Development and main doctrines of food philosophy in antiquity

The paper considers the problems of food philosophy’s genesis as an important indicator of socio-cultural knowledge and cultural identity. Development of the philosophy of food as a factor of anthroposociogenesis in primitive society and complementary philosophical concepts of understanding the philosophy of food in antiquity and the Middle Ages is analyzed. Basic features of meaningful consideration of food in the paradigm of ancient philosophy is embodied and reflected in the figures and teachings of Plato and Epicurus; they fix diametrically different views on the role of food in human life. Plato in the "Republic" emphasizes the need for more ascetic attitude to food, and ideally posits its construction to utilitarian function of consumption. The doctrine of Epicurus, on the contrary, enriched and developed the spirit of hedonism, enjoy food as an ideal collective everyday life of harmony, so correcting more ascetic ideal of Plato. Then, in the Hellenistic period and the Middle Ages there was greater divergence of these dual oppositions as dual consideration of the world occurred in this period in various fields of cooperation. Within the various binary oppositions they considered the soul and the body, material and spiritual world, good and evil, heaven and hell, male and female. If ancient Greek philosophers emphasized asceticism in relation to food, seeing it primarily as a spiritual practice, the desire to acquire wisdom and intellectual achievements, the view of the Middle Ages focused on the search for personal salvation and divine enlightenment of the soul. Thus binary paradigms of food hedonism and asceticism are closely connected with philosophical ideas about man’s place in the world in the analyzed culture periods.