Martini Metaphysics

On Enjoyment, Reflection, and Faithfulness

Tom was an Anglophile. Maybe he still is, but if so, then not as much as he was when our families were neighbors in Long Beach 20 years ago. Tom studied in Oxford and naturally developed a taste for the finer things — pipe smoking, fountain pens, sherry before dinner, and … of course … martinis. I’ve always lacked the patience to be a true connoisseur of the finer things, but at least I try to dabble. And as dabbling goes, I’m not half bad.

Before joining Tom at his occasional cocktail hours in his apartment, I viewed martinis with apathy and maybe a little disgust. I tried James Bond’s Vesper martini once:

• 3 parts gin

• 1 part vodka

• 1/2 part Kina Lillet

• lemon peel

And of course, shaken, not stirred. To me, this was no more than a little bowl of booze. It caused my cheek glands to chirp at me and wonder what the point was.

But the Vesper isn’t a normal martini. Usually it’s gin, vermouth, and a garnish — typically an olive or lemon peel or onion.

Photo by Eduard Pretsi on Unsplash

And the typical martini had a bad reputation when I was in my 20s.

You’d hear people say, “Gin gives me a headache.” Or, “Please pour a lot of the olive juice in it to disguise the flavor.” The most common complaint was about the vermouth: “Extra extra dry please. Like, only a drop of vermouth.” And hotel bartenders — looking awesome with their black button-ups, paisley vests, and neon ties — would rinse the glass by pouring in a dash of vermouth, swirling it around, and pouring it out before adding the other ingredients. The fact is that people didn’t like dry vermouth. It’s a fortified white wine with virtually no sweetness to balance the briny, wormwood and chicory flavor.

But Tom loved martinis. He pointed me to Dale DeGroff’s classic, The Art of the Cocktail, which paints a completely different picture of the martini. DeGroff says to use a 4-to-1, gin-to-vermouth ratio. Add a dash of orange bitters. This doesn’t work with cheap vermouth. And for the longest time, cheap vermouth is all anyone had in the U.S. As historical cocktails came back into fashion, higher quality vermouth became available. DeGroff also emphasized chilling the glass before hand, using a much smaller stemmed coup, and stirring your martini until it’s really REALLY cold.

The resulting drink was something else altogether. It was intense but also relaxing. And it was ritualistic in a sense. Prepared correctly, it was only a few ounces total. And because it was important to drink it cold, you’d enjoy it relatively quickly, like you would with espresso in Rome. It wasn’t a “sipper.”

Instead:

The martini was a saturated experience.

“A phenomenon is saturated when intuition overtakes intention—when what appears gives itself in such excess that it bursts our capacity to conceptualize it.”

That’s philosopher, Jean-Luc Marion, describing what he calls a “saturated phenomenon.” While neighbors with Tom, I was working on my dissertation and reading a good deal of continental philosophy. Tasting this new (or old) form of the martini reminded me of the saturated experience.

In a good martini, the first thing you experience is the chill of the glass on your fingers, and when you bring it to your mouth, you almost catch a cool breeze coming off it. Next, the scent of lemon peel (as I like it) and juniper berry. Then, more coldness, as you take a sip and feel the contrast of the icy liquid moving around your mouth. You taste nothing at this point, but the shock catches all of your senses. And you feel it especially in your fingers and above your eyes. A second later, and you become aware of your surroundings again, realizing that for a brief moment you were caught in the "intuition” of the moment. You taste the juniper, rose, and coriander only as you swallow, in the back of your throat. And any subtle burn from the alcohol comes only in your belly.

Is that an enjoyable experience? Maybe not, for many. But it’s an interesting experience. And what interested me about it was how it resists thought until you’ve taken a couple of sips. It’s like Wordsworth reclining on his couch, only in the evening realizing what the afternoon’s daffodils truly meant. A good martini is surprising and all-consuming, but in the end it is quiet and contemplative. You know that this is what a martini should be, beyond its composite parts.

I want to apply the adage:

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Some experiences have a way of putting us in mind of thought itself. The martini is the least of these experiences, but it’s an accessible one.

