ABSTRACT
While Hobbes might not be an obvious place to start for a philosophical treatise on alcohol consumption (Plato being the philosopher of wine par excellence), his overall moral and political philosophy provides an interesting approach to the topic. Hobbes wrote very little on the subject of alcohol, and the only detail we know about his own drinking habits present nothing more than that of a moderate man who drank less than the average man of his time, and in part for medical reasons. Despite these inauspicious foundations, I will develop here a Hobbesian theory of alcohol consumption, establishing the following claims: 1) alcohol consumption is morally acceptable only to the extent that it is compatible with the operation of the reasoning faculty; 2) the government has a legitimate and even necessary role to play in regulating alcohol consumption; and 3) citizens who violate civil law in drinking alcohol when and where doing so is forbidden thereby act immorally. By way of conclusion, I discuss problems with this theory and briefly discuss how one might apply the Hobbesian theory of alcohol to recreational drug use.
