Philosophers at Table: On Food and Being Human

(Paperback)

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In this book, Raymond D. Boisvert and Lisa Heldke explore what happens when philosophers ask 'how are we to eat' This simple question is dense with interpretations, reflecting the complex roles food plays in our lives - roles that are increasingly fraught, in an age characterized by fears about food safety; worries about environmental damage; and concerns about cultural sensitivity. It's difficult to imagine an activity more philosophically charged than eating. In addition to the latest thought in the field Philosophers at Table takes in literature, myth, history and film to make the case for a 'stomach-endowed' philosophy. The short story and film Babette's Feast serves as the starting point for an argument for hospitality as the central ethical virtue.

A surprising, original take on something we all do every day, yet rarely think about in any depth. Philosophers at Table invites readers to use their relationships to food to investigate the philosophical scaffolding that undergirds their own lives.

Reviews

"Boisvert and Heldke are proceeding from our shared, lived experience as people with stomachs, so prior familiarity with the work of Immanuel Kant and Rene Descartes is not needed. The book is carved with that crisp, clear precision common to academic philosophy texts, never advancing any idea an inch without a concise explanation of its origin. Boisvert and Heldke's combined voice is never haughty or self-indulgent, but instead jovially tries to reach past the classically dry, snooze-inducing language of too-tidy minds into something closer to the tone of sociology or ethnography, lush with specific anecdotal examples and some sense of humor."-- "PopMatters"
"By exposing the creaking plumbing of categorical thinking that undergirds many of our simplistic either/or notions, Boisvert and Heldke help us realize that self-sufficiency is insufficient when it comes to rebuilding community, reintegrating agriculture into culture, and our species into nature. A philosophy that starts with food may just be the way to break down the real and perceived barriers that we have erected between our mind and body, between ideas and between each other, with the overlapping and interconnection of people and ideas demonstrated."-- "Know Where Your Food Comes From"
"Delightful, deep but never pedantic. The great philosophers of the past are widely considered and their theories analyzed, but the goal is not to provide a historical excursus on what thinkers of the past wrote about food. The authors compare their work to plumbing in the sense that they try to understand the nuts and bolts of how things work and above all how ideas and values--often taken for granted and never fully discussed--greatly shape the way we understand and interact with the world. There is no more immediate perspective to do this than by looking at food, an experience that everybody, one way or another, shares."-- "Huffington Post"

Author Bio

Raymond D. Boisvert is Professor of Philosophy at Siena College, New York, and the author of several books including I Eat: Therefore I Think (2014). Lisa Heldke is Professor of Philosophy at Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota. Her most recent book is Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer (2003).