Peikoff's Personal Esthetics Authority

[Ellen Stuttle]

On April 21, 2016 at 11:11 AM, Brant Gaede said:

I read [Joan] onsidered Objectivism to be Rand's psychotherapy on herself.

 

On April 21, 2016 at 11:28 AM, Brant Gaede said:

I do think [the Blimenthals] got back with Barbara.

--Brant

OL's resident digressor

Digressing further to (1) correct the first statement (it was Allan not Joan) and provide the context, and (2) quote Barbara's account of her reconciliation with Joan and Allan.

The following material comes from a 2008 discussion.  I've provided it not using the quote feature, since if someone responds to a post which has material in a quote box, that material gets deleted in the response. (I hate the awkwardness of the blinking new software.)

 

===============================

==== Part of Post by JERRY BIGGERS, January 24, 2008 at 1:11 am - link:

Well, David Kelley's invitation for Nathaniel to speak at TOC events was viewed as an endorsement by TOC Board member Allan Blumenthal, who promptly resigned and has not spoken at TOC events since. An interesting aside is that Allan Blumenthal is a relative of Nathaniel, and a member of Rand's Inner Circle until, finally, he was told by Ayn that his presnce was no longer welcome. Subsequently, he told Barbara Branden in her biography of Rand, that he had come to the conclusion that Rand may have been evil from the start and that that aspect of her personality was a causative element in her creation of Objectivism. It is curious that such a statement did not detract from his acceptance on the IOS/TOC board.  ==== end

 

==== Reply by ELLEN STUTTLE, January 24, 2008 at 3:15 AM - link:

Oh, dear, the way things get mixed-up and false stories get spread...

You might be right about Allan's viewing Nathaniel's invitation [should have read "being invited"] as an "endorsement," or at least a "sanction," but that isn't quite how David described the issue to my husband and me back at the time when it was decided to invite Nathaniel. Instead the sound of it was more that Allan just didn't want to be part of an organization where Nathaniel was speaking.

That Allan is a relative of Nathaniel's is true; he's Nathaniel's first cousin. They grew up together and never got along well.

You have it backward about the split between Ayn and Allan. The Blumenthals split with Ayn, not the reverse. She made things unpleasant enough for them with her nagging about their musical and artistic tastes (and some other issues), Joan says it almost seemed as if she was trying to drive them away. But the break originated from their side. You can find this in Barbara's biography (pp. 386-87). (I also know the story in more detail than Barbara provides, having heard further details from Allan himself not long after he and Joan had broken with Ayn.)

What you write about Allan's opining on Ayn's evil is NOT in Barbara's biography. Instead it's a further gloss on something Roy Childs reports in his final interview, conducted by Jeff Walker. It goes significantly farther than what Allan is reported as saying in Jeff Walker's book -- which in turn goes farther than what Allan was saying in 77-80 (after which I lost touch with him). Back then (the late '70s) he said, "I thought the ideas were great and the woman was crazy." He clearly didn't mean "crazy" as in certifiable, instead colloquially. He was negative but not as negative as it sounds as if he became later on.

I question the accuracy of the story Roy Childs tells -- about Allan and Joan arguing that Ayn was evil (on an evening when Roy visited the Blumenthals along with Barbara, who counter-argued, said Roy, that, no Ayn wasn't evil). Maybe, if Barbara reads this, she could say how accurate the report is.

Something I know for a fact is that Roy could elaborate stories and even get them thoroughly wrong. For instance, he tells a story in the same interview about a good personal friend of mine and gets every detail wrong -- and I know that the friend wasn't the source of any of the errors because I was there the night Roy met her, at a private dinner party attended by only four people, my friend and I, her then-current boyfriend, and Roy. I wasn't even out of earshot of any of the conversation, so I know what he was told, and how wrong he got it (though he makes a good story of what he reports).

