An examination of the philosophical aspects of eating and tasting food.

Why should we read? We assume that reading is good for us, but often we cannot articulate exactly what it does for us. In this fascinating book, Sarah Worth addresses from a philosophical perspective the many ways in which reading benefits us morally, socially, and cognitively.Worth leads her readers through the subtle questions of the ways in which we understand fiction, nonfiction, and the overlap and blending of other genre distinctions. Ultimately she argues that reading, heari...

“Engaging, evocative. . . . [Bloom] is a supple, clear writer, and his parade of counterintuitive claims about pleasure is beguiling.”—NPRWhy is an artistic masterpiece worth millions more than a convincing forgery? Pleasure works in mysterious ways, as Paul Bloom reveals in this investigation of what we desire and why. Drawing on a wealth of surprising studies, Bloom investigates pleasures noble and seamy, lofty and mundane, to reveal that our enjoyment of a given thing is determi...

From the bestselling author of Traffic, a brilliant and entertaining exploration of our personal tastes--why we like the things we like, and what it says about us.Everyone knows his or her favourite colour, the foods we most enjoy, and which season of The Sopranos deserves the most stars on Netflix. But what does it really mean when we like something? How do we decide what's good? Is it something biological? What is the role of our personal experi...

In this series of thoughtful essays and stink-eyed observations, Jonah Campbell explores food and drink in the modern world, from pig heads and whisky to fine wine and French gastronomy, Nigella Lawson to David Cronenberg, with a trail of potato chips and stale chocolate bars along the way. In the tradition of writers like M. F. K. Fisher and David Foster Wallace, Eaten Back to Life renders in delirious prose the ecstasies and absurdities that lie beneath the daily business of feeding ours...

A rising star in philosophy examines the cultural, social, and scientific interpretations of love to answer one of our most enduring questionsWhat is love? Aside from being the title of many a popular love song, this is one of life's perennial questions. In What Love Is, philosopher Carrie Jenkins offers a bold new theory on the nature of romantic love that reconciles its humanistic and scientific components. Love can be a social construct (the idea of a p...

A fresh reflection on what makes life meaningfulMost people, including philosophers, tend to classify human motives as falling into one of two categories: the egoistic or the altruistic, the self-interested or the moral. According to Susan Wolf, however, much of what motivates us does not comfortably fit into this scheme. Often we act neither for our own sake nor out of duty or an impersonal concern for the world. Rather, we act out of love for objects that we righ...

From its beginnings in Twilight fan-fiction to its record-breaking sales as an e-book and paperback, the story of the erotic romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels is both unusual and fascinating. Having sold over seventy million copies worldwide since 2011, E. L. James's lurid series about a sexual ingénue and the powerful young entrepreneur who introduces her to BDSM sex has ingrained itself in our collective consciousness. But why have these particular ...

Donatella Versace and Jean-Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent and Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci: fashion is at once a familiar yet mysteriously elite world that we all experience, whether we’re buying a new pair of jeans, reading Vogue, or watching the latest episode of America*’*s Next Top Model. Lars Svendsen dives into this world in Fashion: A Philosophy, exploring the myths, ideas, and history that makes up haute couture, the must-have tre...

As a woman with a husband and other partners, philosopher Carrie Jenkins knows that love is complicated.Love is most often associated with happiness, satisfaction and pleasure. But it has a darker side we ignore at our peril. Love is often an uncomfortable and difficult feeling. The people we love can let us down badly. And the ways we love are often quite different to the romantic ideals society foists upon us. Since we are inevitably disappointed by love, wouldn’t we be better of...

As we taste, chew, swallow, digest, and excrete, our foods transform us, while our eating, in its turn, affects the wider earthly environment. In Eating in Theory Annemarie Mol takes inspiration from these transformative entanglements to rethink what it is to be human. Drawing on fieldwork at food conferences, research labs, health care facilities, restaurants, and her own kitchen table, Mol reassesses the work of authors such as Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans Jonas, a...

Elegantly written by a distinguished culinary historian, Food Is Culture explores the innovative premise that everything having to do with food—its capture, cultivation, preparation, and consumption—represents a cultural act. Even the "choices" made by primitive hunters and gatherers were determined by a culture of economics (availability) and medicine (digestibility and nutrition) that led to the development of specific social structures and traditions.Massimo Montanari b...