The feast introduces an interruption in the flow of everyday life. Within the limits marked by such an interruption, a form of experience different from the ordinary takes place. The time of feast evokes and makes present the sacred time in which events that founded human society took place. In festivals, on one hand, one can grasp and represent the meaning that grounds human experience; on the other hand, a form of full life takes place. In the modern (...) era, festivals lose their connection with the religious dimension, and such features fade away. Yet they do not disappear entirely. They are grasped in a fragmentary way, and this is enough to turn them into marks of resistance against the reduction of human experience to a purely utilitarian dimension. (shrink)

Feasting and Polis Institutions rassemble les actes d’un colloque du même nom organisé à l’Université d’Utrecht du 16 au 19 janvier 2014. Cet ouvrage vise à comprendre comment deux formes particulières de fêtes — la fête sacrificielle et le symposion — ont émergé et évolué dans le monde grec, mais aussi et surtout comment elles se sont placées au cœur des institutions religieuses et politiques qui définissent la société grecque. Les différentes contributions proposées se fondent sur des sourc...

In his early essay, “Reality and Its Shadow,” Levinas appears to take a strong position against art, and while the strength of his admonitions against aesthetics has been questioned, the fact remains that Levinas refers to art as an act that is like “feasting during a plague.” Art becomes offensive. However, is it possible that we could imagine the artwork as a site where the encounter with the Other becomes possible? That is, when we encounter certain artworks, do we not (...) also encounter the radical alterity of one whose experiences and very existence cannot possibly be assimilated to the Same, or to our own experiences? In this paper, I argue that art marks a site where the encounter with the Other is made possible by examining the post-genocide and post-war photographs of Simon Norfolk. I maintain that art thus contains ethical possibilities that actually align with Levinasian ethics, rather than run counter to it, as Levinas seemed to believe. This art cannot be understood through the lens of enjoyment—as “feasting during a plague”—but rather must be understood as an experience which throws us outside of ourselves and our interiority and, in so doing, forces us to confront an alterity and a horror that awakens responsibility and awareness of the Other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:From Feasting to Fasting: The Evolution of a Sin; Attitudes to Food in Late AntiquityJohn F. DonahueVeronika E. Grimm. From Feasting to Fasting: The Evolution of a Sin; Attitudes to Food in Late Antiquity. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. x 1 294 pp. Cloth, $49.95.The role of food in the ancient world has been the focus of much attention in recent years, as both Greek and Roman (...) dining practices have been examined from a number of perspectives—sociological, anthropological, and semiotic, to name but a few. Noticeably absent, however, has been any sustained study of attitudes toward feasting and fasting in major early Christian writers. Veronika Grimm attempts to correct this deficiency by clarifying the social [End Page 655] and symbolic meanings given to food, eating, and fasting in the writings of those who shaped Christian thinking from the first to the fifth century.Chapters 1 and 2 offer necessary background by surveying both Jewish and Graeco-Roman attitudes toward feasting and fasting. Here we come to an essential difference between the two cultures. For the Jew, food and fasting were part of an ethical conduct, the rules for which were given by God. The result was a keen interest in fasting to serve as “penitence, expiation for transgression, the humbling of the self in order to arouse the pity of the Deity” (32). Even so, this focus never implied dualistic negation of “the flesh,” except with Platonic Philo. On the other hand, pagan gods expected worship and sacrifice, yet showed little interest in regulating the daily life of worshipers, what they ate, or with whom they slept. As Grimm reveals, people worked the rules out for themselves, physicians set guidelines for physical well-being, and philosophers stressed moderation as the appropriate human conduct concerning food.Grimm devotes the remainder of her study to a chronological review of feasting and fasting in the works of the principal early Christian writers, beginning with Paul (chapter 3) and continuing with the Acts of the Apostles (chapter 4), Clement of Alexandria (chapter 5), Tertullian (chapter 6), and Origen and Eusebius (chapter 7). Two concluding chapters trace attitudes to food and feasting in ascetic propaganda and practice in the works of Jerome and Augustine.Within these chapters lies the author’s central achievement: the charting of a course from occasional fasting to active self-denial. Thus, writing in the early years of the Church, Paul and the apostles emphasize the religious significance of the celebration and sharing of food but place little value on fasting as an ascetic or religious practice. By the late second and early third centuries, Clement of Alexandria, heavily influenced by Philo, neither regards food as a religious issue nor promotes fasting; nevertheless, he pleads for moderation and decorum in eating, drinking, and sexual activity. Origen, another Alexandrian of the third century, exhibits similar views, despite Eusebius’ attempts to cast him as the stereotypical “holy man” in his Ecclesiastical History. Tertullian, a contemporary of Clement’s from North Africa, reveals an even stronger revulsion from sexuality and, more importantly, holds the distinction of being the first Christian propagandist of expiatory fasting whose writings survive. In Grimm’s analysis it is clearly Jerome, however, who emerges in the fourth century as the true advocate of fasting, especially as an antidote to sexual appetite in women. She portrays him as a spirited supporter of anorexia and as one obsessed with the dangers of sexual temptation. Similarly, Grimm views Augustine’s ascetic program of corporal self-management as perilously approaching anorectic behavior.Thanks to Grimm’s careful treatment of the relevant texts and her professional training as a psychologist, there is much of value in these pages, especially her insights into the relationship between eating and physical, mental, and [End Page 656] spiritual well-being in the ancient world. Even so, a few minor concerns persist. First, her assertion that the Gospels “have no special message concerning food” (74) is puzzling, given that the evangelists frequently mention banquets, both earthly and divine, in their writings. Second, Grimm’s longest chapter, on Graeco-Roman attitudes toward food and fasting, seems to be her most problematic. She cites... (shrink)

