Robert T Valgenti | The Culinary Institute of America (original) (raw)
Academic Papers by Robert T Valgenti
Aisthesis: Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico , 2024
What does it mean to apply a recipe? In this essay I examine how habit and improvisation c... more What does it mean to apply a recipe? In this essay I examine how habit and improvisation contribute to the application of recipes. Application entails more than following technical instructions; it involves strategies for critically reading, understanding, and performing recipes in a manner that contributes to their transmission and trans-formation. Application draws upon our habits and prior knowledge to respond to the contingencies of new situa-tions and highlights future possibilities that require adaptation and transformation. I thus argue that one should view recipes as ethical texts, which in this context of application means that they are something more than rigid technical guides for cooking, and more than mere recordings of cultural and historical knowledge to be reproduced: as an essential element of human gastronomy, the application of a recipe involves habit and improvisation working together in the pursuit of the good life.
East Asian Journal of Philosophy, 2022
This essay examines the concept of terroir, or "the taste of place," from a philosophical and bro... more This essay examines the concept of terroir, or "the taste of place," from a philosophical and broadly hermeneutic standpoint. I argue that terroir is a concept that can be reduced neither to its empirical, geological characteristics nor to the various human interventions that use the landscape and geographical region to produce distinct comestibles (such as wine, cheese, etc.); rather, terroir is a concept that captures a tension between taste and place that resists representation. My goal is to explain how terroir, despite its traditional uses to perpetuate hierarchies of wealth, status, and power, or its more recent deployments as a tool to open or assert economic and political imperatives, can nonetheless operate as a critical concept. I first present a definition of terroir that draws upon a number of recent studies to highlight its polysemic nature and its inherent yet productive tension. I then examine this tension--one that can undermine foundations and resist its reduction to either a descriptive or a constructive function--by drawing upon the work of thinkers who have theorized a type of geophilosophy. In the essay's final section, I suggest that terroir operates like a utopia and thus provides an impetus for the critical evaluation of our claims to territorial identity and aesthetic uniqueness.
“Material and Improvisation in the Formative Process” in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and... more “Material and Improvisation in the Formative Process” in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Improvisation in the Arts, edited by A. Bertinetto and M. Ruta (Taylor and Francis, 2021).
“Is Thinking Critically About Food Essential To A Good Life?” in Food Fights: How History Matters... more “Is Thinking Critically About Food Essential To A Good Life?” in Food Fights: How History Matters to Contemporary Food Debates, edited by C. Ludington and M. Booker (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press 2019), 231-249.
“The Unfamiliarity of Kindredness: Toward a Hermeneutics of Communication” in Thinking the Inexha... more “The Unfamiliarity of Kindredness: Toward a Hermeneutics of Communication” in Thinking the Inexhaustible: The Philosophy of Luigi Pareyson, eds. S. Benso and B. Schroeder (SUNY Press 2018).
This essay is currently published, with a response from Vattimo and Zabala, in Making Communism ... more This essay is currently published, with a response from Vattimo and Zabala, in Making Communism Hermeneutical, Silvia Mazzini and Owen Glyn-Williams, eds., (Springer, 2017), 193-206.
Angelaki, 2016
Abstract This essay argues that the use of the censor's bleep for comedic effect in cases whe... more Abstract This essay argues that the use of the censor's bleep for comedic effect in cases when an actual expletive is not present (what is known as “unnecessary censorship”) can contribute not only to our understanding of traditional theories of humor but also uncover a deep connection between censorship, humor, and human speech. The essay begins with a description of the phenomenon of “unnecessary censorship” within the context of prime-time television and the growing use of profane and indecent language. To understand why unnecessary censorship works as a comedic device in light of increasing expletive use (bleeped and unbleeped), the author examines major theories of humor from Bergson, Morreall, Monro, and Critchley, and applies them to the various ways in which the censor's bleep is deployed. This analysis leads the author to consider how the origin of human speech might entail an original act of censoring that is essential to acts of free speech. The author concludes by highlighting how the censor's bleep can be utilized positively within the context of humor, with the effect of exposing and undermining abuses of power and restrictions on human freedom.
