Dreamer here:

I've been out of touch for a few days.  I'd like to respond to a few
snippets taken out of various letters and possibly various threads.
> >
> >Chris Lees:
> >I believe I am correct in stating, that people were indeed hunted for
> 'sport',
> >pursued by hunters on horseback in the same manner as foxes or deer,
> and
> >then murdered, until as recently as sixty years ago, in Australia.
> 
Jim Tantillo> I suppose one *could* call this form of racial genocide
hunting, but
> then that would be using the term "hunting" in the broadest imaginable
> way. . .  I may simply be
> misinformed, but I bet there were no legal seasons, limits, licenses,
> laws, or anything else governing the "sport hunting" of aboriginal
> peoples in the Australia example. The comparison strikes me as an
> unfair equivocation.

Dreamer: Are you saying that hunting aboriginals would be more
appropriate if it were government-licensed and there were a suitable bag
limit?  Honestly, I'm not sure I see your point.  Frankly, the
government-regulation dimension of hunting has very little philosophical
relevance to me.  If a killing is wrong on more fundamental moral
grounds, the fact that it was done with a license does not impress me. 
Similarly, if some instances of hunting ARE ethically justifiable
(low-tech, subsistence hunting of non-endangered species by
traditionalist native americans, for the sake of argument), I don't
think a government prohibition of the practice would very much affect
the hunters' moral claims.

I think Chris Lees's point, and mine, was that the "sacred game"
explanation of hunting can and has been used to justify the hunting of
humans.  Humans would seem to make even better "game" than deer.  Why
not hunt them, under your rationale?  (There are a number of B-movies
out there which play with this theme.  The Romans gladiatorial games
also had a tendency to blur the lines between human and non-human
"game.")

We come back then to the question of how you can justify doing things to
animals that you would not allow to be done to humans.  Some of the
rationales offered to date in this list discussion: animals can't speak
(or at least we're not smart enough to understand them); animals don't
suffer (by way of proof, the assertion is made that only self-concious
beings really suffer); animals aren't self-concious beings (no proof
offered); animals don't live as long as we do (neither do people with
diagnosed fatal diseases. . . (Can we hunt them then, Dad?! Huh?!)).

By way of alternative, I suggested that we focus on the capacity for
play.  The responses from Mr. Tantillo confirm that he recognizes the
transcendent aspect of play.  (At one point he says "It is possible to
build upon your fundamental insight that play is important to
people and reason from there (somehow) that hunting is important to
people.") But he only discusses that transcendence as a justification
for hunting.  He ignores the original question: if the transcendence in
play can be a justification for hunting, why can't it be a basis for
recognizing value in the lives of the animals hunted?  If play is
important to people, why should we assume that it is any less important
to --or any less valuable when experienced by-- an animal?  Why should a
deer, squirrel, or (to take a highly sympathetic case) a dolphin be
deprived of years of transcendent frolic and play just to provide a
presumptuous human hunter with his/her own brief moment of
transcendence?  A principled response to this question is politely
requested.
> 

Tantillo:  I'm reminded that Plato was the one who originally
> argued (in the Laws) that hunting with hounds was the noblest form of
> the sport. . . .

Dreamer:  Plato also had interesting justifications for slavery and the
oppression of women.  Like all of us, he was a creature of his times.  I
like to think that we've stumbled upon a few moral insights since that
time.  

Tantillo > Plato was making a point about how richly aesthetic an
activity
> hunting with hounds is. Plato had a highly refined and well developed
> appreciation of the houndsman's art--and I do not think it is
> hyperbole to call it "art." As with all art forms, genuine aesthetic
> appreciation and knowledge of the art takes both time to cultivate and
> a sympathetic spirit to understand its merits. . . . Plato
> thought hunting could elevate the hunter while celebrating the animal.
> The root of the word "aesthetics" comes from the Greek verb
> _aisthanomai _, which means "I perceive." Whereas Chris perceives
> great ugliness in hunting, others perceive great beauty.

Dreamer: Tantillo, in the same poetic vein, quotes Pam Houston as to how
hunting should be appreciated as something akin to an opera.  Of course,
I don't dispute any of this.  We can view hunting as "art" with certain
artistic merits.  We can similarly view some of the holocaust medical
experimentation on nonconsenting jews and gypsies as "science" with
certain scientific merits.  We can view the human sacrifice in certain
historical societies as "religious" ritual with symbolic
efficaciousness.  The human mind is capable of amazing feats of
abstraction.  I'll remind us once again that this is why ethics
desperately needs to be informed by the heart, as well as the mind.

Even if we accept that hunting can provide a "transcendent" experience,
it does so at the expense of another non-consenting living creature. 
That makes it fundamentally different than opera, ballet, etc.  
> 
> >Chris:
> >Another point which I have not seen mentioned, is the aesthetic. One
> factor
> >which influenced me to give up hunting, was the sense of disgust I
> felt,
> >with myself, for being proud to have converted a superb and beautiful
> 
> >living creature into a bloody mess. The sense of satisfaction at
> having
> >prevailed, and outwitted a wild bird or animal, was set against the
> visual
> >impact of what it was that I had actually achieved. The graceful
> movements
> >of, say, a hare, delighted my eye. Then BANG. Screams of agony, and
> I've
> >changed what was life and beauty, into something less. I degraded the
> hare.
> >But I simultaneously degraded myself, my conception of my self.

Dreamer:  Well-expressed.  In my case, it was an armadillo.
> 
> 
Tantillo:  In some ways what we are discussing here is the very
> possibility of an aesthetic appreciation of the hunt. . . .  I'll
> cite Pam Houston again: "If hunting can be like war it can also be
> like opera, or like fine wine. It can be like out-of-body travel, it
> can be like the suspension of disbelief. Hunting can be all these
> things and more; like a woman, it won't sit down and be just one
> thing." (xi)

Dreamer:  War can be like all those things to the perpetrator.  Torture
can be like all those things to the torturer.  Again, you don't
generally kill another thinking, living being in an opera, or put a
bullet through the waiter as part of traditional wine etiquette.

To return briefly to the "voluntariness" or "consent" issue: 

Tantillo notes that "I don't have a quick response
to the voluntariness issue, except to note that what makes prey, prey,
is that they are in the business
full-time of eluding predation."  

Dreamer: Are you saying predators, (bears, cougars, etc.) are
off-limits? And, extrapolating to humans again, since Homo Sapiens has
spent most of its evolution as "prey" for various large carnivores,
wouldn't your argument justify hunting groups of homo sapiens?


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