Peikoff's OBJECTIVE COMMUNICATION in print 9/3/2012


Jerry Biggers

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I cannot forbear to add, that what Piekoff meant was "I finally saw what Ayn was trying to pound into my head and could write what I thought she would like.Probably. Maybe".

That is how I understand this event.

I'm not sure if you read the linked description of Rand's detecting Kant pulling the streaker's strings.

Here's the full excerpt - didn't have time to copy and format it earlier. (Thanks, MSK, for checking the link in my earlier post [#17]. The link still doesn't work right on my iPad - one of those mysteries.)

[....]

This comes from a speech by Leonard Peikoff, "My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand: An Intellectual Memoir," delivered at the Ford Hall Forum on April 26, 1987. It was reprinted in Vol. 8, No. 3, June 1987, of The Objectivist Forum and copyrighted 1987 by TOF Publications, Inc.

In the deepest epistemological sense, Ayn Rand was, as we may put it, the opposite of an egalitarian. She did not regard every aspect of a whole as equal in importance to every other. Some aspects, she held, are critical to a proper understanding; others merely clutter up the cognitive landscape and distract lesser minds from the truth. So the task of the thinker is to distinguish the two, i.e., to analyze and process the data confronting him, not to amass mounds of information without any attempt at mental digestion. She herself accordingly always functioned like an intellectual detective, a philosophical Hercule Poirot, reading, watching, listening for the fact, the statement, the perspective that would illuminate a whole, tortuous complexity--the one that would reveal the essence and thereby suddenly make that complexity simple and intelligible. The result was often dramatic. When you were with her, you always felt poised on the brink of some startling new cognitive adventure and discovery.

Here is an example of what I mean. About a dozen years ago, Ayn Rand and I were watching the Academy Awards on television; it was the evening when a streaker flashed by during the ceremonies. Most people probably dismissed the incident with some remark like: "He's just a kid" or "It's a high-spirited prank" or "He wants to get on TV." But not Ayn Rand. Why, her mind, wanted to know, does this "kid" act in this particular fashion? What is the difference between his "prank" and that of college students on a lark who swallow goldfish or stuff themselves into telephone booths? How does his desire to appear on TV differ from that of a typical game-show contestant? In other words, Ayn Rand swept aside from the outset the superficial aspects of the incident and the standard irrelevant comments in order to reach the essence, which has to pertain to this specific action in this distinctive setting.

"Here," she said to me in effect, "is a nationally acclaimed occasion replete with celebrities, jeweled ballgowns, coveted prizes, and breathless cameras, an occasion offered to the country as the height of excitement, elegance, glamor--and what this creature wants to do is drop his pants in the middle of it all and thrust his bare buttocks into everybody's face. What then is his motive? Not high spirits or TV coverage, but destruction--the satisfaction of sneering at and undercutting that which the rest of the country looks up to and admires." In essence, she concluded, the incident was an example of nihilism, which is the desire not to have or enjoy values, but to nullify and eradicate them.

Nor did she stop there. The purpose of using concepts, as I have suggested--and the precondition of reaching principles--is the integration of observed facts; in other words, the bringing together in one's mind of data from many different examples or fields, such as the steel and the coal industries, for instance. Any Rand was expert at this process. For her, grasping the essence of an event was merely the beginning of processing it cognitively. The next step was to identify that essence in other, seemingly very different areas, and thereby discover a common denominator uniting them all.

Having grasped the streaker's nihilism, therefore, she was eager to point out to me some very different examples of the same attitude. Modern literature, she observed, is distinguished by its creators' passion not to offer something new and positive, but to wipe out: to eliminate plots, heroes, motivation, even grammar and syntax; in other words, their brazen desire to destroy their own field along with the great writers of the past by stripping away from literature every one of its cardinal attributes. Just as Progressive education is the desire for education stripped of lessons, reading, facts, teaching, and learning. Just as avant-garde physics is the gleeful cry that there is no order in nature, no law, no predictability, no causality. That streaker, in short, was the very opposite of an isolated phenomenon. He was a microcosm of the principle ruling modern culture, a fleeting representative of that corrupt motivation which Ayn Rand has described so eloquently as "hatred of the good for being the good." And what accounts for such widespread hatred? she asked at the end. Her answer brings us back to the philosophy we referred to earlier, the one that attacks reason and reality wholesale and thus makes all values impossible: the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

