Heidegger and freedom in the anti-drug war movement

This chapter considers the import of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy for anthropological analysis. In particular, it takes up Heidegger’s conception of freedom as letting-be, or Gelassenheit, to think through the various ways in which anti-drug war activists articulate freedom in their political activity. In doing so, an important distinction is made between sovereign freedom and disclosive freedom, and the chapter shows that anti-drug war political activity is best understood in terms of a disclosive freedom that lets others be. Importantly, this disclosive freedom is linked to a conception of attuned care, which is perhaps the central ethical mandate of the anti-drug war movement.