Philosophy of Nutrition: A Historical, Existential, Phenomenological Perspective


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Philosophy of Nutrition
A Historical, Existential, 
Phenomenological Perspective

Enrico R.A. Calogero Giannetto
Full Professor of History of Science, University of Bergamo

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/rela-2017-001-gian enrico.giannetto@unibg.it

AbstrAct

The paper develops a philosophy of nutrition, based on the idea that nutrition is the funda-
mental condition of possibility of the existence: being presupposes eating. Eating meat his-
torically presupposes preying, hunting or fishing, that is killing other animals. This violence 
is at the roots of our civilisation: it transformed human way of life, human way of being. 
Violence over other species then spreads as violence at the level of the same human, social, 
relationships. Violence over other species has been called “work” and now the division of 
work allows the majority of individuals for a life without preying and without violence and 
so for spreading a new way of thinking and feeling, a new way of living. A new antispeciesist 
ethics become possible, based on a vegan style of living.

Keywords: nutrition, antispeciesism, ethics, concrete phenomenology, existential 
philosophy, anthropology, carnivorism, Eros/Thanatos, origin of violence, hu-
man dominion over nature.

1. introduction

The philosophy of nutrition could be understood as a new sub-discipline 
of the more general philosophy, with a thematic object rather overlooked. 
This perspective arises from the conviction that nutrition would be a trivial 
biological activity, possibly to be studied mostly in the natural sciences. If 
anything, it might recognize that nutrition has historically been also linked 
to religious requirements, then also translated into ethical philosophies or 
confessional theologies. In this view, the (even the secular contemporary) 
ethics of nutrition would be not only a marginal part of philosophy, but 
also a kind of undue infiltration into philosophy, derived from the secu-

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larization of religious reasons and cultivated only by new forms of secular 
sectarianism, and indeed questioned by anthropological (ethnic) relativity 
of ethics and of nutrition.

Feuerbach wrote as a joke that der Mensch ist was er isst (man is what 
he eats) by using assonance as a possible etymological relationship between 
the two verbs of being and eating in German language (in Greek language, 
there is assonance between estin and the verb esthio) (Feuerbach 1866, 
1-35).

However, one can state that eating is the first action constitutive of 
being. As nutrition is more and more analysed, we understand that nutri-
tion is an activity that is part of the priority spheres of our relationship to 
the world which determines our existential pre-understanding: in this way, 
nutrition historically determines, as their root, all our philosophical theo-
retical constructions. Nutrition is the necessary but not sufficient condition 
of possibility of existence. This is not a merely biological condition but 
determines the whole mode of existence as an answer to the basic structure 
of our finite existence which shows itself as need, as a form of lacking. Dif-
ferent forms of nutrition involve different modes of existence.

We shall understand ourselves when we shall make an anthropological 
and historical analysis of our existence in respect to its condition of possibi-
lity. Heidegger started with an analysis of daily existence in terms of care 
(Heidegger 1927) and Marcuse in Marxian terms of work (Marcuse 1928, 
45-68; 1929, 111-28; 1930a; 1930b, 15-30, 304-26; 1931, 541-57; 1932, 136-
74; 1965), but we cannot understand mankind without an inquiry on its 
origins. 

We have to develop a historical phenomenology of existence. Our 
knowledge of the origins of mankind has pointed out that there was a 
transition from the frugivorous diet of Hominids to an omnivorous diet, 
including meat. Now, the point is that eating meat involved perhaps two 
stages of evolution: a first one, in which human beings ate flesh of already 
dead animals; a second one, in which human beings became hunters and 
killed animals to eat them. This second stage transformed completely 
human beings into predatory animals, basing their nutrition on a violent 
mode of existence. 

2. cArnivorism And its origins

This violent way of providing nutrition to itself transformed the whole 
existence of mankind. We are what we eat (Feuerbach 1975 [1866], 357-
407): if we eat other living animals and not the fruits of plants and trees, 

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our flesh is constituted by the flesh of other living animals to which we have 
taken off life. Our life as long as we are carnivorous beings is the effect of 
violence and murder of other living animals: even the energy of a caress or 
of a kiss comes from this violence that constitutes our body, our existence. 
Carnivorism is at the origin of inter-specific and intra-specific violence. 
If we started as eating dead beings, then we transformed ourselves into 
predators. Becoming predators, we distorted our pleasure function: we no 
longer feel pleasure only by eating to preserve our life or by loving acts to 
transmit and to create life, but as predators we associate the pleasure of 
eating to that of giving sufferance and death to the living animals, who are 
objects of preying in such a way that the pleasure of giving sufferance can 
be separated from the same act of eating. Thus, violence can give pleasure. 
Eisler (Eisler 1951; Giannetto 2011, 13-29) has so explained the rise of 
sadism from carnivorism, but indeed violence at every level can become 
an important part of our life because our pleasure function was distorted 
and violence can generate pleasure and increasing pleasure can be derived 
from the growth of violence. Violence can be pleasure in itself and self-
incrementing. In this way, hunting and fishing can become sports, hobbies. 
The violence without aim of the Nazis can thus be explained. Impulse to 
death ceases to be only related to the end of self-sufferance and can be 
extroverted to the end of other living animals, it can become an impulse 
to death of other animals. Thus the death instinct has been distorted and 
becomes related to the as well as distorted principle of pleasure and so to 
violence.

