Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book marks a new departure in ethics. In our culture ethics has first and foremost been a question of "the good life" in relation to other people. Central to this ethic was friendship, inspired by Greek thought (not least Aristotle), and the caritas concept from the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Later moral philo- phers also included man's relation to animals, and it was agreed that the m- treatment of animals was morally reprehensible. But no early moral teaching discussed man's relation to the origin of foodstuffs and the system that p- duced them; doubtless the question was of little interest since the production path was so short. The interest in good-quality food is of course an ancient one, and healthy eating habits have often been underlined as a condition for the good life. But before industrialization the production of this food was easy to follow. As a rule, that is no longer the case. The field of ethics must therefore be extended to cover responsibility for the production and choice of foodstuffs, and it is this food ethic that Christian Coff sets out to trace.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements (p. vii)
• Foreword (p. ix)
• Preface (p. xi)
• List of Tables and Figures (p. xvii)
• About the Author (p. xix)
• Part I Food and Ethics (p. 1)
• Chapter 1 Eating, Society and Ethics (p. 3)
• 1 The Intimacy of Eating and Digestion (p. 6)
• 2 Eating in between Life and Death (p. 11)
• 3 The Social Meaning of the Meal (p. 13)
• 4 Food and Ethics in History (p. 16)
• 5 Food Ethics and the Production History (p. 21)
• Part II The Intellectualization of Food (p. 31)
• Chapter 2 Food to Science: On the Intellectualization of Food (p. 33)
• 1 The Hermeneutic Approach of Early Natural History (p. 36)
• 2 The Phenomenological Approach of Late Natural History (p. 42)
• 3 Biology and the Invisible Characteristics of Life (p. 46)
• 4 The End of Phenomenology in Biology (p. 50)
• Chapter 3 The Storylessness of Food (p. 61)
• 1 The History of Industrialization of Agriculture (p. 61)
• 2 Food Science and Gastronomy (p. 69)
• 3 The Powerlessness of the Political Consumer (p. 77)
• 4 The Hidden Production History of Food (p. 85)
• 5 Do not Eat what You Have not Read (p. 89)
• Part III Food Ethics and the Production History (p. 93)
• Chapter 4 Tracing the Production History (p. 95)
• 1 Short-Range and Long-Range Ethics (p. 96)
• 2 Food as a Trace (p. 101)
• 3 The Judgement of Taste and Morality (p. 107)
• 4 The Trace as Presence and Lost Time (p. 115)
• 5 History of Effect (p. 123)
• 6 Production History and Mimesis (p. 130)
• Chapter 5 Food Ethics as the Ethics of the Trace (p. 139)
• 1 The Reliability of the Production History (p. 141)
• 2 Food and Ethical Identity (p. 148)
• 3 Food as a Trace of Nature (p. 153)
• 4 Food Ethics of the Consumers (p. 160)
• Chapter 6 Traceability and Food Ethics (p. 167)
• 1 Fragmentation and Traceability (p. 168)
• 2 Sociological Survey on Ethical Traceability (p. 172)
• 3 Consumer Autonomy: Remembering the Other and Informed Choice (p. 181)
• 4 Recognizing Consumers Recognizing Producers (p. 189)
• References (p. 203)
• Index (p. 209)