The Aesthetic Value of Food

Abstract While eating is a source of pleasure and nutrition, the value of food is widely considered a paradigm of the non-aesthetic for at least three reasons. It is thought to have a subjective basis in our senses of smell and taste, that the flavours we taste are individually relative, and that the available pleasures are transparently interested. I argue that all three beliefs are mistaken, leaving no good reason to deny that eating puts us in touch with properly aesthetic goods. The case is important because it illustrates clearly how there can be ordinary aesthetic goods without a transformative context or special kind of attention and thus how aesthetic goods are truly pervasive.