OBJECTIVIST SCHOLAR, ALLAN GOTTHELF - R.I.P.

[Jerry Biggers]

Allan Gotthelf a Professor of Philosophy who was in Rand's Inner Circle in the 1950-60s, and a founding President of The Ayn Rand Society (a division of the Eastern Region of the American Philosophical Association), has died. See the attached bulletin from the ARS, and an unpublished article which was to have been the Epilogue in his book, On Ayn Rand, on what Ayn Rand meant to him.

http://www.aynrandsociety.org/allangotthelf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I am always sad to see death.

May Mr. Gotthelf rest in peace.

Michael

[Guyau]

Fond memories of Allan, with highest esteem and appreciation. His written works,* and the younger generation of scholars he assisted, will continue to expand my understanding.*

From the festschrift for him, Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle (2010):

Allan Gotthelf was born in Brooklyn during the glory years of the Brooklyn Dodgers—he recalls attending games at Ebbets Field, once watching Jackie Robinson (who joined the Dodgers’ roster in 1947) steal home, and forming an informal “Gill Hodges Fan Club” with two friends. But as passionate as he was for sports, his true love was understanding things at the deepest level, and after doing three years of junior high school in two he attended the justly famous Stuyvesant High School, with its rigorous training in mathematics and science, from 1956 to 1959. . . .

Prior to discovering philosophy, Allan focused his thirst for understanding on mathematics and physics, and in 1959, at the age of sixteen, he entered Brooklyn College, intending to major in physics, but shifting after he arrived toward theoretical mathematics. During the summer of 1961 he read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, which influenced him to redirect his intellectual focus toward philosophy. He graduated in 1963 with a Major in Mathematics and a Minor in Philosophy, having taken classes in philosophy with Martin Lean and John Hospers. Though he had decided to pursue an advanced degree in philosophy, he had a strong interest in philosophy of mathematics and had already accepted a graduate assistantship at Penn State in mathematics. So after completing his MA in mathematics there in one year, he entered the graduate program in philosophy at Columbia University in 1964.

. . . He eventually settled on “Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality” as the topic for his dissertation, and received his Ph.D. in 1975. An essay based on his dissertation won the dissertation essay prize of the Review of Metaphysics and was published in its 1976/7 volume. . . .

From his Preface to Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology (2012):

In 1961, midway through my undergraduate studies, I read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I loved the novel. It glowed with respect for the mind, and for much else that I valued or came to value. Rand loved Aristotle, and that love permeated especially her later writings, from Atlas Shrugged on. . . .

I started reading Aristotle myself and found much of profound value philosophically, certainly more than I had found in the contemporary philosophy materials I studied for my regular courses. I had been fortunate to meet and get to know Rand, and I talked with her about Aristotle (and much else) on and off over the next fifteen or so years. Two ideas I would like to highlight here that attracted me to Aristotle from the beginning (in the first case, with the help of Rand’s own discussion of the issues) were: (i) an understanding of causality and explanation in terms not of events and laws but of things with natures and potentials; and (ii) the idea that developed human knowledge takes the form of axiomatically structured bodies of understanding, which reflect a grasp of the essential natures and potentials of the relevant things (including their attributes), a grasp acquired through systematic sensory observation and a broadly inductive methodology.

And so began an adventure . . . .

[merjet]

Wikipedia implies he was 70 or 71 years old.

[Guyau]

70 years old.

December 30, 1942 – August 30, 2013.

I had published the first issue of Objectivity in September 1990. The material quality had been defective, likewise for the second issue. Before the third issue, with the talents of Joe Dejan and Gloria Ball, I had those two earlier issues reprinted in our final, higher quality and better design. I sent a newly minted copy of V1N1 to Allan Gotthelf in March 1992 and invited him to subscribe.*

That he did, with a letter, April 1992, which included the following:

I found your own article very competent and interesting. You are obviously very familiar with the related psychological research, and you handle the objectivist material well.

