Back to the curriculum - Philosophy

Oct 14, 2025
5 min read

“A philosopher is a person who doesn't care which side his bread is buttered on; he knows he eats both sides anyway.” Joyce Brothers

It's ages since I tackled the food curriculum series, mostly because I had covered all the subjects that were taught in my schooldays. I always determined to carry on but stalled a bit. Today is the day I continue with all those other fields of study that we now know - some of which turn up in schools, some of which are saved for further education. And I'm beginning with philosophy which the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines thus:

"The meaning of PHILOSOPHY is all learning exclusive of technical precepts and practical arts."

All learning or all thought? The Cambridge Dictionary and most of the others, is a bit more specific, defining philosophy as:

"the use of reason in understanding such things as the nature of the real world and existence, the use and limits of knowledge, and the principles of moral judgment"

Pretty fundamental anyway, and I think my opening quote, and that rather strange painting by Scott Reeder, called Bread and Butter (Night) (2008); somehow captures the same kind of feeling. I rather like it - there's a friendliness, even romance about it and a feeling that in the dark there is light, although the writer who presented this painting thought that the butter could be melted by the candle. All very metaphorical.

Now I have never studied philosophy, although I once bought Bertrand Russell's Wisdom of the West, in an attempt to understand it, but alas I didn't get far. It was far too difficult for me. The language was words collected together in ways that somehow disconnected them from each other so that I really did not understand what was said. I suspect that like maths it takes a special kind of mind to understand it all.

Nevertheless I thought I would begin with Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher whose name gave rise to the term Epicurean, which according to Oxford Languages means:

"a person devoted to sensual enjoyment, especially that derived from fine food and drink."

However, an Epicurean is also a follower of the philosopher Epicurus, who, was actually rather the opposite. He did say that:

"Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul."

But this didn't mean you went out and ate and drank to excess. Rather the opposite in fact, as these three of his teachings demonstrate:

"Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance"

"What cannot be satisfied is not a man’s stomach, as most men think, but rather the false opinion that the stomach requires unlimited filling."

"We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink."

Maybe I should have inserted my bread and butter painting here.

I tried to find out how his name came to be associated with luxury food - the top end of the foodie scene, but all I could find was a passing reference to his name being associated with drunkenness and over indulgence in general in the Middle Ages - or as Etymonline puts it he was an:

"Athenian philosopher who taught that pleasure is the highest good and identified virtue as the greatest pleasure; the first lesson recalled, the second forgotten"

Enough of Epicurus. What about philosophy in general and how can it be taught with food as its central concern?

Really philosophy is about life, the universe and everything isn't it? It's about meaning. And here as I started thinking about it I could see how philosophy is a part of every other subject on the curriculum - in the same way as history. Food is just one part of human life to which philosophy can be applied. Think deeply enough about McDonald's and you will be confronted with all manner of questions of morality, economics, sociology, geography, health, medicine, technology, maybe even religion ....

When we think about philosophy we automatically think of those Ancient Greek philosophers, of whom Epicurus was just one of many. Other civilisations have had their philosophers of course, but the Ancient Greeks are the ones who have received the most attention in the Western world at least. And so George Vavakis, a Greek Australian, designed or had designed this rather wonderful logo for his business importing the best Greek food products. It's a sort of an aside, but I think emphasises the fundamental nature of philosophy - for the food he imports are the basics like olive oil, olives, honey, vinegar ...

It's one of the earliest forms of study - of thought - like religion - because I guess, since man has had the capacity for conscious thought the basic questions of what's it all about, who am I, where did I come from, who made this world ...? were answered first by religion and then by philosophy. Religion has rules, belief, rituals, many of them associated with food either literally or symbolically but Philosophy questions and has no rituals or rules - just ideas that can be followed or not. Your choice.

As far as the rest of the curriculum is concerned Philosophy has deep links with several other subjects - Maths - logic after all is a kind of mathematical reasoning is it not? Psychology - even if in some ways psychology and any medical study of the brain is in some ways a repudiation of philosophy.

And literature. Since this is sort of my field I'll just run through all of the French philosophers that I studied at university - for the French are a very cerebral lot I feel - and they do teach philosophy at school - Pascal, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Camus, Sartre - not to mention the granddaddy, some say, of modern philosophy - Descartes.

But I have strayed from the food curriculum. And here I go to the secondary definition of 'philosophy'

"a group of theories and ideas related to the understanding of a particular subject" Cambridge Dictionary

Well anything goes really doesn't it?

Take a plate of food and think about it - as many food writers have said many times, life the universe and everything is there on your plate. And, as I say frequently, it's in your supermarket aisles too.

And of course it can get very pretentious. I found a website called The Food Philosopher, which was written by a Canadian lady called Maya. The website is mostly restaurant reviews, because:

" dining is more than eating; dining is a way to surpass the mundane and achieve enlightenment. Food and dining is a transformative experience: it is a way of life, a way of living, it is a philosophy."

Which is verging on the pretentious is it not? And there are all those other food philosophies, vegetarianism, veganism, fruitarian, all the vast number of theories about what is healthy and what is not, even yesterday's topic of whether to use recipes or not most of which can be very dogmatic. Ethics - a branch of philosophy is also easily related to the food on your plate.

So yes, it's as basic as food.

"I eat therefore I am" perhaps. (Or vice versa.) Well you can't live without food can you?