I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine Paperback – November 25, 2010

"Wine too has a part to play in presenting what the intellect cannot compass. That first sip of a fine wine stirs, as it makes its way downwards, the rooted sense of my incarnation. I know that I am flesh, the by-product of bodily processes which are being brought to a heightened life by the drink that settles within me. But this very drink radiates the sense of self: it is addressed to the soul, not the body, and poses questions that can be formulated only in the first-person case, and only in the language of freedom: 'what am I, how am I, where now do I go?' It invites me to take stock of my situation, to wrap up the day's events, and to take those decisions which were waiting on this moment of calm. In other words, it presents, in a single experience, the doubled-up nature of the person who drinks. He may not have the words to describe this experience: and anyway words will never suffice. Through wine we know, as through almost nothing else that we consume, that we are one thing, which is also two: subject and object, soul and body, free and bound.This knowledge contained in wine is put vividly to use by the Christian Eucharist. Christ, holding the cup to his disciples, declares that 'this is my blood of the New Testament, shed for you and for the remission of sins'. The blood in question is not the physical stuff that goes by that name, but something intimately bound up with the 'I' of Christ. The bread just eaten at the altar-the body of Christ-is made conscious by the wine. Bread and wine stand to each other as body to soul, as subject to object, as the thing IN the world to its reflection at the edge. I do not wish to imply that only a Christian can understand the mystery of wine, any more than it is only a Christian who can understand the Eucharist."This passage captures the high level of reflection from the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton. He shows an impressive knowledge of many topics, and specifically he knows a heck of a lot about wine and has a lot of passionate opinions about it. He has a lot of opinions about everything, from romantic love to classical music, and often expresses them in a witty way. The title is from the Bruce's Philosopher's Song of Monty Python, who often offered liberal humor that was loved by many conservatives for various reasons. Scruton likes to talk about various great philosophers and then adds the opinions of his horse! Besides the Eucharistic reflection above, there's good stuff from the Hindu notion of atman, Eliot's intersection of the timeless with time, and C.S. Lewis' gift love and need love from the Four Loves, which also relates well to Jean-Luc Marion.One of Scruton's key ideas is that wine ties us with history and geography. His favorite, like mine, is France, and perhaps Burgundy and Bordeaux above all, which is cool because my ancestors were from Burgundy. Like faith and music, wine puts us in touch with the communion across the centuries and the oceans. But while France has the finest pays, the countryside, it is actually Florence, Firenze, that is delightfully pre-modern, and my favorite city.The appendix is perhaps the best part of the book, where Scruton offers a brief, probably 20 to 30 page (oddly, the Kindle version stopped numbering the pages here) history of philosophy along with which wine to drink with each. His opinions are always offered authoritatively but sometimes with little supporting evidence. He really has something against Husserl, who influenced many fine Christian thinkers like Edith Stein and Dietrich von Hildebrand. What I found weird was that Scruton's descriptive analysis of experience sometimes looks like phenomenology! Favorites include Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, Hegel and Wittgenstein. Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics is preferred to the rather boring Metaphysics, where Plato's Laws is ridiculously long and requires a good wine. The story about Avicenna made me laugh out loud (hint: he died in an interesting way). Descartes (who provided the title, with his I think therefore I am) is rightly called the most overrated. Berkeley is treated hilariously (drink tar water!) while Hume offered wisdom despite bad epistemology and Locke is important for politics, as Ed Feser and Pat Deneen recently explained.Nietzsche is mostly to be pitied because he had little actual power in real life, where Schopenhauer's problem is that he preferred beer. Russell took British thought in the wrong direction by overanalyzing the word "the" instead of "think", "I" and "am", but his math is still worthwhile. Heidegger broke up Aristotle's being into being for others, being towards death, being there, etc. Leo Strauss is also treated humorously because he was welcomed by America, and within a couple of generations bashed and blamed for everything. But the real villains in I Drink Therefore I Am are the nihilism of Sartre and in a different way Foucault, and the bland social justice of Rawls and Martha Nussbaum.In terms of theology, after the critique of Heidegger he quoted a turgid passage of Karl Rahner and added "he can go on like this for 500 pages". There certainly is a literary critique to be made of Rahner (his own brother said he should be translated into German!), but it doesn't amount to an engagement with his ideas in their substance. Even Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger, who broke away from Rahner in many respects, knew not to dismiss him lightly.Scruton is so passionate about all his opinions, including the opinion that wine is the best (at the very end he finally bothers to bash rose'!) and those who don't drink it are missing life. Of course there are good reasons that people don't drink, namely being alcoholic or having the genetic tendency toward alcoholism. Scruton mentions the Inuit as a culture that didn't develop fermentation and thus has a hard time processing alcohol. His description (phenomenology!) of addiction and its effects is right on, but his understanding of its causes appears limited and simplistic. The French Canadians (whose blood has a small amount of First Nation) are descended obviously from the French, so there should be no genetic problem, and yet alcoholism is more common in Quebec (including New York/Vermont/New Hampshire/Maine) than the old country. While Scruton doesn't seem to appreciate adequately the problem of alcoholism, his brief treatment of its solution is fine. Food is not wine, of course, but it is analogous, and Leon Kass' The Hungry Soul is a fine companion to this book. Scott Hahn's recent Fourth Cup relates well to Scruton's notion of the Last Supper with Christ taking up the god of Dionysus or Bacchus.Let's close with the words of Hilaire Belloc's In Praise of Wine.So my friendLet not your cup desert me at the end...And sacramental, raise me the Divine:Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine.

