Yeah - in case you think I'm making this up, I refer you to
*Hegelspiele* ed. & afterwords by Heiner Höfener, 1977. This is an
anthology of Monty Pythonish German parody-satire dramas : one is called
"Der absolute Stiefel" = The absolute boot) from the 1800s. In the outro
to the latter Hegel's lecture appearances are reviewed with especial
notice taken of his snuff-taking habits. (His drinking was notorious -
Schopenhauer said he had a beerseller's physiognomy & his wineseller's
bills were ginormous - higher than his bookseller's). He sniffed so
forcefully that the students in the first rows were sprayed with his
snuff. This (apparently obtained from a pharmacist) contained a large
quantity of cannabis indica according to Höfener, who claims that the
poetic-mythical language H employs, always unwinding the Ariadne thread
(Benjamin's image from his famous essay on taking hashish in Marseille)
& never really getting there, was directly attributable to his permanent
Rausch (intoxication). Whether this is demonstrably "true" is another
question - I have only found a German blog briefly referring to Hegel's
cannabis consumption. I like to think it is true.
Chris Jones wrote:
>Hegel was a pot head... that has to be about the best explanation of
>Hegel's theory of subjectivity I have ever encountered. The Shorter
>Logic will never be read the same way again.
>
>
I've never actually read that - is it a good read? *Philosophie des
Rechts* was pretty clear, then I had trouble with the *Phänomenologie
des Geistes* & have preferred to read "about" him since. Adorno's little
book (Drei Studien) actually made sense to me, but the key word here is
"little".
>Many thanks for this wonderful insight. (Although I don't think I could
>cope with smoking a large joint and then attempting such a reading.)
>
>
Well, perhaps you should sniff it like G.W.F. ;-)
emjay
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