Listening to Any Rand that evening, I felt that I was beginning to understand what it means really to understand an event. I went home and proceeded to write the chapter in my book The Ominous Parallels about Weimar culture, which develops at length Ayn Rand analysis of the modern intellectual trend. The point here, however, is not her analysis, but the method that underlies it: observation of facts; the identification of the essential; the integration of data from many disparate fields; then the culminating overview, the grasp of principle.

I use the term "overview" deliberately, because I always felt as though everyone else had their faces pressed up close to an event and were staring at it myopically, while she was standing on a mountaintop, sweeping the world with a single glance, and thus able to identify the most startling connections, not only between streaking and literature, but also, as you must know, between sex and economics, art and business, William F. Buckley and Edward Kennedy; in short, between the kinds of things that other people automatically pigeonhole into separate compartments. Her universe, as a result, was a single, unified whole, with all its parts interrelated and intelligible; it was not the scattered fragments and fiefdoms that are all most people know. To change the image: she was like a ballet dancer of the intellect, leaping from fact to fact and field to field, not by the strength of her legs, but by the power of logic, a power that most men do not seem fully to have discovered yet.

Ellen

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Don't you sometims feel, that Rand should have left her estate to somebody else, and set [Peikoff] free?

Free to do what? Despair at feeling unworthy?

Speaking of being set free, however - you got me started on this alternate history speculation with a remark on another thread awhile back - what do you suppose might have happened if Barbara had said "No" to marrying Nathaniel?

Ellen

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Carol,

I don't really have a good explanation for streakers.

But if I were to speculate on principles, it would not be nihilism, nor would I see that as a manifestation of cultural trends of "stripping" out attributes, pun or no pun:

Having grasped the streaker's nihilism, therefore, she was eager to point out to me some very different examples of the same attitude. Modern literature, she observed, is distinguished by its creators' passion not to offer something new and positive, but to wipe out: to eliminate plots, heroes, motivation, even grammar and syntax; in other words, their brazen desire to destroy their own field along with the great writers of the past by stripping away from literature every one of its cardinal attributes. Just as Progressive education is the desire for education stripped of lessons, reading, facts, teaching, and learning. Just as avant-garde physics is the gleeful cry that there is no order in nature, no law, no predictability, no causality.

In Peikoff's lecture, this led to where it had to lead, to No. 1 villain of all time, Kant.

I look at streakers from the other end. There is so much social engineering and covert manipulation going on in the culture, I believe people feel this and resent it. It's the frustration of feeling like you are on a hamster wheel going nowhere. The enormous insatisfaction of buying a ton-load of crap and still not feeling happy, even though you were assured by the advertisers, the press, the government, the salespeople, the celebrities, everyone, that you would be happy if you only bought what they had.

So if I were to speculate about principle, to me it would be defiance. A sense of "I'm not going to be your puppet." Also, there is a huge psychological gap between the big people and the little people, especially once celebrities started appearing by broadcast instead of in person.

Most people get terribly befuddled and embarrassed when they meet a celebrity from the rich and powerful in real life. But this reflects a hidden feeling that those folks are special and I am just ordinary. So if I were to speculate on the core of the public statement in the streaker and take this feeling into account, it would be to tell the rich and powerful that they are just the same as ordinary people underneath. A way to tell the masters that I am not just one of your cattle and I will not moo on cue.

Why then, at the Academy Awards? It's one of the few times an ordinary person can become noticed by the special people and the nakedness is a form so dramatic it cannot be dismissed and shoved under the carpet as if it didn't happen.

I'm not saying this line of thinking is 100% correct or incorrect. But I believe there is some truth to it, just as I believe Rand's view has some truth to it. She is clever in developing a line of thought once she gets on a roll. I can easily see a mix of all this in the same person--and that is what I believe is closer to understanding the real meaning of streaking at major events.

