On Drunkenness

Noah's drunken sleep becomes a study of the befuddled mind, with the oldest surviving account of the sceptics' ten arguments for doubt at its centre.

by Philo of Alexandria75 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: De ebrietate
Original language: Ancient Greek

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Overview

The sceptic Aenesidemus, working in the first century BCE, drew up ten standard arguments for suspending judgment: the same thing looks different to different animals, to different people, to the same person sick or well, from near or far, under one custom or another. His own books are lost. Three ancient writers preserve the list, and the oldest of the three is Philo, who sets it out in the middle of this treatise, a century or more before Sextus Empiricus, the sceptic whose version is the best known. Philo did not become a sceptic. He uses the ten arguments to show what a mind looks like when it trusts the senses and the customs it was raised in: it has drunk too much, and cannot tell one thing from another. The treatise begins from the verse in which Noah drinks the wine of his vineyard and lies uncovered in his tent, and it reads unmixed wine as a symbol of several things at once: foolish chatter, insatiable greed, good cheer, and the nakedness of a soul left exposed. The son who obeys neither father nor mother, the golden calf danced around in the desert, and the priests forbidden wine when they serve at the altar all become figures for that condition. It ends with a prayer that God will uproot the wild vine of folly.

Key concepts

What are the ten modes of scepticism in On Drunkenness?

They are ten standard arguments for suspending judgment, drawn up by the sceptic Aenesidemus in the first century BCE. Each shows that the same thing appears differently depending on who perceives it and how: to different animals, to different people, to one person sick or well, from near or far, under one custom or another. Philo's treatise gives the oldest surviving account of the list.

Why does Philo use sceptical arguments without being a sceptic?

Because he uses them against a particular kind of confidence, not against all knowledge. The arguments expose how unstable the senses and inherited customs are as grounds for belief. A mind that relies on them, Philo says, is like a drunk who cannot tell one thing from another. The remedy he points to is not permanent doubt but a turn away from those grounds towards God.

Who are the father and mother a disobedient son rejects in On Drunkenness?

The father is right reason and the mother is the round of instruction and learning that it is honourable to obey, as a child obeys its parents. The law in Deuteronomy about a stubborn son who heeds neither becomes, in Philo's reading, a portrait of a soul that refuses both reason and education, and so is lost to folly.

What does the wild vine of folly mean at the end of On Drunkenness?

It is folly and excessive desire pictured as a vine rooted in the soul, bearing bitterness instead of fruit. Philo closes the treatise with a prayer that God will uproot it, since the befuddlement the whole book describes cannot be cured by the drinker alone. The image answers Noah's vineyard: the vine a person plants can be a wild one, and only God can pull it out.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Sceptic's Ten Arguments, Turned Against Confidence

If the same thing looks different to the sick and the well, from near and from far, under one custom or another, what can a mind trust? Philo borrows the sceptics' answer without becoming a sceptic.

At the centre of the treatise stand the ten arguments for suspending judgment that the sceptic Aenesidemus drew up in the first century BCE: the same thing looks different to different animals, to different people, to the same person sick or well, from near or far, under one custom or another. His own books are lost, and Philo's is the oldest of the three ancient accounts that preserve the list, older than the famous one in Sextus Empiricus. Philo uses it for his own end: a mind that trusts the senses and the customs it was raised in has drunk too much, and cannot tell one thing from another.

skepticism
epistemology
perception
sensory perception
judgment
knowledge
ignorance
truth
folly

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Unmixed Wine as the Soul's Befuddlement

What is a mind like when it has had too much? Noah's drunken sleep becomes a gallery of the ways a soul loses hold of itself.

The treatise begins from the verse in which Noah drinks the wine of his vineyard and lies uncovered in his tent. Unmixed wine stands for several things at once: foolish chatter, insatiable greed, good cheer, and the nakedness of a soul left exposed. The son who obeys neither father nor mother disobeys right reason and the round of instruction a child should heed; the golden calf is the body made into a god; the priests forbidden wine at the altar show what service to God requires. It ends with a prayer that God will uproot the wild vine of folly.

drunkenness
sobriety
education
law
priesthood
symbolism
desire
pleasure
passions
gratitude

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 75
distinct concepts: 140
by passages held, corpus-wide: #566

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “education” and “virtue”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 18 pairings. 73 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
education	virtue	4
reason	virtue	4
virtue	wisdom	4
ignorance	knowledge	3
education	ignorance	2
education	reason	2
ignorance	virtue	2
knowledge	virtue	2
passions	reason	2
passions	virtue	2
reason	wisdom	2
education	skepticism	1
education	wisdom	1
ignorance	reason	1
knowledge	reason	1
knowledge	skepticism	1
knowledge	wisdom	1
passions	wisdom	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

