Ayn Rand Smeared Again

Casey,
I think it's no secret, nor in my view a valid criticism, that far from 'dipping her toe', insult was Rand's stock in trade when it came to discussing philosophers. And rightly so in most cases.

Jeff

Post 481

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 12:16pm

Jon,

I guess you just don't get it.

Post 482

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 12:20pm

Her remark about Emerson is funny. It�s a plain insult, not ad hominem. But it most certainly is an example of what you asked for: �[�] criticisms by Rand of other philosophers that were not about their philosophy.�

I�m amazed by your capacity for mental pretzels, Casey. Your answer to her Emerson remark is stunning: �Rejection of logic was part of his philosophy. Anyone who rejects logic has a little mind, by definition. Therefore the statement, �Emerson was a very little mind� is an elegant observation on Emerson�s philosophy.� Priceless.

Priceless, indeed. When he says "Rejection of logic was part of his philosophy", the good money is that he says so because Emerson was, even after defrocking, a minister. Minister=Religion=Mysticism=Bad.

Of course, on the other hand, it shows complete ignorance of the times, The Great Enlightenment, what Emerson was to Unitarianism, Transcendentalist literature, and a few dozen other items that could be heaped onto the shopping cart.

See, the deal is (if we are to be orthodox, good proper thinkers) that anyone, living or dead, who was a part of any religious movement must suffer disqualification.. Sadly, that includes most of the founding fathers, Darwin, Alexander Graham Bell, and I'm not sure how many more. And I'm just counting Unitarians/Unitarian Universalists.

That dirty son-of-a-bitch Emerson was a religionist. REJECTED.

He also lived and promoted far too joyful an existence. Not good, probably due to his confused mind, evasion, this, that, the other thing.

Now, with Emerson, we don't have to worry about this happening too much, but in the case of others, such as I mention, there is a rationalization that allows their accomplishments to be validated. Some fucking how.

(Edited by Rich Engle on 9/23, 12:22pm)

Post 483

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 12:22pm

Jon,
You get it all right.

Post 484

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 12:23pm

Casey,

Funny. I don't get it either. I have a problem with double standards. It's hard for me to think straight with them.

(Not meant as aggression, merely stating the fact of the double standard - one person does something, its evil, and another does the exact same thing, it's virtue.)

Michael

Post 485

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 12:28pm

Robert,

Since all of your issues -- except your fixation with ARI -- are covered in the book, I won't rehash them here.

But, I cannot resist. You wrote: "From my reading of the book, I take the title to mean that what Nathaniel Branden said in his memoir and what Barbara Branden said in her biography are pretty much the only thing that critics of Rand rely on�at least, the critics who are around today (though PARC doesn�t even make that qualification)." I cite you to pages one and two where I write that the attack on Rand's personal life is the "recent trend" for which the Brandens are responsible, in my words, this "particular form of Rand'bashing," though others had been doing hatchet-jobs years earlier (providing citations), and, now, "Your pages 1 and 2 just don't do all that good a job of clarifying the boundaries between responsible and irresponsible criticisms of Rand--or between hatchet-jobs on Rand written before the Brandens' books came out, and hatchet-jobs written afterward."

The qualification that was never made was now made (whew!), but inadequately, and, since I only cited for you the example at pages 1 and 2, only in a "single" quote, you claim.

Well, we're making progress...

Post 486

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 12:30pm

Ayn Rand is a poop head.

(must get thread to 500...)

Sarah

Post 487

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 12:44pm

Jeff -- I don't care how harshly she assailed the ideas of others or insulted others for promulgating those ideas. All I'm saying is that this is not the same as insulting a person in order to discredit his ideas. Remember, I did not start this tangent -- a statement was made that Rand nearly always resorted to ad hominem to attack philosophical opponents. I still haven't seen that sweeping statement proven after it was so confidently asserted. I haven't seen a single unambiguous case of Rand resorting to ad hominem to discredit an idea, as is so often done against Rand. The goalposts keep moving on me here, and now I'm supposed to defend the notion that Ayn Rand never traded insults? I never claimed she didn't to begin with. Ad hominem is a very specific form of fallacious argument.

As for her dipping her toe, I was referring to the one paltry example of supposed Rand "ad hominem" that was produced.

And as for her other harsh words for other thinkers, I think many of these statements don't even qualify as insults, but as moral judgements. When we say Hitler was evil, is that an insult? I don't believe she ever just dubbed someone evil without explicating the philosophical reasons for that conclusion. In fact, I'm sure she would consider it immoral NOT to come to a moral judgement about the promulgators of certain ideologies. That's what is so unique and integrated about Rand's approach. Branden, these days, would prefer to call fascism "unbeneficial" rather than coming to the rash conclusion that it was evil. You pick the approach that you prefer. I know the one I prefer.

