Food Philosophy

An Introduction

David M. Kaplan

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780231551106
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Food is a challenging subject. There is little consensus about how and what we should produce and consume. It is not even clear what food is or whether people have similar experiences of it. On one hand, food is recognized as a basic need, if not a basic right. On the other hand, it is hard to generalize about it given the wide range of practices and cuisines, and the even wider range of tastes.

This book is an introduction to the philosophical dimensions of food. David M. Kaplan examines the nature and meaning of food, how we experience it, the social role it plays, its moral and political dimensions, and how we judge it to be delicious or awful. He shows how the different branches of philosophy contribute to a broader understanding of food: what food is (metaphysics), how we experience food (epistemology), what taste in food is (aesthetics), how we should make and eat food (ethics), how governments should regulate food (political philosophy), and why food matters to us (existentialism). Kaplan embarks on a series of philosophical investigations, considering topics such as culinary identity and authenticity, tasting and food criticism, appetite and disgust, meat eating and techno-foods, and consumerism and conformity. He emphasizes how different narratives help us navigate the complex world of food—yet we all have responsibilities to ourselves, to others, and to animals. An original treatment of a timely subject, Food Philosophy is suitable for undergraduates while making a significant contribution to scholarly debates.

NOTES

1. FOOD METAPHYSICS

1. Lisa Heldke, “An Alternative Ontology of Food: Beyond Metaphysics,” Radical Philosophy Review 15, no. 1 (2012): 82.

2. Raymond D. Boisvert, “Convivialism: A Philosophical Manifesto,” Pluralist 5, no. 2 (2010): 58.

3. Leon Kass, The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

4. John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995).

5. W. V. O. Quine, “Ontological Relativity,” in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), pp. 26–68.

6. Donald Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), pp. 183–198.

7. It is debatable if Kuhn and Feyeraband endorse epistemic relativism; however, both indeed argue that scientific development is not an approximation to truth. See Thomas Kuhn, The Essential Tension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Paul Feyeraband, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge (New York: Verso Press, 1975).

8. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer, 2nd ed. (New York: Continuum, 1989).

9. Gadamer, pp. 278–317.

10. Gadamer, pp. 355–382.

11. A scholarly, pedantic work, study, or thought.

12. Frank Sibley, “Tastes, Smells, and Aesthetics,” in Approach to Aesthetics: Collected Papers on Philosophical Aesthetics, ed. John Benson, Betty Redfern, and Jeremy Roxbee Cox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), pp. 235–237.

13. Decomposers break down the dead tissue of other species, similar to scavengers and creatures like earthworms and sea cucumbers, but they do not digest their prey. Instead, they convert it into nutrients and absorb it externally. The most common decomposers are fungi, bacteria, and archaea (single-celled organisms that belong to their own domain). See C. Michael Hogan, “Archaea,” in The Encyclopedia of the Earth, last modified August 23, 2011, https://editors.eol.org/eoearth/wiki/Archaea#Archaea.

14. See, for example, Wendell Berry, Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2009).

15. United States Department of Agriculture, www.nutrition.gov; United Kingdom Food Standards Agency, www.food.gov.uk; European Union European Commission, www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/nutrition.

16. “Food as Fuel Before, During and After Workouts,” American Heart Association, updated January 2015, https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/nutrition-basics/food-as-fuel-before-during-and-after-workouts.

17. Marnae Ergil and Kevin Ergil, Pocket Atlas of Chinese Medicine (Valencia, CA: TPS, 2009), pp. 54–97.

18. K. T. Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 77–81.

19. J. Worth Estes, “Food as Medicine,” in Cambridge World History of Food, ed. Kenneth Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 1534–1553.

20. In chapter 5, we will examine Michael Walzer’s argument that different goods have different meanings and should be distributed for different reasons by different agents.

21. Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrum, eds., Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).

22. David Bollier and Silke Helfrich, eds., The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State (Amherst: Levellers Press, 2013).

23. Jose Luis Vivero-Pol et al., eds., Routledge Handbook of Food as a Commons (New York: Routledge, 2018).

24. Carolyn Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 118–128.

25. Korsmeyer, p. 132.

26. Marta Zaraska, Meathooked: The History and Science of our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat (New York: Basic, 2016).

27. Monika K. Hellwig, “Eucharist,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lind...