Let's eat!

Le Regard Libre N° 15 - Jonas Follonier

For thousands of years, philosophers, clerics, intellectuals and other gurus have been urging us to despise the body, to turn away from the sensible, the sensual and the sentimental, and towards the higher world of the intellect, the spiritual and the divine. Such a conception has haunted Western thought ever since Plato, «the great slanderer of life» as Nietzsche wrote.

What if we stopped listening to their spiel? What if we said to ourselves that the highest, most beautiful (and not the most false and foolish) thing about man consists in using all his faculties - spiritual and sensitive - in moderation, and delighting in their interaction? What if we were to consider that if life is absurd, it's not because a better life awaits us in the hereafter, but because it's the very nature of everything to be absurd (why is there something instead of nothing...), and that this invites us to the best transcendence of this world, namely art?

The worship of matter and the apology of Heaven are extreme positions; for my part, I prefer the happy medium of music, which gives a face to time, of literature, which gives color to the world, or of the table, which gives us the chance to eat and not just feed like beasts. Getting together with friends (whether Platonists or not) around a table, tasting a wine, indulging in a blend of flavors, practicing the art of conversation - this is paradise on earth. Let's sing of its mad delights and marvel at a recent discovery: the stomach, like the brain, has neurons. Well, dear readers, it's time to eat!

Write to the author : jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

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