Rousseau and Food

Synonyms

Taste and distaste and food; Vegetarian diet; You are what you eat

Introduction

Throughout his work, Jean Jacques Rousseau is concerned with food and diet. His writings suggest that a wholesome diet leads to a wholesome character and that good taste is a matter of purity and simplicity in both diet and actions. A vegetarian himself, he often advocates a vegetarian diet, especially for children.

Civilization Is the Result of Moving from Meat Eating to Grain Eating

In both A Discourse on Inequality (Rousseau 1984) and On the Origin of Languages (Rousseau 1966), Rousseau describes “civilized man” as the result of the evolution from savage hunter, through barbaric herdsman, to civilized farmer. The different social organizations described by Rousseau correspond to “man’s” livelihood and, more specifically, to his relation to what he eats: “The savage human is a hunter, the barbarian is a herdsman, and civil man is a tiller of the soil” (Rousseau 1966, p. 38). Rousseau describes...