In The Hungry Soul we find an interesting blend of subjects, methods, and traditions. First and foremost, it is a work of philosophical anthropology, a genre that is itself somewhat out of step with trends in both philosophy and anthropology. That is, contemporary philosophers have learned to be extremely cautious about making armchair generalizations about “human nature,” and anthropologists are leery of attempts to read philosophical lessons in their empirical findings. Despite this atmosphere of intellectual diffidence, Kass has jumped right in and subtitled his book, Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature. This is simultaneously quaint and bold in an era when virtually nobody talks about perfecting human nature, and the very idea of a distinctively human nature is under siege.

The Hungry Soul comprises six chapters, proceeding roughly from the most general considerations about the relations between human nature and human food to the more particular. Thus, the first chapter deals with the very idea of eating, the process of metabolism, and the manner in which eating involves taking something that is “other” and appropriating it, making it part of self. He writes, on page 26, “Eating comprises the appropriation, incorporation, and de-formation of a complex other, and its homogenization into simples, in preparation for their transformation into complex same.” That is, through a process of change of form, a transformation of identity takes place. The central theme of this chapter is the primacy of form (also the title of one of its sections). It is, in fact, a vigorous defense of hylomorphism, although Kass chooses not to use this term. He is anti-reductionistic in his insistence that an understanding of living things exceeds the resources of materialism, stating, “We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the materialistic counter-claims of scientists who, to be blunt, are philosophically rather naive” (page 43). Kass maintains a cautious agnosticism on the ontological implications of his anti-reductionism. For example, on page 48 he writes, “Somehow–and I would say mysteriously–animal organization means ‘animation,’ means ‘inwardness,’ means the presence of what the ancients called psyche or anima, soul.” Although he proceeds to disavow a dualistic “ghost in the machine” construal of soul, his deliberate use of the adverb “mysteriously” invites speculation, as does his subsequent gloss of psyche as “all the integrated vital powers of a naturally organic body, always possessed by such a body while it is alive.”

The chapter titled “The Human Form” is an attempt to work out the relations between the distinctively human characteristics of form and the distinctively human approach to eating, and their implications for human nature. There is an extensive of upright posture and the freeing of the hands for tasks other than locomotion. Along with this there is the increased dominance of vision and the reduced importance of smell (as Jacob Bronowski also discussed in The Ascent of Man). Kass it at pains to show how these changes in form and function, in comparison with other animals, lead to the distinctively human kind of cognition. He rehearses the debate between those who argue that the necessity of hunting is what triggered the development of our minds and those who see us as having been primarily vegetarians. On balance, Kass favors the hunting hypothesis as an important aspect of human omnivorousness. He does not ask the question as to why, of all the species that have turned to hunting, only humans seemingly underwent a diminution in the sense of smell–a vital asset for trackers–in favor of a unique cognitive approach. That is, the very uniqueness of the human solution to the challenges of the hunt is itself a riddle worth pondering.

An important point raised by Kass in the same chapter is what he calls the “gap between the pleasant and the good” (page 91). As he writes, “The good is not simply given, or, if given, it is neither obvious nor easily seen and embraced by human beings.” Here he refers, of course, to the human propensity for eating foods that are either not good for them or perhaps even deleterious to health. What Kass fails to discern, however, is the fact that this gap is a result of the influence of civilization, agriculture in particular. The foods that are pleasant but not good are entirely the products of human artifice. For example, paleoanthropologists recognize from human remains that people got smaller and weaker when they started eating grains at the dawn of agriculture, about 12,000 years ago. They began to experience tooth decay, osteoporosis, and other “diseases of civilization” on a large scale. These diseases are still largely unknown in those few isolated societies that still live as hunter-gatherers. This is not to say that such people are disease-free, but it’s not their food that’s making them sick. This is an important point for a study of human nature, since it suggests that from a physiological and nutritional perspective, at least, humans are “meant” to be hunter-gatherers. For hunter-gatherers the gap between the good and the pleasant does not exist.

At several points in the text, Kass refers to bread as “the human food,” the paradigmatically human sustenance in that it requires planning are foresight and technology to make it. On page 211 he writes, “The expulsion from the Garden of Eden is coupled with a shift from fruit to bread, the distinctly human food, and marks the next major step toward humanization through civilization.” Kass acknowledges that there is still no entirely satisfactory explanation of how this step occurred. In the wild state, grains are inedible to humans, and difficult to harvest, as compared to domesticated grains. Then they must be threshed, ground, mixed with water, and baked. How could any of this occur to the imagination of a hunter-gatherer? We don’t know, but it is certainly noteworthy that the reference to bread in Genesis to which Kass alludes is a part of God’s curse upon humankind. In this context we therefore must ask whether it is part of our nature to be bread-eaters, or is it the mark of a digression from our nature, a “fallen” nature.

In the remaining chapters, Kass explores the various refinements and variations of human food and eating: cannibalism, table manners, hospitality, conviviality, temperance and gluttony. He discusses the ritual use of food in the fascinating chapter on “Sanctified Eating.” Throughout the book there is an emphasis on the human triumph of will and reason over instinct. We subject our relation to our food to various controls: delays, use of implements, limitations, and disciplines. In Kass’s view it is these controls that are the mark of our humanity, not only in eating but in other contexts as well, and he laments the fact that many of these marks are fading. Increasingly, we resort to eating as a kind of automatism, indulging in “fast food” or even eating while walking. The very “informality” of much that is contemporary is, in his view, an actual loss of form and a symptom of disorientation. He writes, on the last page, “Recovering the deeper meaning of eating could help cure our spiritual anorexia. From it we can learn the essential unity of body and soul, and we can relearn the true relations to the formed world that the hungering soul makes possible.” It’s food for thought.

Todd Moody is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, PA.

Categories: Philosophical, General