Key Arguments

• He urges moral teachers to describe concretely 'how disgusting it is for a man to pump more into himself than he can hold and not to know the capacity of his own stomach.'
• He points out that people do in drink what they would be ashamed of when sober: 'Tell them of all the things men do that they would blush at sober, and that drunkenness is nothing but a state of self-induced insanity.'
• He argues that if the same behaviour lasted several days we would unhesitatingly call it madness: 'For imagine the drunken man’s behaviour extended over several days: would you hesitate to think him out of his mind? As it is, the difference is simply one of duration, not of degree.'
• He provides the extreme example of Alexander of Macedon: 'Point to the example of Alexander of Macedon, stabbing his dearest and truest friend, Clitus, at a banquet, and wanting to die, as indeed he should have done, when he realized the enormity of what he had done.'
• He analyzes the moral psychology: 'Drunkenness inflames and lays bare every vice, removing the reserve that acts as a check on impulses to wrong behaviour. For people abstain from forbidden things far more often through feelings of inhibition when it comes to doing what is wrong than through any will to good….', so drink destroys the social and internal restraints that normally prevent wrongdoing.

Source Quotes

If you want to arrive at the conclusion that the good man ought not to get drunk, why set about it with syllogisms? Tell people how disgusting it is for a man to pump more into himself than he can hold and not to know the capacity of his own stomach. Tell them of all the things men do that they would blush at sober, and that drunkenness is nothing but a state of self-induced insanity.

Tell people how disgusting it is for a man to pump more into himself than he can hold and not to know the capacity of his own stomach. Tell them of all the things men do that they would blush at sober, and that drunkenness is nothing but a state of self-induced insanity. For imagine the drunken man’s behaviour extended over several days: would you hesitate to think him out of his mind?

Tell them of all the things men do that they would blush at sober, and that drunkenness is nothing but a state of self-induced insanity. For imagine the drunken man’s behaviour extended over several days: would you hesitate to think him out of his mind? As it is, the difference is simply one of duration, not of degree. Point to the example of Alexander of Macedon, stabbing his dearest and truest friend, Clitus, at a banquet, and wanting to die, as indeed he should have done, when he realized the enormity of what he had done.

As it is, the difference is simply one of duration, not of degree. Point to the example of Alexander of Macedon, stabbing his dearest and truest friend, Clitus, at a banquet, and wanting to die, as indeed he should have done, when he realized the enormity of what he had done. Drunkenness inflames and lays bare every vice, removing the reserve that acts as a check on impulses to wrong behaviour.

Point to the example of Alexander of Macedon, stabbing his dearest and truest friend, Clitus, at a banquet, and wanting to die, as indeed he should have done, when he realized the enormity of what he had done. Drunkenness inflames and lays bare every vice, removing the reserve that acts as a check on impulses to wrong behaviour. For people abstain from forbidden things far more often through feelings of inhibition when it comes to doing what is wrong than through any will to good…. Add to this the drunkard’s ignorance of his situation, his indistinct, uncertain speech, his inability to walk straight, his unsteady eye and swimming head, with his very home in a state of motion – as if the whole house had been set spinning by some cyclone – and the tortures in his stomach as the wine ferments….

Key Concepts

• Tell people how disgusting it is for a man to pump more into himself than he can hold and not to know the capacity of his own stomach.
• Tell them of all the things men do that they would blush at sober, and that drunkenness is nothing but a state of self-induced insanity.
• For imagine the drunken man’s behaviour extended over several days: would you hesitate to think him out of his mind? As it is, the difference is simply one of duration, not of degree.
• Point to the example of Alexander of Macedon, stabbing his dearest and truest friend, Clitus, at a banquet, and wanting to die, as indeed he should have done, when he realized the enormity of what he had done.
• Drunkenness inflames and lays bare every vice, removing the reserve that acts as a check on impulses to wrong behaviour. For people abstain from forbidden things far more often through feelings of inhibition when it comes to doing what is wrong than through any will to good….

Context

Later in Letter LXXXIII, after rejecting syllogistic argument, Seneca offers a substantive moral critique of drunkenness, focusing on its nature as temporary insanity and its power to unleash vices, illustrated by Alexander’s murder of Clitus.