In his thirties, Immanuel Kant would sometimes drink so much in the cafés he usually frequented with moderation that he could not find his way back to his home on the Magistergasse in Königsberg.1 Every evening he played billiards and cards, and every midday he drank a glass of wine – never beer: he was the declared enemy of the Prussian national drink, ‘a slow, but fatal poison’ he saw as one of the major causes of mortality . . . and haemorrhoids.2 To think of Kant as an aficionado of bars is somewhat surprising. The austere and rigorous pietist, the difficult and demanding philosopher was nonetheless a knowledgeable consumer of food and drink, to the extent that his friend the privy councillor von Hippel often joked with him: ‘Do you think you will ever write a critique of cuisine?’3 Alas, there was no Critique of Gastronomic Reason. Even when the thinker analyses taste, in the Critique of Judgement, he gives no place to food.
In his theory of the senses, Kant distinguishes the objective and superior senses – touch, sight and hearing – from the subjective and inferior – smell and taste.4 The nose and the palate are organs of sensation without nobility, for ‘the idea obtained from them is more a representation of enjoyment than cognition of the external object’.5 The knowledge produced through smell and taste is not universal but particular, relative to a subject – hence its perceptual distortions. With the sense of taste, ‘the organs of the tongue, the throat and the palate come into contact with the external object.’6 Granted, but Kant overlooks the imagination, the memory and the understanding in the complex process of the production of a flavour and a judgement of oral taste. Without memory of flavours and combinations, without analytic and synthetic imagination, without both the global and particular grasp of the understanding, there could be no question of taste. And Kant knows it.
Smell is even less social than taste, Kant argues, for the latter ‘has the advantage of promoting sociability in eating and drinking’, and foreshadows flavours to come.7 Kant speaks of ‘the pleasurable feeling produced by ingestion’. But simultaneously smell has a solitary logic. To smell means to smell the same thing as everyone else at the same time, because ‘others are forced to share the pleasure of it, whether they want to or not’, and is therefore ‘contrary to freedom’, while taste permits a greater pleasure because it allows choice, selection, taking preferences into account: ‘among many dishes or bottles a guest can choose one he likes, without others being forced to share the pleasure of it.’8 Autonomy is preserved, sociability is increased, because in spite of its solitary logic, taste is the sense of sociability.
The exercise of taste is solitary and subjective: ‘neither pleasure nor displeasure belongs to the cognitive faculty as regards objects; rather they are determinations of the subject, and so cannot be ascribed to external objects.’9 Kant prefers the senses that permit a universalizable judgement, the condition of possibility for accession to the True, the Just or the Beautiful. Taste only authorizes judgements of value relative to the person tasting, a limitation that cannot satisfy the philosopher, who is concerned with a science of the universal and with little interest in theories of the particular for which there can be no possible science. Taste and smell could never be the objects of a critical theory, which is why Kant could not envision a Critique of Gastronomic Reason, contrary to the claims by his Soviet biographer Arsénij Goulyga.10
Kant’s only possible critique of taste would apply to the superior sensations of touch, hearing and sight, which is why we have the analysis of the judgements of taste and their favoured objects in the third Critique. However, let us be clear about Kant’s failings in relation to art: his pictorial references are meagre; his knowledge of painting limited; his recourse to literature virtually non-existent; and his relationship with music is on a par with that of the hard of hearing who love brass bands. Wasianski affirms that ‘he preferred blaring military music over all other kinds.’11 A concert in honour of Moses Mendelssohn had turned him off concerts and he claimed that music was not worth the time it took to learn it. The time you devote to practising an instrument is spent at the expense of more important things. Its ultimate failing in the eyes of the philosopher is that music is condemned to express only feelings, never ideas. Hence his definitive lack of interest. Let us be wary of deaf philosophers.
No critical theory of alimentary taste is possible. The subject is too imprecise for a science. You could retort to Kant that imprecision was also the fate of the other forms of taste and that it is not possible to perform an objective analysis of any perception whatsoever – whether visual, auditory, olfactory or gustatory, or of touch – and therefore including action. Just the same, that does not stop the philosopher from here and there offering his opinions on food and drink, not to forget the gusto with which he tucked into an unambiguous nutritive practice. Borowski recounts that ‘when he enjoyed a dish he asked for the recipe. He didn’t really like complicated cooking, but above all insisted on the meat being tender and the wine of good quality. He didn’t like to eat quickly, nor to rise from the table immediately after the meal.’12 Picture Kant, between pages of the Critique of Pure Reason, recopying recipes to give to his domestic, Lampe, who like all ex-soldiers – as he was – was a little naive, but obedient and careful to prepare in time the meal that Kant always ordered for the following day.
