"Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; tracks like Rose Royce's 1976 hit 'Car Wash' are the exception. Philosophers, likewise, tend to have a narrow focus on epistemology, metaphysics and trifles like the meaning of life. But occasionally great minds stray from their turf and write about other matters, for example buildings (Martin Heidegger), food (Hobbes), tomato juice (Robert Nozick), and the weather (Lucretius and Aristotle)."
"He clearly loved the stuff, and even urges readers of Ecce Homo to "start the day with chocolate" (p.66). Chocophillia manifests itself in another philosophical classic too. In Albert Camus' novel The Outsider, the Algerian-born existentialist wrote: "After smoking a couple of cigarettes I went back to the room, got a tablet of chocolate, and returned to the window to eat it" (p.8)."
Popular culture and philosophy both dwell on familiar subjects, yet stray topics reveal unexpected connections. Popular music usually focuses on love, with occasional exceptions that celebrate mundane labor or daily life. Philosophers often concentrate on epistemology, metaphysics and the meaning of life, but notable thinkers also address concrete themes such as architecture, cuisine, beverages and weather. Personal habits surface in philosophical texts: Friedrich Nietzsche advocated beginning the day with chocolate, and Albert Camus describes eating chocolate in The Outsider. Social and intellectual circles, like Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Café de Flore, mixed gustatory pleasures with political and literary life.
Read at Philosophynow
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