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Title: Mountain of Paradise

Mountain of Paradise

Reflections on the Emergence of Greater California as a World Civilization

by Josef Chytry (Author)
Monographs XXII, 200 Pages
History & Political Science

Summary

Mountain of Paradise challenges conventional taxonomies of world civilizations by introducing a new and formidable candidate: the civilization of Greater California presently incubating as the evolution of California into a veritable «nation-state» or «world commonwealth» according to contemporary commentators and scholars. Through a series of reflective essays it clarifies the momentous implications of this claim by a thorough account of the genealogical origins of «California», permutation into its speculative moment of self-identity thanks to prolonged creative interchange with European thought and philosophy, advancement to status of a socio-economic powerhouse by the 1950s and 1960s, invention of distinctly Californian variants of political economy by the 1970s and 1980s, and present domination over regions formerly classified as «Greater California». In its range and originality Mountain of Paradise constitutes a robust contribution to current political, social, economic and global thematics.

Table Of Contents


Advance Praise for Mountain of Paradise

Praise for the first edition:

“ ... [this] brilliant essay points to the future of California studies better than any comparable statement I have ever read.”

—Kevin Starr, late University Professor and Professor of History, University of Southern California, author of Americans and the California Dream series

Praise for the new edition:

“The best and most defining writing about California has always been visionary. In Mountain of Paradise Josef Chytry joins a visionary company of historians, explorers, travelers, wayfarers, and natives who know how to summon a spirit of place. As a philosophical history, Mountain of Paradise is remarkable for its vivacity of style, its prodigious learning in many languages, its range in time and space. A decade ago, Chytry proposed “Greater California” as that realm was defined during Spain’s long dominion as a world civilization. This 2025 reissue raises the question of whether California, which has a geopolitical heft exceeding that of all but five or six nation-states, might be deserving of sovereignty, a question that current events make more urgent by the day. This eloquent and searching book is equal to the hour we are living.”

—David Reid, Editor of the Berkeley magazine Dispatches

“Fit with sharp interdisciplinary acumen, Josef Chytry has offered one of the richest accounts of California's vigorous culture and life. Capturing key features of California’s dynamic identity with its social and political consequences for understanding the history and future course of the world, the re-release of Mountain of Paradise at this important moment underscores the unique role California continues to play with ever-increasing relevance to world civilization.”

Die Zeiten ändern sich und mit ihnen die Anforderungen. So ändern sich die Jahreszeiten im Lauf des Jahres. So gibt es auch in Weltenjahr Frühling und Herbst der Völker und Nationen, die gesellschaftliche Umgestaltungen erfordern.

“Die Umwälzung (Die Mauserung)”

“The times change and with them the demands. Thus the seasons change in the course of the year. Thus also in the world cycles there are spring and fall of peoples and nations, which demand social transformations.”

“Revolution (Molting),” I Ching (Richard Wilhelm translation)

est locus, Hesperiam Grai cognomine dicunt,terra antiqua, potens armis atque ubere glaebae; … hae nobis propriae sedes,

“There is a place called ‘Hesperia’ by the Greeks,an ancient land, powerful, warlike rich; …Here is our rightful home,”

Virgil, The Aeneid, iii, 163–164, 167

“What America is to Europe, what Western America is to Eastern,that California is to the other Western states. It has more than any other the character of a great country, capable of standing alone in the world.”

To my son Gabriel and daughter Sophia, native-born Californians

Acknowledgments

This inquiry began thanks to the initiation of Michael Bielicky in arranging an invitation for me to lecture on California civilization at the Center for Theoretical Study at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, in 2003. Subsequently Peter Murphy generously agreed to publish a developed version of the lecture as “California Civilization” in a special issue of Thesis Eleven. Chapter 1 is a further version of the lecture and article.

Once launched on the theme, I was grateful to be invited to present a paper at the annual conference of the Western Humanities Alliance at the University of Arizona in 2005 which was then published in a special issue of the Western Humanities Review as “Bordering the Civilization of Greater California: An Inquiry into Genealogy, Treaty-Making and Influence.” Chapter 2 is a fuller account of my paper and article.

Particularly with its inclusion of Franz Werfel, Chapter 3 is a larger version of the article “California Civilization and European Speculative Thought: An Evolving Relationship” published in California History in 2008, for which I am particularly grateful for the illustrations provided for the publication version by Shelly Kale.

Chapter 4 is largely based on my article “California Irredenta” published in History and Theory in 2011 thanks to Brian Fay.

Finally, Chapter 5 stems from my participation in a Max Planck Institute workshop on “emotional styles – communities and spaces” that was held in Berlin, Germany, in 2010. Thanks to Benno Gammerl, it was published as “Walt Disney and Emotional Environments: Interpreting Walt Disney’s Oeuvre from the Disney Studios to Disneyland, CalArts, and the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT)” in a special issue of Rethinking History in 2012, while thanks to Stuart Kendall a somewhat different and shorter version was published as “Disney’s Design: Imagineering Main Street” in a special issue of Boom: A Journal of California in 2012.

As primarily a European intellectual historian I would never have ventured on this project without the inspiring guidance of the oeuvre of Kevin Starr, particularly his monumental Americans and the California Dream series.

I am particularly grateful to the many inputs from students attending my course “California civilization” given at the California College of the Arts over the past decade as well as the consistent financial support provided by Faculty Development Grants of the College.

As ever, I could always count on my daughter Sophia and son Gabriel: “homegrown” Californians.

Contents

  1. Introduction: Ruminations on the Prospects of a Civilization of Greater Califonia – After 2024

  2. Introduction

  3. 1. Beyond the United States of America? California as a World Civilization

  4. 2. Bordering the Civilization of Greater California: An Inquiry into Genealogy, Treaty-Making and Influence

  5. 3. The Coming of European Speculative Thought: Three Stages

  6. 4. A Golden Age? The California Fifties as Watershed

  7. 5. California Political Economy: The Emotional Environments of Walt Disney

  8. 6. Metaglobal California: California Irredenta

  9. Epilogue: California and the Paradiso

  10. Bibliography

Introduction: Ruminations on the Prospects of a Civilization of Greater Califonia – After 20241

January 2025

The historic turning point marked by the Presidential election of 2024 raises the following striking question:

How ready – or willing – is California to join the collection of independent Sovereign States in the world today?

Details

Pages
XXII, 200
ISBN (PDF)
9783034358583
ISBN (ePUB)
9783034358590
ISBN (Softcover)
9783034358576
DOI
10.3726/b22888
Language
English
Publication date
2025 (July)
Keywords
philosophy self-identity taxonomies
Published
New York, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, Oxford, 2025. XXII, 200 pp., 10 b/w ill., 2 tables.
Product Safety
Peter Lang Group AG

Biographical notes

Josef Chytry (Author)

Josef Chytry is Senior Adjunct Professor in Critical Studies at California College of the Arts in Oakland/San Francisco, and is Managing Editor of the journal Industrial and Corporate Change at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Unis vers Cythère: Aesthetic-Political Investigations in Polis Thought and the Artful Firm (Peter Lang, 2009), Cytherica: Aesthetic-Political Essays in an Aphrodisian Key (Peter Lang, 2005) and The Aesthetic State: A Quest in Modern German Thought (1989), and a co-editor of Understanding Industrial and Corporate Change (2005) and Technology, Organization, and Competitiveness (1998). He was Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Tübingen and received his Dr. Phil. in politics and the history of ideas from the University of Oxford.

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