Gluttony: The Seven Deadly Sins - New York Public Library Humanities Lecture Series | Book for Philosophy & Ethics Studies, Religious Discussions

So concludes Francine Prose in her insightful analysis of gluttony. Part of the sadly uneven 7 Deadly Sins series, Prose's volume is one of the three best of the lot (the other two are Simon Blackburn's Lust and Robert Thurman's Anger). It's well worth reading.Prose, a sensitive historian as well as a penetrating observer of contemporary culture, believes that gluttony "may well be the most widespread" of the 7 deadlies, even though it "appears to have become the least harmful of sins" (p. 41). For those of us living in the wealthier nations, the ethos of food is paradoxical. On the one hand, we're surrounded by enducements to eat often and heartily--or, if one is a member of the high cuisine crowd, to eat preciously and expensively. On the other hand, however, we're also hyper-conscious of both the aesthetics of bodily appearance and the relationship between diet and health. As the old advertisement has it, you can't be too rich or too thin (in fact, even though the demographics no longer bear out the correlation, popular culture still associates obesity with poverty).What this means is that most of us to one degree or another are obsessed with food, either the eating of it or the painful avoidance of it. We may not talk about our food-obsession in the traditional language of sin, preferring instead the language of psychology and therapy (gluttony as a psychological compensatory strategy), but we frequently react to our own and others' over-eating in such strongly judgmental terms that it sounds as if we're condemning a sin. (When I used this book as a text in a philosophy class, for example, my students got pretty heated in their nearly unanimous criticisms of "fat, undisciplined" people.)But as Prose points out, gluttony has traditionally been seen as one of the 7 deadlies precisely because it becomes an idol--that is, an obsession--for people who fall under its sway. An obsession with food redirects attention away from what's important (in traditional terms, a relationship with God or beauty or service to others) and focuses it on self-pleasure and self-absorption. One's belly (or one's appearance, or one's health) becomes one's god. Is our current obsession with thinness on the one hand and gorging ourselves/titillating our palates on the other hand really so different from this? Prose doesn't think so, and I believe she's made a convincing case.An excellent, provocative, insightful, sensitive book--and beautifully illustrated as well.