Anyway, I don't share Ayn Rand's prudery, so I don't see "bare buttocks" proving a "desire not to have or enjoy values, but to nullify and eradicate them." There might be some of that, who knows?, but inside the deepest parts of my mind, I just don't resonate with the idea.

Michael

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Well, you can postulate party-crashing envy, but that'd be just another speculation. You could also postulate an exhibitionist getting prime-time coverage or just someone having adrenaline-fueled fun. Frankly, what's to remember from the Academy Awards from 40 years ago except that display of honest nakedness in a sea of social, artistic and economic hypocrisy other than David Niven's clever rejoinder?

--Brant

not that Rand's living room off-the cuff remarks were silly, but that Peikoff was dumb enough to make them public as an expression of her genius instead of how wrong-headedness can take you into an embarrassing swamp of deductive reasoning off ignorance

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Don't you sometims feel, that Rand should have left her estate to somebody else, and set [Peikoff] free?

Free to do what? Despair at feeling unworthy?

Speaking of being set free, however - you got me started on this alternate history speculation with a remark on another thread awhile back - what do you suppose might have happened if Barbara had said "No" to marrying Nathaniel?

Ellen

It was Nathaniel who had satiated his brain with The Fountainhead, not Barbara, and had gone bonkers over meeting and interacting with Ayn, as a young man with his brain-power would enough naturally do, and that inertia would have put him into her bed regardless. The basic problem was the would-be psychologist running head on into a philosopher and getting trapped in philosophy denigrating his natural career and love path blinded by the ideas she had dressed him out in. As someone needing psychotherapy you wouldn't want anything to do, if you really knew what was going on with him, with him as a psychotherapist before, say, 1970-1971. Comparing his work with Blumenthal's as reflected by an article Blumenthal wrote for The Objectivist, Branden said he was using an approach out of his, Branden's, waste-basket, meaning it was garbage. I've yet to read one word of praise about his pre-break therapy work. As for my own experience (1976), it was great--for me. If I were a psychotherapist, however, I'd do some things quite differently albeit basically the same. (This is apart from the energy-therapy stuff he embraced at the end of his career, which has no reality for me.)

--Brant

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Don't you sometims feel, that Rand should have left her estate to somebody else, and set [Peikoff] free?

Free to do what? Despair at feeling unworthy?

Speaking of being set free, however - you got me started on this alternate history speculation with a remark on another thread awhile back - what do you suppose might have happened if Barbara had said "No" to marrying Nathaniel?

Ellen

If that had happened, I think that NB and AR would have gotten together sooner - maybe even married. Barbara would be out of the Collective and the movement, and might have written novels, very good ones.

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Don't you sometims feel, that Rand should have left her estate to somebody else, and set [Peikoff] free?

Free to do what? Despair at feeling unworthy?

Speaking of being set free, however - you got me started on this alternate history speculation with a remark on another thread awhile back - what do you suppose might have happened if Barbara had said "No" to marrying Nathaniel?

Ellen

If that had happened, I think that NB and AR would have gotten together sooner - maybe even married. Barbara would be out of the Collective and the movement, and might have written novels, very good ones.

Them getting married was completely not going to happen, especially in the 1950s.

--Brant

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Don't you sometims feel, that Rand should have left her estate to somebody else, and set [Peikoff] free?

Free to do what? Despair at feeling unworthy?

Speaking of being set free, however - you got me started on this alternate history speculation with a remark on another thread awhile back - what do you suppose might have happened if Barbara had said "No" to marrying Nathaniel?

Ellen

If that had happened, I think that NB and AR would have gotten together sooner - maybe even married. Barbara would be out of the Collective and the movement, and might have written novels, very good ones.

Them getting married was completely not going to happen, especially in the 1950s.

--Brant

I don`t know ....if NB had wanted marriage, and Rand`s reason persuaded her that it would be an expression of her highest values, would she have let her `conventional side`` carry the day I wonder. Poor Frank`s feelings would hardly have been much of a factor.

She could have been a Joan Collins for the 50s.

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Speaking of being set free, however - you [Carol] got me started on this alternate history speculation with a remark on another thread awhile back - what do you suppose might have happened if Barbara had said "No" to marrying Nathaniel?

