Feeding utopia: food and nutrition in the utopian educational publications of Agostinho de Silva
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14393/REVEDFIL.v39a2025-70535Keywords:
Utopia, Encyclopedism, Human NutritionAbstract
Abstract: Published in 1942, Human Nutrition is one of the 96 volumes of the multidisciplinary collection Initiation/Cultural Notebooks, entirely conceived and produced between 1940 and 1944 by the Portuguese philosopher and utopian pedagogue Agostinho da Silva (see Reis, “The genealogy of the Utopian Millenarianism of the Oporto philosopher Agostinho da Silva” in Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal, 2nd series). The announcement on the back cover of the first issue of this collection, states that the collection has been launched “without any kind of commercial purpose” so as to help to “popularize the knowledge that is indispensable for a broad and solid culture”. With this encyclopedic project, Agostinho da Silva aimed to provide, at a modest price, a course of general knowledge to a large public deprived of advanced levels of schooling, without, however, ruling out the possibility of further in-depth studies of the themes addressed. Our essay aims to assess the extent to which Agostinho da Silva’s visionary reasoning allowed philosophical issues regarding food to be raised from a utopian perspective - for example, of what does food actually consist, what can and should be eaten, how we know what is safe to eat, what constitutes good food, and how food is distributed.
Keywords: Utopia; Encyclopedism; Human Nutrition.
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References
FRANCO, António Cândido. O Estranhíssimo Colosso. Uma biografia de Agostinho da Silva. Lisboa: Quetzal, 2015.
SILVA, Agostinho. Alimentação Humana. Lisboa: Cadernos de Iniciação Cultural, 1942.
Data de registro: 22/08/2023
Data de aceite: 22/11/2023
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Copyright (c) 2025 José Eduardo Reis
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Declaration of Copyright: The works published are the property of their authors, who may make use of them for later publications, always citing the original publication (original title, Educação e Filosofia, volume, issue, pages). The authors of the articles published are fully responsible for them; the journal and/or EDUFU are exempt from legal responsibility for their content.
Déclaration de droit d’auteur: Les œuvres publiées sont la propriété de leurs auteurs, qui peuvent les avoir pour publication ultérieure, à condition que l'édition originale soit mentionnée (titre de l'original, Educação e Filosofia, volume, nombre, pages). Tous les articles de cette revue relèvent de la seule responsabilité de leurs auteurs et aucune responsabilité légale quant à son contenu n'incombe au périodique ou à l’EDUFU.