Against Flaccus (In Flaccum)
Written as a demonstration of divine justice, this account of the Alexandrian riots of 38 CE and of the prefect Philo blamed for them stands with his historical and apologetic works.
EN
Allegorical Interpretation (Legum allegoriae I–III)
The first surviving treatise of the Allegorical Commentary, Philo's long verse-by-verse reading of Genesis, covering its second and third chapters in three books.
EN
Every Good Man Is Free (Quod omnis probus liber sit)
Written in the manner of the Greek schools rather than as commentary on Moses, it is, with On the Eternity of the World, one of Philo's philosophical treatises.
EN
On Abraham (De Abrahamo)
The first of Philo's lives of the patriarchs in the Exposition of the Law, following On the Creation of the World; its companions on Isaac and Jacob are lost, and On Joseph continues the set.
EN
On Cultivation (De agricultura)
Noah the farmer is a subject Philo splits across two treatises; this first one is built on the difference between near-synonyms, and On Planting continues it.
EN
On Dreams (De somniis I–II)
A treatise of the Allegorical Commentary, in two surviving books on the dreams of Jacob, Joseph and Pharaoh's court.
EN
On Drunkenness (De ebrietate) you are here EN
On Flight and Finding (De fuga et inventione)
Hagar's flight and the angel who finds her, Genesis 16:6–14, read within the Allegorical Commentary.
EN
On Joseph (De Josepho)
The life of the statesman in Philo's series of patriarch lives within the Exposition of the Law. It follows On Abraham; lives of Isaac and Jacob, now lost, once stood between them.
EN
On Mating with the Preliminary Studies (De congressu eruditionis gratia)
Philo's reading of Genesis 16 as a theory of education, set within the Allegorical Commentary; On Flight and Finding continues Hagar's story.
EN
On Planting (De plantatione)
The second of Philo's two treatises on Noah as farmer, turning from farming in general to the planting of the vineyard.
EN
On Rewards and Punishments (De praemiis et poenis et de exsecrationibus)
The closing treatise of the Exposition of the Law, on the rewards, punishments, blessings and curses the Law sets before its hearers.
EN
On Sobriety (De sobrietate)
A short sequel to On Drunkenness in the Allegorical Commentary, on Noah waking and pronouncing his blessings and curse. Its Greek title names exactly that: what Noah prayed for and cursed once sober.
EN
On the Change of Names (De mutatione nominum)
Genesis 17 and its renamings, from Abram and Sarai to Jacob and Joshua, read in the Allegorical Commentary; it also carries Philo's clearest statement that God has no proper name.
EN
On the Cherubim (De Cherubim)
Two short commentaries joined under one title: the cherubim at Eden's gate, then the birth of Cain. Within the Allegorical Commentary it picks up where the three books of Allegorical Interpretation stop.
EN
On the Confusion of Tongues (De confusione linguarum)
The Tower of Babel in the Allegorical Commentary, opening with a defence of Genesis against critics who likened it to Greek myth.
EN
On the Contemplative Life (De vita contemplativa)
A portrait of the Therapeutae, classed with Philo's historical and apologetic writings; it opens by referring back to his account of the Essenes, the active life to this contemplative one.
EN
On the Creation of the World (De opificio mundi)
The overture to Philo's Exposition of the Law, the series that goes on to lives of the patriarchs and a code of laws. It stands apart as his reading of the creation story in its literal order.
EN
On the Decalogue (De decalogo)
The hinge of the Exposition of the Law, turning from the lives of the patriarchs to the written law.
EN
On the Embassy to Gaius (Legatio ad Gaium)
The companion of Against Flaccus: an eyewitness history of the embassy Philo led to Gaius, and the fullest account he left of his own public life.
EN
On the Eternity of the World (De aeternitate mundi)
Among Philo's philosophical treatises, the one that names the Greek schools and their arguments most openly.
EN
On the Giants and On the Unchangeableness of God (De gigantibus; Quod Deus sit immutabilis)
Two treatises that editions usually separate but that read as one commentary, in the Allegorical Commentary, on the verses of Genesis leading up to the flood.
EN
On the Life of Moses (De vita Mosis I–II)
Philo's biography of Moses in two books, usually counted with the Exposition of the Law though it stands on its own.
EN
On the Migration of Abraham (De migratione Abrahami)
Abraham's call in Genesis 12, read as the soul's migration toward God; in the Allegorical Commentary it follows On the Confusion of Tongues in the order of Genesis.
EN
On the Posterity of Cain (De posteritate Caini)
The last of the Cain treatises in the Allegorical Commentary, following Cain from his exile through his descendants.
EN
On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain (De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini)
One of the run of treatises on Cain and Abel in the Allegorical Commentary, taking up the brothers' offerings in Genesis 4.
EN
On the Special Laws (De specialibus legibus I–IV)
The largest work in the Exposition of the Law, in four books; it follows On the Decalogue and is followed by On the Virtues.
EN
On the Virtues (De virtutibus)
A pendant to On the Special Laws in the Exposition of the Law, gathering laws under the virtues they train rather than under the Ten Commandments.
EN
The Worse Attacks the Better (Quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat)
It follows On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain in the Allegorical Commentary and carries the brothers' story on to the murder itself.
EN
Who Is the Heir of Divine Things? (Quis rerum divinarum heres sit)
Best known for its long passage on the Logos dividing the world into opposites, this reading of God's covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15 belongs to the Allegorical Commentary.
EN

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