Philosophical analyses of fast food have been relatively nonexistent. One of the only philosophers who provides a theoretical analysis of fast food is Douglas Kellner, who maintains that fast food is "dehumanizing." The most prominent scholarly or academic treatment of fast food is that of the sociologist George Ritzer, who advances the "McDonaldization" thesis, while claiming that fast food is "dehumanizing." Neither Kellner nor Ritzer offer a sustained analysis in defense of this claim. This paper will attempt to provide such (...) an analysis, making use of the theory of technology put forth by Albert Borgmann. Fast food, it will be argued, is best understood as a "device" in Borgmann's sense. For Borgmann, devices lead to a "disconnected, disembodied, and disoriented sort of life." This aspect of fast food helps explain the reaction against it that we find in the work of Kellner and Ritzer. (shrink)

The four essays in this little volume are the essence of a lifetime of thought, lecturing and writing by a leading twentieth century philosopher. Josef Pieper's theory of festivity was forged in dismal wartime Germany. Agreeing with Nietzsche that "the trick is not to arrange a festival but to find people who can enjoy it," he discovers a rage for anti-festival sweeping the earth: "C'est la guerre qui correspond a la fete!" Yet Pieper conveys 'certain tidings' of the divine guarantee (...) of the world and of human salvation. In each of these essays Dr. Pieper surveys twentieth century world views. In "Hope and History" he contrasts Baudelaire's and Dostoevsky's dire warnings of an extreme concentration of evil with the promise of the Apocalypse: victory over death; resurrection; a new heaven and a new earth. "The Unavoidable Dilemma of a Non-Christian Philosophy", he says, "is that while Plato, Pythagoras and Aristotle, the founders of Occidental philosophy, require an unprejudiced openness to theology, the secularized modern European or North American does not even know what 'wisdom in divine affairs' means." Finally, in "Leisure" he points out that in contemporary life utility demands to be the measure of all things, including 'spare time' and even the intellectual life of the university. However, Plato, like the Christians, says that only in celebrating divine worship does man lose the shape of a slave. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Politics of Eating: Feasting in Early Greek SocietyJohn RundinIn Euripides’ Cyclops, Silenus and his satyr companions have been shipwrecked in the realm of Polyphemus and have become his slaves. 1 Odysseus lands there, meets Silenus, and, conversing with him, asks who inhabits the land:Odysseus: Who occupies the area? A race of beasts? Silenus: Cyclopes. They live in caves, not roofed houses. Odysseus: Who is their leader? Or do (...) they have a democracy? Silenus: They’re herdsmen. No one has any power over anyone else. Odysseus: Do they sow Demeter’s grain? Or what do they live on? Silenus: Milk and cheeses and meals [borai] of mutton. Odysseus: Do they have Dionysus’ drink, the liquid of the vine? Silenus: Not at all. For that reason, they live in a land without choruses. Odysseus: Are they hospitable, and do they treat strangers with respect? Silenus: They claim that strangers have the most delicious flesh. [End Page 179] Odysseus: What do you mean? They like meals [borai] of men they have killed? Silenus: Everyone who comes here has been eaten up.(117–28)Silenus has rapidly made clear the beastly level of Cyclopean gastronomy. The savagery of the Cyclopes’ diet is underlined by his diction: the LSJ tells us that the word translated twice here as “meals,” borai, is more appropriately used to describe food for animals than for people. Silenus also lets us know that the Cyclopes are herdsmen and, like atavistic throwbacks to a time before cereal culture, raise no grain. 