Take that, Novalis!

For at least two centuries, people who ought to know better have been alleging that “philosophy bakes no bread.”  Google the expression, and you’ll find it (or a version of it) attributed to that wildly prolific philosopher, It Has Been Said. I found a hand-scrawled note to myself, claiming that

Bertrand Russell says it in The Problems of Philosophy, but I can’t seem to confirm the truth of this, so I’m inclined to think I made it up. You’ll find any number of online surveys, such as this one, asking you if you agree or disagree with the expression.  If you’d been around in, say, 1867, when the Journal of Speculative Philosophy began publication, you would have  found it on the masthead of the journal.

The claim seems to appear in print for the first time in the writings of one Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg, the philosopher-novelist also known as Novalis. Novalis managed to accomplish an awful lot, given that he died of tuberculosis at 28: he left an impressive collection of (fragmentary, unfinished) philosophical writings and letters, as well as two prose novels and a prose poem. He also left us with the assertion  that ““Philosophy cannot bake bread—however, it can provide us with God, freedom and immortality—now which is more practical—philosophy or economics?”

What you won’t find on google is much counterevidence to Novalis’s claim. But all that is about to change, as the 2009 graduates of the philosophy department take the baking world by storm.

Caleb Phillips has set out to put the lie to it, in his new blog, “Philosophy that Bakes Bread.” (Google THAT expression and all you’ll find is Caleb.) Find Caleb and his oat wheat bread recipe here. And Kate Goodpaster can be found this summer at the River Rock Cafe, earrrrrrrrly in the morning, baking all manner of bready objects, to the delight of the denizens of St. Peter.

A 1965 issue of Time magazine hauled out the old chestnut  about philosophy and bread in an article promising to answer that ancient question, “What (If Anything) to Expect from Today’s Philosophers.”  From some of us at least, you can expect, well, bread. Here’s some I baked today, in fact.