Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Articles

Philosophy & Cocktails

Robin Small will have a Martini – stirred, not shaken.

Several books on wine and philosophy have appeared in recent years. Amongst these, Roger Scruton’s I Drink Therefore I Am (2011) stands out to me as a discussion that treats the subject in detail. But a striking feature of that book is its dismissive mention of cocktails. Scruton clearly thinks that getting drunk is the only reason for drinking a cocktail – or rather, for drinking more than one, since he assumes you will keep going until you reach that goal. That looks like a recycling of the old line about the quickest way out of Manchester being a bottle of gin.

…