A merican on E verest: Individualism, the A merican Intellectual Tradition, and the Dream of W oodrow W ilson Sayre

This article identifies the A merican philosophical antecedents that informed W oodrow W ilson S ayre's failed attempt to climb M ount E verest in 1962. Sayre, a philosophy professor at T ufts U niversity, was an extreme proponent of individualism and saw the challenge of climbing E verest as a struggle of one man against cold, “antiseptic” Nature. In his writings on the subject Sayre uses some of the same cultural notions about humanity and mountains that were current in A merican intellectual culture during the 19 th century. The paper traces these notions from the Transcendentalists and A merican poetic descriptions of mountains through to S ayre's writings. The paper ends by describing the official response to Sayre's expedition as revealed in archival sources.