Jean-Paul Curnier's 'La bête en soi': A Philosopher-Hunter's Meditation on Mortality

Jean-Paul Curnier, a philosopher known for writings on art, culture, cinema, music, and political ecology, reveals in his latest book that he is a bowhunter. The book, reviewed by Jacques Henric in artpress, explores the tension between intellectual life and the primal act of killing. Curnier hunts wild boar with a bow and arrow, a legal but dangerous practice requiring close proximity to the animal. His turn to archery was inspired by Eugen Herrigel's 'Zen in the Art of Archery,' which frames the practice as a spiritual experience rather than a sport. The book meditates on death—not abstractly, but as a risk taken and a death given—and examines humanity's relationship with blood, bestiality, and the animal-human divide. Curnier engages with Nietzsche's aphorism on the insignificance of origins, arguing that the archer's gesture connects him to a common ancestral past. He dialogues with the boar he kills, akin to torero José Tomás speaking to his bull, suggesting a paradoxical intimacy. Curnier consumes the meat of the animals he kills, distinguishing himself from those who eat meat without confronting the death behind it. The review also references Curnier's contribution to a recent artpress2 issue on bullfighting.