I would question only your treatment of descriptive phrases as standing for concepts, e.g. “the prime numbers among the counting numbers from 1 to 1000,” rather than as Rand called them “qualified instances.” If concepts are mental units in a primary way, and mental units can be retained (at this level of abstraction) only by means of verbal units that can be held and manipulated as units, the parts of which do not signify parts of the mental unit, then a descriptive phrase would need to be condensed to a small manageable unit—effectively a word or very short phrase that functions as a word—for one to have retained a concept. Rand used to give the example of how the description “Conceptual Common Denominator” became a concept when it came to be abbreviated “CCD.” (See ITOE, 177; I was in fact Professor B.) Introspectively, that seems absolutely right to me.

I was somewhat uncomfortable too at the ease with which you seemed to think one can integrate the results of psychological research by a wide range of researchers, whose own theoretical frameworks might well be structuring either their evidence or their conclusions, into an Objectivist theoretical framework. Of course, much research is acceptable as it stands, but so often research into “concepts” and “language” is colored by faulty conceptions of same, and as a reader I at least would like to have more confidence that I can trust your judgment about the significance of that research. I’m not sure what the solution is: I think my confidence level would have risen had you quoted from these sources, but I recognize that that might have made the article unmanageable. . . .

I don’t know if you and your associates are familiar with the Ayn Rand Society . . . . Quite apart from that, I would be interested to know of your background and the area of your own work. Am I right to think that we haven’t met?

From my reply:

Thank you also for you comments . . . .

I am an engineer employed in the nuclear power industry. I have two BS degrees . . . .

We have met almost. I attended a presentation of yours at Northwestern University in the late seventies. Your subject was romantic love. I should probably say outright that we ended that day in a bitter conflict over gay love. My lover Jerry Crawford and I continued together twenty-two years to his death in 1990.

I was with him. We were alone. That is the way it was, and that is the way it should have been.

It is uncertain how long I shall continue. I have the HIV . . . . Anyway, for now I continue just with him and this work. Thank goodness for this work.

Allan renewed his subscription for Volume 2, which ended in 1998. In this century, Allan would greet me and introduce me to others, if he had a minute before sessions of the Ayn Rand Society. We corresponded once more a few years ago concerning my remarks online about the conflict I had had with him in the ’70’s and its resolution and concerning my contributions to this site. He signed “Good wishes.” I replied, “Affectionately.”

I wish his mind in print wide and long life, and may memory of him by his loved ones last always warm and clear.

[Neil Parille]

I'm not sure if Gotthelf was part of Rand's "inner circle."

Of the philosophers who were associated with Rand, such as Peikoff and Binswanger, he had the most successful academic career. He had an impressive list of publications. For some reason, he published relatively little on Rand and Objectivism.

-Neil Parille

[Brant Gaede]

There's a picture of him as part of the NBI baseball team (The Huns)--1964--in The Passion of Ayn Rand.

--Brant

only a year older than me

[BaalChatzaf]

I am always sad to see death.

May Mr. Gotthelf rest in peace.

Michael

Consider the alternative. Suppose there was no death. Then this planet would be an unmanagible horrible mess.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

I am always sad to see death.

May Mr. Gotthelf rest in peace.

Michael

Consider the alternative. Suppose there was no death. Then this planet would be an unmanagible horrible mess.

Ba'al Chatzaf

False alternative.

--Brant

[Jerry Biggers]

I'm not sure if Gotthelf was part of Rand's "inner circle."

Of the philosophers who were associated with Rand, such as Peikoff and Binswanger, he had the most successful academic career. He had an impressive list of publications. For some reason, he published relatively little on Rand and Objectivism.

-Neil Parille

Neil,

You're probably correct, that Allan Gotthelf was not a member of Rand's Inner Circle in the 1950s, as he would have been in his teens. As the Wikipedia article on him states, he attended some NBI courses and events, and Rand knew him well enough to pick him as the Indexer for both the Virtue of Selfishness and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. He probably was one of the unidentified philosophy professors who attended a seminar on Objectivist epistemology, excerpts of which are included as an appendix to the second edition of Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

His brief book On Ayn Rand was criticized by Leonard Peikoff shortly after its publication, for deviationism. I don't remember the details, but somehow Gotthelf's description of Objectivist epistemology was somehow deficient in Peikoff's opinion (I think Binswanger joined Peikoff in this) The criticism was somewhat ironic, as this was one of the first introductory presentations by a philosophy professor, and Gotthelf had slogged on, lock-step, with the ARIan orthodoxy, including dismissing any other "unapproved" (without the ARIan imprimatur) books on Objectivism, at the end of his book..