![Research paper thumbnail of “Vattimo at 80: A Hermeneutic Reality Check,” Philosophy Today [Special Issue: Festschrift for Gianni Vattimo, edited by R. Valgenti], 60:3 (Summer 2016).](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/50387681/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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The art of cooking is always performed within a horizon or context and is never merely the applic... more The art of cooking is always performed within a horizon or context and is never merely the application of a set of techniques. But such a context is not simply historical or geographical. When asked about terroir and its effect on a particular breed of lamb he had prepared, French chef Thierry Marx claimed that terroir is ultimately not about geography; terroir is not a place, but is in fact inside of him. One might call this a sort of portable, existential terroir. And although such a claim might seem nothing more than culinary hubris, the idea of a personal, existential terroir, or as Druckman puts it, the idea that " each chef has an inimitable culinary fingerprint, that the food he or she makes is an index tracing the past, " 1 is what gives rise to my topic of discussion today: cooking as interpretation. What does it mean to consider the art of cooking an act of interpretation; and moreover, why should the art of cooking be approached as an act of interpretation? For the purposes of this examination I wish to define cooking in a rather simple manner as the application of a set of techniques and processes to food stuffs in order to make them more edible, nourishing, and/or palatable to humans. Cooking is thus a purposeful process of transformation or metabolization. Such a definition, however, belies the rich contexts in which cooking has unfolded and continues to unfold. Cooking is never just about the preparation of food, but in its purpose and expression reveals relations of power, geography, time, and so on. For example, I have already presupposed a great deal with the phrase " the art of cooking. " I intend to take this in both senses of the genitive: that cooking, in all of its expressions, employs a certain set of skills and techniques that are unique to it; and that such cooking is in fact one of the fine arts. Although one could argue that over the past two centuries the world of the fine arts has been democratized more than ever before, the traditional hierarchies that distinguish the distance senses (sight and hearing) from the proximal ones (touch, smell and taste) nonetheless remain entrenched in our judgments and appreciation of art. 2 Thus today, even though the art of cooking and the celebrity chef seem to dominate both the popular and also the elite cultural landscape, a cooking or tasting station would still be an unexpected sight (and impossible taste) in a traditional artistic space—an art gallery or a theatre for example. And yet, given the innumerable places where food happens—from restaurants and roadside stands to supermarkets, farms and laboratories that dot our agrarian and urban landscapes—it would be problematic to claim that all of them potentially constitute examples of " food as art, " such that the category of art would become meaningless. For example, just as all representational images do not count as visual art, so too every example of cooking does not live up to the ideal of a gastronomic art. Thus, we must first ask the question: what is it that distinguishes " art " from other forms of human production? This is an impossibly broad and contentious topic, so I only hope to offer some guidelines to help organize my thoughts. For my reflection on this topic, two philosophers are central. The first, Martin Heidegger, explains the event-like character of artistic production in his famous essay " The Origin of the Work of Art. " As an event and not merely an object of art, its qualities are ephemeral and fleeting rather than stable and unchanging; such a work has no essence or nature in the traditional sense, no reference other than to itself as an event that is the very criterion for its truth; as a critical idea, the event collapses the traditional divisions between artist, art work, spectator of art, and the medium through which it is delivered, rendering the event something that happens beyond the singular and
Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, 2014
Interpreting Nietzsche, 2011
Gianni Vattimo, the Italian philosopher, cultural critic and politician, interprets the legacy of... more Gianni Vattimo, the Italian philosopher, cultural critic and politician, interprets the legacy of Western metaphysics as one burdened by a fundamental violence. But Vattimo also suggests that this inheritance, if interpreted carefully and with a sense of the times in the manner suggested by Nietzsche, could support a philosophical project of human liberation. Nietzsche’s nihilism, so often misunderstood as a form of radical scepticism, is in Vattimo’s estimation the key to interpreting metaphysics in terms of its continual weakening rather than its final overcoming. Such a position is more reliant than others on a cohesive, if not systematic reading of Nietzsche; yet, Vattimo truly breaks stride with other interpreters through his consideration of Nietzsche as a pre-eminently hermeneutic philosopher whose thoughts have profound, and ultimately positive, political consequences. This interpretative orientation is present throughout Vattimo’s readings of Nietzsche, from his earliest studies in the 1960’s to the formulation of his emblematic “weak thought,” and most recently, in his notions of an “ontology of actuality” and of “hermeneutic communism.”ii Vattimo’s reading of Nietzsche is inspired both by Dilthey’s characterization of Nietzsche as a “life” philosopher and, most importantly, Heidegger’s understanding of Nietzsche as a traditional philosopher concerned with the question of Being (2001: pp. 1-7). But rather than resolve what might rightly be understood as opposed interpretations of Nietzsche, Vattimo concerns himself with the problems of Being and truth as they unfold within history and within the ever-changing world of life and existence. Thus, Vattimo does not interpret Nietzsche’s as a “vitalistic” reading of Being and truth, but rather as the beginning of hermeneutic ontology, the inception of a form of philosophy that begins with the premise that “there are no facts, only interpretations,” and thus interprets Being and truth from within the very history of decline and weakening that has made them the central concepts of philosophy. Vattimo’s interpretation of Nietzsche unfolds as part of his broader attempt—one that he argues is central to hermeneutic ontology—to recover the positive features of nihilism and to establish a philosophy of liberation and non-violence.
