Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy

Castle Lecture Series

by Robert B. Pippin

In this pathbreaking book one of America’s most distinguished philosophers brilliantly explores the status and authority of law and the nature of political allegiance through close readings of three classic Hollywood Howard Hawks’ Red River and John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Searchers. Robert Pippin treats these films as sophisticated mythic accounts of a key moment in American its “second founding,” or the western expansion. His central question concerns how these films explore classical problems in political psychology, especially how the virtues of a commercial republic gained some hold on individuals at a time when the heroic and martial virtues were so important. Westerns, Pippin shows, raise central questions about the difference between private violence and revenge and the state’s claim to a legitimate monopoly on violence, and they show how these claims come to be experienced and accepted or rejected. Pippin’s account of the best Hollywood Westerns brings this genre into the center of the tradition of political thought, and his readings raise questions about political psychology and the political passions that have been neglected in contemporary political thought in favor of a limited concern with the question of legitimacy.

Genres: Film, Philosophy, Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Robert B. Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books and articles on German idealism and later German philosophy, including Kant's Theory of Form; Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness; Modernism as a Philosophical Problem; and Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations. In addition he has published on issues in political philosophy, theories of self-consciousness, the nature of conceptual change, and the problem of freedom. He also wrote a book about literature and philosophy: Henry James and Modern Moral Life. A collection of his essays in German, Die Verwirklichung der Freiheit, appeared in 2005, as did The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath, and his book on Nietzsche, Nietzsche, moraliste français: La conception nietzschéenne d'une psychologie philosophique, appeared in 2006. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy appeared in 2012. He was twice an Alexander von Humboldt fellow, is a winner of the Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities, and was recently a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a member of the American Philosophical Society. He is also a member of the German National Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[Martin Riexinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the Western has long been dismissed as actrivial genre, Pippin argues that the best examples of the kind stand on an equal footing to great works of literature when it comes to formulating and exemplifying existential, societal as well as political questions.
Special chapters are dedicated to Hawkes' Red River, Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and The Searchers, while his early movie Stagecoach serves to explain the central idea that Westerns deal with the end of the West, more precisely, the replacement of an sometimes anarchic, sometimes patriarchal order by a rule based, "Europeanized" society. A society that is as well less open.
In Red River this change occurs within one ranch. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance demonstrates like High Noon that the new bourgeois order is fragile and its security relies on men who have not given up the old Western values.
In The Searchers Ford connects the racist history of the West with that of the South in the story of Ethan's unsatiable quest for revenge.
The analysis of the films does not as so often focus on the plot, but devotes to imagery and mise en scène the attention they deserve.

[Roderick Mcgillis · Rating 4 out of 5]

My four stars guide the way to some sharp insights into specific films; Pippin is a close reader. On the larger issue of his political philosophy/psychology, the book left me less than clear. True, the American western movie does have a political dimension as many commentators have shown, but just how this works for Pippin does not crystallize for me. The western myth has perhaps been more clearly scrutinized in Richard Slotkin's work. Here we see three representative films as exploring the "founding" story. This founding appears to bring into tension the claims of community versus the individual, not a surprising idea. It also involves an imaginary that seems to need the confrontation of the know and the unknown, the family and that which is alien to the family. This raises the spectres of violence and racism. All this is well worth thinking about, and this is a worthy book.

[Amir · Rating 4 out of 5]

این‌یکی هم منتشر شد و امیدوارم ظرف یک هفته ده روز آینده در کتابفروشی‌ها دردسترس باشد.

[Hannah Long · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent overview of how the great classic Western directors examined and created the American myth. It starts off a bit academic but once it gets going it's very compelling.

[Michael Hoover · Rating 4 out of 5]

A niche book for sure, but an important read, not just for philosophy, but for American films. Despite the dense subject matter, it was a quick read. However it often leaves you with more questions than answers. I recommend just for brevity and John Ford.

[Eduardo Fort · Rating 5 out of 5]

El profesor Robert Pippin es el responsable de esta apasionante investigación sobre la influencia de Howard Hawks y John Ford (dos de los cineastas más grandes del Western estadounidense) en el pensamiento político norteamericano. Es un libro atractivo tanto como para académicos cuanto para el público en general.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on the philosophy of the Western film and make you understand how it transfered to our movies today!

[Faith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cool read about a unique topic! Lent to me by my professor.

[Stan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book.

I originally learned of this book from David Thomson's review.

I decided to read it only after stumbling across & repeatedly viewing Pippin's very interesting lecture on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.