Philosophy and Food

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Philosophy and Food

• Ian James Kidd
• St Johns College
• Department of Philosophy

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A philosophy of food?

• "What course of lectures are you attending now,
  ma'am?" said Martin's friend, turning again to
  Mrs. Brick.
• "The Philosophy of the Soul -- on Wednesdays."
• "On Mondays?"
• "The Philosophy of Crime."
• "On Fridays?"
• "The Philosophy of Vegetables."
• Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44),
  ch17.

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Food in human life

• Food matters!
• Biological, medical, dietary, social, cultural
  and aesthetic issues
• Food is an enormously important part of our daily
  lives and so one of potential philosophical
  interest!

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Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)

• Physiologie du Goût, ou Méditations de
  Gastronomie Transcendante (1825)
• (The Physiology of Taste
• Whilst all animals feed, only man eats
• Food is more than a basic everyday function but
  something which has bearing upon our health and
  happiness

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The aesthetics of food

• Philosopher Elizabeth Tefler
• Appreciation of the arts requires a cultivated
  understanding, but everyone eats, so there cannot
  be an art of food
• Aesthetic eating repays attention and
  discernment and may well take practice and some
  instruction
• Elizabeth Tefler, Food as art, in Alex Neil and
  Aaron Ridley, eds., Arguing About Art (New York
  Routledge, 2002), p.24.

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Food, society and conviviality

• Brillat-Savarin dining together lends new
  delights to love, strengthens the bonds of
  friendship, disarms hatred, and facilitates the
  conduct of affairs
• Sharing, participation, generosity, serving one
  another good moral and social habits!

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How we grow food reflects our virtues and vices

• Wendell Berry
• Consider the associations that have since
  ancient times clustered around the idea of food
  associations of mutual care, generosity,
  neighbourliness, festivity, communal joy,
  religious ceremony
• Berry. Wendell. 2002 1977. How we grow food
  reflects our virtues and vices, in Gregory E.
  Pence (ed.) The Ethics of Food, Oxford Rowman
  and Littlefield, p.11.

Woodcut illustration for Thomas Dekker's The
Shoemaker's Holiday
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Marie-Antoine Carême(1784-1833)

• The chef of kings and the king of chefs
• François Bonneau on the Congress of Vienna
• Carême retained his kitchens France retained
  its borders

When we no longer have good cooking in the
world, we will have no literature, nor high and
sharp intelligence, nor friendly gatherings, nor
social harmony
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Georges-Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935)

• Le Guide Culinaire (1903)
• Emperor William II of Germany speaking to
  Georges-Auguste Escoffier
• "I am the emperor of Germany, but you are the
  emperor of chefs."  

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Moral aspects of food

• Vegetarianism, veganism, and the treatment of
  animals
• Does the enjoyment of food encourage bad moral
  habits? (and cant food also encourage good
  habits, too?)
• Food as a very material, physical, sensual thing
  

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Gluttony and moderation

• St Paul
• Their god is their stomach, and their glory is
  in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things
  (Phil 3 19)
• St Thomas Aquinas gluttony as excess that
  discourages moderation and modesty of appetite

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Gluttony and lust

• The spiritual dangers of over-attentiveness to
  ones body
• Physical desires (for flesh in both senses!)
  counteracting our salvation

Hieronymus Bosch, Allegory of Gluttony and Lust
(1490-1500 )
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Food and sex
The way to a mans heart is through his
stomach Gastroporn endless talk of
succulence, mouth-watering, tender, juicy,
tantalising, etc.
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Molecular gastronomy

• Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford
• On the construction of kitchen fireplaces and
  kitchen utensils, together with remarks and
  observations relating to the various processes of
  cookery, and proposals for improving that most
  useful art (1794)
• In what art or science could improvements be
  made that would more powerfully contribute to
  increase the comforts and enjoyments of mankind?
• Nicholas Kurti, The Physicist in the Kitchen
  (1969)
• I think it is a sad reflection on our
  civilization that while we can and do measure the
  temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not
  know what goes on inside our soufflés

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The significance of food

• Food is more than mere nourishment but is an
  essential part of the human experience
• Gregory E. Pence ,2002. Introduction the
  meaning and ethics of food, in Gregory E. Pence
  (ed.) The Ethics of Food, Oxford Rowman and
  Littlefield, pp.vii.
• Brillat-Savarin
• The fate of nations depends on what they eat
  and the discovery of a new dish does more for
  the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a
  star

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Philosophy and Food

• Ian James Kidd
• St Johns College
• Department of Philosophy