Publikation Killing a wounded sow

Publikation Killing a wounded sow

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Thorsten Gieser (2018). Killing a wounded sow: a phenomenological approach to a problematic hunting situation. In: Thiemo Breyer & Thomas Widlok (Hrsg.). The Situationality of Human-Animal Relations: Perspectives from Anthropology and Philosophy. Bielefeld:transcript, pp. 129-142

In the blossoming field of Human-Animal Studies, the problem of killing
(in hunting and elsewhere) is usually considered, above all, to be an ethical prob-
lem and a question of animal rights. In this essay, my approach is to situate the
ethics of killing animals in its pragmatic context of hunting practices. By doing
so, I show that the killing of animals is not only an ethical problem, but also a
practical one: a challenge to the way humans and animals interact with each other
as bodily and sentient beings or agents in a common situation. That is, killing is
also a problem of skill: the hunter needs to know how to kill and how to kill
‘properly.’ In other words, in hunting there is not only an intention to kill, but
also—in certain circumstances, which are the topic of this chapter—an obligation
to kill.

Thiemo Breyer / Thomas Widlok (eds.)
The Situationality of Human-Animal Relations: Perspectives from Anthropology and Philosophy

Riding, hunting, fishing, bullfighting: Human-animal relations are diverse. This
anthology presents various case studies of situations in which humans and animals
come into contact and asks for the anthropological and philosophical implications of
such encounters. The contributions by renowned scholars such as Albert Piette and
Kazuyoshi Sugawara present multidisciplinary methodological reflections on
concepts such as embodiment, emplacement, or the »conditio animalia« (in
addition to the »conditio humana«) as well as a consideration of the term
»situationality« within the field of anthropology.