The violent practice of preying was the first way to reduce other living 
beings to objects of our pleasure. This violent mode of existence implies a 
pre-understanding of the world, of everything that is a part of the world, as 
an object of our preying and of our pleasure. 

The first way of classifying every being of the world into a two-sided 
table of values, good/bad, has to be related to something that can conserve 
life and to something that can destroy life. Thus, there was something that 
may be eaten and something, like another living animal, that may not be 
eaten. When becoming carnivorous, conservation of life by means of nutri-
tion started to become paradoxically associated to the destruction of other 
living beings this ethical table of values has been turned upside down. 
Good became simply what can be eaten and bad something else that cannot 
be eaten. The first kind of evil related to killing other living animals, then, 
by carnivorism became transformed into a good skill to provide flesh as 
food.

Eros seems to be limited and forbidden in human life by a social-politic 
“principle of reality” which could make it unrealizable. Eros seems confined 

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only within the human sphere, because a biological “principle of reality” 
(struggle for life and inter-species violence) seems to negate the extension 
of Eros to relations with other living beings. Marcuse’s perspective (Mar-
cuse 1955) makes a deconstruction of this Freudian idea of reality and 
necessity. It is only an absolutization of a particular historical, economic-
socio-politic, and evolutive, anthropological and environmental condition 
which is indeed contingent. Marcuse makes real an utopy. The eschatologi-
cal utopy of a future civilisation, based on Eros and to be realized through 
a multilevel revolution, has its foundation on the memory of a primeval 
condition of a non-carnivorous mankind. Indeed, human beings, since their 
appearance on the Earth, have been ejected into an environmental condi-
tion where there was a struggle for life: preying animals have been hunting 
even human beings. In this kind of environmental contexts, even defending 
themselves could have implied killing other preying animals. And a mime-
sis of these predator animals like wolves could have transformed human 
beings into preying animals. In any case, however, the partial or total lack 
of vegetal food within a particular environment could have induced human 
beings to negate Eros within inter species sphere for the aim of individual 
survival giving rise to a new species of human beings as preying animals. 
Beginning by satisfying hunger with flesh of other already dead animals, 
human beings, as well as other animals who then transformed themselves 
into preying animals (by epigenetical switching on and off some genes) and 
have been taken as models by humans, have been developing a depend-
ence from the death of other animals and became slaves of flesh food that 
transformed them into predators and killers of other animals. The death 
instinct which was part of Eros and served to make sufferance cease has 
been extroverted by a cultural solution: becoming predator animals and 
eating the flesh of other animals. This was not necessary: humans or other 
animals could have come back to an environment full of vegetal food and 
so to a vegetarian diet by switching back on and off some genes. We have 
to understand Darwinian evolution in a new synthesis with epigenetics. 
Struggle for life in the sense of animal preying happens only when a certain 
animal wants to be constantly present for long times relevant for nutrition 
within a non-fitting-to-animal-life environment (for human beings: arctic 
ices, desert zones or other non-fitting environments). Successive migra-
tions are not a sufficient motivation to change diet. There are fitting and 
non-fitting animal life environments: struggle for life and natural selection 
happen only within environments which are non-fitting for animal life and 
therefore induce some animals to preying other animals. 

I believe that no living being was born as carnivorous predator, but 
became such by some choice of diet at some existential bifurcation (to 

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survive by eating meat or to die): epigenetics now explains as phenotypic 
variations can switch on and off genes and can produce heritable altera-
tions. Carnivorous predators are not such by “nature”, but by evolution: 
carnivorism can be explained as an epigenetical effect that can be modified 
by a new way of living and eating. We must recognize that some other ani-
mals, as carnivorous predators, as dogs and cats that have made a violent 
pact with human beings to share the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of 
good and evil, to share the food of dominion, have distorted their “philoso-
phy of life” into violence before us, but also that many other living beings 
have never left the vital dimension of Eros.

The whole vital power an animal has to live and to be maximally happy 
is converted against other animals which have to be captured, killed and 
reduced to food: it becomes violence, destructive power of other living 
beings. Life instinct is so converted into pulsion of killing other living 
beings. The same body is converted in a sort of “war-machine” against 
other forms of life. The same pleasure is converted into something related 
to doing violence. Being carnivorous is involved by the rejection of our 
structural being-for-death.

