Hunting & Philosophy: Taking Aim at the Heart of Life Nathan Kowalsky (ed.) St. Joseph’s College, University of Alberta [email protected] I. The Project.................................................................. 1 II. Brief Contents............................................................. 2 III. Expanded Contents (with abstracts)............................ 4 IV. Length & Timeline....................................................... 16 V. The Editor................................................................... 16 VI. Call for Abstracts......................................................... 16 I. The Project Hunting & Philosophy is a trade paperback intended to be a part of Wiley-Blackwell’s Philosophy for Everyone series. It will attract attention by its apparently oxymoronic purview, and pique the interest of gourmands and granolas, vegetarians and veterinarians, academics and activists – and hunters, of course! Out of an overwhelmingly large pool of 117 abstracts, we have secured twenty contributors from a wide range of disciplines and walks of life, each of whom will write a chapter that is both philosophically stimulating and inviting to a general reading audience. Chapters have been divided into the following four units: The Good, the Bad, and the Hunter; The Hunter’s View of the World; Eating Nature Naturally; and The Antler Chandelier: Hunting in Culture, Politics and Tradition. In order to recuperate the ancient appeal of philosophy as a broadly accessible means of critical awareness, volumes in this series balance contributions by professional philosophers with academics from other disciplines, as well as non-academic writers. This book is no exception, with philosophy, biology, archeology, anthropology, sociology, geography, communications, religion, and fine arts representing the academy. Moreover, among the contributors are three confirmed non-hunters and nine confirmed hunters, seven women authors, one aboriginal author, two confirmed anti-hunters, one confirmed ex-vegan, and one confirmed yak herder! Finally, several contributors have considerably high profiles among their respective constituencies. 1 | P a g e II. Brief Contents Unit 1: The Good, the Bad, and the Hunter “Taking a Shot” Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza Department of Philosophy Linfield College “Why and How is Fair Chase Fair?” Theodore R. Vitali Philosophy Department Saint Louis University Professional Ethicist of the Boone and Crockett Club “Hunting for Environmental Support” Lisa Kretz Marine Waste Resource Management Project Officer “Hunting Like a Vegetarian: Same Ethics, Different Flavors” Tovar Cerulli Freelance Writer “If You Love Hunting, You Can’t Go On Hunting Like This!” David Petersen Outdoor Author Unit 2: The Hunter’s View of the World “Hunting for Meaning” Brian Seitz Department of Philosophy Babson College “Getting By with a Little Help from My Hunter: Riding to Hounds in English Mounted Foxhound Packs” Alison Acton Department of Sociology University of Essex “Flying to the Falcon” Timothy Raven Hume Artist and Animal Trainer 2 | P a g e “Tracking in Pursuit of Knowledge: Teachings of an Algonquin Bush Hunter” Jacob Wawatie, Mowegan Stephanie Pyne Director of Kokomville Academy Department of Geography Carleton University “Living with Dead Animals: Trophies as Souvenirs of the Hunt” Garry Marvin Social Anthropology Roehampton University Unit 3: Eating Nature Naturally “The Carnivorous Herbivore: Hunting in Human Evolution” Valerius Geist Department of Biological Sciences University of Calgary “Killers and Keepers of Game: The Universality of the ‘Master of Animals’” Janina Duerr Institute for Prehistory and Archaeological Science University of Basel “Hunting: A Return to Nature?” Roger J. H. King Department of Philosophy University of Maine “The Camera or the Gun: Different Hunting Lenses and Ecologies” (tentative title) Jonathan Parker Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies University of North Texas “Sex, Death and Tofu: Can One Love Life and Deny the Flesh?” Richard Kover Institute of Philosophy Catholic University of Louvain (Leuven) Unit 4: The Antler Chandelier: Hunting in Culture, Politics and Tradition “Hunting Literature as Imaginative Atavism” Roger Scruton Research Professor, Philosophy Institute for the Psychological Sciences 3 | P a g e “The Lure of the Craft: Primitive Archery in Contemporary North America” Kay Koppedrayer Department of Religion and Culture Wilfrid Laurier University Associate Editor of Primitive Archer Magazine “Concerning Hunting: Hunting in Contemporary Art” Paula Lee Art History Summer Faculty, Sogang University Visiting Scholar, Harvard University “The New Artemis? Women who Hunt” Debra Merskin School of Journalism & Communication University of Oregon “Off the