Appetites for Thought: Philosophers and Food
Appetites for Thought offers up a delectable intellectual challenge: can we better understand the concepts of philosophers from their culinary choices? Guiding us around the philosopher’s banquet table with erudition, wit, and irreverence, Michel Onfray offers surprising insights on foods ranging from fillet of cod to barley soup, from sausage to wine and coffee.

Tracing the edible obsessions of philosophers from Diogenes to Sartre, Onfray considers how their ideas relate to their diets. Would Diogenes have been an opponent of civilization without his taste for raw octopus? Would Rousseau have been such a proponent of frugality if his daily menu had included something more than dairy products? Onfray offers a perfectly Kantian critique of the nose and palate, since “the idea obtained from them is more a representation of enjoyment than cognition of the external object.” He exposes Nietzsche’s grumpiness—really, Nietzsche grumpy?—about bad cooks and the retardation of human evolution, and he explores Sartre’s surrealist repulsion by shellfish because they are “food buried in an object, and you have to pry them out.”

A fun romp through the culinary likes and dislikes of our most famous thinkers, Appetites for Thought will intrigue, provoke, and entertain, and it might also make you ponder a bite to eat. 
1120400661
Appetites for Thought: Philosophers and Food
Appetites for Thought offers up a delectable intellectual challenge: can we better understand the concepts of philosophers from their culinary choices? Guiding us around the philosopher’s banquet table with erudition, wit, and irreverence, Michel Onfray offers surprising insights on foods ranging from fillet of cod to barley soup, from sausage to wine and coffee.

Tracing the edible obsessions of philosophers from Diogenes to Sartre, Onfray considers how their ideas relate to their diets. Would Diogenes have been an opponent of civilization without his taste for raw octopus? Would Rousseau have been such a proponent of frugality if his daily menu had included something more than dairy products? Onfray offers a perfectly Kantian critique of the nose and palate, since “the idea obtained from them is more a representation of enjoyment than cognition of the external object.” He exposes Nietzsche’s grumpiness—really, Nietzsche grumpy?—about bad cooks and the retardation of human evolution, and he explores Sartre’s surrealist repulsion by shellfish because they are “food buried in an object, and you have to pry them out.”

A fun romp through the culinary likes and dislikes of our most famous thinkers, Appetites for Thought will intrigue, provoke, and entertain, and it might also make you ponder a bite to eat. 
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Appetites for Thought: Philosophers and Food

Appetites for Thought: Philosophers and Food

Appetites for Thought: Philosophers and Food

Appetites for Thought: Philosophers and Food

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Overview

Appetites for Thought offers up a delectable intellectual challenge: can we better understand the concepts of philosophers from their culinary choices? Guiding us around the philosopher’s banquet table with erudition, wit, and irreverence, Michel Onfray offers surprising insights on foods ranging from fillet of cod to barley soup, from sausage to wine and coffee.

Tracing the edible obsessions of philosophers from Diogenes to Sartre, Onfray considers how their ideas relate to their diets. Would Diogenes have been an opponent of civilization without his taste for raw octopus? Would Rousseau have been such a proponent of frugality if his daily menu had included something more than dairy products? Onfray offers a perfectly Kantian critique of the nose and palate, since “the idea obtained from them is more a representation of enjoyment than cognition of the external object.” He exposes Nietzsche’s grumpiness—really, Nietzsche grumpy?—about bad cooks and the retardation of human evolution, and he explores Sartre’s surrealist repulsion by shellfish because they are “food buried in an object, and you have to pry them out.”

A fun romp through the culinary likes and dislikes of our most famous thinkers, Appetites for Thought will intrigue, provoke, and entertain, and it might also make you ponder a bite to eat. 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781780234557
Publisher: Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date: 03/15/2015
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 128
File size: 741 KB

About the Author

Michel Onfray is a French philosopher and founder of the tuition-free Université Populaire in Caen, France, where he teaches. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, The Atheist Manifesto. Stephen Muecke is professor of ethnography at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and a writer of fiction. His translations include Jos Gil’s Metamorphoses of the Body. He lives in Sydney. Donald Barry (1955–2014) was a lecturer at the University of Western Sydney and a translator specializing in French.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Banquet of the Omnivores

1. Diogenes; or, The Taste of Octopus

2. Rousseau; or, The Milky Way

3. Kant; or, Ethical Alcoholism

4. Fourier; or, The Pivotal Little Pie

5. Nietzsche; or, The Sausages of the Anti-Christ

6. Marinetti; or, The Excited Pig

7. Sartre; or, The Revenge of the Crustaceans

Conclusion: The Gay Science of Eating

References

Bibliography

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