Recount a time when you were struck with something’s or somebody’s beauty. To this extent the Romantic poets got it right: it’s an internal and reflective experience. We sense our power of understanding in these moments, even if we can’t describe the particular aspects of the thing we find beautiful.

I sometimes describe a good class discussion as “greater than the sum of its parts.” That’s because we don’t learn only about the subject we’re discussing but also about our own collective power to seek truth and clarity.

The notion of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts comes from Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

In all things which have a plurality of parts, and which are not a total aggregate but a whole of some sort distinct from the parts, there is some cause; inasmuch as even in bodies sometimes contact is the cause of their unity, and sometimes viscosity or some other such quality. (source)

Aristotle is discussing the unity or wholeness of things that have parts and matter and form. What makes a thing a thing is its substance, and its substance is not just a collection of parts but a form. The reason why we recognize a thing to be what it is—a chair, a dog, a boy—is that it has the form of that thing. Aristotle’s point is that the cause of that form is distinct from the causes of its various parts. Thomas Aquinas applies this idea to theology. God is a substantial unity, and he isn’t made up of parts. Anything that is made up of parts depends for its being on its parts, and this isn’t the case with God, who depends on nothing outside of himself.

Aquinas also applies this idea to beauty:

For beauty includes three conditions, "integrity" or "perfection," since those things which are impaired are by the very fact ugly; due "proportion" or "harmony"; and lastly, "brightness" or "clarity," whence things are called beautiful which have a bright color. (source)

I take particular interest in Aquinas’s inclusion of “clarity” in this list of three conditions for beauty. It doesn’t mean brightness. It means splendor. A beautiful thing cuts through the crowdedness of our senses and thoughts and shows itself to it as something that is unified, harmonious, and complete. Beauty differs from Truth and Goodness in its reliance on our experiences. Clarity is similar to what Marion means when he says that the saturated experience “gives itself” to us, not in the normal way but with unusual force.

The martini has something to teach us.

When I said that I lack the patience to be a true connoisseur of the finer things I mean that as a criticism of myself. Many of my favorite writers take deep interest in the beauty and harmony of the small things of life — routines, friendships, food, a beautifully organized office, a well-built hardbound book. These little pleasures are either utilities for us or they are exercises in seeing the wholeness of things.

In Paradise Lost, his epic about the fall of Adam and Eve, John Milton makes this one of Adam’s most important lessons. Adam is ambitious in thought. He wants to know how the cosmos works. What angels eat. How he can become like God. Slow down, the angel Raphael says to him. The path to God begins by attending to what is properly yours, to your own food, your garden, your wife, your routines.

Raphael says encourages Adam:

Wonder not then, what God for you saw good
If I refuse not, but convert, as you,
To proper substance; time may come when men
With Angels may participate, and find
No inconvenient Diet, nor too light Fare:
And from these corporal nutriments perhaps
Your bodies may at last turn all to Spirit,
Improv'd by tract of time, and wingd ascend
Ethereal, as wee, or may at choice
Here or in Heav'nly Paradises dwell;
If ye be found obedient, and retain
Unalterably firm his love entire
Whose progenie you are. Mean while enjoy
Your fill what happiness this happie state
Can comprehend, incapable of more (source)

There was only one law in the Garden of Eden, as Milton imagines it. But there were countless means of sanctification — Adam’s work, his love, his diet, his leisure, his children. Obedience is chiefly defined in this positive sense and not as avoiding the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Adam responds:

Well hast thou taught the way that might direct
Our knowledge, and the scale of Nature set
From center to circumference, whereon
In contemplation of created things
By steps we may ascend to God.

Jesus calls this kind of obedience faithfulness. “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?”

We’re all capable of being philosophers, that is, people who enjoy the world and also reflect on what they enjoy. Humans have a unique experience of the world around them because not only do we sense it but we also think about it. And as we come to see things for what they really are, through what causes them to be what they are, we have the reciprocal experience of knowing ourselves more clearly.

And the little things and finer things help us do this. The martinis, if I can be allowed the leap, teach us to know ourselves. It’s this combination of being faithful with what we have, enjoying it but holding it out with an open hand, moving outside of our anxious selves, that allows things to become our “own.”

And,