A colleague of mine, Randall Auxier, offered this fine meditation on Facebook, and I couldn't help but share.
A doubt has become a real problem for me. We all know that bacon is sort of an end in itself. It's almost a Kantian Idea of Reason --God, freedom, immortality, and bacon-- the ideas without which nothing else can really be good. And home grown tomatoes, while certainly a widely acknowledge intrinsic good, are commonly seen as contributors to other goods, but still very, very good all alone (with a bit of salt, perhaps). But here is the problem: I can't shake the feeling that bacon and homegrown tomatoes, even with good bread, can become a mayonnaise delivery system. Now, I know what you're thinking: "bacon isn't a system in the service of anything but itself." I know, I know. BUT HEAR ME OUT. How can you KNOW that unless you leave the mayonnaise off of the BLT? And no one has ever done that, and no one ever will. That's MY point. It's not just French ancestry speaking here. I am asserting that bacon CAN be subordinated in the hierarchy of goods, or at least, it is impossible to prove that it CAN'T BE, since no one is going to test this.
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