Your complimentary articles

You’ve read one of your four complimentary articles for this month.

You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Philosophy Shorts

Philosophers on Sneezing

by Matt Qvortrup

‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads. It was about all the things rock stars normally don’t sing about. Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; tracks like Rose Royce’s 1976 hit ‘Car Wash’ are the exception.

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.

“Ah yes, the ecstasy of sneezing.”
(Søren Kierkegaard Papers, p.225)

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was not normally one for giving advice on bodily matters, but he was such a big fan of the everyday pleasure of the sneeze that he made an exception in this case and counselled “that if you really wish to sneeze, then gurgle your nose with water, and if that doesn’t work try to tickle your nose” – though he pointed out that this “would not continue to work.” (Papers, p.104)

The Danish existentialist had several beliefs in common with his seventeenth-century French predecessor Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), including their agreement on Original Sin, the benevolence of the Almighty, and trusting obedience to the Deity. Bizarrely, they also shared a passion for sneezing. Like the Dane, the French writer stressed the blissful feeling of sternutation: “Sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul,” he wrote. (Pensées, p.160)

This delight was not only the preserve of religious bachelors in the modern period. Sneezing was something from which even the ancient philosophers took pleasure. Aristotle (384-322 BC), who was normally not given to hyperbole, extolled the sensation associated with this respiratory phenomenon, and pronounced that “we regard sneezing as divine.” Not one to leave a topic alone, the Macedonian went on to wonder why “farting and burping are not regarded as sacred, but that of sneezing is so regarded?” His explanation was as follows: “Because this region [the head] is the most sacred, the breath from it is revered.” (Problems, XXXIII).

So far so good. But certain Anglicans were excessively worried about the consequences of sneezing. Pascal and Kierkegaard, while both hard-line Christian fundamentalists, did not subscribe to this form of Christianity. Nor did the famously atheistic Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), but he did write about the dangers of sneezing according to the Church of England: “Old fashioned people still say ‘bless you’ when one sneezes, but they have forgotten the reason for this custom. The reason was that people were thought to sneeze out their souls, and before their souls could get back, lurking demons were apt to enter the un-souled. But if you said, ‘God bless you’, the demons were frightened off.” (Unpopular Essays, p.98)

Perhaps more disturbing to modern readers is the knowledge that the droplets of a sneeze can travel up to four metres from the offending and possibly germ-laden nostrils. These days, it’s likely we will be more worried about social distancing than about demons entering our souls. Perhaps rightly so; or perhaps not. Take your pick.

Matt Qvortrup’s book Great Minds on Small Things is published by Duckworth.