Is Thinking Critically about Food Essential to a Good Life?

Should we eat to live or live to eat? Philosophers in the Western traditions have generally argued for the former, dismissing gustatory taste, thus the pleasures of the table, as a second-tier sensation. This idea stems from both the Classical and Christian belief in the superiority of the mind over the body. Robert Valgenti argues that it was not until relatively recently that philosophers began to take food seriously, and that having a philosophy of food is indeed integral to living good life.

Jan, jídlo a pití

The contribution summarizes Jan Zouhar’s lectures in the series of light-hearted conferences titled Food, Drink and European Culture, which he gave in 2002–2019. Using examples and references, it places their themes into the context of philosophy of food, known as gastrosophy.

Mądrość smaku i smak mądrości. Od filozofii jedzenia do filozofowania jedzeniem

Mądrość smaku i smak mądrości. Od filozofii jedzenia do filozofowania jedzeniemW niniejszym artykule na podstawie przeglądu moich dotychczasowych poszukiwań w zakresie filozofii jedzenia i estetyki gastronomii przedstawiam nową teorię smaku podniebiennego. Wykazawszy bliskie powiązania między jedzeniem a filozofią w moich wcześniejszych pracach, zająłem się następnie estetyką smakowania, wykorzystując sformułowane przez Deweya pojęcie doświadczenia oraz multisensoryczne i ekologiczne podejście do percepcji zaproponowane przez J.J. Gibsona. W moich najnowszych badaniach skupiam się na wypracowaniu koncepcji percepcji haptycznej, która przeciwstawia się optycznemu modelowi smaku i smakowania. „Haptyczność” w moim ujęciu to perceptualne zaangażowanie stanowiące część procesu doświadczania jedzenia. Proponuję odejście od idei „dobrego smaku” stanowiącego wyszkoloną i nabytą umiejętność smakowania rozumianego jako zadanie oraz zastąpienie jej koncepcją smaku jako nieustannego, praktycznego dostrajania się do środowiska, do którego kształtowania aktywnie się przyczyniamy. Ponieważ większość moich badań dotyczy wina, opisuję takie podejście do smaku i smakowania za pomocą ukutego przeze mnie neologizmu „epistenologia”. The wisdom of taste and the taste of wisdom: From philosophy of food to philosophy with foodIn this essay I propose a new theory of gustatory taste, retracing my research as a philosopher of food and aesthetician of gastronomy. After having solidified the connection between food and philosophy in my early works, I moved towards an aesthetic of gustation based on the notion of experience in a deweyan sense and on the multisensorial and ecological approach to perception as proposed by J.J. Gibson. In my latest works, I am concerned with the developing of the idea of haptic perception, in contrast with an optical approach to tastes and tasting. With “haptics” I mean a perceptual engagement deeply involved in the processes of experiencing food. I suggest we should turn from the idea of “good taste” as the result of trained and acquired skills to taste as a task, to mean the practical and continuous attuning with the environment we actively contribute to shape. As most of my research is based on wine case, I coined the word “epistoenology” to describe such approach to taste and tasting.

Food – The Story of Our Life: A Contribution to the Studies of Food and the Anthropology of Taste

By approaching the phenomenon of food (consumption) as an identity issue of the first order, as man’s alimentary, only true biography, and an authentic expression of self and experience, but also as a key phenomenon in the development of man and mankind, the author points toward the anthropologically relevant aspects of research pertaining to food (the mythological, cultural and historical, economic, aesthetic, linguistic, political). The development of the art and philosophy of food (consumption) is considered in the context of history of the ideas of Epicureanism, empiricism and lametrism, as well as in the context of the end of the cult of culture” in its traditional meaning. Moving between issues of art theory and epistemology, the author pays special attention to the causes of the theoretical neglect of the senses of taste and smell, historical reasons of the second-rate position of gastronomy among the other sciences and arts, as well as changes taking place at the end of the “short 20th century” which enabled a revolution in aesthetics and social values – the expansion of food studies and the art of cookery. Thus the aim of the paper is twofold: on the one hand it is an attempt to shed some light on the history of this revolution in the context of the theoretical and aesthetic relationship toward food and the art of its preparation, and on the other, it should be an argument incentive to have the basic issue of food (consumption) find its way onto our own academic menu.