Ethical Reflections On Hunting Animals

Hunting has a long history as an important source of human evolution,intellectual development,and spiritual entertainment needs.From the perspective of hunting motivation and history,the way of hunting animals mainly includes survival,eating and sports hunting.Combined with the modern development of hunting connotation,this paper defines the survival hunting as the hunting for the sole purpose of survival.The edible hunting refers to the hunting behavior of eating prey for other purposes when the cultivated meat has become the main edible meat of human beings.The sports hunting refers to the hunting satisfying the spiritual entertainment.Since modern times,the legitimacy of three kinds of hunting has been challenged by diversified production,life style and human’s moral concern for animals.This paper reviews the historical evolution and main problems of survival,edible and sports hunting,and expounds the common ethical reasons and questions of three kinds of hunting behaviors,including discussing the possibility of human diversified production and life style replacing survival hunting,analyzing the necessity and inevitability of modern survival hunting,exploring the intrinsic value and individual value of prey,considering the natural right of man to preserve his own life.In the part of edible hunting,the injury degree of animals caused by factory breeding and hunting was compared,and the rationality of human welfare priority,the choice of vegetarian diet and the priority of life welfare were discussed.This paper discusses the conflict between the goal of human service and the actual effect,the satisfaction of human spirit and the ethical concern embodied in hunting morality.According to this,the ethical attitude and practice of hunting animals should be properly explained,that is to say,human beings need to keep awe of animal life and adjust their moral cognition of modern hunting behavior.For example,the principle of life priority and the principle of injury minimization should be taken into consideration in hunting,and the external supervision of modern hunting moral behavior practice also needs to be strengthened.