Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
“This svelte little book is surprising and delightful. Only a Frenchman could have written so delectably about food and philosophy.”
Review
“
Appetites for Thought is a delightful read; a deceptively small book, but packed densely with ideas. It’s like a serving of fancy tapas: misleadingly small little dishes, but rich and filling once you consume them.”
Synopsis
This hugely controversial work demonstrates convincingly how the worlds three major monotheistic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—have attempted to suppress knowledge, science, pleasure, and desire, condemning nonbelievers often to death. Not since Nietzsche has a work so groundbreaking and explosive questioned the role of the worlds three major monotheistic religions. If Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, Onfray insists that not only is God still very much alive but also increasingly controlled by fundamentalists who pose a danger to the nature of human morality.
Documenting the ravages of religious intolerance over the centuries, the author makes a strong case against the three religions for their obsession with purity and their contempt for reason and intelligence, individual freedom, desire, and the human body, as well as their disdain for women, sexuality, and pleasure. In their place, all three demand faith and belief, obedience and submission, extolling the “next life” to the detriment of the here and now. Tightly argued, this is a work that is sure to stir debate on the role of religion in American society—and politics.
Synopsis
“Wonderful, invigorating. . . . a passionate and coolly reasoned advocacy of atheism.”—Times Literary Supplement
Synopsis
“Wonderful, invigorating. . . . a passionate and coolly reasoned advocacy of atheism.”—Times Literary Supplement
Synopsis
Appetites for Thought offers up a formidable intellectual challenge: can we better understand the concepts of philosophers from their culinary choices? Tracing the food obsessions of philosophers from Diogenes to Sartre, Michel Onfray—a philosopher himself—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? For Kant, the nose and palate are organs of sensation without nobility, for, as Kant writes, “the idea obtained from them is more a representation of enjoyment than cognition of the external object.” While for Nietzsche, “it is through bad female cooks—through the complete absence of reason in the kitchen, that the evolution of man has been longest retarded and most harmed.” Sartre was famously repulsed by shellfish (not to mention tomatoes) because it was “food buried in an object, and you have to pry it out”—and also renowned as the philosopher who developed a unique conception of nausea.
Appetites for Thought will intrigue, provoke, and entertain, and it might also make you fancy a snack.
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 Gils
Metamorphoses of the Body. He lives in Sydney.
Donald Barry (19552014) 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