Phenomenology of spirit

One distinguishing feature of the young adult is his novel tendency to reach into the past and identify one or two serendipitous, yet utterly formative childhood encounters. Of course, there is a fine line between discovery and invention when it comes to self-psychoanalyzing, and my necessarily hazy retrospection becomes still more so as I confront the defining moment of my own privileged upbringing—enjoying a Singapore Sling at the Longbar of Raffles Hotel Singapore, site of the drink’s invention by the estimable Ngiam Tong Boon in the early 20th century. This was indeed a boon to my 8-year-old palate, and with it an enduring passion for cocktails was born.

I have since developed other fixations, most notably one for political philosophy. But if this second passion for philosophy brought me to Duke, Duke has, in turn, emphatically brought me back to the first. To be sure, there is much about academia that will drive a good man to drink, though I must remark less cynically that a well-made cocktail invariably has been complicit in my most cherished moments of late night lucubration and discovery. Given the cocktail’s contribution to my philosophy, I wonder if philosophy might somehow return the favor. That is, I wonder whether, in the spirit of philosophy, one might formulate a philosophy of spirit.

Others have engaged in a similar undertaking with whiskey. But a moment’s reflection reveals that whiskey and the cocktail are like day and night, (not simply because these are my respective hours of consumption), and that a philosophy of the one cannot possibly serve as an adequate philosophy of the other.

One difference is age. While the first known use of the term “cocktail” occurs in the early 19th century, whiskey dates back to the mid 16th century. Whiskey is not only older than the cocktail in its inception, but its age is additionally—and more importantly—the chief determinant of its quality. Whiskey develops at a glacial pace, silently accommodating the chemical characteristics of the sunless barrel in which it slumbers. Such a premium on gradualism and age corresponds in principle to a conception of tradition and authority that is positively Old World.

The cocktail boldly rebukes the exclusive authority of tradition, for its quality depends just as much on proper recipe as it does on age. Furthermore, this mixing occurs with an ease of experimentation that bespeaks a certain democratic entrepreneurialism. Anyone with a liquor cabinet can invent or perfect a cocktail, though very few have the resources to produce a fine whiskey. And though an appreciable variety of such whiskies exists, differences of taste are exceedingly subtle beyond a handful of basic categories. The seemingly infinite selection of cocktails affords much more dramatic distinctions, thereby offering something for everyone’s tastes, no matter how eccentric or (un)refined. If whiskey is Old World, then the cocktail is decidedly American.

The cocktail is indeed an American invention, owing its first systematic treatment to New Yorker David Embury, who codified the requirement that a cocktail must include a base spirit, simple syrup and bitters. The operating principle of combination, according to Embury, is balance, suggesting a Madisonian solution of sorts whereby the countervailing force of any one component prevents the rise of a majority faction of the remaining two. Perhaps in the end this blending of three utterly foreign ingredients into a synergistic whole best represents that antiquated American ideal of a “melting pot.” The cocktail would thus instantiate our beloved “e pluribus unum” in sippable simulacrum.

To be sure, the undeniably American character of the cocktail is universally flattering to neither America nor the cocktail. Jeremiah Thomas, for instance, considered one of the “founding fathers of American mixology,” originally made a career managing minstrel shows. Every cocktail thus imparts to its consumer a tacit complicity in the severest sort of institutional racism, as if as an ugly, unspoken garnish. One shudders at the post-modern possibilities for discovering still more deeply hidden valences of oppression and control—if one drinks enough, one will surely find them.

But what if this comparison of the cocktail to democracy were totally ill-conceived? How could I justifiably overlook the fact that the typical cocktail consists of approximately 99 percent base spirit and mixer, and a mere fraction of 1 percent bitters? Does the disproportionate influence of the 1-percenter somehow presage the bitter truth of Wall Street greed?