Having emerged from the state of inebriation in which we left him in the 1760s, Kant pulled himself together and probably drew on the experience to create a theory of drunkenness. In his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, drunkenness is defined as ‘the unnatural condition of inability to order one’s sense representations according to laws of experience, provided that the condition is the effect of an excessive consumption of drink’.13 It is also ‘a physical means to excite . . . the imagination’, to strengthen it, or at least to elevate its feeling.14 The instruments of this divine alchemy are ‘fermented beverages, wine or beer, or the spirits extracted from them, such as brandy; [all] these substances [being] contrary to nature or artificial’.15 Kant concedes that these techniques to forget the self can allow one to escape a world that is too harsh – to ‘forget the burden that seems to lie, originally, in life generally’.16 The philosopher theorizes about the different effects of these beverages – taciturn drunkenness from brandy, stimulation from wine and nutrition from beer. Their ingestion ‘serve[s] as social intoxication; but with the difference that drinking-bouts with beer make guests more dreamy and withdrawn, whereas at a wine-drinking party the guests are cheerful, boisterous, talkative, and witty’.17 Describing the symptoms of inebriation he has observed – staggering and slurring his words – Kant condemns drunkenness in the name of one’s duties to society and to oneself, with however this tempering codicil: ‘But there is much to be said for qualifying the judgment of such a mistake, since the borderline of self-control can be so easily overlooked and overstepped, for the host desires that the guest leave fully satisfied . . . by this act of social activity’.18 God knows it is easier to tolerate those sins that one might have committed oneself! Te absolvo.
Persisting with the analysis of this divine consolation, Kant associates drunkenness with the carefreeness it provokes: ‘the drunken man no longer feels life’s obstacles, with whose overcoming nature is incessantly connected’.19 Intoxication also encourages speaking freely, the opening up of emotions, and the expansion of morality:
It is the instrumental vehicle of a moral quality, namely frankness. Holding back one’s thoughts is an oppressive state for a sincere heart, and merry drinkers do not readily tolerate a very temperate guest at their revel . . . Good-naturedness is presupposed by this permission that man has, for the sake of social pleasure, to go a bit beyond the borderline of sobriety for a short while.20
Drunkenness liberates another man in the drinker; it releases a second nature that has no relationship with the first.
Supposing Kant to be only slightly drunk, his observation of himself will give him enhanced insight, while his observations of others will furnish the rest of his data. The idea of Kant stumbling around the streets of Königsberg has a certain charm – it makes the postulates of pure practical reason seem all the more devoid of imperatives. To Kant the problem is not as trivial as it might seem, since he devotes further pages to investigating the logical structure of human intemperance. In Part 2 of the very serious Metaphysics of Morals, the Doctrine of Virtue, Kant includes a section called ‘On Stupefying Oneself by Excessive Use of Food or Drink’. Here eating and drinking to excess are brought together – both are vices under the heading of a lack of respect for one’s duty to oneself:
Brutish excess in the use of food and drink is misuse of the means of nourishment which restricts or exhausts our capacity to use them intelligently. Drunkenness and gluttony are the vices that come under this heading. A man who is drunk is like a mere animal, not to be treated as a human being. When stuffed with food he is in a condition in which he is incapacitated, for a time, for actions that would require him to use his powers with skill and deliberation.21
Kant likens alcohol to drugs and other substances that are obstacles to wisdom, dignity and self-mastery. Always magnanimous, he continues:
They are seductive because, under their influence, people dream for a while that they are happy and free from care, and even imagine that they are strong; but dejection and weakness follow and, worst of all, they create a need to use the narcotics again and even to increase the amount.22
In this lies the advantage drunkenness has over knowledge . . . Its drawback is that it is insufficiently radical: you have to keep repeating it. Otherwise, if you are to believe Kant, the technique presents several advantages. Gluttony – ‘greediness’, in the translation of Alexis Philonenko – is worse than drunkenness, because ‘it only lulls the senses into a passive condition and, unlike drunkenness, does not even arouse imagination to an active play of representations; so it approaches even more closely the enjoyment of cattle.’23 In his following explanatory note, ‘Casuistical Questions’, Kant ponders whether wine and its powers of conviviality can at least be justified, if not eulogized. The means of intoxication that confine one in isolation and solitary pleasure are radically condemned. Alcohol has some advantages in that it eases social interaction and contributes to the harmonization of human relations. The austere pietist takes over from eudemonistic practice for the final word:
Although a banquet is a formal invitation to excess in both food and drink, there is still something in it that aims at a moral end, beyond mere physical well-being: it brings a number of people together for a long time to converse with one another. And yet the very number of guests (if . . . it exceeds the number of the muses) allows only a little conversation (with those sitting next to one); and so the arrangement is at variance with that end, while the banquet remains a temptation to something immoral, namely intemperance.24
The distinction comes down to moderation, in permitting a use that is not a misuse.
