Why Does Food Need Philosophy?
Robert Valgenti

Philosophers who study food often spend a good deal of time explaining why philosophy should pay more attention to food and how it might change the way philosophy goes about its business.  The hope is that philosophy might become less abstract, more connected to life, by focusing on this common aspect of human life.  This talk aims to flip this idea and examine why food, and our relation with it, needs philosophy more than ever before.

Robert T. Valgenti is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Lebanon Valley College. His research interests cover contemporary Italian philosophy, hermeneutics, biopolitics and the philosophy of food, with recent publications on the work of Roberto Esposito, Gianni Vattimo, Nietzsche, and the philosophy of humor. He is the translator of several essays and books by Italian philosophers, most notably Luigi Pareyson’s Truth and Interpretation (2013), Gianni Vattimo’s Of Reality (2016), and Gaetano Chiurazzi’s The Experience of Truth (2017). He is the director and founder of E.A.T. (engage, analyze, transform), an undergraduate research group at Lebanon Valley College whose interventions aim to improve the ethical, environmental, cultural and nutritional profile of the college dining experience.  He is a member of The Menus of Change University Research Collaborative and an editor for the journal Gastronomica.