University of Michigan Law School University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository Articles Faculty Scholarship 1997 Gluttony William I. Miller University of Michigan Law School, [email protected] Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/697 Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles Part of the Food and Drug Law Commons, Legal History Commons, and the Religion Law Commons Recommended Citation Miller, William I. "Gluttony." Representations 60 (1997): 92-112. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WILLIAM IAN MILLER Gluttony Amongthem all, whocan descry A vicemore mean than Gluttony? Of anygroveling slave ofsense, Notone can claimso smallpretense To thatindulgence which the wise Allowto human frailties As theinglorious, beastly sinner, Whoseonly object is-a dinner. -WWm.Combe 1815' GLUTTONY DOES NOT HAVE THE GRANDEUR OF PRIDE, the often brilliantstrategic meanness of envyand avarice,the gloryof wrath.It does man- age to gain some small allure byits associationwith lust, its sexy siblingsin of the flesh. Yet there is somethingirrevocably unseemly about gluttony,vulgar and lowbrow,self-indulgent in a swinishway. Gluttony is not the stuffof tragedyor epic. Imagine Hamlet too fat to take revenge or Homer making his topic the gluttonyof Achilles rather than his wrath.2With gluttony,compare pride and anger,sins thatmark the grand action of revenge,sins thatcan be emblematized by tigers,lions, eagles, and hawks,rather than by pigs and (dare I say it) humans. Gluttonyrequires some immersionin the dank and sour realm of disgust.Glut- tonyinevitably leads to regurgitation,excrement, hangover, and gas and to de- spair and feelingsof disgust.But it has a cheerier side too that I don't mean to ignore: the delightsand pleasures of good food, drink,and convivialjoys.If glut- tonyoften drags disgustin its wake, it also motivatesa certainkind of amiability that makes for good companionship,hospitality, and even a kind of easygoing benevolence. Most of the seven deadly sins are less properlysins than dispositions,tenden- cies, or traitsof character.Nor are theya complete listof sin-generatingdisposi- tions. Fearfulness,for example, is surely a much graver motivatorof sin than gluttonyand even pride.Just what is it about gluttonythat makes ita vice? Do the grounds of its viciousnessshift through time? Could one ever claim gluttonya virtuewithout also being a shallow hedonist?Even David Hume, who took great delightin making the case for the virtueof pride, was willingto go only halfway on gluttony'sbehalf, arguing, in effect,that obsessing on its viciousness meant you were moved bythe unamiable vicesof crabbed moralismand frenziedenthu- siasm,not thatyou were manifestingvirtue: 92 REPRESENTATIONS 60 * Fall 1997 ? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions To imagine,that the gratifyingof any sense,or the indulgingof any delicacyin meat, drink,or apparelis of itselfa vice,can neverenter into a head,that is notdisordered by thefrenzies of enthusiasm.3 We are somewhat conflictedabout the precise moral status of gluttony.In- deed, as we shall see, so were earlier ages, although the grounds of theirambiva- lence were ratherdifferent from ours. Among us the sin of gluttonyis the sin of fat,whether it lolls about men'spaunches (note thatfat transforms stomachs into paunches, pots, or beer bellies) or else squigglesloosely about women'sthighs, or clogs the arteriesin a gender-neutralfashion. Gluttony for us is the sin of ugliness and ill health,but chieflyugliness. Except forphilosophers and theologians,most of us have nevermanaged to distinguishtoo wellbetween the good and thebeauti- ful,between the ethicaland moral on one hand and the aestheticand pleasurable on the other.As a matterof practicalmorality, ugliness remains, despite centuries of pious exhortationto thecontrary, a sin. And thevery cachet of gluttony'shistor- ical pedigree as an honored memberof a select group of capital sins helps relax the grip of those nigglingscruples we may have acquired about blaming the fat for theirobesity. There is nothingquite like the sin of fat.Its wages, we are told, is death-physical, moral, and social. The author of a best-sellinghow-to-raise- your-adolescent-daughterbook reportsthat 11 percentof Americanswould abort a fetusif theywere told it had a tendencyto obesity.Elementary-school children judge the fat kid in the class more negativelythan theydo the bully.4In thislife, the fat are damned, the beautiful (who manifestlyare not fat) are saved, and we are not sure that this ordering doesn't also anticipatearrangements beyond the grave. But thisis a veryrecent historical development, for when the poor were thin, fatwas beautiful.And when povertycame to be characterizedless by insufficient calories and more by too many calories of the wrong kind, fatbecame ugly.In a perverseway, the poor