UB Professor Takes Philosophy Into The Kitchen

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Philosophers historically have paid little attention to the sense of taste, dismissing it as an inferior sense and one that is too idiosyncratic to be worthy of consideration.

But a University at Buffalo professor breaks new philosophical ground and offers interesting food for thought in a recent book that reveals the symbolic and aesthetic value of taste and uncovers why this bodily sense largely has been ignored for so long in the realm of philosophy.

"Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy" (Cornell University Press, 1999) by Carolyn Korsmeyer considers the philosophical merit of the literal "taste" and investigates its objects -- food and drink -- and the activity of their consumption, as well as their representation in art and literature.

Korsmeyer, who has focused most of her scholarly work on aesthetics and the philosophy of art as a philosophy professor in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, explains that a source of her interest in the sense of taste was recent feminist perspectives in philosophy that have disclosed the limitations of the discipline's traditional focus.

Feminist perspectives opened up the question: 'What has philosophy unduly overlooked or dismissed from its purview?'" notes Korsmeyer. "I decided that one answer is the sense of taste, food and the intimate, everyday activity of eating.

"The common assumption that taste presents no interesting philosophical problems is a deep-seated error that banished a potentially fascinating subject from the scope of philosophical inquiry," says Korsmeyer, noting that the classification of taste, smell and touch as the inferior, bodily senses began with the early Greek philosophers.

She adds that the significance of food and eating also has been overlooked because it is tied to the necessities of existence and has become such a normal, routine activity. But it is exactly the centrality of eating to everyday life that led her to question why something so common and full of meaning has been left out of philosophical study.

"Food, if valued at all in aesthetic terms, is usually regarded only as a gourmet item of particular delectability," which, she says, is "meager grounds" on which to establish aesthetic features of tasting and eating, especially when considering the symbolic significance of foods and their consumption.

"The sophisticated pleasures that food can deliver are the usual grounds for defending the aesthetic importance of taste, but if we focus only on pleasure, we neglect the aspects of food and eating that most resemble what is valuable in works of art: the cognitive, symbolic roles they play, even in everyday life. Foods qualify as symbolic and meaningful in a host of ways, for they are representational and expressive."

Korsmeyer counters the philosophical traditions that discount taste pleasures by interpreting them as merely a bodily sensation.

"Pleasure itself has been misunderstood as only private and subjective. The very flavors in our mouths mean something, and standard theory has been quite wrong in concluding that savoring them ensnares us in our own bodily sensations, oblivious to the social, cultural and personal meanings that taste provides."

She explains that food has a high degree of symbolic value, especially when you consider that it is attached to almost all ceremonial events and holidays. Birthdays, weddings, religious ceremonies, she adds, all are examples of how food enters into things with tremendous importance.

Many philosophers have assumed that food does not represent anything outside itself, says Korsmeyer, who quickly dismisses that notion with such simple examples as Easter eggs, butter lambs, candy corn, chocolate kisses, gingerbread men, croissants, radish roses and goldfish crackers.

She adds that many common foods were created with meaning that has since disappeared, such as croissants, which, she explains, were invented by Viennese bakers in 1683 to resemble the shape of the crescent moon on the banners of Ottoman Turk invaders after a successful defense of their city.

Other foods have more expressive properties, she says, such as chicken soup, which is "soothing" and "comforting," and indicates an expression of care.

She says some meanings are obvious, such as in the bread and wine of the Christian Eucharist or the Jewish Passover seder. Others are reflected upon less, such as the pertinence of root vegetables at Thanksgiving because they are a late-harvest food appropriate for November, and the turkey, which is a bird common to the North American woods.

Korsmeyer explains that food, while not art itself, performs many of the same symbolic activities as works of art. "We can discover many of the meanings attached to tastes and foods by considering how these subjects are represented in art."

In her book, she examines several artistic representations of taste and food, specifically in visual art and literature, and demonstrates, through the use of several famous paintings and narratives, that eating and drinking continue to inspire artists and writers, and offer important reflections about taste and food.

Korsmeyer's work on taste has led her to pursue work on theories of emotion, specifically emotions termed "difficult pleasures."

"Disgust, fear, sorrow and nostalgia all are feelings we value when evoked by a movie, play or other work of art because we are deeply moved, but at the same time, we can label something as 'too' gross or 'too' sad, hence the term 'difficult pleasure.' We seek out these feelings but then are somewhat uncomfortable when presented with them."

Of all the difficult pleasures, Korsmeyer is most intrigued by the emotion of disgust. "It is an interesting emotion and one that is variously interpreted," she says. "On one hand, disgust can be seen as being a helpful benefit that creates an aversion to that which is foul," explains Korsmeyer. However, she adds that disgust also can become transformed into what is considered a sophisticated or heightened flavor, such as with gamey meat -- which often is left to decompose slightly before cooking -- or products like bleu cheese.

In her book, Korsmeyer shows that this also is evident with art work, using Chaim Soutine's painting "Carcass of Beef," which is housed in Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery, to show how the artist took something disgusting -- a hung, beheaded ox carcass -- and made it into art.

"Food is a powerful vehicle for the expression of that which is dangerous, terrible and abhorrent," says Korsmeyer. "While sometimes the artistic rendering of foods seems virtually to mirror daily life and real patterns of eating, at other times art moves into worlds where foods are palatable only as representations, for art reaches toward limits of tolerability that practice cannot approach."