The Philosophy of the Western

Contents

CONTENTS Introduction: Philosophy and the Western 1 Jennifer L. McMahon and B. Steve Csaki Part 1. The Cowboy Way: The Essence of the Western Hero “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh, My Darling”: Loneliness and Solitude in Westerns 13 Shai Biderman Civilization and Its Discontents: The Self-Sufficient Western Hero 31 Douglas J. Den Uyl Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Pragmatists 55 B. Steve Csaki Two Ways to Yuma: Locke, Liberalism, and Western Masculinity in 3:10 to Yuma 69 Stephen J. Mexal Landscapes of Gendered Violence: Male Love and Anxiety on the Railroad 89 Lindsey Collins Part 2. The Code of the West: The Cowboy and Society “Order Out of the Mud”: Deadwood and the State of Nature 113 Paul A. Cantor Order without Law: The Magnificent Seven, East and West 139 Aeon J. Skoble From Dollars to Iron: The Currency of Clint Eastwood’s Westerns 149 David L. McNaron The Duty of Reason: Kantian Ethics in High Noon 171 Daw-Nay Evans Part 3. Outlaws: Challenging Conventions of the Western The Cost of the Code: Ethical Consequences in High Noon and The Ox-Bow Incident 187 Ken Hada “Back Off to What?” The Search for Meaning in The Wild Bunch 203 Richard Gaughran No Country for Old Men: The Decline of Ethics and the West(ern) 221 William J. Devlin The Northwestern: McCabe and Mrs. Miller 241 Deborah Knight and George McKnight Part 4. On the Fringe: The Encounter with the Other Savage Nations: Native Americans and the Western 261 Michael Valdez Moses Regeneration through Stories and Song: The View from the Other Side of the West in Smoke Signals 291 Richard Gilmore Go West, Young Woman! Hegel’s Dialectic and Women’s Identities in Western Films 309 Gary Heba and Robin Murphy Beating a Live Horse: The Elevation and Degradation of Horses in Westerns 329 Jennifer L. McMahon Selected Bibliography 351 List of Contributors 355 Index 359 ...