3. cArnivorism implicAtions

The non-acceptance of own individual death even if living implies kill-
ing other living beings extroverts death instinct: it becomes a destructive 
instinct against others. Death instinct becomes autonomous from Eros and 
opposes it: it becomes Thanatos. Life opposes death and so life opposes 
other life. Life becomes slave of Thanatos and living is reduced to preying, 
becoming instrument of violence and death, will to power and to dominion, 
which operates a distortion of pleasure, now slave of dominion. The active 
principle of life, the vital energy of life, that is Eros, is not only subject of 
sublimation, but also converted into an instrument of death, into Thanatos. 
Rationalization is not only a process of removing and repressing Eros, but 
also a legitimation of Thanatos. Existence becomes a struggle between Eros 
and Thanatos, and finally an ethical and political choice/decision between 
life and death. Living an authentic full human existence implies a world-
animal-revolution.

Hunting and fishing changed our perception of animal life ad of the 
world, but also our perception of space and time: space is not anything 
to be contemplated with wonder, but to be crossed running to prey and 
to obtain flesh; time is not the quiet measure of the peaceful growing of 
the varieties of life, but is to be shortened for better preying and killing. 

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Technical tools had to be developed to overcome the biological inferiority 
of human beings in respect to other species. 

Agriculture implied another radical change in human existence: work-
ing the land involved the slavery of other animals as principal workers and 
has been giving rise to zootechnics, related to animal farming. Realizing a 
dominion over earth and over other animal species has been called human 
work. Before killing and eating other animals was better their exploitation: 
of their own milk, of their fur, of their workforce and, at the end, of their 
flesh, of their skin, of their bones.

By animal farming, flesh became ever suitable to be eaten and a car-
nivorous diet became dominant. Sacrifice of other animals to gods became 
the ideological legitimation of farming and killing by means of religion. The 
human dominion over earth and all the other animal species constituted a 
new order of the world (Giannetto 2015, 221-41). This Neolithic revolu-
tion (Giannetto 2005, 37-41) in human life changed the improvised form 
of violence into an organized system. The division of preying, exploitat-
ing and killing other animals became the “division of work”. Legitimating 
dominion by means of ideological constructions became another kind of 
work, intellectual work, separated by manual work. Human beings became 
able to tame not only other animal species, but also their so hidden ferocity 
ruled by the division of work and by a system of law. 

Human beings did not limitate themselves to prey and to kill but 
started to accumulate the objects of preying and of exploitation for the 
future and to develop new technologies of exploitation and of killing. Car-
nivorous diet became part of a wider system of violence and of dominion. 
Another change in our perception of the world, of life and space and time 
happened. Our anxiety for death became stronger and stronger: our “civi-
lised” life became sedentary and quiet, but the rejection of death involved 
a new distorted perception of time and of the future. We started to become 
slaves of our violence, of our technologies and of our work.

4. conclusions

Now, we are no more conscious of this original violence, because our lives 
are, for the most, free from the direct violence of preying: we find flesh 
(often without any recognizable form) to eat in supermarkets. Only few 
human beings work as killers of non-human beings, and killing another 
animal no longer implies any aggressive behaviour, due to the mechaniza-
tion of violence and to the act of killing using artificial machines. Thus, 
we become unconscious of the origin of human violence from carnivorism 

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(carnivorism is the original sin) (Eisler 1951; Giannetto 2011, 13-29) and 
we can be carnivorous and non-directly-violent (non-aggressive) persons 
because we do not directly participate to the act of preying and killing. 
Paradoxically, this mechanization and industrialization of violence and 
killing which has led to the highest level of violence and of systematic 
extermination of other living beings has also allowed the detachment of 
carnivorism from a violent behaviour and with it the possibility of rejecting 
the carnivorism itself and of a new, radically non-violent, way of thinking.

Our intellectual work was a legitimation of our violence: what we think 
is what we eat, and our way of thinking is part of our phagocytation metabo-
lism process. Thinking is a process which is one with living. Thus, thinking 
is related to the pleasure of living and loving. When the pleasure of living 
is related to phagocytation of other animals and to giving sufferance and 
death to other beings, thinking becomes involved in phagocytation, in its 
preying and dominion strategies, and indeed it becomes a symbolic phago-
cytation and a strategy for actual phagocytation. Thinking as verbal reason-
ing is no more an expression of Eros, but an expression of Thanatos: Eros 
is transformed into Thanatos (Marcuse 1955). Human culture became not 
only a sublimation of Eros, but a form of Thanatos, a form of virtual phago-
cytation. The analysis operated by verbal reasoning is a kind of anatomy of 
the body flesh teared to pieces and dismembered into pieces by preying and 
then by metabolism: phagocytation becomes the transcendental material 
condition of possibility to understand verbal reasoning.

However, we can change our mind: the same separation of work 
allowed for a transformation of the role of legitimation of violence into a 
form of a criticism of violence. Thus, we can change our carnivorous diet 
into a vegan one and our philosophy into a criticism of violence and of 
its ideologies and into an universal ethics of reverence for all forms of life 
(Schewitzer 1923, 331; Giannetto 2012, 22-33; Giannetto 2015, 75-87).

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