2 They are so backward that they do not have even wine. One dire consequence of this is spelled out by Silenus: they have no choruses. Polyphemus himself later illustrates another: they totally lack sympotic sophistication (483–589). So great is their culinary degeneracy, that, in defiance of the accepted norms of hospitality, they eat strangers who visit their realm. Not only, however, do the Cyclopes lack the elements of a cultured cuisine, they also lack basic political institutions. They have no ruler, nor do they have a democracy: as Silenus says, “no one has any power over anyone else.” The lack of political institutions and of culinary development may at first seem like two independent elements of a culturally deprived life. This is not the case, however. We shall see that in early Greek culture there is a strong connection between eating and politics. Indeed, it will soon be apparent that the Cyclopes’ culinary and political deficiencies are closely related.It is my hope to demonstrate this relationship. Emphasis will be placed on representations of eating in the Iliad and the Odyssey. It will then be shown how the patterns uncovered in Homeric texts lived on in later documents and institutions. It is impossible to know how accurately the life portrayed in the Homeric poems represents the historical conditions of any real society. 3 It may be true that the analysis of institutions [End Page 180] described in them is relevant only to an ideal world or to an aristocratic ideology. Such complex issues, however, may be avoided by merely analyzing certain aspects of eating as presented by Homer without thought of how well those aspects match the practice of any actual people. In the endeavor, of course, caution must be exercised not to expect too much of the data. Even if Homer’s narrative does represent some actual society, it is the nature of narrative to be selective, and it would therefore be inappropriate to try to extract from the poems either a comprehensive picture of foodways or any quantitative data about them. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to be struck by how consistent representations of eating in Homer are, and, moreover, not to acknowledge that patterns revealed in the Homeric representations had a long afterlife not only in later texts but even in social institutions.Feasting and the Homeric Political EconomyOn the shield of Achilles, a microcosm of the Iliadic world, is wrought a scene which reveals some political aspects of eating.And he put on it [the shield] the precinct of a king. There workmen were reaping with sharp sickles in their hands. Some of the bunches of grain were falling... (shrink)

The bacchantic feast, especially as it is described in Euripides’s Bacchae, is a powerful example of what may be thought of as the most essential cornerstone of Wes- tern culture: the dualism between the dimension of reality (represented by Pentheus) and the dimension of ideality (represented by the bacchantic feast). In particular, why must the former die after having seen the latter? That is, why the dimension of idea- lity (as well as the dimension of the sacred) can (...) be essential, and even a saviour, for the dimension of reality (as well as for the dimension of the profane) if and only if the dualism between them is rigorously respected? I shall try to answer this question, and to use my answer as a clue to start investigating another essential structure of the dualism between reality and ideality which founds Western culture, by passing from its religious meaning to its epistemological meaning. (shrink)

We argue that the occurrence of puritanical norms cannot simply be explained by appealing to the need for cooperation. Anthropological and archaeological studies suggest that across history and cultures self-indulgent behaviours, such as excessive drinking, eating, and feasting, have been used to enhance cooperation by enforcing social and group identities.

