This blog is intended as an online philosophical notebook, a place for me to record my thoughts on various abstract, ethical, social & aesthetic issues, such that they are available to a wide audience for consideration. My intent here, in general, is not to argue systematically for some single position throughout these essays, but to explore various ideas, arguments & counterarguments in an intelligible fashion, for my own intellectual stimulation and hopefully the intellectual curiosity of others as well.
You’re ready to teach an introduction to philosophy course. Your post on “what is philosophy” is terrific!
As for the post on food as art, I couldn’t help think about memory, and wonder whether it might be another criterion for a definition of art, though not without problems–perhaps necessary but not sufficient. What I mean is that some food, like some art, leaves its mark on my memory. There are certain eating experiences that are indelibly marked in my memory, and they include not just what I ate, but the social context and affective reactions that are bundled with the meal. The same is true for me with art. I can often remember not just a sculpture, painting, or piece of music, but where I saw/heard it, with whom, how I felt, and so forth. For both food and art, the aesthetic experience for me is linked to broader, contextual memories. Perhaps this is too “thin” of a conception of aesthetic experience, since many experiences would be described this way, whether aesthetic or not, but when I thought about how I experience food in ways similar to art, this is what came to mind. Need to think more on this.
Thanks about the intro post!
I think that’s definitely something that art can do, that is, crystalize the memory of our experiencing it, and what surrounds that memory, with a particular intensity, and I’d agree that food can do the same thing. I’m not 100% sure I’d want to say that it’s a necessary condition for art-status, because I’ve also seen a lot of art works that didn’t evoke this sort of reaction (I wouldn’t want to say that the Mona Lisa isn’t an art work just because it didn’t do much for me personally). On the other hand, we could say that any art work must be *capable* of evoking this response, even if it doesn’t do so for every person, in order to be art. We might alternatively say that this sort of memory isn’t definitive of art, but is integral to what we call being “moved by” an art work.
-J.