Is there a comprehensive list of excommunicated Objectivists?


KacyRay

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I'm wondering, it there a list somewhere on the net of all the major figures who have been excommunicated from the Objectivist movement, with a description of the surrounding circumstances?

We all know about NB, BB, and DK. But I know there have been other solid figures that aren't quite so well known, and I'd like to find out how many there are I don't know about, and what happened with them.

Anything like that out there?

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I once heard, from Lindsay Perigo (I believe), that George Reisman (author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics) is an excommunicated Objectivist.

According to Wikipedia, he still identifies as an Objectivist but had a falling out with senior members of the ARI.

I'm too tired,at the moment, to do more research on the subject. I thought this contribution might get the ball rolling.

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"Is there a comprehensive list of excommunicated Objectivists?"

Why do you want that? Are you applying? If so, you may have to either take a number and wait in line, or do something conspicuous to draw the attention of the ARIan "Men in Black." The below listed books will give you some hints.

It's actually rather complicated, because the expelled form their own groups, and then may have their own dissidents who will be "asked" to leave. Very similar to the splintering and re-splintering of the Trotskyist movement (in behavior, if not in ideology).

By the way, George Reisman, a member of Rand's Inner Circle from the early 1950s, an economist, and a lecturer at many ARI approved or run, conferences, prior to expulsion, was kicked out of ARI because he questioned using Peter Schwartz as a lecturer or instructor at the ARI Objectivist Academic Center. The expulsion was due to the personal animosity of Schwartz, not for "ideological" deviance.

Anyway, here are a few references (not in historical order):

http://www.johnmccaskey.com/joomla/index.php/resignation The most recent, after McCaskey incurred The Peikoff's anger for daring to (mildly) criticize some fact in Harrimann's The Logical Leap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess_of_the_Market Jennifer Burns' bio of Rand, includes most of the purges, but not the most recent (i.e. McCaskey). See her website, below.

http://www.jenniferburns.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand_and_the_World_She_Made Anne Heller's bio of Rand goes into more detail about some of the excommunications (or walkaways) in the Randian subculture, but not McCaskey, which occurred after the books publication.

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/reviews/cult.html The Objectivist Reference Center's review of Jeff Walker's The Cult of Ayn Rand, which was an amalgum of every bit of gossip, some true, some half-true, and some completely false. Reads like it was written by someone from The National Enquirer..

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/ The Objectvist Reference Center (not ARI-approved). Not completely up to date, but gives a lot of background material on events prior to 2010.

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You can only be self-excommunicated from the "Objectivist movement" for that's mostly what you want it to be. There is an obvious Objectivist faction you can be embraced by or de-embraced by and seemingly sort of tolerated factions within that faction of various sorts. Objectively Objectivism means individualism and there is no way of objectifying the quantity or quality of most so constituted. The ARI is Peikoff's individualism. The quality of that is quite low, but he gets to kick anybody's ass he wants to just as I do, but from somewhere else. So what is the ARI really all about? Money. As long as it can suck in and dish out money it exists, but there is no ideological "movement " there to speak of.

Objectivism is differentiated from libertarianism in two important ways. First it is a logically vertically integrated system from metaphysics to politics. Second, it is centered on ethics while libertarianism is centered on politics. Culturally orthodox Objectivism includes huge dollops of questionable esthetic and psychological considerations and jejune political Utopianism mistakenly confusing this last with the possible ideal while the practical ideal can only be moving toward more and more freedom over time, being careful as you go. Rationally it should be critical thinking as the ideal, not the results of such to be dished out like food by those who already did the cooking.

--Brant

who wants to listen to a three-hour speech by John Galt on the radio while driving a taxi?

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I excommunicated myself in 1989 or so. Maybe 1990. In hindsight, a very sound decision.

True story: a couple of years before the Big Split, a buddy and I were shooting pool, discussing the Leonard and Peter combination then gaining preeminence in O'ism. I predicted that Kelley would be given the boot. I told him once that happened I would be write off the Objectivist movement. I then ignored it for about 25 years, and found that it had pretty much gone backwards for a quarter century.

My sense is that most Objectivists would do well to imitate the Stoics, especially the Roman Stoics. Live the core tenets of the philosophy while recognizing that an explicit philosophy of life is better than a hodge-podge of contradictions, exercise just a touch of detachment about what can be controlled in one's life, keep checking one's premises, and love life, never forgetting that all of this will be gone like a vapor, sooner than anybody ever expects. A nice glass of wine isn't a bad idea either.

The "Inner Citadel" is what matters at the end of the day, not all this external BS about who had lunch with a Libertarian, or the latest goofy pronouncements of a doddering PhD with a podcast.

That seemed to work pretty well for Marcus Aurelius. Knock on wood, it has for me too.

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  • 4 months later...

That seemed to work pretty well for Marcus Aurelius. Knock on wood, it has for me too.

Marcus Aurelius shows no indication of actually having applied any particularly Stoic philosophy, and by all evidence was a tyrant and somewhat inept at putting his affairs in order. Just sayin'.

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