IIn this article, I use autoethnography to share my personal experiences with Njangis in Cameroon, Central Africa. ‘Njangi’ is an old business practice where members of a community contribute money to assist one another turn by turn. There is literature on the concept of Njangis, however, autoethnography has not been used to share the rich African values that underpin this concept. Using reflexivity as a postmodernist technique, I describe my experiences with Njangis as both a child and adult, while contrasting (...) this with a conventional ‘Western’ banking system. The aim of this emancipatory exercise is to give voice to an African practice as it relates to business and ethics. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is a critical evaluation of Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnival laughter’s theory, and along the analysis of Walter Benjamin’s notion of laughter, and its relation to modernity. While Bakhtin concentrates his attention on a few medieval festivities, this paper focuses on the “feast of fools” (festa stultorum) as a metaphor for carnival laughter. For Bakhtin, clown, joker, etc. represents Medieval and Renaissance carnival spirit, while an animated Mickey Mouse, alongside with Charlie Chaplin’s movie character, appears in (...) Benjamin’s texts as a figure of modernity. Carnival laughter can be cruel, and it was cruel indeed, participated in violence during the festivities. The same cruelty Benjamin had found in a few fairy tales collected by the Brother Grimm. How cruelty and laughter are connected? The lack of common experiences in modernity was the reason why Bakhtin wanted to find a counterbalance to modern atomistic bourgeois society, and laughter could have given it. According to Bakhtin, the spirit of carnival as a collective laughter gradually dried up and in the 16th century it has self-transformed into a novel and became a genre of grotesque realism. For Benjamin, only epic, architecture and cinematograph are able to create the collective experience. (shrink)

An annual celebration called the Day of the Driver, held in the vicinity of a chapel in the central southern part of the Rhodope Mountains of Bulgaria, is a professional as well as Orthodox Christian feast in which Bulgarian Sunni Muslims have participated at least since the fall of the communist regime in 1989. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article shows that the protracted workings of the socialist elevation of work identity are expressed in this ritual that has developed (...) under the auspices of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, while at the most conspicuous level, Bulgarian Orthodoxy is strongly associated with anti-Ottoman and anti-Muslim nationalism. The celebration of work in Orthodox ritual life has a long history in the presocialist and earlier periods, but the contemporary interfaith participation is motivated by the desire of the local transportation companies to assert their professional identity in the context of an ongoing economic decline. Although invisible from the outside, exopraxis is nonetheless intrinsic to the event. (shrink)

Emmanuel Falque’s The Wedding Feast of the Lamb represents a turning point in his thought. Here, Falque links philosophy and theology in an original fashion that allows us to see the full effect of theology’s “backlash” against philosophy. By attending closely to the incarnation and the eucharist, Falque develops a new concept of the body and of love: By avoiding the common mistake of “angelism”—consciousness without body—Falque considers the depths to which our humanity reflects animality, or body without consciousness. (...) He shows the continued relevance of the question “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”, especially to philosophy. We need to question the meaning of “this is my body” in “a way that responds to the needs of our time”. Because of the ways that “Hoc est corpus meum” has shaped our culture and our modernity, this is a problem both for religious belief and for culture. (shrink)

