Philosophy and Food

That last sentence touches on at least some of philosophy’s concerns, though Plato never accorded food much standing: ‘I declare,’ he wrote in Gorgias, ‘that [cookery] is dishonourable because it makes pleasure its aim instead of good, and I maintain that it is merely a knack and not an art because it has no rational account to give of the nature of the various things which it offers.’ Epicurus, a more grounded philosopher, had more sensible things to say on the value of right eating and right living (which run quite counter to those often ascribed to gourmandizing Epicureans). And brillat-Savarin, whose philosophy of food is as good as any, had plenty of arguments to put paid to Plato.