Seite - 29 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Band 4:2

27 | www.limina-graz.eu Alessandro De Cesaris | The Taste of Truth a definition that would need further clarification and is certainly not free from some problematic aspects, but that is clear enough for the sake of this paper, I will understand technology as the domain of all forms of artificial mediation. Even though it is possible to mediate and extend the physiology and the aesthetics of taste through prostheses and other artificial devices, we have focused on these two mediation processes without taking into account the role of technology. However, of course, this influence, along with the con- stant interplay between these three dimensions, must never be forgotten. This being said, the symbolic dimension is structurally technological: it is based at the very least on the specific form of artificial medium that is lan- guage. In this final chapter I will come back to some aspects of the experi- ence of taste I have already brought to attention, and I will investigate their symbolic dimension. 4.1 Taste and knowledge The first element to consider with more depth and from a new standpoint is the already mentioned connection between knowledge and pleasure. In his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Immanuel Kant remarks that taste is a faculty of judgment, since it evaluates the wholesomeness of food before ingestion (cf. Kant 2016, 51). The means by which taste judg- es is pleasure: wholesome food is tasty. Before analysing taste in its more general and reflective sense – an analysis that Kant will offer both in the Anthropology and in the third Critique – Kant already highlights how the interconnectedness of pleasure and knowledge is a core aspect of any ex- perience of taste. The etymological connection between sapere and sapor is well-known. Giorgio Agamben has stressed the importance of Kant’s reflection on the faculty of taste, since the German philosopher highlights for the first time how this identification of knowledge and pleasure is highly problematic (cf. Agamben 2015, 11). Since Plato, according to Agamben, knowledge and beauty are clearly distinguished, but at the same time, their reciprocal rela- tion is constantly interrogated. The judgment of taste is a source of «em- barassement» precisely because it belongs to the faculty of cognition, but The judgement of taste as a source of «embarassement»