In practical terms Kant had resolved this problem – after frequenting public bars for his midday meal for many years, he had decided to stop patronizing them in order to avoid the promiscuity of these encounters. After the decision to take his meals at home, he strove to establish a precise protocol that would ensure he never dined alone, a practice he judged to be harmful from a dietetic point of view. An anecdote recounts how Kant, having no one to lunch with, had sent his valet into the street to invite the first passer-by to join him. He usually sent an invitation to his friends on the morning of his proposed lunch, so as not to deprive them of any other possible engagement. The cook prepared the meals the philosopher had ordered the previous evening. R. B. Jachmann writes: ‘Kant was so attentive to his guests that he took careful note of their preferences and had those dishes prepared for them.’25 His household was set up for six people, and he practised Chesterton’s principle: never invite more than nine guests – the number of the Muses – but usually only three or five. The meal would last until four or five in the afternoon. As he got older, Kant discontinued the after-lunch strolls he took to aid his digestion in favour of one or two cups of coffee and the only pipe he allowed himself during the day.
While he sometimes received students (at that time university courses were given at the home of the teacher), his habitués were a future minister of state, the Governor of Prussia, a general of the infantry, a duke, a count, a President of the Chamber, a Privy Councillor, a bank director and a merchant. Master of ceremonies, Kant would lead the conversation, steering it away from commonplace topics as well as commentaries on his works.
The midday meal was his only one for the day. Before that he had only a cup or two of weak tea, at five in the morning. He always took this alone – the presence of a second valet after half a century of the company of the first so unsettled him that he could not swallow a drop of his tea. He could not allow himself coffee until very late, although he loved the smell, but during his last years he relied on it to give a boost to his failing energy.
Jachmann tells us:
His menus were simple: three dishes, cheese and butter. In summer he dined with the window open on his garden. He had a big appetite and he loved veal broth and barley and vermicelli soup. Roast meats were served at his table, but never game. Kant generally began his meal with fish, and added mustard to almost every dish. He loved butter as well as grated cheese, especially English cheese, although he claimed that it was artificially coloured. When there were a lot of guests he had cakes served. He adored fresh cod: ‘I would eat a full plate of it, even on leaving the table.’ Kant chewed meat for a long time in order to swallow only the juice. He spat out the remnants and tried to hide them under bread crusts in a corner of his plate. His teeth were very bad and gave him a lot of trouble. He drank a very light red wine, usually a Medoc, and placed a small bottle of it next to the place setting of every guest. Usually this would satisfy him, but occasionally he also drank white wine, when he found the red too acidic.26
Once the meal was finished, he loved to ‘have a drink’, to use the philosopher’s own expression. He drank a half-glass of wine said to be ‘digestive, from Hungary or the Rhine or, if he did not have those, Bischof’ – sweetened red wine heated with orange peel.27 Paper that he did not use for his philosophical manuscripts served as a reserve he used to cover his wine to keep it warm. Jachmann also says: ‘He thought the pleasure of drinking was heightened when he swallowed air at the same time, so he drank with his mouth wide open.’28 This was the ritual for a long time. Then Kant grew old. His health had never been good; throughout his life he suffered from stomach conditions. It must be said that his medication was appropriate: some bitter drops in the morning had dissuaded him from the effectiveness of that sort of pharmacopia, and were quickly replaced by ‘a small glass of rum, which ended up giving him heartburn’.29 Neither drops nor rum – at five in the morning, Kant abandoned his stomach to its natural hyperacidity for many years. His digestion was irregular. Such was the scrupulous fidelity of his biographers that we are even privy to the details of Kant’s constipation. The Freudians would rejoice – the sphincter and its role in the development of Kantian ethics . . .
