Like any serious art, drinking can be a matter of dialectics. On the one hand we have the professional (one might say sober) approach. This is the mixologist path that gives us bespoke ice cubes, a market rush on Peychaud’s bitters and bearded men speaking earnestly about the botanicals in Alpine amari. For the past several years, the professionals have been on the ascent, and this is great. Thanks to them, every zip code has its own small-batch organic cachaça distillery. By spiking our drinks with a hard shot of expertise, they’ve helped it grow up. Problem is, maturity isn’t always fun.

On the other side, we have Jägerbombs, umbrella drinks, elemental pleasures and wild nights. Problem is, a burning forehead, a parched tongue and the bathroom linoleum at 3 am.

The question, then, is what should a thinking drinker do? More importantly, what would Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel order from a well-developed cocktail list?

A really excellent Surfer on Acid, obviously. One made with handcrafted gum syrup and pineapple shrub, and the most exquisite French Caribbean spirits money can buy. Lifting his hurricane glass, he might observe that cocktails can be expert and enjoyable, rational and rapturous, synthesizing their dichotomies in a harmony of sweet and dry flavors.

Yes, dead German philosophers would drink super fancy fun cocktails, sometimes with umbrellas sticking out. Just like these from local bar talent.

Blood of the Kapu Tiki

In a punch bowl, combine ingredients with ice. Garnish with floating citrus peel flowers, lime wheels impaled with mint sprigs and an inverted spent lime shell containing flaming Hamilton 151 Demerara Overproof Rum.

This is a citrus-forward drink, with pronounced fruit and a complex background spiced with anise and cinnamon notes. Also, it’s on fire. “When someone walks by with a large punch bowl with flaming limes,” says Loyal Nine co-owner Daniel Myers, “it sells the next one.” Inspired by Tiki bookBeachbum Berry’s Intoxica, Myers and bar manager Fred Yarm put a New England stamp on the recipe by swapping in Ipswich’s Privateer rum. The blazing lime “pirate ship” adds a further nautical touch.

$55 at Loyal Nine, 660 Cambridge St., Cambridge (617-945-2576) loyalninecambridge.com