Grid: Hunting as Subversive Behavior” (tentative) James Carmine Department of Philosophy Carlow University III. Expanded Contents (with abstracts) Unit 1: The Good, the Bad, and the Hunter “Taking a Shot” Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza Department of Philosophy Linfield College I am ten or eleven years old. For the first time I align the sights on an animal with intent to shoot. My former “hunting experience” is that of vicious playground kids who skewer, crush, or burn insect-like critters. But this is a bird, a “real” animal. Trouble is, by now I’m a nature crusader who belongs to the WWF. I mean, I’ve pestered my father like a horsefly till he’s quit hunting. Yet here I am, with a sweet, unsuspecting animal marked by the white dot at the end of my barrel. I try to control my breathing as my thoughts mirror the resistance of the trigger I’m feathering…am I really going to pull it? The aim is to take a shot at a number of issues at the heart of hunting that range from what a fair kill is to certain tensions in the hunter’s ethos (technology versus skill) and practices of a controversial nature (baiting). Virtue ethics and a non-instrumental view of values brace the inquiry. 4 | P a g e These are flushed into sight by several autobiographical narratives aimed at my own conflicts (like the opening teaser—resolved later), which anchor arguments within the framework of sudden realizations, as well as accounts from popular writers in hunting and gun magazines. Other notable members of this hunting party that help track down veritable philosophical prey are: José Ortega y Gasset, Iberia’s foremost philosopher, award-winning Miguel Delibes, both of whom have written extensively and incisively on hunting, and David Sansone’s insightful views on sport as they concern hunting. They themselves are the object of crosshairs examination by philosophers Tom Regan and Peter Singer. In the end, all are fair game: no one’s safe here as the scope scans the horizon. This is no boy scout outing but a safari that seeks the one-bullet kill. Not packing the punch of a .500 magnum heavy scholarly article or the light load of a.22LR Outside Magazine piece, the chapter fits in the quarter bore category, bringing down genuine philosophical issues with an entertaining “popular” all around caliber. (Disclaimer: no real animals are harmed in the reading or writing. Only our own convictions are under peril.) “Why and How is Fair Chase Fair?” Theodore R. Vitali Philosophy Department Saint Louis University Professional Ethicist of the Boone and Crockett Club The ethics of fair chase does not constitute a moral requirement on the part of the hunter to treat the animal fairly. To claim that animals have a right to be treated fairly entails that animals have the right not be hunted. Fairness, therefore, must be for the hunter, not the hunted. Fairness to the hunter has two elements. The first is that hunting must be conducive to the conservation of the species and thus to the overall well being of the ecosystem of which it must play an integral part. Second, because the animal’s life is a good for the animal (directly) and a good for the ecosystem (indirectly), it cannot be destroyed without a proportionate good being achieved. In sport hunting, food and game management, though present and essential, are not the sufficient moral reason for killing an animal since the primary intention of the hunter is to enjoy the experience of hunting not food procurement nor game management. Therefore, there must be a proportionate good to compensate for the good that is lost. That good is the quality of the experience of the hunter. This experience, including the pleasure that is derived from it, is the experience of being a predator in the fundamental predator-prey relationship, the life-death continuum which is essential to all life in the biotic community. In the predator-prey relationship, the hunter practices the virtues and arts necessary for a successful hunt. These virtues and skills generate a deep sense of satisfaction and pleasure when performed at a very high level. Hence, the pleasure of the hunt is a result of the exercise of specifically human virtues applied by the hunter in his or her role as predator in search of prey. 5 | P a g e “Hunting for Environmental Support” Lisa Kretz Marine Waste Resource Management Project Officer Hunters are often perceived to be environmentalists, as they are a major political force for protecting various ecosystems that support the game they pursue. I will argue in this chapter that many standard defenses of hunting as an environmental practice are false. It can be argued that hunting preserves the balance of nature. Some contend that the natural human role in ecosystems includes consuming non-human animals. I will argue claims