Review: On Hashish by Walter Benjamin

'On Hashish' is a selection of protocols and various writings on intoxication by Walter Benjamin. They are based on experiments that took place between 1927-1934 in Berlin, Marseille and Ibiza. Many were conducted in group conditions, which included individuals like Ernst Bloch and Jean Selz. Although Benjamin had planned a great drug-related work during his lifetime, it never came to fruition. This collection was first published posthumously in 1972 as 'Uber Haschisch'. I'll be working from the English translation, published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.

Initially inspired by 19th century writers like Charles Baudelaire and the group environment of Club Des Hashishins, Walter Benjamin began experimenting with Hashish along with various contemporaries including physician Ernst Joel and philosopher Ernst Bloch. According to the translators forward: "The philosophical immersion that intoxicants afforded Walter Benjamin was not symbolist derangement of the senses -- but transformation of reason. Which is to say: transformation of the traditional logic of noncontradiction and the traditional principle of identity". He wanted to explore philosophically, and quite literally in his drug taking, the horizons of experience.