"Eating Sublime and Terrible"
Dr. Carolyn Korsmeyer
SUNY - Buffalo
"In Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy, I argue for the aesthetic dimension of food on 'cognitivist' grounds. That is, I reject the common appeal to sophisticated pleasure to justify foods as aesthetic objects (or even, as some would argue, works of art), and rely instead on their capacities to fulfill the kinds of symbolic functions that Nelson Goodman outlines in Languages of Art. This paper pursues this line of thought by developing the idea of 'terrible eating'--eating that is transgressive, sinful, or apparently 'unnatural.' Far from representing the brutal end of the spectrum of eating, however, I suspect that terrible eating lies at the root of some sophisticated and recherch tastes. This paper speculates about the meanings of this kind of cuisine, further developing the symbolic, cognitive aspects of tastes and foods."