An imposed hunting rule taught its first ethical lesson in self-restraint

Evidence

When my father gave me the shotgun, he said I might hunt partridges with it, but that I might not shoot them from trees. I was old enough, he said, to learn wing-shooting. … My dog was good at treeing partridge, and to forego a sure shot in the tree in favor of a hopeless one at the fleeing bird was my first exercise in ethical codes. Compared with a treed partridge, the devil and his seven kingdoms was a mild temptation. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 433

Categorization

• DEFINE: The passage defines where Leopold locates ethics — in voluntarily foregoing the easy shot — prefiguring the land ethic’s demand to extend restraint beyond self-interest.
• XREF: Directly seeds the land ethic chapters that follow — the discipline of voluntary self-limitation modeled by wing-shooting rules. — connects to: Scarcity-forced habits can evolve into self-imposed ethical codes of character. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 627; Moral self-sanctions regulate conduct before external sanctions do — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 52; Moral self-sanctions make people accountable for their actions — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 334 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Moral self-sanctions regulate conduct before external sanctions do #corroborates (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 52
• Behavior is regulated by legal, social, and self-evaluative sanctions #expands (0.75)
• Moral denunciation constrains behavior more effectively than merely procedural rules #corroborates (0.75) — , The Rod and the Child, 2517
• Western man’s conquest of nature begins with conquest of his own self #expands (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 178
• Moral self-sanctions make people accountable for their actions #expands (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 334
• Skillful hunting depends on thinking from inside the prey’s perspective. #expands (0.72) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 690
• Moral agency runs on negative and positive self-sanctions #expands (0.72)
• The word ‘trust’ originally meant holding one’s place in a coordinated hunt #complicates (0.70)