Symposium, 2010
I am grateful to Antonio Calcagno and Silvia Benso for inviting me to be part of this panel dedic... more I am grateful to Antonio Calcagno and Silvia Benso for inviting me to be part of this panel dedicated to "Encountering Italian Philosophy." Moreover, it is my pleasure and honour to respond to the thinking of Ugo Perone, a philosopher who is not only a product of, but who has helped to shape and develop, the intellectual landscape of my adopted philosophical home of Torino, Italy. This common background is not, however, without its inherent problems. Perhaps the difficulty with this shared horizon involves the possibility that this encounter in the present, an encounter with the work and the person himself, is in danger of not being an encounter at all: I wonder if it is even possible to read his work and experience his thinking without tracing certain familial lines in the visage of his ideas, without responding almost instinctively to the familiar tone in his philosophical voice, like meeting a cousin for the first time later in life, an individual who exists only in name, that symbolic person in front of the person. If we were to meet neither here in this room nor merely in the textual encounter, but instead in Torino, in front of Palazzo Nuovo, or in the middle of Piazza San Carlo, or on the platform at Porta Nuova, what would stand forth and remain beyond the shared landmarks, the friends in common, and the congeniality of space? What has been cleared out by the recognisable features and the shared connections-biological and historical-and thus prepared a revelatory opening for this new place and this new time? How do we overcome the threat of the familiar and prepare for something truly new? One typical response would claim that the desire to encounter something beyond that always-already open horizon is precisely the problem. Namely, that a shared horizon is the very condition for the encounter, such that engaging and recognising difference is made possible
Consequences of Hermeneutics, 2010
Between Nihilism and Politics, 2010
Tropos, 2009
Via Raffaele Garofalo, 133 a/b 00173 Roma Stampa Braille Gamma S.r.l.-Santa Rufina di Cittaducale... more Via Raffaele Garofalo, 133 a/b 00173 Roma Stampa Braille Gamma S.r.l.-Santa Rufina di Cittaducale (RI) Carte: opaca Bravomatt 300 g/m' plasrificata opaca (copertina) e usomano bianco Selena 80 glm' {interno} A1lestimento: Legamra a filo di refe I brossura Stampa realizzata in collaborazione con la Finsol S.rl Finito di stampare nel mese di ottobre del 2008
Essays, Podcasts, and Other Media by Robert T Valgenti
When Knowledge is Not Enough, 2022
A response to Megan A. Dean's essay "The Worst Dinner Guest Ever" in Gastronomica (2022) 22 (3): ... more A response to Megan A. Dean's essay "The Worst Dinner Guest Ever" in Gastronomica (2022) 22 (3): 59–71.
Los Angeles Review of Books
WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a nihilist today? Could nihilism in fact represent the best chance for gl... more WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a nihilist today? Could nihilism in fact represent the best chance for global democracy? For Gianni Vattimo (1936), an Italian philosopher, avowed Catholic, and former elected member of the European Union Parliament, a certain form of nihilism represents the future of social, political, and economic justice.
Vattimo willingly embraces the term nihilist — which is striking, given the public’s tendency to associate nihilism with banal relativism or even the tragic rejection of all values. But for Vattimo, nihilism entails the interpretation of a particular history that the West, and consequently, the rest of the world, continues to endure. Vattimo’s name for this history and its way of thinking is “metaphysics.” It represents a mode of thought that claims to achieve a definitive truth — in logic, mathematics, natural science, and even religion and politics — through a purportedly accurate description or formulation of reality. Nihilism as a historical event represents the weakening of that standard of truth over time and its substitution by the figure of interpretation — so much so that interpretation (or even the commonplace idea that truth is relative) has today become a koinè or common idiom. Nonetheless, the lingering desire for a definitive truth is a persistent reminder of that history’s ongoing, but never complete, unfolding. Vattimo understands his response to this tension as a nihilistic vocation, a form of philosophical hermeneutics (or theory of interpretation) that over the past five decades he has alternatively named “weak thought,” “the ontology of actuality,” and, most recently, “hermeneutic communism.”
