A comprehensive and accessible introduction to the development of and current debates in the aesthetics of food and drink.

Philosophy and Kafka is a collection of original essays interrogating the relationship of literature and philosophy. The essays either discuss specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka’s work, consider the possible relevance of certain philosophical outlooks for examining Kafka’s writings, or examine Kafka’s writings in terms of a specific philosophical theme, such as communication and subjectivity, language and meaning, knowledge and truth, the human/animal divide, justice, and freedom.

The lack of agreement about the meaning of common wine-describing terms such as structure has led to conflicting views about the ontological nature of wine as an aesthetic object. I argue that a wine’s structure is a dispositional property of that wine realized in the temporal organization of qualities centered in the middle palate of a taster’s gustatory experience. I defend this claim from those (e.g., Scruton) who argue that only experiences have such properties, not wines. I also oppose those (...) (e.g., Kant) who hold that gustatory objects are hedonically experienced immediately and hence do not afford an extended temporal encounter. I follow Brillat-Savarin’s lead in arguing that gustatory experience has a progressive temporal character. Finally, I further articulate the theory that a wine’s structure is a temporal organization of qualities. (shrink)

The Philosophical Contexts of The Wall and Other Stories presents a philosophical analysis of all five stories in Sartre’s short-story collection, concentrating on characters’ acts of bad faith. Kevin W. Sweeney argues that each of the five stories has its own philosophical problem that serves as the context for the narrative, and that Sartre constructs each story as a reply to the philosophical issue in the context and as support for his position on that issue.