In our daily life we develop habits that, being constantly practiced, become part of who we are. Two areas in which we develop habits are the evaluation of sources of food, and the evaluation of sources of happiness. It is my contention that the habits developed in those areas could affect one another. Thus, acquiring good habits in one area is of utmost importance to develop the other one. Conversely, if we develop the bad habit of picky eating this will (...) have as one of its outcomes the development of a bad habit that restricts our openness to rmding avenues for happiness. In order to show how the two habits affect one another, I will use Aristotle's theory of habit as developed in his Nicomachean Ethics. (shrink)

The story of the binding of Isaac, also known as the akedah, has been the subject of many important philosophical commentaries and discussions. One of these is Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, first published in 1843. Comparing Kierkegaard’s characterization of Abraham as the paradigm of the knight of faith with the character of Iphigenia from Euripides’s Iphigenia at Aulis, it becomes apparent that Iphigenia exhibits characteristics that make her fit the same paradigm. In order to account for the behavior of both (...) Abraham and Iphigenia, I use Aristotle’s notion of ἕξις as it appears in Nicomachean Ethics II.5. (shrink)

The Law Most Beautiful and Best: Medical Argument and Magical Rhetoric in Plato’s Laws. By Randall Baldwin Clark (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), xiv + 178 pp. $55.00 cloth.

The many ways in which we interact with food, e.g., eating, cooking, purchasing, farming, legislating, etc., are intersected by ethics and politics. The terms of our interactions with food are dictated in a significant way by how we understand its metaphysical underpinnings; that is to say, by how we define “food.” When food is understood as nothing more than it becomes easier to dismiss our political and ethical obligations since, after all, food is only a thing. This obscures the others (...) who make our interactions with food possible, and who are affected by our choices and those of our communities. In order to revitalize our engagement with the ethical and political responsibilities that we both inherit and produce in our interactions with food, it is helpful to refocus our understanding of what food actually is. I propose that food is better understood as a transformative . Building on metaphysical theories by Aristotle and Emmanuel Levinas, I explain this new understanding of food, and use examples to show how this view of food enhances our political and ethical responsibilities. (shrink)