Hunting

The significance of a human experience can be measured by the quantity and quality of its art. By this criterion religion and erotic love are the deepest of our poor resources; but hunting, however distant on the surface, lies adjacent to them in the depths.

Roger Scruton

This is the exact argument he didn’t make adequately in his book On Hunting. I’m very sympathetic to hunting as a pastime, I’ve done it myself, and in this book by a philosopher I was looking for a more reflective treatment of the subject than he gave me.

He calls it a memoir, and even says that it will not be a defense of hunting. But the rest of the book is about how great hunting is. So, rather than working as an honest memoir, it just felt more like an inadequate defense.