A Commentary on the Passing Scene by
Robert Paul Wolff
rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
Monday, May 23, 2016
SUCCESS HAS CROWNED MY EFFORTS
The coquelet was delicious. Tomorrow, I shall try some fish --perhaps coquilles St Jacques, if they are available at the market, or maybe skate [raie], which is delicious, even if rather scary looking.
The culinary theme of your recent posts made me curious about what you might think of one of the arguments Loren Lomasky offered in a 2013 paper "Is it Wrong to Eat Animals?" - that the contribution of meat eating to lives of excellence is underestimated. He suggests that the pleasures of meat "afford human beings goods comparable qualitatively and quantitatively to those held forth by the arts. Lives of many people would be significantly impaired were they to forego carnivorous consumption . . . When we look at the world's great cuisines we discover without exception that they not only include meat but feature it as a focal point of fine meals. In France as in India, China as in Italy, meat is sovereign ... that so many religions advance constraints on which animals are to be eaten and how the permissible ones are to be slaughtered and prepared conveys a recognition of meat eating as being among the very important components of how human beings can live well."
Skate is wonderful, though I'll admit that I usually (and preferably) buy the wing already removed from the otherwise difficult to deal with bony piece, and certainly not in full skate form. I hope you'll enjoy!
The culinary theme of your recent posts made me curious about what you might think of one of the arguments Loren Lomasky offered in a 2013 paper "Is it Wrong to Eat Animals?" - that the contribution of meat eating to lives of excellence is underestimated. He suggests that the pleasures of meat "afford human beings goods comparable qualitatively and quantitatively to those held forth by the arts. Lives of many people would be significantly impaired were they to forego carnivorous consumption . . . When we look at the world's great cuisines we discover without exception that they not only include meat but feature it as a focal point of fine meals. In France as in India, China as in Italy, meat is sovereign ... that so many religions advance constraints on which animals are to be eaten and how the permissible ones are to be slaughtered and prepared conveys a recognition of meat eating as being among the very important components of how human beings can live well."
ReplyDeleteSkate is wonderful, though I'll admit that I usually (and preferably) buy the wing already removed from the otherwise difficult to deal with bony piece, and certainly not in full skate form. I hope you'll enjoy!
ReplyDelete