Elsewhere on Objectivist Living, Herr Doktor Robert Campbell spake some very wise words about this issue on September 7, 2006, and I replicate them here without modification:

[Robert Campbell]Roger,

In a post that may have been lost when the site was hacked, I quoted a wise colleague in psychology, who says, "You publish, and you take your lumps."

When you put your views in print, you inevitably run the risk that other smart people will notice how they have implications that you were unaware of. Perhaps implications that you really didn't intend, or that weaken your case. But if you don't publish, what are your chances of noticing all such implications all by yourself?

I've made one decision recently.

For years, I made excuses for Leonard Peikoff. Someone would criticize The Ominous Parallels, or OPAR, and I'd say, "His lectures on Issue X are so much better." I even did this after becoming active in IOS. When I read OPAR, in 1999, I made lots of critical notes in the margins, but decided not to write any extended analysis of it, because... his lectures were so much better.

Well, Dr. Peikoff's lectures often are better. Even the ARIans tacitly concede this, when they extol Understanding Objectivism as the be-all and the end-all.

But TOP and OPAR are what he chose to publish. They're what he thinks he adequately thought through.

All Peikoff scholarship and Peikoff criticism should proceed on the same assumption. If he presents a weak case in OPAR, or goes over the top, we all need to quit excusing it on the grounds that he did a better job elsewhere. Our readership has little or no access to elsewhere, and Dr. Peikoff apparently isn't sufficiently confident in the stuff he did there to afford them access to it.

Amen to that, and kudos to Dr. Campbell for all the excellent archaelogical sifting he has done in various versions of Peikoff's writings and speakings on the topic of "The Peikovian Doctrine of Arbitrary Assertion." See his excellent essay of that title in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Volume 10, No. 1 (Fall 2008).

REB

[i think I should add, for clarification, these remarks first posted on OL on September 7, 2006]

I'm not saying that there won't be more Objectivist books written, especially by the ARI faction. I fully expect to see, before long, the book on consciousness that Harry Binswanger is reportedly working on. I also expect to see a book on philosophy of physics by David Harriman (perhaps co-authored by Leonard Peikoff), and a book by Peikoff on his "DIM Hypothesis." (I think that a more important book than any of these would be one by Peikoff compactly presenting his views on induction that he developed through two recent series of lectures. Perhaps this, too, is forthcoming. [Note: Harriman presented Peikoff's model of induction in the context of the history of modern science in his 2010 book The Logical Leap.)

But even if these books do appear in the next several years, two things bother me about them. One, it has been so damned long for so little to have appeared from the ARI contingent -- and two, most of it will be "chewing," rather than any new, original, substantive philosophizing.

This latter point is important. Rand enjoined us to avoid the pitfall of "thinking inside the square." (Nowadays, this is called "thinking inside the box.") Yet, what is all this "chewing," if not exactly what she warned against? The timidity at taking risks and exploring new ideas is depressingly apparent.

The irony is that for all the care that Peikoff et al take for their published work to be consistent with Objectivism, none of their work actually is Objectivism, if the "closed system" criterion is to be taken seriously. Everything written after Rand died is, at most, inspired by or "in the tradition of" Rand's philosophy, as she herself defined it.

That being so, why not take some chances and go out on a limb? What is the worst that can happen? If you're speaking for yourself, as someone inspired and taught by Rand, even if you're a self-proclaimed Objectivist philosopher, not disagreeing with a single word Rand wrote on philosophy, your own writings are not Objectivism, so who cares if you make a mistake here or there?

The answer is obvious. It is more important to cling to one's precarious little perch in the ARI hierarchy than to bravely go where no man has gone before. (I came up with that phrase myself. :-)

Yours truly, Gene Roddenberry

It's an oft-lamented, squirm-inducing fact that ~many~ well-meaning (?) people in the Objectivist movement have tended to misinterpret (?) Rand's ideas in a rationalist/intrinsicist manner, not to say an overly ~judgmental~ manner. A good amount of Peikoff's 1983 course, "Understanding Objectivism," was aimed at uprooting and dispelling such tendencies of Objectivists--students and spokescritters thereof, alike. As was his later course, "Judging, Feeling, and Not Being Moralistic." As were his later courses, "Objectivism through Induction" and "Induction in Physics and Philosophy."

These are very good antidotes, even if only partial, to the problem noted. Unfortunately, up until now, they have remained part of the massive "aural" tradition of Objectivist philosophy. You can buy the CDs, listen, and frantically scribble notes--wondering later: did he really say that, then hunt and peck through the audio for the actual comment. Not much fun, compared to eyeballing a stationary target on the printed page.

As noted above, Peikoff once remarked: "Then it's for eternity." Exactly. That means that critics and careful students can pick it apart and maybe find subtle flaws that cast doubt on patterns of inference and the resulting action recommendations. And that's scary. Which I think is the main reason there has been ~so little~ published by Objectivist writers other than Ayn Rand herself -- or Nathaniel Branden, of course, who has been as fearless as he has been prolific in putting his ideas out there in printed form.

The only good news in this area is that Peikoff's "Understanding Objectivism" is going to be edited/re-written(?) by Robert Mayhew and published next spring. Probably over the anguished protests of Peter Schwartz and his ilk, who seem to prefer the rougher-tougher, more judgmental brand of Objectivism. Should be an interesting roll-out.

[Posted elsewhere on OL on October 10, 2011]