Ortega y Gasset IV, Internal goods, attention

In his analysis of hunting, Ortega picks up on this distinction between actions done for their own sake (“the pleasing”) and those which lead us to external goods (“the laborious”). The dichotomy defines human life: “So here is the human being suspended between two conflicting repertories of occupations: the laborious and the pleasing.” (p. 37). This distinction, and not the distinction between “difficult and easy,” leads the philosopher to the heart of the human action: “Happy occupations, it is clear, are not merely pleasures; they are efforts, and real sports are effort. It is not possible, then, to distinguish work from sport by a plus or minus in fatigue. The difference is that sport is an effort made completely freely, for the pure enjoyment of it, while work is an obligatory effort made with an eye to the profit” (p. 42).

Now we can hunt either as work or sport. We do not violate the act of hunting if we do it for one or the other of these purposes. However, after the Paleolithic era, once humans developed agriculture and no longer had to hunt, humans continued to hunt. Aristocrats hunt, and the working masses fight for the privilege of hunting. Dick Cheney hunts, and Tred Barta hunts. We hunt in pursuit of happiness. We hunt in order to hunt.

Like Pieper’s description of festivity, the activity of hunting itself can transform our usual habits of attention. Usually, “[o]ur attention, which is what aims our vision, seizes on that spot on the horizon because we are persuaded that what interests us will appear there. This attention to the preconceived is equivalent to being absorbed in one point of the visible area and not paying attention to the other points.” However, “[t]he hunter’s look and attention are completely opposite to this. … Thus, he needs to prepare an attention of a different and superior style – an attention which does not consist in riveting itself on the presumed but consists precisely in not presuming anything and in avoiding inattentiveness. It is a ‘universal’ attention, which does not inscribe itself on any point and tries to be on all points. There is a magnificent term for this, one that still conserves all its zest of vivacity and imminence: alertness. The hunter is the alert man” (p. 138).