[Jerry Biggers]

I am always sad to see death.

May Mr. Gotthelf rest in peace.

Michael

Consider the alternative. Suppose there was no death. Then this planet would be an unmanagible horrible mess.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Oh. I thought the planet already had earned that dubious distinction.

[Guyau]

Jerry,

I hope you are aware that Gotthelf was Prof. B, as he mentioned in his 1992 letter to me that I quoted above and as has been mentioned repeatedly at this site by Ellen and I. Always read the seminar transcripts with that in mind: that Gotthelf is B and Peikoff is E. See how Rand is informed by them? How she relies on them? (This is so boring to be mentioning this for the fifteenth time. I promise, I'll not try to wake anyone concerning it again.)

--S

[Jerry Biggers]

Jerry,

I hope you are aware that Gotthelf was Prof. B, as he mentioned in his 1992 letter to me that I quoted above and as has been mentioned repeatedly at this site by Ellen and I. Always read the seminar transcripts with that in mind: that Gotthelf is B and Peikoff is E. See how Rand is informed by them? How she relies on them? (This is so boring to be mentioning this for the fifteenth time. I promise, I'll not try to wake anyone concerning it again.)

--S

Yeah, I got that. So, I'll not mention it again. (Oh, oh! I just did).

[George H. Smith]

Around 1975 I heard Gotthelf lecture in Los Angeles. The talk itself was a summary of material he had presented in a paper on Aristotle v. Plato on love. That part was fine, but the lengthy Q&A, which focused mainly on the O'ist view of sex, was utterly bizarre. Of course, Gotthelf condemned homosexuality in no uncertain terms, and that part was expected, but his reason was odd. He claimed that when gays engage in sex, one always mimics the role of a woman, so gay sex entails faking reality, which is immoral.

Next in line was masturbation, which Gotthelf also condemned as immoral. He reasoned that people almost always fantasize while masturbating, and that fantasizing also involves faking reality, which is immoral.

After Gotthelf droned on about how one should only have sex with one's "highest value," I asked a question. It was an honest question involving the possibility that one's "highest value" might be contextual, etc. After I finished, Gotthelf ran the intellectual scam on me that I call the "Objectivist Twist" -- the kind of response that always begins, "The very fact that you asked that question shows such-and-such" -- with the "such--and--such being a devastating psychological revelation about the questioner.

As unbelievable as it sounds, Gotthelf concluded that a psychologically healthy man would be unable to have sex with any woman who is not his "highest value"; in other words, he wouldn't be able to get it up. It took several minutes for Gotthelf to lecture me on this point in a very snotty way, so I resolved to strike back with some humor. After he finished with a triumphant Q.E.D.! look on his face, I replied: "You know, that's the first philosophical defense of impotence that I've ever heard." After much of the crowd laughed uproariously, Gotthelf scowled. Our exchange ended there, of course.

His philosophical accomplishments aside, Gotthelf came across to me and many others in the audience as a pretentious and ignorant puritan. I later mentioned some of Gotthelf's views to Nathaniel Branden, who remarked that Ayn Rand never defended most of them.

Ghs

[Reidy]

Some extra history:

Gotthelf was on at least one of the interviews Rand recorded for Columbia University's station in the early 60s. Barbara Branden recounts that he was the organizer of a baseball game between the NBI staff (Witch Doctors) and students (Attilas).

He said he discovered Rand in 1961, so he wouldn't have been in the original inner circle.

[Jerry Biggers]

Obviously, the Allan Gotthelf that George encountered in 1975 was quite different from the views that he later expressed in 1992 to Stephen.Peikoff and Branden also changed their view of homosexuality from that of Rand.

