Taste to Taste

In the summer of 1938, the philosopher, mathematician and virtuoso whistler Ludwig Wittgenstein delivered a series of lectures to a small group of students at Cambridge University. Lacking the poetic brevity for which the Austrian’s published work is celebrated, these ramblings only found their way into print posthumously, reconstructed from student notes, rescued from oblivion because they contain opinions on a subject Wittgenstein otherwise left entirely alone: aesthetics, the formal study and art and artistic concepts, such as structure, effect, intention and beauty.

If you are not sure what this means and what these things are, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Wittgenstein himself begins by describing the field as ‘very big and entirely misunderstood’.[1] While we can all perceive something – a painting, house, melody – as beautiful, when we try to analyse or explain those judgements, things quickly become uncertain. Is, for example, beauty a property inherent in those things, or an effect produced by them? How does the beauty of a landscape painting differ from the beauty of the view it represents? Are there reliable aesthetic formulae, or is beauty, as the adage goes, solely in the eye of the beholder?

When faced with difficult questions like these, when the very definition of the subject at hand is unclear, a popular trick among philosophers is to begin by defining things negatively – by asking the much easier question of what things are not. I was once told – in all seriousness, by a PhD student who was being paid (albeit probably not much) to teach me – that moral clarity is not a mango tree.

Wittgenstein here pulls the same trick, if a little less egregiously. From the off, he draws a firm distinction between two realms: that of art, where talk of aesthetic qualities and judgements is appropriate; and that of what he calls ‘utterances of delight’, where they are not. Exactly what falls into the former is uncertain, but into the latter, he is sure, we can place at least one thing: food. In one of philosophy’s oddest examples – and this is a hotly contested field – he goes as far as describing a comparison between a hypothetical grieving friend’s articulacy and the enjoyment of vanilla ice cream as ‘almost disgusting’. The illustration may be confusing, but the claim is not. Wittgenstein is not exactly sure what aesthetics is, but he knows what it is not, and it is not food.

This would be perfectly acceptable – just another philosophical position – were it not for a small matter of vocabulary. For Wittgenstein, a foundational part of the aesthetic experience is what might be described as informed admiration. To properly appreciate music, he writes, it is not enough to simply say ‘Ah!’ when music is played – like, as he puts it, a dog wagging its tail. One must be able to question and critique. A notorious miserablé, every example Wittgenstein gives is negative: ‘Does this harmonise?’ he asks, hypothetically, ‘No. The bass is not quite loud enough. Here I just want something different.’

While he conspicuously avoids the word, the kind of skilful discernment Wittgenstein describes is what is commonly referred to, in both aesthetic theory and popular conversation, as taste. You enjoy someone’s home décor, admire their outfit, covet their record collection – you say that person has good taste. When we try to make clear the murky waters of aesthetic experience, our go-to term, our most reliable crutch, is one lifted directly from the culinary realm, etymologically linked to the physical sensation of touch, literally referring specifically to the experience of eating. Much as Ludwig might want to deny it, the reasons are obvious.

Just like music and painting, good food depends upon form and structure, from the most basic meat-and-two-veg plate building to outrageous but inspired fine dining combinations. Balances between textures, flavours, temperatures and nutritional content differentiate basic eat-what-you-must nutrition and something which might be called a meal. Save for Jordan Peterson and a few hyper-masculine social media freaks, no one wants to eat plates piled with unseasoned meat. We want structure, pairings chosen with intention by chefs and cooks to make us feel everything from simple gorgeous pleasure to the Proustian existentialism which overwhelms Anton Ego in the eponymous climax of Pixar’s Ratatouille. The most obvious candidates for the definitive elements of art – structure, effect and intention – are equally present in food, which suggests that taste is not just lexicographical overlap; and demands an explanation for any offhand dismissal of the aesthetic experience of eating.

Another of Wittgenstein’s examples might help. Just like when listening to music, when visiting a tailor Wittgenstein puts great stock in what he calls ‘knowing what’s in it’: a good knowledge of fabrics and cuts on the part of the customer elevates the act of choosing a suit to an aesthetic experience. But not for me; I know almost nothing about bespoke tailoring and have never made any such choices. Nor, indeed, have many other 21st century readers. As the so-called Menswear Guy on Twitter so often and eloquently laments, over the past 75 years or so bespoke tailoring has shrunk from the relatively common experience described by Wittgenstein to a highly specialised industry catering to a tiny, very wealthy few.[2] The aesthetic experience of clothing is now selecting off-the-rack items. Few could make an informed decision on the bespoke construction of a suit.

