Taste as Experience: The Philosophy and Aesthetics of Food

Nicola Perullo

Published by Columbia University Press 2016

Taste as Experience

The Philosophy and Aesthetics of Food

Nicola Perullo
Preface by: Massimo Montanari

In the series Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History

https://doi.org/10.7312/peru17348

Overview
Contents

About this book

Nicola Perullo sees food as constituting our first and most significant encounter with the earth. He draws on years of research to explain the complex meanings behind our food choices and the thinking that accompanies our gustatory actions. For Perullo, taste is value and wisdom. It cannot be reduced to mere chemical or cultural factors but embodies the quality and quantity of our earthly experience.

How do our daily encounters with food shape our knowledge of the world?

Author / Editor information

Nicola Perullo is professor of aesthetics at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. He is the author of several books in Italian and teaches courses on aesthetics and the philosophy of taste, wine evaluation, and the ethics and aesthetics of food.

Massimo Montanari is professor of medieval history and the history of food at the Institute of Paleography and Medieval Studies, University of Bologna. His Columbia University Press books include Let the Meatballs Rest: And Other Stories About Food and Culture (2012); Cheese, Pears, and History in a Proverb (2010); Food Is Culture (2006); Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History (2003); and Food: A Culinary History (1999).

Reviews

The book is engaging and packed with stimulating thoughts and tidbits to chew on (pun intended, of course).

Carolyn Korsmeyer, author of Making Sense of Taste: Taste, Food, and Philosophy:
With Taste as Experience, Nicola Perullo has set a new standard for studies of the sense of taste, delivering a sophisticated and multifaceted approach to understanding gustatory experience. His innovative perspective blends the contributions of biology and culture and adjudicates the roles of pleasure and cognition in eating and drinking. Perullo's intriguing study culminates in a theory of taste as a kind of aesthetic wisdom that discloses the depth and complexity that gustatory experience can achieve.

Richard Shusterman, author of Thinking Through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics:
With its wealth of wide-ranging philosophical and gastronomical knowledge, Taste as Experience illuminates the richly meaningful complexity of our ordinary ways of eating, while suggesting a path to somaesthetic wisdom through our culturally and cognitively embodied encounters with food.

David M. Kaplan, editor of Readings in the Philosophy of Technology:
Nicola Perullo analyzes food aesthetics and the nature of taste in more detail than anyone else has ever done. Taste as Experience moves comfortably across the disciplines, drawing equally from philosophy, literature, culture, and history. This is a lively and entertaining read, full of insights and interesting examples.

Steven Shapin, author of Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life:
Philosophers have historically held the senses of gustation and olfaction in bad odor and have regarded eating and drinking as unworthy subjects for those living the Life of the Mind. Perullo manages the difficult task of writing philosophically, and very seriously, about food and wine with only a minimum of defensiveness. His subject is the experience of eating and drinking, and his book is essential reading for anyone wanting to reflect on what that experience is.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface to the American Edition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Foreword Massimo Montanari Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
Introduction: Children of a Lesser Sense? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
First Mode of Access Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
Second Mode of Access Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
Third Mode of Access Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
The Wisdom of Taste, the Taste of Wisdom Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
Backmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 176

eBook

Published: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 9780231541428