Judging from George's encounter, I suppose that we should be thankful that Gotthelf had not put his earlier views on romantic love to pen.

[Neil Parille]

I believe Peikoff ganged up on Gotthelf with David Harriman, not Harry Binswanger.

[Ellen Stuttle]

From my reply:

[....]

It is uncertain how long I shall continue. I have the HIV . . . . Anyway, for now I continue just with him and this work. Thank goodness for this work.

Stephen,

I've been reading the thread backward starting from the last post (I often read threads in backward order).

I got to that part and started crying so much my eyes bleared.

How grateful I am that you did continue.

I'm sorry to learn of Allan's death, as is Larry - I told Larry the news when I saw the thread title. I always liked Allan (mostly from a distance; I was only a few times at social gatherings where he was present), and I appreciated his intellect (differences of opinion notwithstanding).

Ellen

[George H. Smith]

Obviously, the Allan Gotthelf that George encountered in 1975 was quite different from the views that he later expressed in 1992 to Stephen.Peikoff and Branden also changed their view of homosexuality from that of Rand.

Judging from George's encounter, I suppose that we should be thankful that Gotthelf had not put his earlier views on romantic love to pen.

I read the excerpt from Gotthelf's letter that Stephen posted. There is nothing in it that would indicate that Gotthelf changed his views on homosexuality. True, he was cordial to a man who was openly gay, but that's a different matter.

It took NB quite a while to change his views on homosexuality. He held the orthodox Randian view (a twist on Freud, in fact) when I was attending group sessions in 1971-3, and I recall a number of interesting arguments that he had with Roy Childs on the subject. During the early seventies Roy called himself "bisexual" and even wrote a lengthy unpublished paper defending the rationality of that position against both heterosexuality and homosexuality. After a disastrous affair with a woman, however, Roy declared himself completely gay by late 1972.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

By 1976 Nathaniel Branden, at least in the context of therapy, was quite tolerant of sexual orientation and had no expectation of changing anyone's orientation and no explanation of it, officially speaking. NB is a classic heterosexual and a ladies' man if I ever saw one. It wasn't blatant, but obvious enough. He just naturally loves and appreciates women and their "incredible softness."

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Obviously, the Allan Gotthelf that George encountered in 1975 was quite different from the views that he later expressed in 1992 to Stephen.Peikoff and Branden also changed their view of homosexuality from that of Rand.

Judging from George's encounter, I suppose that we should be thankful that Gotthelf had not put his earlier views on romantic love to pen.

I read the excerpt from Gotthelf's letter that Stephen posted. There is nothing in it that would indicate that Gotthelf changed his views on homosexuality. True, he was cordial to a man who was openly gay, but that's a different matter.

It took NB quite a while to change his views on homosexuality. He held the orthodox Randian view (a twist on Freud, in fact) when I was attending group sessions in 1971-3, and I recall a number of interesting arguments that he had with Roy Childs on the subject. During the early seventies Roy called himself "bisexual" and even wrote a lengthy unpublished paper defending the rationality of that position against both heterosexuality and homosexuality. After a disastrous affair with a woman, however, Roy declared himself completely gay by late 1972.

Ghs

You really loved your friend. I remember from what you wrote after Roy died. Hard to believe it's been 20 years now. He was a presence, a force, that's been missing ever since.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

Obviously, the Allan Gotthelf that George encountered in 1975 was quite different from the views that he later expressed in 1992 to Stephen.Peikoff and Branden also changed their view of homosexuality from that of Rand.

Judging from George's encounter, I suppose that we should be thankful that Gotthelf had not put his earlier views on romantic love to pen.

I read the excerpt from Gotthelf's letter that Stephen posted. There is nothing in it that would indicate that Gotthelf changed his views on homosexuality. True, he was cordial to a man who was openly gay, but that's a different matter.

It took NB quite a while to change his views on homosexuality. He held the orthodox Randian view (a twist on Freud, in fact) when I was attending group sessions in 1971-3, and I recall a number of interesting arguments that he had with Roy Childs on the subject. During the early seventies Roy called himself "bisexual" and even wrote a lengthy unpublished paper defending the rationality of that position against both heterosexuality and homosexuality. After a disastrous affair with a woman, however, Roy declared himself completely gay by late 1972.

