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Antonio Escohotado
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. One of his best known works is The General History of Drugs. 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.
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 of 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 the works of 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 his death he 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. He has translated the works of Newton, Hobbes, Jefferson as well as that of Thomas Szasz, Mikhail Bakunin and 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."
The Escohotado family, a long-time resident of the northwest of the Madrid mountain range, has its first notorious member with Escohotado's great-grandfather, Vicente, who supported the Glorious Revolution of 1868 as mayor of Galapagar. The son of the former (and grandfather of Escohotado), also named Vicente, was one of the first scholarship holders of the town to study law, and when he had already published an extensive history of theater in verse, La teatrada (1925), along with several books of planhs and songs, he went from being a solicitor to mayor of El Escorial. The sixth of his sons, Román (1908-1970), father of Antonio Escohotado, began by voting for the socialist Julián Besteiro and ended up signing the Manifesto of the Spanish Falanx. He was head of Dionisio Ridruejo's secretariat during his time as director general of Propaganda, directed Radio Nacional from 1941, won the main journalistic awards (including the Mariano de Cavia prize) and was press attaché in Brazil from 1946 to 1956.
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Antonio Escohotado
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. One of his best known works is The General History of Drugs. 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.
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 of 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 the works of 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 his death he 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. He has translated the works of Newton, Hobbes, Jefferson as well as that of Thomas Szasz, Mikhail Bakunin and 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."
The Escohotado family, a long-time resident of the northwest of the Madrid mountain range, has its first notorious member with Escohotado's great-grandfather, Vicente, who supported the Glorious Revolution of 1868 as mayor of Galapagar. The son of the former (and grandfather of Escohotado), also named Vicente, was one of the first scholarship holders of the town to study law, and when he had already published an extensive history of theater in verse, La teatrada (1925), along with several books of planhs and songs, he went from being a solicitor to mayor of El Escorial. The sixth of his sons, Román (1908-1970), father of Antonio Escohotado, began by voting for the socialist Julián Besteiro and ended up signing the Manifesto of the Spanish Falanx. He was head of Dionisio Ridruejo's secretariat during his time as director general of Propaganda, directed Radio Nacional from 1941, won the main journalistic awards (including the Mariano de Cavia prize) and was press attaché in Brazil from 1946 to 1956.
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