Post 488

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 12:56pm

I write that the attack on Rand's personal life is the "recent trend" for which the Brandens are responsible, in my words, this "particular form of Rand'bashing,"

And then there's all of us who loved the novels, loved her, cracks and all, spent years with the philosophy as our beacon, fell away from it because of dissatisfaction with LP, the ARI (God, they always are asking me for money), and the general crustiness of dealing with a great bulk of AR's first generation of followers, who ran back into Branden, and read his books. Even before I read MYWAR, NB's work gave me what was missing to be able to appreciate (and maybe just survive) this first generation. And, his work added essential components, components that translated into more actions on my part which were in alignment with the primaries of AR's work. When I read MYWAR, I found myself with as much admiration for her (and the Brandens) if not more, than I ever had. I've heard this same thing said one way or another by many, many people. Wow, we must be some real spaced-out fuckers, huh? How do it be?

Objectivism is just like any other system in one way: it can create rigid, repulsive monsters. Who was wrong in The Affair? Goddamn everybody.

Everybody.

Dwelleth not on sin.

Post 489

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 12:59pm

About that Emerson quote -

By "consistency" he means conformity to received beliefs and ways of doing things, not logical consistency as we (including Rand) understand it. Some selections from the text of Self-Reliance at http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm:

"The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them...I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency."

The closest he comes to our understanding is: refusal to admit mistakes and change course:

"But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day."

In answer to Fahy's challenge, anyone familiar with Rand's writings can find ad hominem attacks galore on philosophers, named or unnamed:

- Galt's exhoration to "sweep away those hatred-eaten mystics of the subsidized classroom" (a remark which moved Sidney Hook to write, "This is the way philosophy is written in the Soviet Union.")

- Her characterization of Wittgenstein's family resemblances as "an exact description of a mind out of focus"

- Also from ITOE: "Like a spoiled, disillusioned child, who had expected predigested capsules of automatic knowledge, a logical positivist stamps his foot at reality and cries that context, integration, mental effort and first-hand effort are too much to expect of him, that he rejects so demanding a method of cognition, and that he will manufacture his own 'constructs' from now on."

- "Idiot-philosophers" on the model of "idiots-savants" (Kant and Sullivan?)

- Her characterization of Kant as the most evil person who ever lived.

and so on and on.

Peter

Post 490

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 1:21pm

Peter,

This debate is outside of anything in my book, but I can't help but observe that yours are examples of Rand negatively evaluating (even "insulting," if you like), and in every case providing her reasons for the negative judgment.

Yours are not examples of ad hominem at all. This is the very distinction Casey just mentioned. For example, Rand thought that nominalism in practice describes an unfocused psycho-epistemology. She had reasons for thinking so. You may say that she got Wittgenstein wrong, or that she was wrong about the substance of the matter, or that her reasons were insufficient. But, she was not engaged in ad hominem or even in empty insults. Very negative evaluations --even moral ones -- are not the same thing as ad hominem. When Prof. Aune expresses his interest in arguments that "the particulars of Rand's private life call into question" the validity of her philosophy, he is expressing an interest in ad hominem.

And, let's see, Prof. Hook can suggest an affinity between Rand's approach and totalitarianism, and that's quite alright, but Rand cannot complain of subsidized classrooms and life-hating mysticism. Got it.

And, Emerson now seems to me have been almost a progenitor of pragmatism, eh?

(Edited by James S. Valliant
on 9/23, 1:36pm)

Post 491

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 2:01pm

"Ayn Rand is a poop head."

(must get thread to 500...) [Sarah]

Nah!! She ain't.

(trying to improve intellectual quality of this thread)

Your mamma is a doodoo head.

(trying to get to 600)

Moreover she [did] [did not] insult someone in print

(trying to get to 700)

And her biographers associate with known nose-pickers

(trying to get to 800)

And let's expand the conversation to talk about whether or not everyone answered all my questions scrupulously in discussing yo' mamma.

(oh...I give up)

Post 492

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 2:10pm

William James was intimately familiar with Emerson's work. I never looked into Peirce's level of interest, because I read so little of him. I am assuming that he was highly familiar. I don't know if you could say Emerson was an ancestor, but there was an influence. In James' work, I find his focus on Emerson to be much more pronounced in his "On The Varieties of Religious Experience" lectures, for one, than you do in his work on pragmatism. When Emerson is talking about not looking over your shoulder so much, he is carrying religious thought into the picture, as well. Even Martin Luther wrote in this area- it has to do with the pointlessness of dwelling on sin. Pragmatism takes on a very different meaning and purpose if you are operating in the world of religious pluralism, or individual religious consciousness, if you wish. I'm not talking about primacy of mind, I'm talking about something else, and over here it really makes no matter. This is all deeply within the extremely broad, unmapped enemy territory that is commonly referred to as "mysticism".

