Verdauung des Fremden. Zu einer Philosophie der Ernährung

Digestion is the biological utilization of something opposite, contrary or alien, external to one’s own life. The alien is negated in its identity here, and in some cases is killed. At the same time, this involves an (auto-)confrontation by the organism with itself: strangeness or alienness is self-alienation, a tendency toward cleavage or splitting provoked by what is Other. What is integrated as compatible or expelled as incompatible follows individual rules. A direct contributor here is the culinary culture that creates and underpins nourishment by food: a preparation of wild alienness for compatibility. Its flip side comprises infectious auto-immune reactions. Digestion is directed against one’s own organism; self-alienation in turn splits into a foreign, alien force. Methodological key-elements are a dialectical reading of Aristotle's theory of nutrition and a reference to the exploration of the "physiological inflammation" by Robert Rössle.