Ghs

You really loved your friend. I remember from what you wrote after Roy died. Hard to believe it's been 20 years now. He was a presence, a force, that's been missing ever since.

--Brant

My 1992 tribute to Roy, originally published in Liberty Magazine, may be read here:

http://www.libertarianism.org/blog/remembering-roy-childs-0

I wrote this article in an emotional blur, fortified by cocaine and heroin. I barely remember writing it, but I do recall shutting myself in my office and vowing not to come out until it was finished. I figured that if I took a break I might never finish it. It probably took me around ten hours, because I kept breaking down during the writing process.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

By 1976 Nathaniel Branden, at least in the context of therapy, was quite tolerant of sexual orientation and had no expectation of changing anyone's orientation and no explanation of it, officially speaking. NB is a classic heterosexual and a ladies' man if I ever saw one. It wasn't blatant, but obvious enough. He just naturally loves and appreciates women and their "incredible softness."

--Brant

1976 sounds about right. I've always assumed that Branden's views on homosexuality changed sometime around 1975. Before that time, however, Branden sometimes said that, whereas Freud traced homosexuality to problems with the mother, he was convinced that the root lay in problems with the father. But Branden was never moralistic about this matter during the time that I was spending a lot of time with him (1971-74); he just viewed homosexuality as a type of aberration. And I'm pretty sure that he sometimes counseled gay men who wanted to change. I don't know what changed Branden's mind, but I admired him for doing so.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

Changed Branden's mind: I'll be blunt. His clients. If you are a young male all kinds of sexual emotions, reactions, even experiences might/may/likely encompass ~homosexual feelings~ or reactions, but it's hormones. It's part of growing up. (Not being female I can't comment for them.) But in going back into childhood using abreactive exercises seeking out ~explanatory trauma~ or influence it might seem superficially to be homosexual this or that and Branden would have had to deal with that, etc. To be effective in his work he would have had to deal with all this and many other issues at face value to start with and not dump moralizing suppositions onto the situation which would have been damnation unto him as a therapist. While Nathaniel lost a lot of his moral voice, which Rand refused to do, because of what he did to her in the 1960s, he didn't need that to be a great therapist. He needed it for broader, general issues, but any therapist who brings moralizing into the therapeutic context is damnably incompetent. Ayn Rand was a moralizer. Branden was a moralizer. Break '68. He left a lot of that crap behind, but crap wasn't all he left. He paid a great and bad price and will carry it to his grave. The man was seduced and traduced but greatly transcended that wronging which was his too, not just hers.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

Changed Branden's mind: I'll be blunt. His clients. If you are a young male all kinds of sexual emotions, reactions, even experiences might/may/likely encompass ~homosexual feelings~ or reactions, but it's hormones. It's part of growing up. (Not being female I can't comment for them.) But in going back into childhood using abreactive exercises seeking out ~explanatory trauma~ or influence it might seem superficially to be homosexual this or that and Branden would have had to deal with that, etc. To be effective in his work he would have had to deal with all this and many other issues at face value to start with and not dump moralizing suppositions onto the situation which would have been damnation unto him as a therapist. While Nathaniel lost a lot of his moral voice, which Rand refused to do, because of what he did to her in the 1960s, he didn't need that to be a great therapist. He needed it for broader, general issues, but any therapist who brings moralizing into the therapeutic context is damnably incompetent. Ayn Rand was a moralizer. Branden was a moralizer. Break '68. He left a lot of that crap behind, but crap wasn't all he left. He paid a great and bad price and will carry it to his grave. The man was seduced and traduced but greatly transcended that wronging which was his too, not just hers.

--Brant

You may have a point there. There were a number of happy and well-adjusted gay couples running in the Branden circle in those days, and more than a few thoroughly messed-up straight couples. Maybe the obvious empirical evidence caused NB to rethink his position. 8-)

Ghs