Telos Press Publishing is delighted to announce the publication of Ernst Jünger’s Approaches: Drugs and Altered States, now available in English translation.

In Approaches, Jünger describes his experiences with drugs over the course of his life, ranging from youthful drinking sprees, through experiments with hashish and morphine, to more powerful psychotropic substances like mescaline, peyote, and LSD. Taking his readers on a remarkable journey from beer to hallucinogens, he provides fascinating vignettes from key moments in Germany’s troubled twentieth century. Approaches is also a fundamentally philosophical, even spiritual journey toward hidden dimensions of existence that, in Jünger’s view, have been eclipsed by the ambient noise of modern life. The ecstatic altered states provided by drug use, he claims, can help us approach them and find a deeper truth.

Order your copy of Ernst Jünger’s Approaches: Drugs and Altered States at the Telos Press website and save 20% with the coupon code BOOKS20.

Follow the Telos Press Podcast

Stay up-to-date with the conversation by following the Telos Press Podcast through your preferred podcast provider.

Recent Books from Telos Press Publishing