{"id":8578,"date":"2010-09-01T11:55:28","date_gmt":"2010-09-01T16:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=8578"},"modified":"2017-09-19T20:15:17","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T00:15:17","slug":"hunting-philosophy-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/hunting-philosophy-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Hunting: In Search of the Wild Life, Edited by Nathan Kowalsky"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author\u2019s Note: A free review copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher, Wiley-Blackwell<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"Wiley-Blackwell\u2019s series of philosophy books for general readers, Philosophy for Everyone<\/a>, aims to serve general, non-expert readers without actually treating them as \u201cdummies\u201d or creating watered-down, one-size-fits-all philosophy. The risk such an endeavor always faces is to end up serving nobody<\/em> while trying to serve everybody<\/em>, failing to satisfy either the experts or the neophytes.<\/p>\n

In the anthology Hunting: In Search of the Wild Life<\/a> <\/em>(affiliate link), editor Nathan Kowalsky brings together an impressive list of both heavyweights and lightweights from philosophical academia, as well as writers from other fields, many (okay, most) of them being active hunters. The goal: to present to general readers a philosophical examination of hunting from many angles without the jargon, word-spinning, and castles-in-the-air theorizing that characterizes much of “expert” philosophy.<\/p>\n

The Philosophy of Hunting<\/h2>\n

The anthology opens with a foreword by David Petersen, whose credentials include serving as a Field Director for Trout Unlimited and being named the Conservationist of the Year by the Colorado Wildlife Foundation. Perhaps not surprisingly, Petersen’s foreword sets the tone for most of the anthology as a whole in giving a sort of patient nod to criticisms of hunting–but mostly as a launching pad for unvarnished praise (or at least support) of the practice of hunting. For example, he staunchly claims that hunting’s critics completely miss the “self-evident biological fact\u2026that a complementary instinctive need to be hunted<\/em> is built into the evolved prey species” (xiii; italics in the original). Even better, the predator-prey “sacred game” is in fact an evolutionary sine qua non<\/em>, something “without which no living thing would even be”<\/em> (italics in the original).<\/p>\n

Despite this trumpeting (I would almost say bombast) for the essentiality of hunting–to humans and to nature as a whole–Hunting<\/em> seeks to present fairly and in informative detail both sides of the debate. To do so, the essays are split up into four parts, covering the larger categories under discussion:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. “The Good, the Bad, and the Hunter”: the morality of hunting;<\/li>\n
  2. “The Hunter\u2019s View of the World”: what hunting is really<\/em> like, from the horse\u2019s mouth;<\/li>\n
  3. “Eating Nature Naturally”: hunting and the environment\/conservation;<\/li>\n
  4. “The Antler Chandelier: Hunting in Culture, Politics, and Tradition”: the interrelationship of hunting and various social factors.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    At first glance, an exploration of hunting including these topics would be very informative, both to supporters and critics, offering key insights and perhaps revolutionary arguments. Petersen is thus rightly confident when he predicts that readers will be “gently jolted into having to rethink what you thought<\/em> you knew about hunting all along” (xv).<\/p>\n

    In Intellectual Battle There Is Law<\/h2>\n

    The best part of Hunting<\/em> is its balance of breadth with tightness, its manageably sized essays focusing on a wide variety of arguments for and against hunting. At the same time, recurring themes clearly come out and provide threads that weave the whole together. These include:<\/p>\n