The main point is that none of that really flies over in this part of the realm, for obvious reasons. With Emerson, it might be best to simply take the joy that he often brings into his writing. Whitman is the same. They were just those kind of people.

Emerson was often quite unneven in his writing about day to day affairs of men. There are some things in "Self-Reliance" that you will find softened elsewhere. He was really quite sick of certain kinds of bullshit at certain times, particularly involving people always asking for a dollar.

(Edited by Rich Engle on 9/23, 2:13pm)

Post 493

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 2:18pm

Casey,

In response to your #487... How would you classify this one?

My page references are the expanded 2nd edition of the Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, published in 1990.

"(As an illustration, observe what Bertrand Russell was able to perpetrate because people thought they 'kinda knew' the meaning of the concept 'number'--and what the collectivists were able to perpetrate because people did not even pretend to know the meaning of the concept 'man.')" (pp. 50-51)

"But the proper epistemological ideal is to have your conceptual knowledge, as far as it extends, in as precise a form as mathematics. Or mathematics as it used to be, prior to Russell" (p. 201).

"He [Russell] is a man who claims you can take anything as an axiom and work from there--and the result is most of modern philosophy (except I wouldn't ascribe it to his influence)." (pp. 244-245)

Only the first statement was published during Rand's lifetime. But it is actually harsher than the other two.

Rand is saying that Bertie Russell did at least one really bad thing, on purpose. (That's what "perpetrate" means.) She doesn't say what it was.

Robert Campbell
(Edited by Robert Campbell
on 9/23, 2:28pm)

Post 494

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 2:24pm

Okay, just as I make my humorous post disparaging much of the thread, it veers in an interesting direction:

The discussion by Rand of -or dismissal of- other thinkers. And what constitutes fair treatment of other thinkers in the field of philosophy is a very important one [not just Emerson, not just Russell] if one wishes to make an impact in the world of ideas.

What is worth discussing and how (and where) does one discuss it.

But shouldn't that be another thread, rather than lumping everything which orbits Rand even at the distance of Pluto into a thread called "Ayn Rand Smeared Again"? This is by no means as simple as issue as Rand's defenders or attackers on this point seem to think.

There are several aspects to untangle:

1. Accuracy of assessment on her part (and on the part of other Objectivists)
2. Essentializing vs. over-simplifying
3. Ad hominem vs. dismissal with a put-down vs. detailed, exhaustive, respectful analysis
4. Whether the conventional assessment of a major thinker (e.g., Kant) is accurate; whether she is repeating or disagreeing with that assessment and on what evidence.
5. How much time and attention does 'scholarship' require one give to a thinker whose fundamental approach or logic is faulty (as opposed to a quick, and disrespectful, dismissal)?

Philip Coates
(Edited by Philip Coates
on 9/23, 2:30pm)

Post 495

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 2:27pm

James,

I was too hasty in claiming that your book makes no differentiation between earlier hatchet jobs on Rand and a variety that has become common since the publication of The Passion of Ayn Rand.

Robert Campbell

Post 496

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 2:49pm

Robert,

No problem, dude. That's why I'm here, to answer questions,

Post 497

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 2:50pm

I think it's pretty fucking odd that an Objectivist can blame the actions of parties (particular flavor of RandBashing<tm>) on other parties. There's that whole ownership of one's actions thing.

I guess that means such a person has determined that these people are incapable of formulating their own conclusions, and that, yes, somehow the Brandens anticipated that weakness, and capitalized on it by attempting to reprogram the proles. Like launching a computer virus. Rightio... I'm sure this was foremost in their thoughts as they wrote their books. It's all coming clear to me now. NB has always been into the weird stuff, somehow he hit the motherlode and figured out how to unleash Svengali Power<tm>. I hate when charismatic types do that, don't you? I've heard cases where they can even talk young disciples into letting them fuck their husbands or wives.

Being morally bankrupt, they had no problem using their (uh, former) prominence and influence within the movement to launch this deadly plague to the poor, thoughtless innocent drones, who would surely carry on their sinister plan, and publish their own bashing books. Newer, more improved bashing books.

Soon, if their MeisterPlann holds form, we will see version 3.0 appear on the horizon, and... oh shit...

rde
More Power To The Shields, Leonard!

(Edited by Rich Engle on 9/23, 2:58pm)

Post 498

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 3:09pm

Robert,

She was harsh, yes, about Russell, she may have even been wrong about his ideas, but THAT IS NOT AD HOMINEM!!!

I'm done now on this.

Casey

Post 499

Friday, September 23, 2005 - 3:11pm