Gastronomica, 2020
O rely on recipes. Most of what I have learned about food and cooking has instead occurred throug... more O rely on recipes. Most of what I have learned about food and cooking has instead occurred through observation, trial and error, and most importantly, collaborations with others whose impact cannot be reduced to a simple formula. Recipes, nonetheless, have a certain power: they speak for those who cannot be present and offer guidance when the path forward is uncertain. The idea for this issue arose in the wake of the WHO's declaration on March 11, 2020, that COVID-19 was a pandemic. The Editorial Collective of Gastronomica, as a matter of course, was already conducting its regular meetings via Zoom, and each of us was experiencing the pandemic in different ways, on different timelines, and with differing degrees of intensity in Italy, Japan, South Africa, Canada, and the United States. As scholars and members of our local and global communities, we believed that it was important to respond to this moment and to find some order in the chaos-through mutual support, storytelling, and analysis. We were searching for a recipe to guide our efforts and provide some measure of certainty. As stay-at-home orders multiplied in the wake of the spreading pandemic, recipes were having a moment. Again. A fascination with recipes is not new in times of infectious disease. Recipes were viral sensations long before social media. Recipes might even be the original meme. Through replication, transformation, and diversification over time, they coevolve with their hosts-benefitting from their strengths and exploiting their weaknesses. The rapid spread of recipes for tangy sourdough loaves and frothy dalgona coffees, for hand sanitizer and presidential Clorox cocktails, reveals the same latent pathologies of past pandemics. Much like Plague Water and the various "sweat potions" that promised relief during outbreaks of the plague in seventeenth-century Europe, the proliferation of recipes in the time of COVID-19 offers scant immunity from fear, inequality, scapegoating, and xenophobia. 1 Recipes, once synonymous with cures, seem to function merely as placebos. The course of this history is baked into the very structure of the recipe, whose form and imperative voice originate in medical prescriptions or "receipts" from the sixteenth century. The popularization of these scripts-Hieronymous Brunschwig's Liber pestilentialis (1500) is noteworthy above all for its attempt to render the technical language of medicinal plague cures into the German vernacular-suggests a persistent epistemological problem at the heart of any public health crisis: how to disseminate curative knowledge to those who are in the best position to deliver care? In subsequent centuries, the spread of recipe collections and cookbooks reflected a similar dichotomy: those who were literate and could afford such texts nonetheless relied upon those whose skills and station placed them in the kitchen rather than at the dinner table. M. F. K. Fisher's essay "The Anatomy of a Recipe" notes how the writing and transmitting of recipes later evolved to match the "changing tempo of reading, preparing, producing," even though cooking, for the most part, remained unchanged.
Introduction written for the "A Feast for the Eyes" Exhibit
Aisthesis: Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico , 2024
What does it mean to apply a recipe? In this essay I examine how habit and improvisation c... more What does it mean to apply a recipe? In this essay I examine how habit and improvisation contribute to the application of recipes. Application entails more than following technical instructions; it involves strategies for critically reading, understanding, and performing recipes in a manner that contributes to their transmission and trans-formation. Application draws upon our habits and prior knowledge to respond to the contingencies of new situa-tions and highlights future possibilities that require adaptation and transformation. I thus argue that one should view recipes as ethical texts, which in this context of application means that they are something more than rigid technical guides for cooking, and more than mere recordings of cultural and historical knowledge to be reproduced: as an essential element of human gastronomy, the application of a recipe involves habit and improvisation working together in the pursuit of the good life.
East Asian Journal of Philosophy, 2022
This essay examines the concept of terroir, or "the taste of place," from a philosophical and bro... more This essay examines the concept of terroir, or "the taste of place," from a philosophical and broadly hermeneutic standpoint. I argue that terroir is a concept that can be reduced neither to its empirical, geological characteristics nor to the various human interventions that use the landscape and geographical region to produce distinct comestibles (such as wine, cheese, etc.); rather, terroir is a concept that captures a tension between taste and place that resists representation. My goal is to explain how terroir, despite its traditional uses to perpetuate hierarchies of wealth, status, and power, or its more recent deployments as a tool to open or assert economic and political imperatives, can nonetheless operate as a critical concept. I first present a definition of terroir that draws upon a number of recent studies to highlight its polysemic nature and its inherent yet productive tension. I then examine this tension--one that can undermine foundations and resist its reduction to either a descriptive or a constructive function--by drawing upon the work of thinkers who have theorized a type of geophilosophy. In the essay's final section, I suggest that terroir operates like a utopia and thus provides an impetus for the critical evaluation of our claims to territorial identity and aesthetic uniqueness.
“Material and Improvisation in the Formative Process” in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and... more “Material and Improvisation in the Formative Process” in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Improvisation in the Arts, edited by A. Bertinetto and M. Ruta (Taylor and Francis, 2021).
“Is Thinking Critically About Food Essential To A Good Life?” in Food Fights: How History Matters... more “Is Thinking Critically About Food Essential To A Good Life?” in Food Fights: How History Matters to Contemporary Food Debates, edited by C. Ludington and M. Booker (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press 2019), 231-249.
“The Unfamiliarity of Kindredness: Toward a Hermeneutics of Communication” in Thinking the Inexha... more “The Unfamiliarity of Kindredness: Toward a Hermeneutics of Communication” in Thinking the Inexhaustible: The Philosophy of Luigi Pareyson, eds. S. Benso and B. Schroeder (SUNY Press 2018).
This essay is currently published, with a response from Vattimo and Zabala, in Making Communism ... more This essay is currently published, with a response from Vattimo and Zabala, in Making Communism Hermeneutical, Silvia Mazzini and Owen Glyn-Williams, eds., (Springer, 2017), 193-206.
