Semiotics of Drinking in the Context of Post-metaphysical Transformations of Modern Philosophy

Abstract

The objective of this research is to develop the philosophical aspects of a semiotic analysis of the phenomena of drunkenness and intoxication. The consumption of alcoholic beverages has been a significant aspect of a person's cultural life throughout almost all of its history. Alcohol occupies such a significant place in human existence that intoxication can be safely attributed to the number of existentials or modes of human existence. Accordingly, the consumption of alcoholic beverages and the state of intoxication are inevitably endowed in culture with symbolic functions; a whole semiotic space or alcoholic discourse is formed with its own boundaries, center and periphery, a set of significant oppositions, a system of meaning. This semiotic space does not exist in isolation, but is inscribed in the semiosphere as such, is in correlation with the semiotic spaces of certain cultures, eras, religious and philosophical worldviews. The analysis of these structures, meanings and oppositions is the task of drunkenness semiotics. The study may have a literary orientation and be devoted to identifying the semiotic aspects of drunkenness in the space of a literary text and the history of fiction. Cultural-historical analysis is focused on the study of the symbolic functions of drunkenness in the context of cultural and historical eras and the life of individual peoples. Finally, philosophical research using semiotics as a methodological attitude should focus primarily on the explication of metaphysical and post-metaphysical issues in alcoholic discourse.