This charming little book by Roger Scruton is a must-read for every serious wine drinker. It is divided into two sections, the first dealing with RS’s wine experiences, his favorite bottles and their place within his life, and the second dealing with a philosophy of wine. Some of the philosophy deals with traditional epistemological and metaphysical issues, but then it becomes more cultural and anthropological. At base, wine is about tradition in the deepest sense. It is about our transition from hunter/gatherers to farmers and the manner in which the cultivation of wine brought us together in social, ritualistic fellowship, which is to say that wine ultimately is about religion, specifically the Eucharist.Because of the importance of its functions and the depth and breadth of the meaning of the word terroir, RS has the basis for a discussion of practical issues. Why, e.g., is it foolish and wrong to use screwcaps rather than corks? Why, e.g., is it foolish and wrong to create Reislings with higher than normal alcohol content?The book ends with a set of recommendations concerning the wine that should be consumed when one is reading particular philosophers. This is the most enjoyable (if not the most searching and philosophic) section of the book, because it opens the door to RS’s summarizing the pros and cons of individual thinkers and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses with no holds barred. In other words, it gives him the opportunity to take off the gloves and be as impish as he desires.Potential readers should know that RS goes out of his way to find viticultural virtue in unexpected places and also to thrash and bash with abandon. One example: the Australian wine industry is not going to be pleased with this book. A second example: the Missouri wine industry will be pleased with his ruminations on the Norton varietal.Highly recommended.

The opinions expressed in this book regarding the wine growing cultures outside of France are at times difficult to read. As a reader stationed very far away from France, I found myself occasionally growing frustrated with Scruton's borderline elitist viewpoints (you, however, may not find anything abrasive in his writings). I must say that Scruton is a definite Francophile - to the point that he has difficulty seeing the good in other parts of our very large world. After a few glasses of wine, some will agree with Scruton that [French] wine can transport one to the vineyard, to the soil, and can provide a complete education of the immediate area. I still enjoyed this book for what it was. There are plenty of charming stories infused into this wine drinker's autobiography. If you find yourself purchasing this book for the philosophy (as I did), be aware that only parts in the second half contain worthwhile material. These bits of philosophy may not be satisfactory for your studies, but you should give them a chance all the same. On the whole, I would recommend this book - just know what you are getting yourself into beforehand and do not expect to find anywhere near as much philosophy as the title suggests.

This is a serious treatise on the place of wine in human culture by distinguished scholar and thinker Roger Scruton. He was a traditionalist and a conservative at a time when the academic philosophy wasn’t, and the book is all the better for it—wry, eccentric, and free spirited. Parts are abstract and tough going because Scruton takes his subject seriously (for the most part), but you’ll learn a great deal about wine, culture, and civilization from this book. I’d make “I Drink Therefore I Am” required reading for philosophy majors. Where else will they discover what wines pair best with Aristotle, Boethius, Bacon, Kant, and Nietzsche?

I bought this several years after reading an essay by the same author in another book about wine. I believe this one can be read straight through but I read it by dipping into it: checking the legs, the cork, the colour, the body, before downing the contents. It turns out that they are essentially reworked essays Scruton has written over a number of years. They are speculative and provocative, but also informative and, sometimes, moving. Most of all they are surprising and funny. He invites controversy as much as approbation. Some clearly find him tiresome, and dismiss him as a bore, but I like the way he sticks up for people - wine growers mostly - who spend their lives in one place working to produce something extraordinary: independent and local heros against global mediocrity. In Chinon for example he singles out the justly famous, but sadly no longer with us, Charles Joguet: an artist and sculptor who, on the death of his father, came back to run the estate and invested the rest of his life developing it, not to see what he could get out of it but what he could coax it into becoming.The important assertion running through the work is that philosophers should be judged by the results of their ideas as the winemaker should be judged by his wine. Because these are essays there are some surprising omissions, notably Robert Pirsig, who in the 1960s established Quality as so important in his fabulous Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; and Epicurus, whose maxim ‘Life is good! Make sure to enjoy it’ could be the book’s leitmotif. Epicurus also said ‘Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have is among the things you only hoped for.’ So this book is an excellent sherry, an appetizer rather than encyclopaedic, and no worse for that. He certainly suggests some unusual solutions and, like Plato, ‘should always be esteemed – not because his conclusions are the right ones, but because he attempted to prove the others wrong’.

What a great little book. This is much more a personal reflection by Scruton, full of biographical detail and reminiscing, with a lovely (often self-effacing) humour all the way through. In many ways he manages to convey his philosophical approaches and reasoning far more persuasively in this way as opposed to his somewhat confrontational polemic in his main philosophical works. A gem of a read.

Liked all of it. A drinking man’s think.

I bought this book as a present for my father in law and he absolutely loved it. I then got a copy myself on his recommendation and spent a number of nights enjoying it.

Entertaining philosophical treatise....lacks a little forward momentum at times