The Taste for Ethics


Book Description

This book marks a new departure in ethics, which has up to now been a question of ‘the good life’ in relation to other people, based on Greek concepts of friendship and the Judaeo-Christian ‚caritas.’ No early moral teaching discussed man’s relation to the origin of foodstuffs and the system that produced them; doubtless the question was of little interest since the production path was so short.




The Taste for the Other


Book Description

"A deeply meditated study of C.S. Lewis as a social philosopher. It does him good service. Avoiding unnecesaary biographical data, Meilaender concentrates rigoursly on Lewis' writings in an attempt to 'get at the heart of [his] vision of human community and his understanding of morality' . . . A discriminating work with an intricate structure well suited to the subject." -Modern Language Review "Meilaender's first-class scholarly study of Lewis's social and ethical thought is also a fine commentary on his anthropology . . . A well-written interpretation of the man who has probably had more influence on the theology of thoughtful Christians in the twentieth century than all the church's professional theologians." -Choice "Meilaender is a master exegete and critic of Lewis' dialectical vision in all its rich concreteness . . . This work must now stand as our best guide to Lewis's thought." -Christian Century "A remarkably complete look at Lewis's thought." -New Oxford Review "Combining solid scholarship with literary imagination, Meilaender does what Lewis himself does: he fascinates readers and draws them unawares into serious thought and into reflection requiring a response. . . . A first-rate study of Lewis that can serve also as an introduction to a serious study of all of Lewis's works." -Religious Studies Review "A book that has been needed for a long time. Meilaender brings to his study not only an in-depth knowledge of philosophy and theology but also a keen literary awareness. . . . A gracefully readable, luminously clear book." -Christianity and Literature GILBERT MEILAENDER is the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Professor of Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University. His most recent book is Bioethics: A Primer for Christians (Eerdmans).




Before Dinner


Book Description

Both issues refer to the social and cultural aspects of food.




Taste as Experience


Book Description

Taste as Experience puts the pleasure of food at the center of human experience. It shows how the sense of taste informs our preferences for and relationship to nature, pushes us toward ethical practices of consumption, and impresses upon us the importance of aesthetics. Eating is often dismissed as a necessary aspect of survival, and our personal enjoyment of food is considered a quirk. Nicola Perullo sees food as the only portion of the world we take in on a daily basis, constituting our first and most significant encounter with the earth. Perullo has long observed people's food practices and has listened to their food experiences. He draws on years of research to explain the complex meanings behind our food choices and the thinking that accompanies our gustatory actions. He also considers our indifference toward food as a force influencing us as much as engagement. For Perullo, taste is value and wisdom. It cannot be reduced to mere chemical or cultural factors but embodies the quality and quantity of our earthly experience.




From Field to Fork


Book Description

Paul B. Thompson covers diet and health issues, livestock welfare, world hunger, food justice, environmental ethics, Green Revolution technology and GMOs in this concise but comprehensive study. He shows how food can be a nexus for integrating larger social issues in social inequality, scientific reductionism, and the eclipse of morality.




Making Sense of Taste


Book Description

Taste, perhaps the most intimate of the five senses, has traditionally been considered beneath the concern of philosophy, too bound to the body, too personal and idiosyncratic. Yet, in addition to providing physical pleasure, eating and drinking bear symbolic and aesthetic value in human experience, and they continually inspire writers and artists. Carolyn Korsmeyer explains how taste came to occupy so low a place in the hierarchy of senses and why it is deserving of greater philosophical respect and attention. Korsmeyer begins with the Greek thinkers who classified taste as an inferior, bodily sense; she then traces the parallels between notions of aesthetic and gustatory taste that were explored in the formation of modern aesthetic theories. She presents scientific views of how taste actually works and identifies multiple components of taste experiences. Turning to taste's objects—food and drink—she looks at the different meanings they convey in art and literature as well as in ordinary human life and proposes an approach to the aesthetic value of taste that recognizes the representational and expressive roles of food. Korsmeyer's consideration of art encompasses works that employ food in contexts sacred and profane, that seek to whet the appetite and to keep it at bay; her selection of literary vignettes ranges from narratives of macabre devouring to stories of communities forged by shared eating.




Taste


Book Description

A thoughtful consideration of taste as a sense and an idea and of how we might jointly develop both. When we eat, we eat the world: taking something from outside and making it part of us. But what does it taste of? And can we develop our taste? In Taste, Sarah Worth argues that taste is a sense that needs educating, for the real pleasures of eating only come with an understanding of what one really likes. From taste as an abstract concept to real examples of food, she explores how we can learn about and develop our sense of taste through themes ranging from pleasure, authenticity, and food fraud, to visual images, recipes, and food writing.




The Ethics of What We Eat


Book Description

An investigation of the food choices people make and practices of the food producers who create this food for us leading to a discussion of how we might put more ethics into our shopping carts.




The Philosophy of Food


Book Description

This book explores food from a philosophical perspective, bringing together leading philosophers to consider the most basic questions about food. Each essay analyses many contemporary debates in food studies. Slow Food, sustainability, food safety, and politics, and addresses such issues as happy meat, aquaculture, veganism, and table manners.




Modern Food, Moral Food


Book Description

American eating changed dramatically in the early twentieth century. As food production became more industrialized, nutritionists, home economists, and so-called racial scientists were all pointing Americans toward a newly scientific approach to diet. Food faddists were rewriting the most basic rules surrounding eating, while reformers were working to reshape the diets of immigrants and the poor. And by the time of World War I, the country's first international aid program was bringing moral advice about food conservation into kitchens around the country. In Modern Food, Moral Food, Helen Zoe Veit argues that the twentieth-century food revolution was fueled by a powerful conviction that Americans had a moral obligation to use self-discipline and reason, rather than taste and tradition, in choosing what to eat. Veit weaves together cultural history and the history of science to bring readers into the strange and complex world of the American Progressive Era. The era's emphasis on science and self-control left a profound mark on American eating, one that remains today in everything from the ubiquity of science-based dietary advice to the tenacious idealization of thinness.