Friday, August 11, 2006
(8:30 PM) | Amish Lovelock:
Amish Lovelock's Height of Good Taste
Where are the stomach-affirming philosophers of today? Nietzsche asked why there was no philosophy of nutrition and we might as well ask the question again in our own time. Ever since darn Plato claimed in the Phaedo that no truth or thought of any kind comes from the body philosophers have neglected, even abhored, all those damn bodily desires which get in the way of real work.
All of us with academic work to be doing know the pains of every day getting up, taking a shower, making breakfast, finally sitting down to get some writing done - and in a flash it's noon and the stomach is growning... again. "As soon as I get this paragraph done," "just this next sentence and then I'll cook something," is what we tell ourselves as the clock ticks on to 3 or 4.
Paul was pretty adamant on the perils of the palate: "Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ," he said, "Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is their shame. Their mind is on earthly things." Aquinas too called gluttony "inordinate" having left the rigourousity of the realm of Reason. Religion then, like Philosophy, can be an anal profession - (of course not because of eating too much). Melville's Ishmael put it well when he said: "So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have 'broken his digester.'"
Yet for all the Plato's in the world there have always been some Heraclitus' and Democritus' waiting in the wings. Question is where are the food philosophers of today? What would, say Nancy, have to say about all this?
For Plato, cooking was a trivial knack rather than a true art. But surely there are times when the first taste of some divine foodstuffs demands classification as Event! Surely stomachs do not waste time with universal doubt and go straight for the jugular Truth, no? Carolyn Korsmeyer in her Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy, observes that "Bodies and stomachs immerse us in the world, engage us in all sorts of interactions, and blur rigid boundaries between ourselves and our surroundings." A direct path to God through the gut then?
Enough of the speculative now. It's time for a joke from the sometimes wonderful, but mostly plain www.food-jokes.co.uk:
Fruit Salad.
Three guys who were lost at sea ended up landing on an unfamiliar island. After wandering around for a while, a group of natives picked them up and took them to their hut. The chief came up to them and said, "We will let you live, if you can go out into the jungle and bring me 10 pieces of fruit." So the men agree and take off. The first guy brings back 10 apples and places them before the chief. "Now, you must stick the apples up your ass and not show a bit of emotion, or else we will kill you." The guy got one, and on the second, he flinched and was killed. The second guy walks up and shows the chief 10 berries. He is given the same task and makes it up to 8 and then begins to laugh histerically. He is also killed. When the second guy gets to heaven and meets up with the first, the first asks him "You almost had it! Why did you laugh??" The second replies, "I couldnt help it. I got the 8th up there and saw the other guy walking up with pineapples."
Adieu.
