×
welcome covers

Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please


If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Philosophy Shorts

Philosophers on Wine

by Matt Qvortrup

‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads, about all the things rock stars normally don’t sing about. Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; a track like Van Morrison’s 1976 hit Cleaning Windows is the odd one out.

Philosophers, likewise, tend to have a narrow focus on epistemology, metaphysics and trifles like the meaning of life. But occasionally great minds stray from their turf and write about other matters, for example buildings (Martin Heidegger), food (Hobbes), tomato juice (Robert Nozick), and the weather (Lucretius and Aristotle). This series of Shorts is about these unfamiliar themes; about the things philosophers also write about.