«Le vin, cette liqueur traîtresse»

Abstract

Carole Dornier : "Wine, that treacherous liquor". In the first half of the century, drunkenness concerned moralists more than doctors. Theologians and philosophers were aware of alcoholic dependence and its consequences, but disagreed when defining appropriate use. For Catholic orthodoxy (Pontas, Dictionnaire des cas de conscience), appropriate use means to drink from necessity only, but this justifies Islamic prohibition and Jansenist rigour rather than Christian toleration (La Médecine théologique ). Lay moralists distinguished reasonable pleasure from destructive behaviour and excessive rigour (Le Maître de Claville, Le Traité du vrai mérite) to find happiness in conformity with natural law (Toussaint, Les Mœurs). But if pleasure is a means to avoid pain, drunkenness and suicide, condemned or justified by the same arguments, are remedies for life's miseries (Maupertuis, Essai de philosophie morale). The effects of wine, alcohol and drugs are compared by philosophers who consider the search for exaltation and relief as a universal phenomenon. The reasonable use of wine seems to be based either on submission to Divine Providence or on respect and self-control as a duty (Kant, Anthropology and Doctrine of Virtue).