Angelaki, 2016
Abstract This essay argues that the use of the censor's bleep for comedic effect in cases whe... more Abstract This essay argues that the use of the censor's bleep for comedic effect in cases when an actual expletive is not present (what is known as “unnecessary censorship”) can contribute not only to our understanding of traditional theories of humor but also uncover a deep connection between censorship, humor, and human speech. The essay begins with a description of the phenomenon of “unnecessary censorship” within the context of prime-time television and the growing use of profane and indecent language. To understand why unnecessary censorship works as a comedic device in light of increasing expletive use (bleeped and unbleeped), the author examines major theories of humor from Bergson, Morreall, Monro, and Critchley, and applies them to the various ways in which the censor's bleep is deployed. This analysis leads the author to consider how the origin of human speech might entail an original act of censoring that is essential to acts of free speech. The author concludes by highlighting how the censor's bleep can be utilized positively within the context of humor, with the effect of exposing and undermining abuses of power and restrictions on human freedom.
The art of cooking is always performed within a horizon or context and is never merely the applic... more The art of cooking is always performed within a horizon or context and is never merely the application of a set of techniques. But such a context is not simply historical or geographical. When asked about terroir and its effect on a particular breed of lamb he had prepared, French chef Thierry Marx claimed that terroir is ultimately not about geography; terroir is not a place, but is in fact inside of him. One might call this a sort of portable, existential terroir. And although such a claim might seem nothing more than culinary hubris, the idea of a personal, existential terroir, or as Druckman puts it, the idea that " each chef has an inimitable culinary fingerprint, that the food he or she makes is an index tracing the past, " 1 is what gives rise to my topic of discussion today: cooking as interpretation. What does it mean to consider the art of cooking an act of interpretation; and moreover, why should the art of cooking be approached as an act of interpretation? For the purposes of this examination I wish to define cooking in a rather simple manner as the application of a set of techniques and processes to food stuffs in order to make them more edible, nourishing, and/or palatable to humans. Cooking is thus a purposeful process of transformation or metabolization. Such a definition, however, belies the rich contexts in which cooking has unfolded and continues to unfold. Cooking is never just about the preparation of food, but in its purpose and expression reveals relations of power, geography, time, and so on. For example, I have already presupposed a great deal with the phrase " the art of cooking. " I intend to take this in both senses of the genitive: that cooking, in all of its expressions, employs a certain set of skills and techniques that are unique to it; and that such cooking is in fact one of the fine arts. Although one could argue that over the past two centuries the world of the fine arts has been democratized more than ever before, the traditional hierarchies that distinguish the distance senses (sight and hearing) from the proximal ones (touch, smell and taste) nonetheless remain entrenched in our judgments and appreciation of art. 2 Thus today, even though the art of cooking and the celebrity chef seem to dominate both the popular and also the elite cultural landscape, a cooking or tasting station would still be an unexpected sight (and impossible taste) in a traditional artistic space—an art gallery or a theatre for example. And yet, given the innumerable places where food happens—from restaurants and roadside stands to supermarkets, farms and laboratories that dot our agrarian and urban landscapes—it would be problematic to claim that all of them potentially constitute examples of " food as art, " such that the category of art would become meaningless. For example, just as all representational images do not count as visual art, so too every example of cooking does not live up to the ideal of a gastronomic art. Thus, we must first ask the question: what is it that distinguishes " art " from other forms of human production? This is an impossibly broad and contentious topic, so I only hope to offer some guidelines to help organize my thoughts. For my reflection on this topic, two philosophers are central. The first, Martin Heidegger, explains the event-like character of artistic production in his famous essay " The Origin of the Work of Art. " As an event and not merely an object of art, its qualities are ephemeral and fleeting rather than stable and unchanging; such a work has no essence or nature in the traditional sense, no reference other than to itself as an event that is the very criterion for its truth; as a critical idea, the event collapses the traditional divisions between artist, art work, spectator of art, and the medium through which it is delivered, rendering the event something that happens beyond the singular and
Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, 2014
Interpreting Nietzsche, 2011
Gianni Vattimo, the Italian philosopher, cultural critic and politician, interprets the legacy of... more Gianni Vattimo, the Italian philosopher, cultural critic and politician, interprets the legacy of Western metaphysics as one burdened by a fundamental violence. But Vattimo also suggests that this inheritance, if interpreted carefully and with a sense of the times in the manner suggested by Nietzsche, could support a philosophical project of human liberation. Nietzsche’s nihilism, so often misunderstood as a form of radical scepticism, is in Vattimo’s estimation the key to interpreting metaphysics in terms of its continual weakening rather than its final overcoming. Such a position is more reliant than others on a cohesive, if not systematic reading of Nietzsche; yet, Vattimo truly breaks stride with other interpreters through his consideration of Nietzsche as a pre-eminently hermeneutic philosopher whose thoughts have profound, and ultimately positive, political consequences. This interpretative orientation is present throughout Vattimo’s readings of Nietzsche, from his earliest studies in the 1960’s to the formulation of his emblematic “weak thought,” and most recently, in his notions of an “ontology of actuality” and of “hermeneutic communism.”ii Vattimo’s reading of Nietzsche is inspired both by Dilthey’s characterization of Nietzsche as a “life” philosopher and, most importantly, Heidegger’s understanding of Nietzsche as a traditional philosopher concerned with the question of Being (2001: pp. 1-7). But rather than resolve what might rightly be understood as opposed interpretations of Nietzsche, Vattimo concerns himself with the problems of Being and truth as they unfold within history and within the ever-changing world of life and existence. Thus, Vattimo does not interpret Nietzsche’s as a “vitalistic” reading of Being and truth, but rather as the beginning of hermeneutic ontology, the inception of a form of philosophy that begins with the premise that “there are no facts, only interpretations,” and thus interprets Being and truth from within the very history of decline and weakening that has made them the central concepts of philosophy. Vattimo’s interpretation of Nietzsche unfolds as part of his broader attempt—one that he argues is central to hermeneutic ontology—to recover the positive features of nihilism and to establish a philosophy of liberation and non-violence.
