The Taste for Ethics An Ethic of Food Consumption [Hardcover]

This book marks a new departure in ethics, which has up to now been a question of the good life in relation to other people, based on Greek concepts of friendship and the Judaeo-Christian caritas. No early moral teaching discussed mans relation to the origin of foodstuffs and the system that produced them; doubtless the question was of little interest since the production path was so short.

This book marks a new departure in ethics. In our culture ethics has first and foremost been a question of the good life in relation to other people. Central to this ethic was friendship, inspired by Greek thought (not least Aristotle), and the caritas concept from the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Later moral philo- phers also included mans relation to animals, and it was agreed that the m- treatment of animals was morally reprehensible. But no early moral teaching discussed mans relation to the origin of foodstuffs and the system that p- duced them; doubtless the question was of little interest since the production path was so short. The interest in good-quality food is of course an ancient one, and healthy eating habits have often been underlined as a condition for the good life. But before industrialization the production of this food was easy to follow. As a rule, that is no longer the case. The field of ethics must therefore be extended to cover responsibility for the production and choice of foodstuffs, and it is this food ethic that Christian Coff sets out to trace.Foreword. Preface. Part I: Food and Ethics. 1. Eating, Society and Ethics. 1.1 The Intimacy of Eating and Digestion. 1.2 Eating in between Life and Death. 1.3 The Social Meaning of the Meal. 1.4 Food and Ethics in History. 1.5 Food Ethics and the Production History. Part II: The Intellectualisation of Food. 2. Food to Science: On the Intellectualisation of Food. 2.1 The Hermeneutic Approach of Early Natural History. 2.2 The Phenomenological Approach of Late Natural History. 2.3 Biology l#