Taste has long been the odd one out in philosophical discussions of aesthetics. While judgments of beauty in art and nature have been taken seriously—both as subjective experiences and as the foundation for shared critical discourse—literal taste, the act of eating and drinking, has been treated as an outlier. Too bodily, too immediate, too entangled with personal preference to sustain anything like the disinterested contemplation that great artworks supposedly demand.
The historical snobbery toward taste is easy to trace. From Plato’s lofty realm of Forms to Kant’s insistence that aesthetic pleasure be “disinterested,” the tradition has consistently marginalized gustatory experience. Genuine aesthetic judgment requires reason, imagination, and critical distance which are more easily achieved with vision and hearing than when chewing and swallowing. Taste is too ephemeral and too closely tied to biological needs. Cuisine lacks the permanence of sculpture, the narrative depth of literature, or the formal complexity of music. Or so the argument goes.
Yet the strict separation between “higher” and “lower” senses—between the cognitive pleasures of art and the bodily pleasures of food—has already been effectively dismantled by contemporary philosophy. Over the past 75 years, thinkers across various disciplines have challenged the primacy of vision and hearing in aesthetic discourse, recognizing that all sensory experience is mediated by culture, training, and interpretation. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology insists on the embodied nature of perception, dissolving the rigid boundary between intellect and sensation, and Carolyn Korsmeyer’s Making Sense of Taste (1999) demonstrated the conceptual poverty of the sense hierarchy that denied the aesthetic status of taste. Scholars of material culture, anthropology, and cognitive science have further demonstrated that taste and smell are not mere instinctual reactions but cultivated, structured, and meaningful modes of experience.
So really, the old hierarchy of the senses is about as outdated as serving Jell-O salads at a dinner party. If we’ve accepted that vision and hearing don’t have a monopoly on aesthetic experience, why does taste still get sidelined? The only reason we haven’t placed food squarely into the realm of serious aesthetic judgment is because we’ve been too busy eating it.
The key question is not whether taste is subjective (all experience is, to some extent) but whether it can be discussed and evaluated with the same seriousness as other aesthetic experiences. If all food judgments were mere personal preferences—entirely idiosyncratic, impossible to articulate or dispute—then food criticism would be an absurd enterprise. But we do, in fact, debate food. We argue over balance and execution, complexity and simplicity, authenticity and innovation. We distinguish between the refined and the crude, the harmonious and the dissonant, the transcendent and the mundane and expect others to recognize these distinctions even though me might disagree about when they should be applied. This suggests that taste, far from being an impenetrable domain of private sensation, operates within a shared framework of judgment.
A well-trained palate is not simply a matter of subjective whim. When we describe a wine as “overly tannic” or a dish as “imbalanced,” we are pointing to something about the food or wine itself—not just our own personal reactions. There is an objective structure to taste, a reality of flavor compounds and textural interactions that can be analyzed and understood. People disagree about food not because taste is arbitrary, but because there is something there to be debated. If each person’s gustatory experience were entirely beyond scrutiny, disagreement would be meaningless; no one could ever be wrong.
Furthermore, the aesthetics of food is not just about sensory pleasure. Food has cultural, historical, and symbolic significance. A dish tells a story—about its place of origin, its evolution through trade and migration, or its significance within rituals. The meaning of food extends beyond mere taste, just as the meaning of a painting extends beyond mere color. To ignore this dimension is to ignore the richness of culinary experiences.
If we are to take food seriously as an aesthetic category, we must fully embrace the implications of contemporary philosophy’s rejection of sensory hierarchies and explore more fully the nature of that sensory engagement with food. The pleasure of eating is not opposed to the possibility of critical judgment; it is, in fact, the foundation of it.
To taste well is to discern—to detect nuance, to appreciate contrast, to recognize balance, tension, and structure. This is no different from what we do when we engage with other arts. A symphony is not a mere collection of sounds but an interplay of harmonies, rhythms, and textures that we perceive relationally. Likewise, a great dish is not merely a collection of ingredients but a carefully orchestrated interplay of flavors, temperatures, and textures that demand our attention and appreciation.
Philosophy, in its long quest to understand beauty, has too often ignored what is right in front of us. Taste is not a lesser mode of aesthetic experience but a fundamental one. To eat with discernment is to engage in an act of judgment as rich and complex as any encounter with art. And that is an argument worth savoring—preferably with a bottle of good wine.