Symposium, 2010
I am grateful to Antonio Calcagno and Silvia Benso for inviting me to be part of this panel dedic... more I am grateful to Antonio Calcagno and Silvia Benso for inviting me to be part of this panel dedicated to "Encountering Italian Philosophy." Moreover, it is my pleasure and honour to respond to the thinking of Ugo Perone, a philosopher who is not only a product of, but who has helped to shape and develop, the intellectual landscape of my adopted philosophical home of Torino, Italy. This common background is not, however, without its inherent problems. Perhaps the difficulty with this shared horizon involves the possibility that this encounter in the present, an encounter with the work and the person himself, is in danger of not being an encounter at all: I wonder if it is even possible to read his work and experience his thinking without tracing certain familial lines in the visage of his ideas, without responding almost instinctively to the familiar tone in his philosophical voice, like meeting a cousin for the first time later in life, an individual who exists only in name, that symbolic person in front of the person. If we were to meet neither here in this room nor merely in the textual encounter, but instead in Torino, in front of Palazzo Nuovo, or in the middle of Piazza San Carlo, or on the platform at Porta Nuova, what would stand forth and remain beyond the shared landmarks, the friends in common, and the congeniality of space? What has been cleared out by the recognisable features and the shared connections-biological and historical-and thus prepared a revelatory opening for this new place and this new time? How do we overcome the threat of the familiar and prepare for something truly new? One typical response would claim that the desire to encounter something beyond that always-already open horizon is precisely the problem. Namely, that a shared horizon is the very condition for the encounter, such that engaging and recognising difference is made possible
Consequences of Hermeneutics, 2010
Between Nihilism and Politics, 2010
Tropos, 2009
Via Raffaele Garofalo, 133 a/b 00173 Roma Stampa Braille Gamma S.r.l.-Santa Rufina di Cittaducale... more Via Raffaele Garofalo, 133 a/b 00173 Roma Stampa Braille Gamma S.r.l.-Santa Rufina di Cittaducale (RI) Carte: opaca Bravomatt 300 g/m' plasrificata opaca (copertina) e usomano bianco Selena 80 glm' {interno} A1lestimento: Legamra a filo di refe I brossura Stampa realizzata in collaborazione con la Finsol S.rl Finito di stampare nel mese di ottobre del 2008
When Knowledge is Not Enough, 2022
A response to Megan A. Dean's essay "The Worst Dinner Guest Ever" in Gastronomica (2022) 22 (3): ... more A response to Megan A. Dean's essay "The Worst Dinner Guest Ever" in Gastronomica (2022) 22 (3): 59–71.
Los Angeles Review of Books
WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a nihilist today? Could nihilism in fact represent the best chance for gl... more WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a nihilist today? Could nihilism in fact represent the best chance for global democracy? For Gianni Vattimo (1936), an Italian philosopher, avowed Catholic, and former elected member of the European Union Parliament, a certain form of nihilism represents the future of social, political, and economic justice.
Vattimo willingly embraces the term nihilist — which is striking, given the public’s tendency to associate nihilism with banal relativism or even the tragic rejection of all values. But for Vattimo, nihilism entails the interpretation of a particular history that the West, and consequently, the rest of the world, continues to endure. Vattimo’s name for this history and its way of thinking is “metaphysics.” It represents a mode of thought that claims to achieve a definitive truth — in logic, mathematics, natural science, and even religion and politics — through a purportedly accurate description or formulation of reality. Nihilism as a historical event represents the weakening of that standard of truth over time and its substitution by the figure of interpretation — so much so that interpretation (or even the commonplace idea that truth is relative) has today become a koinè or common idiom. Nonetheless, the lingering desire for a definitive truth is a persistent reminder of that history’s ongoing, but never complete, unfolding. Vattimo understands his response to this tension as a nihilistic vocation, a form of philosophical hermeneutics (or theory of interpretation) that over the past five decades he has alternatively named “weak thought,” “the ontology of actuality,” and, most recently, “hermeneutic communism.”
