Nourishment: A Philosophy of the Political Body

by Corine Pelluchon, Justin E. H. Smith (Translator)

Overview

This book seeks to replace the philosophy of the subject, underlying contemporary contractualism, with another philosophy. The ethics of vulnerability, which emphasizes the category of passivity, is the first phase in this philosophy of corporality, further supplemented in Nourishment by a philosophy of “living from,” which takes the materiality of our existence seriously: hunger, oikos, space and time, place, and enjoyment.

Based on a radical phenomenology of sensations, this book takes inspiration from the French philosophers who were able to suggest an alternative to Heidegger's ontology of concern, such as Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Paul Ricœur. Going beyond the dualism between nature and culture, subject and object, Pelluchon aims to determine the existential structures that break with Heidegger's ontology of concern and the philosophies of freedom that serve as a foundation for liberal political theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350073883
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/21/2019
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	752,905
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Corine Pelluchon is Professor of Philosophy at Paris-Est-Marne-La-Vallée, France. She is author of Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Rationalism: Another Reason, Another Enlightenment (2015) which won the Francois Furet Prize.

Justin E. H. Smith is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Paris 7, Denis Diderot, France. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, n+1, Slate, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Smith is also an editor-at-large of Cabinet Magazine.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part 1 A phenomenology of nourishment 25

1 Living from 27

Enjoyment 28

The gourmet cogito 34

Taste 42

The tea ceremony 51

The terrestrial condition, the localization, and birth 55

2 Space, milieu, and other existants 69

The geographicity of being, the ecumene and mediance 70

Dwelling, building, cultivating 83

Empathy communication with animals, and sharing of the common world 103

Zoopolis and justice towards animals 122

Eating meat and the love of animals 137

3 Eating disorders 154

Hunger as the starting point of ethics 154

A problem of justice, not of shortage: The capabilities approach 159

Food ethics and policy 163

The phenomenology of nourishment and agriculture 169

Anorexia, bulimia, and obesity: A painful orality 175

Part 2 To institute a common world 195

4 A new social contract 197

Hobbes's artificialism, or the social contract as a response to violence 200

Locke's moderate liberalism: Autonomy without waste or expropriation 208

Rousseau's general will and the sense of obligation 221

Rawls's original position and the new social contract 233

The principles of justice as the sharing of nourishment 254

5 Reconstructing democracy 263

Supplementing the representative system 265

The hypothesis of a third chamber, and the role of experts 270

From competitive democracy to deliberative democracy 280

The heterogeneity of the public sphere and participation 286

Culture and democracy: Intellectuals, media, and the schools 292

6 Beyond national boundaries 303

In the shadow of the bomb 305

Globalization, sovereignty, and methodological cosmopolitanism 312

Cosmopolitical rights since Kant 319

Global civil society and cosmopolitical democracy 326

Imaginary, utopia, and the heritage of the Enlightenment 331

Conclusion 340

The opening of the possible and conviviality 341

Love of life 347

A radical phenomenology of sensing and a political constructivism 351

Notes 357

Index 396

Editorial Reviews

In this original and important book, Corrine Pelluchon argues for nothing less than a new social contract that does justice to the biosphere, to all life, especially other animals, as well as human life, and to future generations. On the basis of a phenomenology of food and nourishment, she shows how freedom depends on the "love of life" and on sharing what nourishes with others. Pelluchon also takes up the practical challenge of reimagining democratic institutions to sustain this ethics of life. Anyone interested in questions of justice and environmental or food ethics should read this book.

From the Publisher