In fact Kant returns to scrutinize his constitution on numerous occasions in his work. One of his biographers tells us that ‘perhaps never before had a man shown such an interest in his body and all that concerns it’ than the philosopher of Königsberg.30 In the chapter devoted to hypochondria in The Conflict of the Faculties, he confesses:
I myself have a natural disposition to hypochondria because of my flat and narrow chest, which leaves little room for the movement of the heart and lungs; and in the early years this disposition made me almost weary of life. But by reflecting that, if the cause of this oppression of the heart was purely mechanical, nothing could be done about it, I soon came to pay no attention to it.31
Kant is particularly concerned with what he calls a dietetics, defined as ‘the art of preventing disease’, as opposed to therapeutics, or the art of healing. A chapter of the work is entitled ‘The Power of the Mind to Master its Morbid Feelings by Sheer Resolution’.
Hypochondria, which Kant himself admits to, is defined several times in his work. In the ‘Essay on the Maladies of the Head’, he writes:
The hypochondriac has an ill which, regardless which place it may have as its main seat, nevertheless in all likelihood migrates incessantly through the nerve tissue to all parts of the body. It draws above all a melancholic haze around the seat of the soul such that the patient feels in himself the illusion of almost all maladies of which he as much as hears.32
He also says elsewhere on the topic, that he ‘is not seldom weary of himself as well as of the world’.33 In another text on mental illnesses he establishes that the digestive organs are the seat of these psychological disorders.34 Kant’s own predilection for the consolations and techniques of the aperitif for self-forgetting is understandable – the rigorous master of the categorical imperative is a pessimistic hypochondriac looking for an effective consolation.
Thus he develops a ‘hygienic system’ of which the postulate is: dominate your nature or it will dominate you. The principles are multiple and diverse: in relation to temperature, Kant suggests keeping the feet cool and the head warm; in relation to sleep, sleep little (the bed is a nest for a lot of illnesses); in relation to a propitious moment: think about it for a while (never at mealtimes), synchronize the activities of the stomach and the mind, breathe for a while – to ‘suppress and prevent morbid accidents’ – with the lips closed, and other picturesque details.
Where eating is concerned, trust in your appetite, have regular eating habits, avoid too much liquid – such as in soups – and as you grow older choose ‘stronger flavoured food and more exciting drinks (for example wine)’, in order adequately to stimulate ‘the vermicular movement of the intestines’ and the circulatory system.35 Do not immediately give in to your desire to drink water. Have a single meal a day, at lunchtime, in order to reduce the amount of intestinal labour required: ‘For this reason, an impulse to have an evening meal after an adequate and satisfying one at midday can be considered a pathological feeling; and one can master it so completely by a firm resolution that one gradually ceases to feel these attacks at all.’36 In this way Kant illustrates the idea by which
the stoic way of life (sustine et abstine) belongs, as the principle of [dietetics], to practical philosophy not only as the doctrine of virtue but also as the science of medicine. Medical science is philosophical when the sheer power of man’s reason to master his sensuous feelings by a selfimposed principle determines his manner of living.37
Reconciled with philosophy, dietetics wins its spurs of nobility – it is understood as an argument for a science of bodily wisdom.
Emaciated, ‘dried up like a clay pot’,38 complaining about the sauerkraut being too sweet while lunching on sweetened prunes, eating meat on the turn (because it is more tender), chewing it for a long time to extract the juice, giving up his fork for a small spoon, Kant burdened his correspondence with Kiesewetter about what beetroots to order. As an octogenarian reaping the benefits of a careful diet, Kant finished his life quite gently, comfortably. In 1798 he had written: ‘The art of prolonging human life leads to this: that in the end one is tolerated among the living only because of the animal functions one performs – not a particularly amusing situation.’39 True to himself, nourished on bread and butter (for which he developed an obsession during his last days), taste out of kilter, appetite gone, when he discovered food on his plate that had been badly and unevenly cut, he cried: ‘Give me form, precise form . . . ’.40