Coffee - Philosophy for Everyone: Grounds for Debate

by Fritz Allhoff (Editor), Scott F. Parker (Editor), Michael W. Austin (Editor), Donald Schoenholt (Foreword by)

Overview

Offering philosophical insights into the popular morning brew, Coffee — Philosophy for Everyone kick starts the day with an entertaining but critical discussion of the ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and culture of coffee.

• Matt Lounsbury of pioneering business Stumptown Coffee discusses just how good coffee can be
• Caffeine-related chapters cover the ethics of the coffee trade, the metaphysics of coffee and the centrality of the coffee house to the public sphere
• Includes a foreword by Donald Schoenholt, President at Gillies Coffee Company

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781444337129
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	03/22/2011
Series:	Philosophy for Everyone Series , #29
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Editors

SCOTT F. PARKER has contributed chapters to Ultimate Lost and Philosophy, Football and Philosophy, Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy, Golf and Philosophy, and iPod and Philosophy. He is a regular contributor to Rain Taxi Review of Books. His writing has also appeared in Philosophy Now, Sport Literate, Fiction Writers Review, Epiphany, The Ink-Filled Page, and Oregon Humanities.

MICHAEL W. AUSTIN is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Kentucky University, where he works primarily in ethics. He has published Conceptions of Parenthood: Ethics and the Family (2007), Running and Philosophy: A Marathon for the Mind (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), and Football and Philosophy: Going Deep (2008).

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Table of Contents

Foreword (Donald Schoenholt).

Editors' Introduction (Scott F. Parker and Michael W. Austin).

PART 1 THE FIRST CUP: COFFEE AND METAPHYSICS.

1 Coffee: Black Puddle Water or Panacea? (Mark Pendergrast).

2 The Necessary Ground of Being (Michael W. Austin).

3 The Unexamined Cup Is Not Worth Drinking (Kristopher G. Phillips).

4 Sam. sara in a Coffee Cup: Self, Suffering, and the Karma of Waking Up (Steven Geisz).

5 The Existential Ground of True Community: Coffee and Otherness (Jill Hernandez).

PART 2 GROUNDS FOR DEBATE: COFFEE CULTURE.

6 Sage Advice from Ben’s Mom, or: The Value of the Coffeehouse (Scott F. Parker).

7 The Coffeehouse as a Public Sphere: Brewing Social Change (Asaf Bar-Tura).

8 Café Noir: Anxiety, Existence, and the Coffeehouse (Brook J. Sadler).

9 The Philosopher's Brew (Bassam Romaya).

PART 3 THE WONDERFUL AROMA OF BEAN: COFFEE AESTHETICS.

10 Three Cups: The Anatomy of a Wasted Afternoon (Will Buckingham).

11 Is Starbucks Really Better than Red Brand X? (Kenneth Davids).

12 The Flavor of Choice: Neoliberalism and the Espresso Aesthetic (Andrew Wear).

13 Starbucks and the Third Wave (John Hartmann).

14 How Good the Coffee Can Be: An Interview with Stumptown’s Matt Lounsbury (Scott F. Parker).

PART 4 TO ROAST OR NOT TO ROAST: THE ETHICS OF COFFEE.

15 More than 27 Cents a Day: The Direct Trade (R)evolution (Gina Bramucci and Shannon Mulholland).

16 Higher, Faster, Stronger, Buzzed: Caffeine as a Performance-Enhancing Drug (Kenneth W. Kirkwood).

17 Green Coffee, Green Consumers – Green Philosophy? (Stephanie W. Aleman).

18 Coffee and the Good Life: The Bean and the Golden Mean (Lori Keleher).

How to Make it in Hollywood by Writing an Afterword! (The Coffee Bean Guys).

Notes on Contributors.

Editorial Reviews

From the storied history of the world's obsession with the stimulating brew, to an exploration of Jürgen Habermas' dissection of the public sphere as it relates to coffee drinkers, to the declension of standards of "Fair Trade" labeling, this snappy volume reaches in every direction for the truth when it comes to how thinking people, particularly in the U.S., relate to coffee, both philosophically and practically. In interesting, educational, and often funny selections, we learn facts both surprising (most coffee farmers and people living in coffee-growing regions have no idea why anyone would want to drink the stuff) and rudimentary. On the dark side, contributions that deal with the ethics of coffee consumption lead to a better understanding of what fair trade means for farmers and why it's important. On the light side, future coffee snobs will learn how to tell the difference between their roasts (and will be introduced to a /pound bean). This is more sociology than philosophy, but a smattering of deep (enough) thoughts from the likes of Hume, Bourdieu, Kant, and others will keep true addicts—of both coffee and philosophy—stimulated. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

In this addition to an accessible and substantive series, 18 new essays, with coffee and coffee culture as their shared theme, relay the relationship between the coffee-related contemporary and everyday and the ideas and ideals on which the history of formal philosophy has been built. The essays by philosophy professors, graduate students, and well-informed coffee and philosophy aficionados discuss the aesthetic, moral, ethical, and phenomenological aspects of drinking, preparing, growing, and sharing coffee, as well as the history and politics that the bean and the beverage have enjoyed and suffered. Coffeehouse culture, the nature of thinking and writing, and the physiological responses of humans to coffee are also explored, always with references to Western thought from the ancients through modern abstainers, such as Kant, and 20th-century indulgers, led by Sartre. VERDICT Recommended for coffee and philosophy aficionados. This entry in the series may well also be of interest for book discussion groups.—Francisca Goldsmith, Infopeople Project, Berkeley, CA

Library Journal