Gastronomica, 2020
O rely on recipes. Most of what I have learned about food and cooking has instead occurred throug... more O rely on recipes. Most of what I have learned about food and cooking has instead occurred through observation, trial and error, and most importantly, collaborations with others whose impact cannot be reduced to a simple formula. Recipes, nonetheless, have a certain power: they speak for those who cannot be present and offer guidance when the path forward is uncertain. The idea for this issue arose in the wake of the WHO's declaration on March 11, 2020, that COVID-19 was a pandemic. The Editorial Collective of Gastronomica, as a matter of course, was already conducting its regular meetings via Zoom, and each of us was experiencing the pandemic in different ways, on different timelines, and with differing degrees of intensity in Italy, Japan, South Africa, Canada, and the United States. As scholars and members of our local and global communities, we believed that it was important to respond to this moment and to find some order in the chaos-through mutual support, storytelling, and analysis. We were searching for a recipe to guide our efforts and provide some measure of certainty. As stay-at-home orders multiplied in the wake of the spreading pandemic, recipes were having a moment. Again. A fascination with recipes is not new in times of infectious disease. Recipes were viral sensations long before social media. Recipes might even be the original meme. Through replication, transformation, and diversification over time, they coevolve with their hosts-benefitting from their strengths and exploiting their weaknesses. The rapid spread of recipes for tangy sourdough loaves and frothy dalgona coffees, for hand sanitizer and presidential Clorox cocktails, reveals the same latent pathologies of past pandemics. Much like Plague Water and the various "sweat potions" that promised relief during outbreaks of the plague in seventeenth-century Europe, the proliferation of recipes in the time of COVID-19 offers scant immunity from fear, inequality, scapegoating, and xenophobia. 1 Recipes, once synonymous with cures, seem to function merely as placebos. The course of this history is baked into the very structure of the recipe, whose form and imperative voice originate in medical prescriptions or "receipts" from the sixteenth century. The popularization of these scripts-Hieronymous Brunschwig's Liber pestilentialis (1500) is noteworthy above all for its attempt to render the technical language of medicinal plague cures into the German vernacular-suggests a persistent epistemological problem at the heart of any public health crisis: how to disseminate curative knowledge to those who are in the best position to deliver care? In subsequent centuries, the spread of recipe collections and cookbooks reflected a similar dichotomy: those who were literate and could afford such texts nonetheless relied upon those whose skills and station placed them in the kitchen rather than at the dinner table. M. F. K. Fisher's essay "The Anatomy of a Recipe" notes how the writing and transmitting of recipes later evolved to match the "changing tempo of reading, preparing, producing," even though cooking, for the most part, remained unchanged.
Introduction written for the "A Feast for the Eyes" Exhibit
Here is an interview I did with Fabian Corver for his Dare to Know! series on the Philosophy, Sci... more Here is an interview I did with Fabian Corver for his Dare to Know! series on the Philosophy, Science, and Aesthetics of Food.
For generations, we’ve heard “You are what you eat.” From a nutrition standpoint, the phrase’s me... more For generations, we’ve heard “You are what you eat.” From a nutrition standpoint, the phrase’s meaning is clear—but what about when we trace it back to its philosophical origins?
NYU’s Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health will host author Graham Harman and Philosophy Professor Robert Valgenti who will discuss Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach’s famous 19th-century phrase. The exchange will outline two possible ways of understanding the “being” or existence of those who eat, of food, and of the relations between the two.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Psychological Science
Healthy food labels tout health benefits, yet most people prioritize tastiness in the moment of f... more Healthy food labels tout health benefits, yet most people prioritize tastiness in the moment of food choice. In a preregistered intervention, we tested whether taste-focused labels compared with health-focused labels increased vegetable intake at five university dining halls throughout the United States. Across 137,842 diner decisions, 185 days, and 24 vegetable types, taste-focused labels increased vegetable selection by 29% compared with health-focused labels and by 14% compared with basic labels. Vegetable consumption also increased. Supplementary studies further probed the mediators, moderators, and boundaries of these effects. Increased expectations of a positive taste experience mediated the effect of taste-focused labels on vegetable selection. Moderation tests revealed greater effects in settings that served tastier vegetable recipes. Taste-focused labels outperformed labels that merely contained positive words, fancy words, or lists of ingredients. Together, these studies s...
