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Philosophy
and wine: Jamie Goode's Report on a one-day meeting held on Friday 10th December 2004, organised by the Philosophy Program of the School of Advanced Study, London University (http://www.sas.ac.uk/Philosophy/Wine.htm) Part 1: Roger Scruton's paper - Philosophy and the Intoxicating Properties of Wine ‘Philosophers have probably drunk more than their
fair share of wine’, observed Roger
Scruton in the introduction to his paper, ‘but they
haven’t had their fair share of the words written about it’. This
was a good way to begin this conference on philosophy and wine, which
gave three well regarded academic philosophers a chance to begin to
redress the balance. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be reviewing
the presentations and discussing some of the issues that were raised
at this one-day meeting. Scruton’s opening paper concentrated on the
philosophy of intoxication. He began with two questions. First, he
asked whether there is a single phenomenon of intoxication: is
something different about the intoxication induced by wine, or is it
the same as that induced by cannabis or whisky? Then he asked whether
intoxication was something that philosophers should be exploring. Is
intoxication a ‘natural kind’, i.e. something that can be wholly
explained in scientific terms? If so, this leaves philosophers nothing
to say on the subject. While science can explain the physiology of the drunken
state, Scruton argued that there is more to intoxication than just
drunkenness. His idea is that the experience of drinking wine is
intoxicating in itself quite separately from the physiological effects
of the alcohol it contains. So, when we ask about intoxication, we are
indeed asking a philosophical question. We can’t make a direct
causal connection between the state of intoxication and the wine
itself. Scruton used the analogy of the excitement of a
football fan to illustrate the relationship between intoxication and
wine. The excitement of the fan watching his/her team play (or in the
case of Manchester City fans like myself, the state of nervous anxiety
and then utter depression) is caused by the football match, but
isn’t a definable physiological condition. ‘Intoxication induced
by wine is also directed at the wine in the same way that the
excitement of a football match is directed towards the game’, says
Scruton. But it is impossible to make a direct link from the game of
football to the state of excitement in the fan. He then considered the relationships between our
different senses. Thomas Aquinas famously distinguished the cognitive
senses of sight and hearing from the ‘non-cognitive’ senses of
taste and smell, a division that Scruton thinks is still helpful
today. He distinguishes, on this basis, the sensory and aesthetic
pleasures. ‘The taste of wine is sensory; poetry is intellectual’,
he states. Intoxication is considered sensory and not aesthetic. Along
similar lines, he posits that, ‘A visual experience is a
representation of reality, whereas taste and smell are not like
that’. This is reflected in the difference between cogent accounts
of paintings and the imprecision of winespeak. ‘Tastes are not
representations of the objects’. Then we are led to consider some deeper, more profound
aspects of intoxication by wine. ‘Intoxicating drink is a symbol of
and a means to achieve an inward transformation’, says Scruton.
‘From ancient times wine has been allotted a sacred function. It
enters the soul of the person drinking it’. Thus wine takes on a
significant role: as we drink it, it becomes part of us in a special
way. To emphasize the special nature of wine, Scruton makes
a four way classification of kinds of stimulant. (1) Pleases us but doesn’t alter the mind. An example of (1) would be tobacco, which has some
mental effects but doesn’t alter the mind. The pleasure is connected
with the mental effects. (2) Is illustrated by drugs which we swallow
whole purely for their effect; we take no pleasure in the drug
ingestion process itself, but take the drug purely for its effect. (3)
These are stimulants that are mind altering but which give pleasure in
their taking, such as cannabis or alcohol. Class (4) includes wine,
where it is in the act of drinking that the mind is altered. Alcohol in general and wine in particular has a unique
social function. Many of the social contexts we have devised are aimed
at limiting consumption, by controlling the rate of intake. The buying
of rounds of drinks in the pub and the circulation of wine at the
dinner party are examples of this, and they mirror the Greek
symposium. ‘The qualities that interest us in the wine reflect
the social order of which we are a part’, says Scruton. Wine is not
simply a shot of alcohol. At its heart is the transformation of the
grape in fermentation. The transformation of the soul under its
influence is a continuation of this: the Greeks described fermentation
as a ‘work of God’. This is reinforced by the concept that the
human skill in this process is the skill of husbandry: we aren’t
actually ‘making’ the wine. Indeed, Scruton asserts that the goal
of good winemaking is to ensure that the alcoholic content doesn’t
escape from the wine but remains part of it. Truth is an important component of wine. Its effect is
present and revealed in the flavour, and thus wine has a
quintessential honesty. There is ‘truth in wine’, but this is
truth for others, and not for ourselves: as we drink wine each of us
reveals more of ourself to others; we talk more, and more openly. Wine
is quite unlike other mind-altering drugs which are dishonest in
nature, because they claim to elevate the perception of the user such
that the user enters a transcendental realm. These drugs lie to use
because they tell us about another world outside our own. Instead,
wine tells us about the true world; the one we live in, revealing more
about it. Wine, when drunk in company, leads to an opening out of the
self to others. Scruton also touched on the importance of the concept
of ‘terroir’. In ancient cultures the production of wine resulted
from a settled occupation of a patch of land. To plant vines signalled
a sense of permanence about a location, and thus was a significant
activity in the life of a community. By savouring wine we are
‘knowing’ something about the history and geography of a
community. The association of a wine with a particular place means
that the name of a place is, according to Scruton, the best and most
reliable description of that wine. So, some interesting ideas and concepts are raised
here. In particular, I like the idea of wine as a ‘virtuous
intoxicant’, to use one of Scruton’s terms. According to his view
there is something special and unique about wine; it isn’t like
other drinks. As an indirect support of this idea, the consistent and
long-standing role of wine in culture and religion, which he
chronicles in his paper, does suggest that this is a unique substance.
Following through on Scruton’s ideas, if we feel there is substance
to his claims then we need to bear them in mind in discussions about
‘naturalness’ of wine and notions of terroir – both subjects of
intense current debate in the wine world. In the question and answer
session, someone asked about Australian wine, and how it fits with
these sorts of ideas. ‘Australian wine is a big problem’, admits
Scruton. ‘Here is a landscape that has been dragged from hunter
gatherer to farmer in 100 years; it is not yet a properly settled
landscape. Settlement has come from outside as an act of conquest.
This does affect the wine’, he suggests. ‘This is why Australians
haven’t built a goût de
terroir into their wines in the same way that the French have.’
Some thought-provoking and controversial ideas. The philosophy of wine
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