Current Affairs

mrina · Chief of Army Staff Joined: 10 Mar 2008 Posts: 4174

Is Hunting Fun? Is Killing?
Anti-hunting advocates frequently use the label "sport hunting" as a rhetorical tool to make modern hunting appear trivial or frivilous and, thereby, to add weight to the gratuitous nature of any harm inflicted on animals as a result of hunting. Similarly, anti-hunters often say that hunters hunt and kill animals for fun (or for amusement or recreation or any of a host of other trivializing adjectives). In my experience, such rhetorical devices usually signify little more than a willful attempt to avoid addressing an issue carefully and thoroughly. For instance, it signifies a lack of seriousness about understanding why someone might have misgivings about characterizing the killing of animals as "fun", and consequently, a lack of intellectual seriousness about the issue of animal welfare generally.

Let me consider the issue of killing animals for fun (or amusement--Cartmill's term) in detail. If one understands the concept of fun in an appropriately broad manner, it might be plausible to say that hunting is fun. After all, a large portion of hunting is simply a matter of spending extended periods of time outdoors, frequently in a backcountry setting. A great many nonhunters regard this as fun. Similarly, shooting a bow and arrow is at least as fun as, say, playing golf or any of a number of other activities which rely on tests of one's hand-eye coordination. So, a lot of the individual components that go into hunting are fun; and, in that sense, it might be reasonable to say that hunting is fun. And without question if all of these components were not fun, but distasteful, probably nobody would hunt.

Of course, the point at which a shot opportunity arises can be extremely exciting. But very few people I know regard the killing of animal itself as fun. (To suppose that it must be otherwise is to commit the fallacy of division.) The death of the animal for most hunters is a pretty solemn occassion, though the solemnity is poised at the apex of a massive amount of effort and frequently a flood of visceral excitement. The corresponding emotions are extremely complex; sufficiently complex that they have given rise to all sorts of silliness on the part of hunters in an attempt to explain it. Someone who is serious about understanding the meaning and/or significance of modern hunting has to wade through this extremely complex psychological situation and make an effort to come to grips with the often imperfect expression of it by hunters. (Those who are politically-, rather than alethically-, minded will think that it is hunters who must articulate these issues clearly, it not being the responsibility of those who oppose hunting. Philosophers, at any rate, know better.)

Some anti-hunters will concede the foregoing points and insist that they are not saying that hunters think killing animals is fun, but that hunters kill animals for fun. The idea here is that one can detach the psychological impact of hunting and killing from the reasons for hunting and killing. In this sense, killing for fun is to be contrasted with killing for survival. But this seperation of psychology from motivation sets up a false dilemma: either one hunts for survival or one hunts "for fun". The rhetorical force of this move is obvious. The only reasonable interpretation of "for fun" is "not for survival", but the reliance on the term "fun" insinuates a triviality to nonsurvival-based hunting/killing. As if survival was the only nontrivial aspect of our existence! I, for one, don't buy it.

sunnyajmal · V I P Joined: 18 Feb 2008 Posts: 8649 Location: Hearts

toooooooooooo sad............