Food and Philosophy: Selected Essays

by Spencer Wertz

Overview

These essays on food and philosophy were written over several decades. Not only philosophers and historians but individuals who have an ongoing interest in food should relish them. The essays cover wide-ranging topics that include genetically modified organisms, chocolate and its world, food as art, the pornography of food, and the five flavors of Chinese cuisine. In addition, there are several chapters that deal with the refinement of erudite (professional) cuisine from popular (regional) cuisine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe. One chapter stands alone as an analysis of the Native American cultural foundations of maize. The book opens with an essay on the philosophy of food history that addresses three fundamental problems: the duplication of sensations and taste, the understanding of recipes from other historical periods, and the sorts of judgments that are included or excluded in a historical narrative. The book ends with an exposition of R. G. Collingwood’s anthropology of eating and dining, which completes the discussion with an analysis of the magical symbolism of those cultural activities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875656380
Publisher:	TCU Press
Publication date:	03/03/2017
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

SPENCER K. WERTZ is emeritus professor of philosophy at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth. He has taught wine appreciation classes and served many years on a Dallas-Fort Worth wine panel. For a decade he headed a barbecue team that traveled across Texas and New Mexico participating in competitions. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he enjoys the fine culinary scene. Food and Philosophy: Selected Essays is his fifth book.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Philosophy of Food History 9

2 The Five Flavors and Taoism: Lao Tzu's Verse Twelve 24

3 The Elements of Taste: How Many Are There? 35

4 Leibniz and Culinary Cognitions: A Speculative Journey 46

5 Taste and Food in Rousseau's Julie, or The New Heloise 59

6 Hume's Culinary Interests and the Historiography of Food 72

7 Revel's Conception of Cuisine: Platonic or Hegelian? 92

8 The Analogy between Food and Art: Tolstoy and Eaton 99

9 Maize: The Native North American Legacy of Cultural Diversity and Biodiversity 108

10 Are Genetically Modified Foods Good For You? A Pragmatic Answer 133

11 Is There a Pornography of Food? 145

12 Chocolate and Its World 152

13 Eating and Dining: Collingwood's Anthropology 160

Index 168

About the Author 182

Interviews

Santa Fe, New Mexico
Fort Worth, Texas