Over that same period, however, another cultural trend has travelled in roughly the opposite direction. The Ludwig Wittgenstein who lectured on aesthetics was Austrian born, working in Britain in 1938. The previous year, in my hometown, the Manchester Cookery Book was published, offering recipes for, among other things, ‘Toast Water’: a pint of water with a slice of toast blended up in it.[3] Only 15 years earlier, hyperinflation in Germany in the wake of the First World War had pushed the cost of basic foodstuffs into the hundreds of thousands of deutschmarks, and starving citizens were pictured butchering dead police horses on the street for meat. Were Wittgenstein and his bright-eyed students to look to the future, they would have seen the unmistakable hulk of war on the horizon, carrying along with it decades of rationing.

The point is that while he probably got to wear nicer suits than I ever will, it seems quite likely that Wittgenstein ate some rather poor food; worse, even, than your average modern Brit, who has a globe-spanning range of ingredients and recipes available to her. The 21st century Brit’s knowledge of food, I suspect, more closely matches Ludwig’s suit buyer than his enjoyer of vanilla ices. Could informed selections of sauces, carbs, proteins and cuisines match those choices which, for Wittgenstein, can elevate a sartorial experience to an aesthetic one?

Perhaps, but this would suggest that aesthetics is an approach, rather than a quality, both in how the craftsperson or artist makes the thing in question, and in how the perceiver receives it. And if this is the case, it seems absurd to deny that food can be aesthetically formed and enjoyed. Who can deny the aesthetic component of haute cuisine: the concepts interwoven into menus; the sculptural structure of dishes; the performative poise of waiters and bartenders? Fine dining is theatre, and it would be a challenge both emotional and financial to eat in such restaurants and not appreciate the experience aesthetically.

But is this really what food is about? Is food to be understood primarily through the lens of elite and exclusive restaurateurs? For most of us, concept menus are a tiny fraction of our culinary lives, far outweighed by staples like cereals, sandwiches, crisps and lager. To be sure, these things can be approached aesthetically – you can think deeply about the balance of flavours and cultural meanings of a meal deal, and you certainly exercise taste and preference in your choices. But to claim these things as aesthetic entities would stretch to the disingenuous.

Lest I be accused of pulling the mango tree trick, I suppose I should here offer a definition of an aesthetic entity – ‘not a meal deal’ probably won’t suffice. For this, as ever, I can’t help but come back to Kant. In his Critique of Judgement, the grandaddy of Western philosophy, Immanuel Kant, offers one of the most readily misunderstandable understandings of aesthetics: art as purposiveness without purpose.[4] As a species, we meticulously whittle bone, tune instruments and edit novels as though we are constructing complex machines to fulfil essential aims, but all without a practical output. On this model, food must always fall short of arthood. Food is always purposeful; it must and always feeds you. The most intricate 12 course tasting menu is a failure if it does not complete this most basic function – if you leave hungry.

This is the most fundamental experience in eating, and it is one that goes way beyond taste, preference and discernment. It is the feeling of sustenance, the glow of the energy that drives life and the universe. Wittgenstein is right: eating is not like looking at a masterpiece or listening to a symphony. It is both less and much, much more than this. The fundamental experience of eating belongs to the same category as the feeling of the sun’s warmth on your face.

Kant also has a name for these kinds of experiences, like observing a beautiful sunset which is far beyond human agency. He calls it the sublime, and I desperately wanted to end this essay with a well-constructed citrusy pun, but I seem to lack the vocabular dexterity to construct that joke. Conveniently, however, I also genuinely believe that such an ending would over-intellectualise something which is really quite simple. So instead, I will turn to another, more contemporary writer. In her essay ‘The Long and Short of the Love Affair that Imploded Because of Eccles Cakes, Three-Quarters of a Quiche and Don’t-Cut-My-Leg African Chicken’, the Nigerian essayist Yemisi Aribisala, ironically, captures what I am trying to say in a beautifully concise phrase. It is, I think, the true reason that eating is so wonderful, why real gourmands enjoy cheese on toast as much as pan-seared scallops. Because they are all, at bottom, the same holy experience. ‘Life,’ writes Aribisala, ‘is short and food is a relief. To eat is a blessing.’[5]

Notes

[1] Wittgenstein, L. ‘Lectures on Aesthetics’, Blackwell, Oxford, 1966, p. 1. All quotes from Wittgenstein in this essay are from the same text.

[2] See various tweets by Derek Guy, AKA ‘The Menswear Guy’, under the handle @dieworkwear. Deeply knowledgeable about his subject matter, kind to followers but able to cut down trolls with precise hilarity, Derek’s is the first – and perhaps last – breakthrough Twitter account of the 2020s, and one of the few keeping the light burning in the dark times since Elon Musk took over.

[3] I am here being somewhat deceitful. The Manchester Cookery Book, published by The Municipal Training College of Domestic Economy in 1938, does contain such a recipe, but it is offered under its ‘Invalid’ section as easily ingestible fuel for the injured. I do think, however, that the unwell may deserve a little bit more pleasure – not to say nutrition – than this recipe can offer.

[4] Kant, I. The Critique of Judgement, 1970, p. 73

[5] Aribisala, Y in In the Kitchen: Essays on Food and Life, Daunt Books, p. 135