Stumbled across an interesting page, comparing the philosophy of W. James and J. Royce with Jimmy Buffet.
http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/TAMU/PD08.htm Jimmy Buffett encounters American Philosophy Specially excerpted due to it's coincidence with Pirsig's point about the Western mythos (cowboys and indian west) that shaped our national character: Royce himself is a fascinating character. A native of a small western mountain town, he thought and wrote extensively about the ideas of community while in self-imposed exile at Harvard. Although he refused to return home to California for anything more than short visits, California and the West shaped nearly everything Royce touched. He is likely the only philosopher to write both a western and one of the most important “lost” histories of a Western American place. Royce’s history, as biographer John Clendenning put it, “is a study of disloyalty. The evil that Royce persistently describes is that form of individualism which seeks personal gain at the expense of social harmony.” Whereas myths of the American West as a place shaped by individual heroes were firmly entrenched in the late nineteenth-century American mind, Royce debunked with aplomb and points out that racism, greed, and violent mob action—not heroism—won California for the U.S.. His history and his novel help illustrate a larger point seen throughout much of his philosophical works about the importance of community: it can ruin us or help make us better as individuals. In his later years, Royce celebrated the idea of small communities and a “wholesome provincialism.” As John, E. Smith has noted, Royce felt that “because of the vastness of national unities and the consolidation of social forces which drives towards uniformity, conformity and the dead weight of mob-thinking, we must find refuge and renewal in small communities in which the individual can regain his self-consciousness and dignity. Once again, the community must restore the individual.” Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