Also in the same interview he describes AR as high on speed from her diet pills plus caffeine. As I mentioned on another thread (see), possibly Roy himself was the source through which, on the West Coast (Roy's homebase), Ayn's use of diet pills became magnified.

Long and short: I don't know if Allan really did eventually come to the opinion that Ayn was evil, or if that's a Childs-style exaggeration. But it is not in Barbara's biography.

Ellen

PS: Barbara gives the date of the split between Ayn and the Blumenthals as 1978; that's off by a year -- it was 1977.

==== end reply by Ellen Stuttle

 

==== Part of Follow-up Post by JERRY BIGGERS, January 24, 2008 at 9:39 am - link:

Thanks. I stand corrected on the details that you provided. The story that Allan Blumenthal later described Rand and her philosophy as "evil" does not appear in Barbara's book (at least, I could not find it after reading your post). In which case, as you said, that story probably originated from Jeff Walker's interview with Roy Childs and subsequently, in Walker's book, The Ayn Rand Cult.  === end

 

==== Second Reply by ELLEN STUTTLE, January 25, 2008 at 0:27 am - link:

 I'm afraid I have to correct further. Please note, I didn't say that the "evil" story appeared subsequently in Walker's book. It isn't in Walker's book either.

Here is what Allan is reported as saying in Walker's book The Ayn Rand Cult:

Walker quoting Allan B. said:

pg. 247

According to Allan Blumenthal, Rand "created an entire system, including her philosophical system, to deal with her own psychological problems." To which this interviewer stammered, "All of Objectivism was to deal with her own psychological problems?" Blumenthal insisted, "That's my view." Though surely an exaggeration, this perspective reframes the statement she once made: "Objectivism is me..." [ellipsis in original] {end}

==== end second reply by Ellen Stuttle

 

BARBARA BRANDEN had meanwhile posted scotching the "AB said that AR is 'evil'" story and telling about her reconciliation with Joan and Allan Blumenthal.

==== Post by BARBARA BRANDEN, January 24, 2008 at 9:46 am - link:

Ellen, you are right in your post correcting Jerry Biggers' description of Allan Blumenthal's break with Rand and his estimate of her.

Jerry, this is not in any way a criticism of you. I have an idea of the sort of stories that float aroumd, and it's impossible for someone who wasn't directly involved to know what is true and what isn't. But it was Joan and Allan who ended their relationship with Rand, it was not Rand's decision. Further, I never heard Allan state that Rand was evil -- it's not the way he talks or thinks.

Chris, you asked when the Blumenthals and I reconciled. It was in 1976. I had returned to New York in 1975, where I remained for two years, and Joan and I -- after not seeing each other for more than seven years -- almost literally bumped into each other on Fifth Avenue one day. We had been close friends in Winnipeg from the time we were twelve or thirteen; we had taken an apartment together when we attended UCLA; I had introduced her to Ayn and Objectivism; and we had married cousins. Our rupture in 1968, after Rand published "To Whom It May Concern," was very painful for both of us. We began talking, and over the next few weeks I told Joan -- and then Allan -- a great deal that she had not known about "the break' and my part in it, and we began picking up the pieces of our friendship. It was a development that made me very happy, and still does; my friendship with Joan has always been one of the most importamt relationships of my life.

Barbara

==== end post by Barbara

 

NOTE: I'm completely surprised at Allan's having said something so overwrought and indefensible as the statement Walker quoted, if the quote is accurate.  The context makes it look as if it is accurate.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

On April 30, 2016 at 8:40 PM, Ellen Stuttle said:

You again miss the point.  Repeat: Peikoff wasn't making an esthetic appraisal at all.  He was talking about his personal reaction.  He wasn't assessing the work's technical merit, which is the only issue to which that passage you dub "the Objectivist method of Esthetic Judgment" applies.  You've elevated that passage into worse than the tail wagging the dog.  You've turned it into the tail replacing the dog.

Your arguing with an imaginary foe.

