coming: serious drinking

Not a few authors of antiquity noted the extraordinary effect that wine has on the soul when drunk as it should be –that is, in company. And yet, as Roger Scruton rightly wrote, philosophers have said little (too little) about the true meaning of wine, the truth that wine itself contains, and its leading role in the construction of the human. Wine, as the French gastronome Brillat-Savarin said, deserves philosophical attention. A frivolous reading of the old proverb oinon kai aletheia (or in vino veritas, in its Latin translation), assumes that the truth of wine lies in what we say and do under its influence. But to take wine seriously (that is, to wonder about that truth) implies understanding that not a few of the ways in which we inhabit the world today are echoes of a perhaps original toast (should we, can we imagine an Urtoast?), that the question of the truth of our being has often found answers in shared wine, and that these answers need to be poured and brought to the mouth to be understood, from Plato to Kierkegaard and beyond (namely, here). The ancients knew this, in their own way: from this awareness come the myth of Dionysus, the poem of Gilgamesh, the constant allusions to wine in the Hebrew Bible, and the millenary rituals (Hellenic, Babylonian, Assyrian) that precede and prefigure the Christian Eucharist.

 Co-edited with Dr. Elaine V. Wilson, Serious Drinking wants to do literally what its title says: to drink wine, and to do it seriously. That is, it asks the question of the truth of wine and thinks through the relationships that wine inaugurates –with nature, ourselves, others, and (the) god(s). In order to try to approach this truth (or, even better, these truths), we believe it is essential to adopt an interdisciplinary perspective. Whenever we talk about wine, a number of ideas about the self, intoxication, the social, perception, communication, and the religious are in play –though more often than not, only under the table (or the bar). To bring these pre-assumptions to light, we propose an edited volume containing texts from selected authors, exploring the (liquid) matter in question, from selected disciplines: communication theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy, anthropology, aesthetics, sociology, food studies, et cetera. If wine is the transformation of the grape in fermentation, the transformation of the soul under its influence can be seen as a continuation of this first transformation. Not for nothing did the Greeks describe fermentation as a “work of God.” Since these disciplines have extensively analyzed the human-culture-religion triad (i.e., the transformation of the natural into culture, and of the human into the divine), it is to be expected that we turn to them when taking wine seriously –that is, as an object of intellectual inquiry (and enjoyment). 

Despite being obviously present at the heart of more than one classical philosophical text, wine has been woefully ignored in the history of Western thought. While it is necessary to ask what this omission reveals about our scientific endeavors, it is also true that a philosophy of wine has been gaining ground for some years now, perhaps in response to the saying attributed to Plato that “nothing more excellent or precious than wine has ever been granted, on behalf of the gods, to men”. With these concerns (and perspectives) in mind, we want to (re)think the link between academic reflection, the simple (and arcane) happiness of shared wine, and its ultimate relationship to virtue. To take wine seriously (to do some serious drinking) is to remember that the best pairing is a topic of discussion worthy of the wine being drunk. As the Greeks well knew, this is perhaps the best way to discuss the issues that matter.