Jonathan Singer's witty, erudite book is a celebration of rationality and an urgent call to make use of intelligence and reason to better cope with human problems. Emphasizing the importance of rationality's greatest achievement, modern science, Singer—one of the foremost biologists of our era—argues that for the first time in several million years humanity has at its disposal the tools for an objective understanding of the external world. Singer demonstrates that, today more than ever, the fullest exercise of rationality is (...) essential if humanity is to rein in a runaway technology and control an explosion of the human population that together threaten to devastate life on this planet within only a few more generations. The intrusion of reason and rationality into our largely irrational world has been painfully slow, uneven, and often unwelcome. Singer explains that for rationalists the founding of modern science—which took place only a few hundred years ago—has overthrown many of the myths of conventional wisdom and dogmas of traditional religions. Yet these beliefs still hold sway over the irrational world, obstructing efforts to deal sensibly with the problematic future of mankind. The core of _The Splendid Feast of Reason _is an engaging and accessible account of the knowledge that modern science provides. Singer offers an absorbing discussion of how life works, of the nature of reproduction, aging, and death, and of the necessary fragility of the individual life compared to the resilience of life itself. He emphasizes the primary role of the genes in determining the structural organization and the behaviors of living things, including humans. He also stresses the nature and mechanisms of biological evolution, mechanisms that have now been placed in jeopardy because of human ignorance and irrational appetites. Finally, Singer delves into the enigma of the real world with its irrational and chaotic operations and offers suggestions of how a rationalist can not only survive, but thrive in it. (shrink)

Neural organization achieves its stated goal to “show how theory and experiment can supplement each other in an integrated, evolving account of structure, function, and dynamics” (p. ix), showing in a variety of contexts – from olfactory processing to spatial navigation, motor learning and more – how function may be realized in the neural tissue, with explanatory and predictive neural network models providing a cornerstone in this approach.

This qualitative study was positioned within an emerging scientific field concerned with the interaction between biblical text and the psychological profile of the preacher. The theoretical framework was provided by the sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking (SIFT) approach to biblical hermeneutics, an approach rooted in reader-perspective hermeneutical theory and in Jungian psychological type theory that explores the distinctive readings of sensing perception and intuitive perception, and the distinctive readings of thinking evaluation and feeling evaluation. The empirical methodology was provided by (...) developing a research tradition concerned with applying the SIFT approach to biblical text. In the present study, a group of 17 Anglican clergy were invited to work in psychological type-alike groups to explore two of the biblical passages identified by Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary for the Feast of Christ the King. Dividing into three workshops, according to their preferences for sensing and intuition, the clergy explored Psalm 93. Dividing into three workshops, according to their preferences for thinking and feeling, the clergy explored John 18:33–37. The rich data gathered from these workshops supported the hypothesis that biblical interpretation and preaching may be shaped by the reader’s psychological type preference and suggested that the passages of scripture proposed for the Feast of Christ the King may be a joy for intuitive thinking types, but a nightmare for sensing feeling types. Contribution: Situated within the reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, the SIFT method is concerned with identifying the influence of the psychological type of the reader in shaping the interpretation of text. Employing this method, the present study contributes to the fields of homiletics and hermeneutics by demonstrating how some readers (sensing types) may struggle more than others (intuitive types) to interpret the scripture readings proposed by the lectionary for the Feast of Christ the King. (shrink)

Using the guise of a simple supper of commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of a charismatic Protestant pastor, who had gathered around him a community of devoted disciples in a small village in Norway, Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen shows us a banquet in which, through the food prepared with the eye of an artist, the senses are awakened for the first time to a kind of experience where what is corporal and what is spiritual cease (...) to be at odds with each other. Thus, a reconciliation of a lost unity between the body and the soul, matter and spirit, is celebrated and achieved. From this first step, with which the fundamental internal fragmentation is overcome, the other levels of unity (unity with others, with the cosmos, and with God) occur in a chain sequence, so to speak. As in all religious situations, there occurs here the coming together of two orders that seem unreconciliable: the temporal and the eternal, the limited and the infinite, the profane and the sacred. The mediator between both orders is Babette, who takes on a genuine sacerdotal function. However, there is an unexpected inversion, and paradoxically what is profane and mundane comes to the rescue of what is spiritual and sacred. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe role of the image in the third part of Practice in Christianity suggests that Kierkegaard was inspired by Meister Eckhart’s and Johann Tauler’s account of detachment. I argue that Kierkegaard was not only indirectly influenced by Tauler through the works of the Pietistic writers, but also directly inspired by Tauler’s sermons. Particularly striking are similarities to a sermon that was included in the Tauler edition owned by Kierkegaard: the second sermon on the Feast of the Exaltation of the (...) Cross. A comparison of the texts shows how both Tauler and Kierkegaard criticize the mental images their contemporaries hold of Jesus Christ. Both stress the importance of existential kenosis, which they describe as Entbildung of the intellect and the will, and which is an essential part of following Christ in his abasement. Furthermore, they analyze inadequate attempts to imitate Christ in a similar manner. Even though Kierkegaard and Tauler differ with regard to the ontological implications of Entbildung, the ethical implications are the same: one should not retreat from the world, but rather turn to it with a selfless attitude. (shrink)

