Walter Benjamin – Hashish as method

He did not give the plant a slogan.
He gave it notes.

Walter Benjamin did not approach hashish as escape. He approached it as method.

Between 1927 and the mid-1930s, Benjamin took part in documented experiments with hashish and other psychoactive substances, often in controlled or semi-controlled settings with physicians and intellectual companions. His notes, protocols and fragments were later gathered in On Hashish / Über Haschisch.

What makes Benjamin important for LIBERA HERBA is not that he “used cannabis”.

It is that he tried to observe perception
while perception was changing.

Memory, language, objects, humour, distance, architecture, art — under hashish, these did not simply become stranger. They became available for philosophical inspection from a different angle.

This is cannabis not as lifestyle, not as rebellion, not as medicine.
Cannabis as an instrument of attention.

Benjamin did not give the plant a slogan. He gave it notes.

And sometimes, in the Herbarium, a note is more valuable than a declaration.