Taste has long been the odd one out in philosophical discussions of aesthetics. While judgments of beauty in art and nature have been taken seriously—both as subjective experiences and as the foundation for shared critical discourse—literal taste, the act of eating and drinking, has been treated as an outlier. Too bodily, too immediate, too entangled with personal preference to sustain anything like the disinterested contemplation that great artworks supposedly demand.
The historical snobbery toward taste is easy to trace. From Plato’s lofty realm of Forms to Kant’s insistence that aesthetic pleasure be “disinterested,” the tradition has consistently marginalized gustatory experience. The dominant view has been that genuine aesthetic judgment requires faculties like reason, imagination, and a degree of critical distance—qualities more easily attributed to vision and hearing than to the act of chewing and swallowing. Taste, by contrast, is ephemeral, perishable, and intimately tied to our biological needs. It lacks the permanence of sculpture, the narrative depth of literature, or the formal complexity of music. Or so the argument goes.
Yet the strict separation between “higher” and “lower” senses—between the cognitive pleasures of art and the bodily pleasures of food—has already been effectively dismantled by contemporary philosophy. Over the past century, thinkers across disciplines have challenged the primacy of vision and hearing in aesthetic discourse, recognizing that all sensory experience is mediated by culture, training, and interpretation. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, for instance, insists on the embodied nature of perception, dissolving the rigid boundary between intellect and sensation. More recently, scholars of material culture, anthropology, and cognitive science have further demonstrated that taste and smell are not mere instinctual reactions but cultivated, structured, and meaningful modes of experience.
Given this shift, it is no longer tenable to dismiss food and drink as beneath serious aesthetic consideration. If all aesthetic experience is embedded in lived, sensory reality, then gustatory aesthetics deserves a place alongside the study of painting, music, and literature. And food, with its capacity to shape identity, convey meaning, and cultivate discernment, is a prime candidate for aesthetic reflection.
The key question is not whether taste is subjective (all experience is, to some extent) but whether it can be discussed and evaluated with the same seriousness as other aesthetic experiences. If all food judgments were mere personal preferences—entirely idiosyncratic, impossible to articulate or dispute—then food criticism would be an absurd enterprise. But we do, in fact, debate food. We argue over balance and execution, complexity and simplicity, authenticity and innovation. We distinguish between the refined and the crude, the harmonious and the dissonant, the transcendent and the mundane. And crucially, we expect others to recognize these distinctions. This suggests that taste, far from being an impenetrable domain of private sensation, operates within a shared framework of judgment.
A well-trained palate is not simply a matter of subjective whim. When we describe a wine as “overly tannic” or a dish as “imbalanced,” we are pointing to something about the food itself—not just our own personal reactions. There is an objective structure to taste, a reality of flavor compounds and textural interactions that can be analyzed and understood. People disagree about food not because taste is arbitrary, but because there is something there to be debated. If each person’s gustatory experience were entirely beyond scrutiny, disagreement would be meaningless; no one could ever be wrong.
Moreover, the aesthetics of food is not just about sensory pleasure. Food carries cultural, historical, and symbolic weight. A dish tells a story—about its place of origin, its evolution through trade and migration, its ritual significance. The meaning of food extends beyond mere taste, just as the meaning of a painting extends beyond mere color. To ignore this dimension is to ignore the richness of the culinary experience.
If we are to take food seriously as an aesthetic category, we must fully embrace the implications of contemporary philosophy’s rejection of sensory hierarchies. We must recognize that aesthetic experience is not limited to disembodied contemplation but is deeply connected to sensory engagement. The pleasure of eating is not opposed to the possibility of critical judgment; it is, in fact, the very foundation of it.
To taste well is to discern—to detect nuance, to appreciate contrast, to recognize balance and structure. This is no different from what we do when we engage with other arts. A symphony is not merely a collection of sounds; it is an interplay of harmonies, rhythms, and textures that we perceive relationally. Likewise, a great dish is not merely a collection of ingredients but a carefully orchestrated interplay of flavors, temperatures, and textures that demand our attention and appreciation.
Philosophy, in its long quest to understand beauty, has too often ignored what is right in front of us—or rather, right on our plates. It is time to acknowledge that taste, both literal and figurative, is not a lesser mode of aesthetic experience but a fundamental one. To eat with discernment is to engage in an act of judgment as rich and complex as any encounter with art. And that is an argument worth savoring.
Exploring the Philosophy of Food and Wine 