I interpret Max Beerbohm as entering the dispute between Christina Rossetti and George Eliot on how English parishioners talk, in his imitative fiction “The Feast.”.

Resumen: En el presente artículo se busca describir el rol fundamental que juega la experiencia estética en los procesos de significación de lo que se suele denominar “religión popular”. Para esta labor, tomamos como objeto de estudio la fiesta religiosa que, junto con hacer referencia a una determinada realidad empírica, nos provee de dos mediaciones conceptuales para el desarrollo de nuestro análisis: la fiesta y la imagen. De este modo, después de contextualizar nuestra reflexión en el marco de los estudios (...) culturales y la estética, procedemos a definir la lógica estético-sacramental de la fiesta religiosa a partir de los conceptos de “fiesta” e “imagen”, abordados desde el enfoque de la New Material Culture.: The aim of this article is to describe the fundamental role of the aesthetic experience in the processes of signification of what is usually called “popular religion”. In order to achieve this, we define as the object of our study the religious feast, which, apart from referring to a concrete empirical reality, provides us with two conceptual mediations for our analysis: feast and image. Thus, following a contextualization of our reflection on the field of cultural studies and aesthetics, we proceed to define the aesthetic-sacramental logic of the religious feast on the basis of the concepts “feast” and “image”, from the perspective of the New Material Culture approach. (shrink)

Who is it that can tell me who I am?The often-complex interplay between self and others characterizes educational undertakings. Considerations of how we gain knowledge involve, at least implicitly, an understanding of the relationship between self, others, and the material environment in which learning occurs. The Academy-Award-winning 1987 film Babette’s Feast, based on the 1950 short story by Isak Dine-sen, while not formally a story of education, presents through its protagonist a pedagogy that highlights learning through encounter as complementary (...) and integral to enhanced and mature knowledge. In this article, I engage closely with the film version of Babette’s Feast to elucidate its educational... (shrink)

A very special kind of feast belongs to the Christian Orthodox tradition: there is a specific liturgical celebration of the Images in the so-called Sunday of Orthodoxy. While in many cultures images are employed in order to celebrate an historic event, this is the only feast in which, on the contrary, images are celebrated for themselves. Nonetheless, the role of images in Orthodoxy is not univocally and positively accepted. In fact, the title’s expression.the wolf as a shepherd. belongs (...) to a Desert Father and refers to the role of images in our mental life. This is not reported by a heretical iconoclastic document, but by the well-known Philokalia, a kind of handbook of Orthodox Aesthetics. This paper aims to present these two aspects in their paradoxical partnership. First, I will present some historical, symbolic and liturgical aspects of this feast. Thus, we should be able to understand better why many contemporary authors claimed that the origins of our visual culture can be traced in this Feast. However, if we comprehend the philosophical value of Byzantine icons, we realise that they have little to do with our contemporary images, no matter whether we mean artistic, religious or media images. We often talk about the.power of images., but just to blame them -as if they were autonomous entities- or to praise them, in a generalized aestheticization of contemporary life. Iconophobia and iconodoulia, I claim, are emerging as ontologically impoverished versions of the former Byzantine theoretical models. What falls into oblivion is the paradoxical status of the image as.appearance of the essence of Being. that demands as a condition of its own existence its self-sublation. These dialectics, conceptually inspired by the Hegelian logic, are fully present in Byzantine Aesthetics, where the feast is considered as a precarious image, held in memory of a future image-loss event known as eschaton. (shrink)