The History of Inebriation and Reason from Plato to the Latin Middle Ages

The project aims to uncover the undetected, yet pervasive dichotomy between spiritual inebriation and physical drunkenness from antiquity to the Middle Ages. It argues that while Christian theologians, inspired by Plato, celebrated inebriation as a metaphor for a hyper-rational state in which the soul transcends the limitations of reason, Christian moralists, inspired by Stoic philosophy, condemned physical drunkenness as fall from reason. The project is expected to radically change our appreciation of how medieval thinkers inherited and transformed pagan classical ideas about drinking. Inebriation provides a hitherto unexplored path to rewriting the history of reason urging us to consider our culturally-ingrained reactions to drinking.