What’s for Dinner? A Culinary Version of <i>The Myth of Sisyphus</i>

Albert Camus famously stated: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide”1 (Camus 2014: 15). In this short essay, I would like to suggest a different version of that phrase: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is the question: What’s for dinner?”The question of what’s for dinner is not just a way to give sense to Camus—it captures the essence of existential thinking and combines the seemingly separate realms of philosophy and food. Camus continues to explain why he concludes that the problem of suicide is the most philosophical question there is. It is because of the consequences it entails: “If the earth revolves around the sun or the sun revolves around the earth is a deeply indifferent question. To be precise: It is a pointless question. On the other hand, I see many people dying because they do not find life worth living” (Camus 2014: 15).Camus roots the philosophical importance of his question in the momentum of urgency. This twist of urgency can be seen as the heart of Camusian existentialism. In a way, it has something un-philosophical; a metaphysical question like “What is the essence of food?” (Kaplan 2020: 19) may be very philosophical but not very urgent. Philosophy seldomly is about urgency. But there is another way to interpret this urgency: Camus’s twist of urgency is a vehicle that roots philosophy back to one of its purposes: helping people to make sense of life. One could paraphrase Camus in saying: you must find something that gets you through the day—and you need it quickly. Otherwise, you won’t get through the day.What seems to be un-philosophical at first is nothing else but a way to remind us what philosophy actually is about. I would like to argue that this is not only true for the question of suicide but also for the question of what’s for dinner. The question is not only about the fact that we need to eat—that goes along with the question of what and how to eat. It’s about a practice that gets us through the day. Asking “What’s for dinner?” and finding an answer to it, can get us through the day. This makes the question itself an existential one.One might think that philosophers do not care much about food. Usually, they are concerned with the realm of abstract thinking and ideas. But there are scattered remarks on food along the history of philosophy from Plato’s diet in Book II of The Republic to the Roman Stoics and Enlightenment philosophers such as Locke, Rousseau, Marx, and Mill (Kaplan 2020: 1). The wittiest comments on food might come from Diogenes of Sinope who is not only said to have lived in a barrel but also loved to mock his fellow philosophers and preach frugality with food (Diogenes Laertios 2020: 260–85). When asked when to eat breakfast, he replied: “When you are rich, whenever you want to, when you are poor whenever you get to” (Diogenes Laertios 2020: 268). When he offered Plato a taste of dried figs and Plato took more than expected, he told him that he asked him to taste them, not to eat them all (Diogenes Laertios 2020: 262). He also taught his students to provide food for themselves and consume only simple meals and water (Diogenes Laertios 2020: 264).Modern philosophers have developed a different focus on food: while questions of the right diet are dealt with by medicine and dietitians, philosophy primarily asks other questions about food: “animal welfare, hunger, agricultural ethics, and food justice” (Kaplan 2020: 1). A current expression of a philosophical approach to food can be found in Corine Pelluchon’s work Nourishment: A Philosophy of the Political Body. The word “nourishment” is no coincidence as Pelluchon uses it to describe the ethical connection of food, its agricultural produce, and climate change with body politics—nourishment describes not only that the body must be nourished but also that it is dependent on getting nourished from something (Pelluchon 2020: 18–26). Here one can see Pelluchon’s account of the philosophy of French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas, who is famous for attributing a special importance not to consciousness or the self but to the Other—meaning that we are primarily constituted by others, respectively the Other—as opposed to an independent subject (Lévinas 2017: 223). In this sense, living also means living of something, a thought that diminishes the divide between human nourishment and nature. (Pelluchon 2020: 10). Humans are therefore never alone to be nourished but are in cohabitation with what nourishes them. They do not exist independently from nature, but they are constituted by what nourishes them.Pelluchon, being not only indebted to Lévinas but also to existentialism (Pelluchon 2025: 60), could also be interpreted in an existential way. Just like humans are constituted of something that nourishes them—they are constituted of what they live for. It is not just us getting through the day, but our ways to get through the day make us.2 One of those ways, and I would argue a very good one, is food—going from meal to meal. Aren’t the worst days those when you don’t even have the time to take a little pause for a bite to eat? Those days don’t kill us immediately, but we get through the day a lot worse than if there had been food. This is why the question of what’s for dinner is so important and existential. As the question is an existential one, we should not marginalize this question in our everyday lives. Why do I think so?—because of the consequences the question entails. It is urgent in the most obvious way as a question of hunger. But even if we are not starving, it helps us get through the day.If we want to believe Camus, life is senseless, dull, and absurd. We must imagine our life like Sisyphus’s: a senseless repetition of events that have no meaning. But still he stated that Sisyphus remains happy, that even though life is senseless or even more because it is senseless, we can affirm it. The answer to the question of whether life is worth living is a strong Yes, even though it is not because life has a sense. There is a different reason why Sisyphus is happy: it is the moment of return from the mountain when Sisyphus follows the stone back into the valley. On his way back from the top of the mountain, he sees life clearly and consciously. He is aware of his situation. This is a moment of pause that Camus calls a sigh of relief: “This hour that is a kind of sigh of relief, comes back with the same certainty as his mischief. It is the hour of consciousness. In these moments, when he returns from the summit and he step by step disappears into the hide-outs of the Gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his stone” (Camus 2014: 143). Because of these moments, Sisyphus is happy. He lives for these moments of his return from the summit.What does Sisyphus do on his way back? I imagine him eating dinner—perhaps just a snack on the way, maybe a meal alone in a tavern, possibly with his friends and family at a kitchen table, sharing his food, having a drink—and forgetting about the absurdity of life. After another meaningless day, hoisting a massive stone up a mountain just to see it roll down before reaching the top, Sisyphus sits down to eat his food. Maybe he has prepared it himself, maybe someone prepared it for him. It might be a frugal piece of bread with soup, it might be a feast. But in this moment, in his hour of awareness—smacking his lips—he sees life very clearly. That’s what dinner is about. In this moment he has won. He is stronger than the stone. We must imagine Sisyphus happy.