Nutrients
Despite recent relaxation of restrictions on dietary fat consumption in dietary guidelines, there... more Despite recent relaxation of restrictions on dietary fat consumption in dietary guidelines, there remains a collective “fear of fat”. This study examined college students’ perceptions of health among foods with no fat relative to foods with different types of fats (unsaturated and saturated). Utilizing a multisite approach, this study collected data from college students at six university dining halls throughout the United States. Data were available on 533 students. Participants were 52% male and consisted largely of first-year students (43%). Across three meal types, the no-fat preparation option was chosen 73% of the time, the unsaturated fat option was selected 23% of the time, and the saturated fat option was chosen 4% of the time. Students chose the no-fat option for all meal types 44% of the time. Findings suggest that college students lack knowledge regarding the vital role played by the type and amount of fats within a healthy diet. Nutrition education and food system refor...
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/of-reality/9780231166973
https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6440-the-experience-of-truth.aspx
https://www.sunypress.edu/p-5729-truth-and-interpretation.aspx
This is an overview of the accomplishments of the EAT Research Group up through its final semeste... more This is an overview of the accomplishments of the EAT Research Group up through its final semester in fall 2019.
1. Gastronomy and Biopolitics Gastronomy, as it is defined by Brillat-Savarin in the Physiology o... more 1. Gastronomy and Biopolitics Gastronomy, as it is defined by Brillat-Savarin in the Physiology of Taste, " is a scientific definition of all that relates to man as a feeding animal. Its [goal] is to watch over the preservation of man by means of the best possible food. " 1 The discipline stretches across the fields of natural history, physics and chemistry, cookery, commerce, political economy and in fact any discipline that in some way concerns itself with some aspect of the preparation and/or consumption of food for humans. " The material of gastronomy is all that may be eaten; its [goal] is direct, the preservation of individuals. Its means of execution are cultivation, which produces; commerce, which exchanges; industry, which prepares; and experience, which teaches us to put them to the best use. " 2 How then are we to interpret Savarin's text, or more importantly, the meaning and spirit of his words? and how might our interpretation act as counter to the interpretation that has been given already over the past two centuries-one that is, to follow a line of critique from Nietzsche to Heidegger and through contemporary theorists like Bernard Stiegler and Giorgio Agamben, primarily scientific. While not existent in name—or as a " science " proper— gastronomy is perhaps the first and oldest human science, as its objective and success constitute the very condition of possibility (a necessary, but not sufficient one) for any other science. As Brillat-Savarin describes the full arc of its influence: " Gastronomy rules all life, for the tears of the infant cry for the bosom of the nurse; the dying man receives with some degree of pleasure the last cooling drink, which, alas! he is unable to digest. " 3 While one could simply read this passage as a riff on "cradle to grave" food planning, a more careful reflection opens up possibilities for considering issues of scarcity, human finitude, and above all, pleasure. When these issues become central to the planning and regulation of societies by governments and their institutions, one can rightly say that gastronomy becomes biopolitical. My modest goal today is to 1 Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, 84 [translation modified].
This investigation of a point of connection between aesthetics and ethics unfolds in the context ... more This investigation of a point of connection between aesthetics and ethics unfolds in the context of a larger project on food, philosophy, and a reinterpretation of the relationship between the two. More specifically, my goal is to take food as a starting point for rethinking some of the basic categories of philosophy, with the understanding that the rather humble position afforded to the proximal (i.e., lower) senses by the tradition—and here I am thinking primarily of taste, but also of touch and smell (both of which, incidentally, are a major component of taste and tasting as a means of encountering the world)—constitutes a site whereupon we might begin to think seriously about why food matters, and for this discussion, how the event of eating as an aesthetic experience—food as art—might lead us not only to rethink an ethics of food, but also to rethink the very foundations of ethics more broadly construed. The impetus for this project has three rather distinct origins. The first is a prompt I employed while teaching my " Food and Philosophy " course: Monty Python's skit " Art Gallery " (watch it), which features the actual ingestion of works of art. 1 The second is my involvement in the planning of a recent exhibit " A Feast for the Eyes " at the Suzanne H. Arnold Gallery on the campus of Lebanon Valley College, which featured artist's renderings of food from traditional still life paintings to Warhol and Dali. The third, which provides the theoretical backdrop for this essay, is the recent work of Jacques Rancière on aesthetics and politics. My reflection on the aesthetics of eating thus places these origins within the horizon of what might be described as a general proliferation and even democratization of gastronomic experiences since the early nineteenth century. Such phenomena include, but are not limited to, the industrialization and mechanization of methods of food production from the farm all the way to the table, the acceptance of gastronomic taste as a metaphor for judgments of subjective taste in the arts and beyond (Korsmeyer 103-115), the rise of restaurant culture as a pleasurable and accessible possibility for the middle and working classes (Sweeney), the globalization of food economies and tastes, and more recently, the explosion and ubiquity of fast food, the rise of the chef as a cultural figure and icon, and the dissemination of food culture and knowledge through television programming dedicated to food. Such democratization, however, cuts both ways, and through my investigation I hope to expose the degree to which a particular distribution of sensible