Making Sense of Plato’s Taste
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21303818 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Afroditi Angelopoulou (0000-0003-0527-6842, Southern California University for Professional Studies, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 117 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 24-44 |
| Publication date | 2022-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Classical Philology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0009-837X • E-ISSN: 1546-072X |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/717257 |
| OpenAlex | W4206353909 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 13 |
This paper focuses on philosophical “taste” in the Republic, aiming to contest the notion that Plato conceptualizes philosophy as a disembodied activity. While it has been noted that Plato often resorts to sensory, visual metaphors to discuss metaphysical “sight” and promote the practice of philosophy, my discussion seeks to move beyond the visual paradigm, showing how the “pure sweetness” of philosophy emerges through the juxtaposition of intellectual and literal consumption (a “feast of speeches” set within a feast). I show that the intense enjoyment of philosophical “sweetness” also entails the positive transvaluation of gustatory and appetitive terms, which Plato often employs to discuss and criticize his contemporaries’ self-indulgent consumption of sensuous (democratic) culture. I evaluate taste as an inclusive concept, which entails the whole alimentary and gustatory experience—that is, appetitive pleasure, consumption, nourishment, satiety, overindulgence, and surfeit. I suggest that this perspective allows us to approach Plato holistically, and to appreciate the interrelation between Platonic ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics. I further argue that the evaluation of Plato’s use of taste and consumption metaphors can help us better understand the extent to which his visceral language manipulates the readers’ “lower” senses to the full, guiding them in their path toward philosophy and away from the material world. Ultimately, this analysis seeks to redefine the ways in which we are invited to think through and with the body as we engage with Platonic discourse
Aesthetics · Consumption (sociology) · CONTEST · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Pleasure · Sweetness · Taste · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
| Highly cited | No |
|---|