Ellen

If that had happened, I think that NB and AR would have gotten together sooner - maybe even married. Barbara would be out of the Collective and the movement, and might have written novels, very good ones.

Them getting married was completely not going to happen, especially in the 1950s.

--Brant

I agree that Ayn and Nathaniel getting married was "completely not going to happen," but not just because of social mores. I think that neither would have wanted to marry the other. Frank really was Ayn's "rock," as she often said. And I think that Nathaniel wouldn't have engaged in flirting with the result that he found himself in a sexual relationship maybe partly against his better judgment if it hadn't been that he was in a marriage which involved sexual frustration. I.e., I think that Barbara's having married Nathaniel was essential to the affair's happening.

A more general point regarding Barbara: I think that her significance to the skein of relationships and developments tends to be much under-rated with the focus on Ayn and Nathaniel, who mostly occupied the limelight.

For instance, running the lecture organization was a lot of work, much of it done by Barbara in the early years. And her personal relationship to Ayn was significant to there being the book Who Is Ayn Rand?. She's the one who did most of the taped interviews of Ayn's reminiscences (a source which includes a lot more material than was used in the early book or even in Passion).

And lots of other details, some with unfortunate or at best mixed results. For instance, Barbara was the one who suggested the idea "psychoepistemology," an idea which has frequently been used for condemnatory purposes or for a snap diagnosis way to dismiss opposing views. I'm not implying that Barbara was pleased with these uses of the term, just that the term, willy-nilly, has been an important one in the Objectivist defense arsenal.

Ellen

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Well, you can postulate party-crashing envy, but that'd be just another speculation. You could also postulate an exhibitionist getting prime-time coverage or just someone having adrenaline-fueled fun. Frankly, what's to remember from the Academy Awards from 40 years ago except that display of honest nakedness in a sea of social, artistic and economic hypocrisy other than David Niven's clever rejoinder?

--Brant

Apparently the motives had to do with gay liberation and with championing nudity.

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/06/yes_they_called.html

By April 2, 1974, the date I find for that Academy Award ceremony, the streaker craze was already underway. Since AR did read newspapers, I have to assume that she was aware that the incident wasn't an isolated one.

not that Rand's living room off-the cuff remarks were silly, but that Peikoff was dumb enough to make them public as an expression of her genius instead of how wrong-headedness can take you into an embarrassing swamp of deductive reasoning off ignorance

I think her remarks were worse than silly. Abysmally bad method, complete with examples of her "slashing generalizations." Yet Peikoff, instead of registering objections to the epistemology, was awestruck and inspired to write an analysis in his Ominous Parallels project, an analysis which, as I said, I suppose met with her approval, since I don't think he'd have specifically mentioned it if she hadn't liked it.

Ellen

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And lots of other details, some with unfortunate or at best mixed results. For instance, Barbara was the one who suggested the idea "psychoepistemology," an idea which has frequently been used for condemnatory purposes or for a snap diagnosis way to dismiss opposing views. I'm not implying that Barbara was pleased with these uses of the term, just that the term, willy-nilly, has been an important one in the Objectivist defense arsenal.

Ellen

Nathaniel championed the idea that Barbara coined the word ("psycho-epistemology")--not LP or AR--but Barbara dislikes it immensely.

--Brant

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Don't you sometims feel, that Rand should have left her estate to somebody else, and set [Peikoff] free?

Free to do what? Despair at feeling unworthy?

Speaking of being set free, however - you got me started on this alternate history speculation with a remark on another thread awhile back - what do you suppose might have happened if Barbara had said "No" to marrying Nathaniel?

Ellen

If that had happened, I think that NB and AR would have gotten together sooner - maybe even married. Barbara would be out of the Collective and the movement, and might have written novels, very good ones.

Them getting married was completely not going to happen, especially in the 1950s.

--Brant

I don`t know ....if NB had wanted marriage, and Rand`s reason persuaded her that it would be an expression of her highest values, would she have let her `conventional side`` carry the day I wonder. Poor Frank`s feelings would hardly have been much of a factor.

She could have been a Joan Collins for the 50s.

Instead of Ayn Rand?

--Brant

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