I am hungry, therefore I am. Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutic phenomenology as a model for food existentialism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v10i1.351Keywords:
hunger, eating, philosophy of food, Embodiment, gustatory timeAbstract
By focusing on the hunger drive and the act of eating as existential dimensions, this essay considers the possibility to extend Paul Ricœur’s thought in the direction of food philosophy. By conceiving his hermeneutic phenomenology as a model for food existentialism, this paper aims to discuss hunger and eating as interrelated aspects of human beings’ embodied existence that are involved in the social world. I will begin with a phenomenological description of hunger and eating referring to Ricœur’s analysis of the corporeal involuntary as offering the base features to develop what I will call an “interpretive existential philosophy of being hungry and eating.” Then, I will turn to hunger and eating as involved in the real complexity of temporal experience. These reflections will lead to examining the interplay of cosmic time and lived time in relation to hunger and eating, opening up the discussion of the gustatory time through the intersection of the objective time of the clock and the subjective time of the stomach.
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