Customer Reviews

Meditations on Hunting

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This is an excellent book which details the Ortega y. Gasset philosophy of hunting. It is surprising how little reader interest there is in the book. I would consider it a must read for those who still hunt.

Ortega y. Gasset bases his thinking on a combination of anthropology, history and natural sciences. The basic idea is that hunting is an ancient occupation of man, it is part of the definition of man's place in nature and it is ingrained into the genetic code of all of us.

In this way, Ortega y. Gasset reveals that by hunting, people fulfill their biological imperatives, realize their ability to transcend time and find their primitive being which predates recorded history.

The work is primarily a philosophical justification of hunting. I believe Ortega y. Gasset proves his point convincingly. However, that hardly matters because his analysis certainly evokes the right question which is, "Why do we hunt?"

Thought-provoking and well written. But be warned, O&G has an odd way of dealing with his subject matter. Sometimes he seems to skirt the title of a chapter altogether. For example, one of the early chapters simply expounds at length upon the "credentials" of two early hunters (a Greek and a Roman). To what end? The gist of the chapter seems to be that if two very solid historical figures both liked hunting, that ought to be good enough for us. Hm. The chapter titled The Ethics of Hunting seems to say - as best as I could decipher it - that the ethical questions that underlie the matter are way too deep, tangled and just plain incomprehensible to even talk about. Philosophically, this can be a frustrating read sometimes. Still, what isn't? Like I said, the book does not fail to be well written and thought-provoking even though it asks more questions than it answers. If you are comfortable reading philosophy and you are interested in hunting, don't pass it up.

A worthwhile read, but a little heavy and stilted. It was a stuggle at times. But, I'm glad I took the time to finish it.