Carolyn Korsmeyer

Taste, perhaps the most intimate of the five senses, has traditionally been considered beneath the concern of philosophy, too bound to the body, too personal and idiosyncratic. Yet, in addition to providing physical pleasure, eating and drinking bear symbolic and aesthetic value in human experience, and they continually inspire writers and artists. In Making Sense of Taste, Carolyn Korsmeyer explains how taste came to occupy so low a place in the hierarchy of senses and why it is deserving of greater philosophical respect and attention. Korsmeyer begins with the Greek thinkers who classified taste as an inferior, bodily sense; she then traces the parallels between notions of aesthetic and gustatory taste that were explored in the formation of modern aesthetic theories. She presents scientific views of how taste actually works and identifies multiple components of taste experiences. Turning to taste's objects—food and drink—she looks at the different meanings they convey in art and literature as well as in ordinary human life and proposes an approach to the aesthetic value of taste that recognizes the representational and expressive roles of food. Korsmeyer's consideration of art encompasses works that employ food in contexts sacred and profane, that seek to whet the appetite and to keep it at bay; her selection of literary vignettes ranges from narratives of macabre devouring to stories of communities forged by shared eating.

In 1929 when Aurel Kolnai published his essay “On Disgust” in Husserl's ]ahrbuch he could truly assert that disgust was a "sorely neglected" topic. Now, however, this situation is changing as philosophers, psychologists, and historians of culture are turning their attention not only to emotions in general but more specifically to the large and disturbing set of aversive emotions, including disgust. We here provide an account of Kolnai’s contribution to the study of the phenomenon of disgust, of his general theory of emotions and of the phenomenological methodology he employed in his work.

In his The Meaning of Disgust, Colin McGinn employs elements of the phenomenological theory of disgust advanced by Aurel Kolnai in 1929. Kolnai’s treatment of what he calls “material” disgust and of its primary elicitors—putrefying organic matter, bodily wastes and secretions, sticky contaminants, vermin—anticipates more recent scientific treatments of this emotion as a mode of protective recoil. While Nina Strohminger charges McGinn with neglecting such scientific studies, we here attempt to show how Kolnai goes beyond experimental findings in his careful description of the phenomenological differences between disgust and other emotions of forceful disapproval.

The problem of disgust has until recently been neglected in the scientific literature. In comparison to the scientific (psychological and metaphysical) interest that has been applied to hatred, anxiety, and similar phenomena, disgust — although a common and important factor in our emotional life — has been unexplored, or it has been viewed as a “higher degree of dislike,” as “nausea,” or as a phenomenon of the “repression of urges.” We here show how the feeling of disgust possesses a unique and characteristic quality on the basis of a phenomenological investigation.

This collection of newly published essays examines our relationship to physical objects that invoke, commemorate, and honor the past. The recent destruction of cultural heritage in war and controversies over Civil War monuments in the US have foregrounded the importance of artifacts that embody history. The book invites us to ask: How do memorials convey their meanings? What is our responsibility for the preservation or reconstruction of historically significant structures? How should we respond when the public display of a monument divides a community? This anthology includes coverage of the destruction of Palmyra and the Bamiyan Buddhas, the loss of cultural heritage through war and natural disasters, the explosive controversies surrounding Confederate-era monuments, and the decay of industry in the U.S. Rust Belt. The authors consider issues of preservation and reconstruction, the nature of ruins, the aesthetic and ethical values of memorials, and the relationship of cultural memory to material artifacts that remain from the past. Written by a leading group of philosophers, art historians, and archeologists, the 23 chapters cover monuments and memorials from Dubai to Detroit, from the instant destruction of Hiroshima to the gradual sinking of Venice.

This collection of newly published essays examines our relationship to physical objects that invoke, commemorate, and honor the past. The recent destruction of cultural heritage in war and controversies over Civil War monuments in the US have foregrounded the importance of artifacts that embody history. The book invites us to ask: How do memorials convey their meanings? What is our responsibility for the preservation or reconstruction of historically significant structures? How should we respond when the public display of a monument divides a community? This anthology includes coverage of the destruction of Palmyra and the Bamiyan Buddhas, the loss of cultural heritage through war and natural disasters, the explosive controversies surrounding Confederate-era monuments, and the decay of industry in the U.S. Rust Belt. The authors consider issues of preservation and reconstruction, the nature of ruins, the aesthetic and ethical values of memorials, and the relationship of cultural memory to material artifacts that remain from the past. Written by a leading group of philosophers, art historians, and archeologists, the 23 chapters cover monuments and memorials from Dubai to Detroit, from the instant destruction of Hiroshima to the gradual sinking of Venice.

Traditionally, the bodily senses of smell, taste, and touch have been designated ‘nonaesthetic’ senses and their objects considered unsuited to be fashioned into works of fine art. Recent innovations in the art world, however, have introduced scents, tastes, and tactile qualities into gallery exhibits, movements that, at least superficially, appear parallel to philosophical revaluations of the senses. This paper investigates the aesthetic scope of the five external senses, addressing some standard arguments about the limits of the ‘lower’ senses. I defend the artistic scope of the bodily senses by appealing to cross-modal perception and to the sensuous aspects of appreciative emotional responses to art.

“Of all the fine arts, drawing is indisputably the most useful, the most positive, and the most capable of practical application,” declared Sigismond Schuster, author of one of the many popular drawing books of the nineteenth century. “It might in this respect be classed rather among the useful than the ornamental arts, for it is the basis of them all, and is an indispensable auxiliary to every mechanic. Drawing is the language of nature and of the imagination; it secures ease and steadiness to the hand, gives symmetrical correctness to the eye, creates and cultivates taste, leads to the appreciation of nature’s beauties, and offers a never-ceasing source of pleasure which is inaccessible to those who have neglected the cultivation of the art.” Drawing books like Schuster’s were powerful influences over taste and artistic standards in the United States during the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Moreover, to the American readership for which he wrote, Schuster’s appeal to the practical value of drawing and painting was the surest route to preparing a friendly reception for instruction in artistic sensibility.

The sense of taste has served as a governing metaphor for aesthetic discernment for several centuries, and recent philosophical perspectives on this history have invited literal, gustatory taste into aesthetic relevance. This paper summarizes the disposition of taste in aesthetics by means of three stories, the most recent of which considers food in terms of aesthetics and its employment in works of art. I conclude with some reflections on the odd position that taste has achieved in the postmodern art world, and I make a case for the often unnoticed role that bodily senses have in the apprehension of art.

Genuineness is an important property of objects that are rare, old, or preserved as memorials. Being genuine enhances economic value for objects such as works of art, and it is obviously critical for historical purposes, such as assessing the artefacts from a past culture. Here I argue that genuineness is also an aesthetic property that delivers an experience of its own. I contend that the sense of touch covertly operates in such experiences, as this sense conveys the impression of being in contact with the ‘real thing’. Touch seems to operate with a kind of transitivity that conducts the past into the present. However, the foundation for that impression may appear dubious, as it compares closely with what has been dubbed ‘magical thinking’. Under these circumstances, is the aesthetic value accorded genuineness sensible or irrational? An apprehension of something real or a pleasant delusion? I defend the transitivity of touch by comparing it to similar phenomena already recognized in studies of perception and emotion