Philosophy of Health
Health concerns everyone. We are flooded with information about diet and wellbeing, yet the conclusions keep contradicting one another: a food praised today is condemned tomorrow, and each fashionable diet is soon overturned by the next. What we lack is not information, but the thinking needed to understand it.
This series looks at nutrition, lifestyle and health with a philosopher’s eye. What is the essence of nutrition? It is the process by which life turns outer matter into itself and sustains itself through constant exchange. Nutritional science has a value nothing can replace, but it offers partial knowledge, which can be applied rightly only within the whole of life. Nor are health and illness absolute opposites: life maintains itself precisely by continually overcoming imbalance, and moderate challenge and stress are the very conditions of strength. A life that pursues absolute “health” and guards against everything is, for that very reason, unhealthy.
We will discuss the principles and pitfalls of diet, exercise and rest, the unity of body and mind, how to weigh the many nutritional theories and wellness trends, and how to build a way of life that is wise without losing the joy of living.