To Eat or Not to Eat: That is the Question

It's the time of the year when we spend hours wrestling with crowds in the mall, when finding a parking space within a ten minute walk of the store is the high point of the day, when we send cards to people we didn't talk to all year, and warm our homes with the smells of baking and cooking. Turkey, ham, potatoes, fruitcake, yams, bread, and of course, holiday cookies: especially chocolate chip cookies. After all, what are the holidays without lots of diet-busting, tooth-decaying cookies to eat? Ahhh... you just have to love chocolate chip cookies... the feel of the dough as you mix it, the eating of a few raw chips before you add them to the mixing bowl, and the heart-warming smell of them baking.



Chocolate chip cookies are so simple: flour, butter, salt, baking soda, vanilla, eggs, sugar, brown sugar, and, of course, chocolate chips. One could say that the ingredients in a chocolate chip cookie are the ingredients of life: mix the flour, butter, salt, baking soda, vanilla, eggs, and sugars together, and you get a basic "bread," i.e., the day-to-day staple of life, the routine and mundane. Not bad tasting but nothing special; still, it contains all the necessary ingredients to stay physically alive. Physically alive, sure...but what are you living for? Ahhh... add the chocolate chips and bingo! You now have what you are living for: those small, sweet, decadent moments of luxury and extravagance, of joyful celebration... those moments that make life worth living. After all, a chocolate chip cookie without the chocolate chips is not a chocolate chip cookie. And life without those small, momentary moments of joy and even extravagance is not life. However, you must be careful, of course, not to add too many chocolate chip cookies - it will just make the cookie too sweet and you will end up sick to your stomach. Just like a chocolate chip cookie, life has to have the right balance of boring, routine, mundane "bread" and joyful, extravagant, even decadent "chocolate" moments. Too much of the boring, and you wonder why bother living; too much of the sweet and you just get sick.

Marx wouldn't care less if the cookie had chocolate chips in it or not: his only concern would be how the cookie was manufactured. Was it made in a small, preferably family-owned business, where each person is known to one another and takes pride in their final product? Or was it mass-produced in a huge anonymous factory, where the workers mean nothing to the employers except for how many cookies they made that day? Does this cookie represent the pride and uplifting of the creator's spirit, or does it represent the beating-down of the spirit of many hundreds of anonymous humans spending their day in meaningless, mind-numbing work for the profit of a corporation they have no say in? By eating that chocolate chip cookie, are you adding to the goodness of the human spirit, or adding to the misery of a nameless worker?

Hobbes would be most concerned with how many cookies you have. He would see the cookie as something to be acquired and accumulated, for the more cookies you own, the more power you have. Of course, it would be best to acquire more cookies with chocolate chips instead of those without chocolate chips, since those with the chocolate chips are a more valuable commodity, therefore increasing your power. It would be important to be generous in sharing your cookies, since the more generous you are with your "riches" - your cookies - the more power you would gain. Since man spends life in a "perpetual and restless desire of power after power," desiring the cookie would not be a sin, it would just be an expression of human's natural desire for power.

He would also wonder if the chocolate chips and the "bread" of the cookie could live in peace together, and if they could avoid conflict. He would probably postulate that the "bread" of the cookie is ultimately selfish, and would want more and more chocolate chips in it. The only way for the cookie to secure itself a civil society would be for the cookie to give itself over to an absolute authority: a recipe written in stone that could never be questioned or modified.

Hume would look at the cookie and see it as a representation of the combat between passion and reason, that the "bread" of the cookie is the "idea" and the chocolate chips the "impression." Since "actions, on many occasions, may give rise to false conclusions in others," he would question if eating the cookie might be misunderstood by others. Perhaps others might see you eating the cookie as a sinful act. Of course, just because others might misunderstand your actions in eating the cookie, it doesn't mean that eating the cookie shows a defect in your moral character. Ultimately, though, the question of whether or not the chocolate chips in the cookie is a good or an evil can only be determined by the senses.

Nietzshe would see the chips as the aristocracy and the "bread" as the slaves, whose sole purpose in life is to serve and set-off the chips perfectly, providing the chips with a place to shine. The chips, after all, are born aristocratic, and the bread is born as a slave. The bread can never become aristocratic, however, the chips can cease to act aristocratic... perhaps by allowing themselves to sit around in the sun and melt, creating a big mess. Nietzshe would probably be taken aback at the thought that the cookie was, in essence, the perfect blending of aristocrat and slave.

Schopenhauer would say that eating the cookie will not make you happy - it will just make you want more cookies, and that perhaps by eating the cookie you are denying the will of the cookie to exist. He would question if one is taking the well-being of the cookie fully into consideration. He would also say that by sacrificing your desire to eat the cookie, you may indeed be bringing about your own true salvation. After all, true salvation requires complete denial of the will. On the other hand, the ultimate goal of the good life is in extinction, so by eating the cookie - bringing about its demise - you may be creating true salvation for the cookie.

Kierkegaard would question whether the cookie represents living life aesthetically or ethically, and whether someone who chooses to eat the cookie is making an aesthetical - sinful - choice or an ethical choice. He would view the chocolate chips as representing lust, obscure passions and perdition and would eat just the "bread," since the chips represent the aesthetical, the evil. Ultimately, whether or not you eat the cookie is an individual choice.

Sartre would question whether or not the cookie exists. Does it become a cookie while it is still a recipe, while it is being mixed in the bowl, while it is baking in the oven, or only after it leaves the oven? Is the cookie aware of itself? Does the cookie know it exists? Does the cookie know it is a cookie? Does the cookie wonder if being eaten is good for it or not? Is it good for all cookies to be eaten? Does the cookie still exist after you eat it? By eating the cookie, do you exist?

Ultimately, the best answer to all these thoughts and questions is simple: just eat the damn thing already.


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Note: This was written in December, 2003, for Professor Knoecklein's Ethics class at Pikes Peak Community College. The work cited from is Oliver A. Johnson's Ethics: Selections from Classical and Contemporary Writers, 1999.