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Loading... Meditations on Huntingby José Ortega y Gasset
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Meditations on Hunting is the most quoted book in sporting literature. It's the finest work on the essence and ethics of hunting. Today when both hunting and fishing are often condemned, Meditations takes on an even greater significance. Ortega points out that life is a dynamic interchange between man and his surroundings, that hunting is part of man's very nature, that hunting is a universal and impassioned sport...it is the purest form of human happiness. The essence of hunting or fishing involves a complete code of ethics of the most distinguished design. The sportsman who accepts the sporting code of ethics keeps his commandments in the greatest solitude with no witnesses or audience other than the sharp peaks of the mountain, the stern oak, and the passing animal. Datus Proper, author of the acclaimed What the trout Said and Pheasants of the Mind wrote the special introduction. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)799.2The arts Recreational and performing arts Fishing, hunting, target shooting HuntingLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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His view communicates the idea that Paleolithic man, who conducted himself as a hunter as a means to an end rather than as a leisurely pursuit, was saturated by instinct and had only brief flareups of primitive reason. Modern man feels a sense of nostalgia concerning this prior state and, in the meantime, remains somewhat resentful of his domestication, so decides to allocate time to an artificial return to it so as to lose himself within the bosom of Nature and demonstrate (through the game of the hunt and his self-imposed limits warranting off undue excess - dynamiting a lake doesn't qualify as hunting) the clear order he manifests in his action as possessing a supremacy over the prey he hunts.
This short book reminds me greatly of a terrible night of hunting I carried out as a boy on the eve of my adolescence. Such an event pretty much consisted of me laying prone in a bush during a deep fog and randomly flashing a torch on and off to see whether or not I would catch a rabbit off guard. I was positively freezing my nuts off in the midst of some poor bastard's aristocratic private estate while my father and his mutual friend wandered off into the woods, maybe he's still in denial, because I definitely heard some strange noises echo throughout that infernal night which belonged to neither fox nor hare. Alas, I begrudgingly shot at a rabbit around an hour or so later and to this day still have no idea if I hit him or not, after this book I wish I had hit that fuzzy little fucker. I don't think anyone felt like they possessed much supremacy that night.... ( )