Short Readings: Philosophy and Food

“Use your noodle,"  “ruminate,” "chew the fat," there are several food metaphors for the open-ended process of thinking.  In a related way, “eat drink and be merry,”  “one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” and “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” indicate some substantive philosophical positions: hedonism, relativism, economic conservatism.
Aristotle had no problem using food language.  He associated friendship with food, referring, quite rightly, to an ancient proverb that identified friends as those “who have eaten salt together.”  On the other hand, Ludwig Feuerbach, supporting a too-simple materialism, uttered the famous “man is what he eats.” (Der Mensch ist was er isst), a cute pun, but a misleading and thus false phrase.

Feuerbach’s example serves as a cautionary tale. Philosophers who are interested in food need not  be those who would reduce the complexities of human existence to minimal physiological procedures.  Cooking, feasting, sharing, along with associated rituals, provide a fuller picture of how the combination nature-culture must always be kept in mind. Attempts to separate them, to say, for example we are merely “what we eat,” should be avoided.  A more accurate phrase would be: we are how we eat.  The way we deal with our need for nutrition is one major marker of how we understand ourselves.

My own interest in the food/philosophy intersection emerged after a sabbatical year in France.  Upon return, with an inkling for something we had missed, we ordered some local pizza.  I went to to pick it up.  In front of me was a young man. He ordered two slices and

a can of soda, went out onto the sidewalk, turned the two slices over each other, swallowed them quickly, alternating with gulps from his soft drink.  After tossing the can into a nearby trash container, he moved on.  This was dinner.

It also represented a microcosm of meaning. It indicated a specific take on how the young man situated himself vis à vis the key relations that characterize human life: to the natural world, to contemporaries, to ancestors, to progeny, to transcendence.  His action reversed the “only connect” adage of E.M. Forster.  
The important point was that the “eat-alone-and-hurriedly” habit, i.e. “only disconnect,” spoke volumes about philosophical positions that have become commonplace: time is a precious commodity; food preparation and eating represent ways  of wasting such time; eating is not a sacred act that connects us in gratitude to the bounty provided by the natural world; eating is not a social act;  beauty and taste are expendables; much more valuable are convenience and efficiency.

There’s a lengthy philosophical trajectory behind all this. It is one that transformed flesh and blood humans into “thinking things,” (René Descartes) or “rational agents” (Immanuel Kant.) These “rational agents” tended more and more to be understood apart from the ongoing activities associated with our fuller flesh and blood dimensions.  Rodin’s “Thinker” became the iconic figure associated with the philosopher.  Plato had given us his Symposium, a dinner followed by a drinking party, and Luther had promoted “Table Talk” as suitable locales for serious deliberation.  

The dominant tradition went the other way.  The idea that a better image for exemplifying a fully human context would be a wedding feast or other shared meal, faded to the periphery.  “The Thinker” reigned supreme.  Michel Serres, a contemporary who does take ordinary food practices seriously, has the best response: “give that guy a roll of toilet paper.”

As I mentioned in my first post, there are some philosophers bucking the trend. Anyone interested in pursuing this newer take would be well advised to check out the website put together by David Kaplan. 

There are also many books,  but for for shorter pieces, I would suggest the following:

Michael Symons, "Epicurus, the Foodie's Philosopher," in Fritz Allhof and Dave Monroe, Food and Philosophy: Eat, Think, and Be Merry, 2009

Lisa Heldke, "The Unexamined Meal is Not Worth Eating: Or, Why and How Philosophers (Might, Could/Do Study Food," Food, Culture & Society, 9.2 (2006): 201-219.

------"Philosophy and Food," in Routledge International Handbook of Food Studies (2013).

Michiel Korthals, "The Birth of Philosophy and Contempt for Food," Gastronomica, Vol. 8, No. 3, Summer 2008: 62-69.

Raymond Boisvert, "Cooking Up a New Philosophy," The Philosophers' Magazine," Issue 61, 2nd quarter, 2013.

------"Philosophy Regains its Senses," Philosophy Now, 31, 2001.