| | The history of the Peripatetic shool, and Theophrastus' actions in regard to the school and Aristotle's personal library, including his polished works which are now entirely lost to us, provides an excellent cautionary example of what happens when someone is made an "intellectual heir" or "executor" and shows what a horrible mistake the existence of ARI as a body supposedly sanctioned by Rand, and run by her heir actually is.
In his will, in order to extend his own influence over how the peripatetic school would be run, Theophrastus (Aristotle's heir) willed the facilities of the school to the school as a whole, but willed the papers not to the school for free use by all, but to one individual whom Theophrastus apparently found "doctrinally acceptable." That person ended up hoarding Aristotle's unpublished finished papers. They were never published in Greece. They were eventiually left to rot in a cellar during the wars that plagued Greece after Alexander. Eventually the texts were found and published by a Roman, in Rome, but by then, the Peripatetic school had lost its influence, (larely to skeptics and Platonizing Stoics) and eventually the never widely distributed editions of Aritotle's finished works were all lost or destroyed when the philosophers left and were ejected from Rome during her long fall. The surviving inferior and incomplete texts we have are those works that the school still had access to without Theophrastus' control, and which were preserved because they were distributed in the Orient and were not destroyed when the West fell.
As far as I can see, Peikoff is in the same position as Theophrastus, and the closeness with which ARI holds Rand's works is eerily similar. I haved intended to maked a point of this at essay length, but have not been posting on SOLO-P out of disgust for James Valliant's evasions which continue to have strong support there.
Perhaps I shall write on this sordid matter at length some other day.
My source for Theophrastus is vols III & IV of Giovanni Reale's History of Ancient Philosophy.
Ted Keer
(Edited by Ted Keer
on 2/28, 12:53pm)
|
|
Funny, I was considering whether facsimilles should be made while posting this. If Peikoff did indeed advise the Library of the omission, and did not sign a statement saying that the manuscript was complete, then he should have fought the case on principle, rather than brag about his victimization. And why was only that manuscript given? Was it a charitable donation, and tax write-off? 