determinefashion by providingan antimodelof the ideal body type that the rich then imitatenegatively. I will discuss these issues more fullylater but let me not loosen my grip on thismorsel of an argumentwithout adding the followingtidbit: although not all gluttonyleads to obesity,nor is all obesitythe consequence of the voluntaryindulgence in the vice of gluttony,we antigluttonousmoralists are never quite willingto pardon fat. The burden of proof,we think,is upon fatpeople to adduce evidence thatthey are not gluttons, for fat makes out a prima facie case thatthey are guiltyand thus owe the restof us an apology or an explanation forhaving offended. When the firstlist of the chiefsins appeared at the end of the fourthcentury there were eight of them and gluttonyheaded the list.5Pride may have been thoughtmore serious,but gluttonystill got firstbilling. Gluttony, doing general service for all the sins of the flesh,was also listed firstin the shorterlist of the Gluttony 93 This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions three temptationsof Christ,although the temptationsnever enjoyed the long- runningpopularity of the seven vices.6Gluttony also was listed firstby John Cas- sian who introducedthe listof sins to the Latin Westin the fifthcentury, and an occasional writerwould see fitto startwith gluttony as late as the thirteenthcen- tury.7Considering thatthe orderingoriginated with severe desert ascetics,it was no accidentthat they listed first what was torturingthem most: desires of the flesh, food first,then sex.8 In the end, however,the orderingof St. Gregorythe Great (d. 604) carried the day, and in that order Superbia(Pride) claimed its prideful place as first,as made sense for the moral ordering of a less obsessivelyascetic and more secularized world; gluttonywas stuckback in the pack one step ahead of lust,which figured last. But the preacher whose topic was gluttonyhad no problem findingbiblical and patristicsupport for claiming its historical priority even ifit was in some sense less serious a sin than pride and avarice. After all, was it not appetite for the forbidden fruit,desire for that apple that cost us all paradise? Thus Chaucer's Pardoner: o glotonye,full of cursednesse! o causefirst of our confusion! o originalof our damnation, Til Christhad boughtus withhis blood again! Lo, howdeare, shortly for to sayn, Aboughtwas thilke [this, such] cursed vileynye! Corruptwas all thisworld for glotonye.9 And considerablyearlier in the fourthcentury St. John Chrysostomwas also will- ing to add the flood to gluttony'sdiscredit: "Gluttony turned Adam out of Para- dise, gluttonyit was thatdrew down the deluge at the timeof Noah."'0 Quite an unsavorybeginning for our amiable vice. To us, Eve has more in common withPrometheus than withthe fat lady in the circus.No desperate resortto the gloss of food-obsessedascetics was required to give pride and avarice preeminence. Does not Ecclesiasticusdeclare pride the beginning of all sin (Sir. 10:13) and St. Paul in his firstletter to Timothy make avarice "the root of all evil" (Tim. 6:10)? But the image of gluttonyas the firstsin was persistent.The officialhomilies of the Anglican church followed the same line. Adam and Eve were gluttonous,said the homilist,and theirexcesses cost us paradise."I Higher-browtheologians, perhaps the highestbrow of all, St. Thomas Aquinas, even feltcompelled to address the issue of gluttony'spriority before dismissingit and assertingthe preeminenceof pride and avarice.'2 Whethergluttony is firstor penultimateis not so crucial; what is remarkable, however,and this was obsessed upon by medieval and early modern moralists, was just how fertilegluttony was of other vices. The power of a vice to generate 94 REPRESENTATIONS This content downloaded from 141.211.57.224 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 16:45:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions othervices was whatthe theologiansunderstood to make a vice capital. Less rigor- ous souls-or rigorous souls who doubted theirpowers to resista good meal- could argue that gluttonyshould be winked at: "But is there anyone, 0 Lord," says a desperate Augustine, "who is never enticed beyond the strictlimit of need?"'3 Eating is necessaryfor life and the blame forlack of measure should be discounted for that reason. But Aquinas concluded that gluttony'sproductivity of vice was undeniable and the sin was thus unarguablycapital. 14 Gluttonypaved the way to lust. It was lust's"forechamber" in the words of a seventeenth-centurysermonizer.15 If in a post-Freudianworld we have learned to eroticize food, privilegingsex and lust as the prime movers and motivatorsof virtuallyall desire, premodern people ratherastutely inverted the order. They alimentarizedlust. It was food, ingestion,and alimentationin all its formsthat provided the dominant metaphors and explanations of motive and desire.