The Taste for Ethics

by Coff, Christian; Broadbridge, Edward

• ISBN13: 9781402045530
• ISBN10: 1402045530
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-15
• Publisher: Springer Verlag

Summary

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, and the caritas concept from the Judaeo-Christian tradition. But no early moral teaching discussed man's 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.Before industrialisation the production of 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. In doing so he shows how the focus of ethics can be expanded from its concern for the good life with and for others to cover the good life in fair food production practices, and how not least through using our integrity or life coherence we can reflect ethically, or caringly, about living organisms, ecological systems and our human identity.From the foreword by Dr. Peter Kemp, Professor of Philosophy at the Danish University of Education

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Foreword	ix
Preface	xi
List of Tables and Figures	xvii
About the Author	xix
Part I Food and Ethics	1	(30)
Eating, Society and Ethics	3	(28)
The Intimacy of Eating and Digestion	6	(5)
Eating in between Life and Death	11	(2)
The Social Meaning of the Meal	13	(3)
Food and Ethics in History	16	(5)
Food Ethics and the Production History	21	(10)
Part II The Intellectualization of Food	31	(62)
Food to Science: On the Intellectualization of Food	33	(28)
The Hermeneutic Approach of Early Natural History	36	(6)
The Phenomenological Approach of Late Natural History	42	(4)
Biology and the Invisible Characteristics of Life	46	(4)
The End of Phenomenology in Biology	50	(11)
The Storylessness of Food	61	(32)
The History of Industrialization of Agriculture	61	(8)
Food Science and Gastronomy	69	(8)
The Powerlessness of the Political Consumer	77	(8)
The Hidden Production History of Food	85	(4)
Do not Eat what You Have not Read	89	(4)
Part III Food Ethics and the Production History	93	(110)
Tracing the Production History	95	(44)
Short-Range and Long-Range Ethics	96	(5)
Food as a Trace	101	(6)
The Judgement of Taste and Morality	107	(8)
The Trace as Presence and Lost Time	115	(8)
History of Effect	123	(7)
Production History and Mimesis	130	(9)
Food Ethics as the Ethics of the Trace	139	(28)
The Reliability of the Production History	141	(7)
Food and Ethical Identity	148	(5)
Food as a Trace of Nature	153	(7)
Food Ethics of the Consumers	160	(7)
Traceability and Food Ethics	167	(36)
Fragmentation and Traceability	168	(4)
Sociological Survey on Ethical Traceability	172	(9)
Consumer Autonomy: Remembering the Other and Informed Choice	181	(8)
Recognizing Consumers Recognizing Producers	189	(14)
References	203	(6)
Index	209