Ellen, dingbat, I've been praising Peikoff for not making an Objectivist Esthetic appraisal, and for giving his personal, subjective reaction instead!

 

On April 30, 2016 at 8:40 PM, Ellen Stuttle said:

I do wonder how long it's been since you read the whole set of three essays.  Sounds like you've forgotten what Rand's theory of art says and how she says artistic response operates.  She does not preface the final cautionary addendum about confusing personal response with appraisal of technical skill by saying words to the effect, "And now, reader, you're supposed to ignore everything I've written in this set of essays up to here and turn it all backward, so as to start with a technical appraisal and then respond."

 

I wonder how long it's been since you've read and grasped anything in its entirety and in full context. You're really losing it. Electron-chasing is taking its toll on you. Or maybe it's the other way around: the electron-chasing is a symptom rather than a cause?

J

[Brant Gaede]

I wouldn't trust Walker, Ellen.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 4/30/2016 at 9:10 PM, Ellen Stuttle said:

I've provided it not using the quote feature, since if someone responds to a post which has material in a quote box, that material gets deleted in the response. (I hate the awkwardness of the blinking new software.)

Ellen,

I'm not a fan, either.

But there is a way to get the embedded quote and the comment in the post to appear when you want to comment on them. Rather than use the quote button at the bottom of the post, select the text you wish to comment on and a small black rectangular quote button will appear. When you click that, the passage will appear properly formatted in the comment box for you to comment on. If you select an embedded quote along with other text, the quote will also appear.

There are two cases I have found when the small black rectangular quote button doesn't work. If something else is already in the comment box, the selected passage will not appear even though the little black box appears and you click on it. Also, if source view is selected for the comment box, the selected passage will not appear when you click on the little black box.

It takes a little getting used to, but it works consistently, so it's easy to automate in your mind and become a habit after a few times.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

On May 3, 2016 at 4:15 PM, Jonathan said:

Your arguing with an imaginary foe.

Ellen, dingbat, I've been praising Peikoff for not making an Objectivist Esthetic appraisal, and for giving his personal, subjective reaction instead!

You continue to display your muck-up over "Objectivist Esthetic appraisal," just as I described earlier:

 

On April 27, 2016 at 10:49 PM, Ellen Stuttle said:

[...] your understanding of the prescribed method, as briefly summarized by you on another thread, is incorrect:

~~~ Jonathan wrote:

link

[Rand's] followers [...] don't observe the work of art and carefully, dispassionately add up its elements to identify a thematic subject and meaning, and then later come to a moral appraisal and appropriate emotional response. Instead, they immediately emote, long before they've had a chance to consider all that the art might contain and mean.

~~~ end quote

The point of Rand's cautionary addendum about "purely esthetic appraisal" is that such appraisal on the one hand and a person's emotional response and moral evaluation on the other are different issues.   She wasn't saying that first you make a "purely esthetic appraisal" and then you evaluate morally and react emotionally based on the results of your "purely esthetic appraisal."  She was saying that you put your emotional and moral appraisals aside in judging the technical quality of a work.

The O'ists (and O'vishes) you decry who react immediately emotionally are doing what she said is the nature of immediate response - response coming from the degree of perceived congruence with how the responder sees life.

Contra you, Peikoff wasn't proceeding in a way contra Rand.  She didn't say that one is to make an aesthetic appraisal first, before evaluating morally and reacting emotionally - or even that one should necessarily make a "purely esthetic appraisal" at all.  She was merely cautioning that the two types of evaluation aren't the same.

You also continue to display your ignorance of chemistry.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

On May 3, 2016 at 7:40 PM, Brant Gaede said:

I wouldn't trust Walker, Ellen.

I don't trust Walker interpretively, but he is accurate in reporting quotes that come from print sources, and the statement he attributes to Allan appears to come from a videotaped interview which was used on a BBC program and could presumably be checked.

I have to correct my statement in the post at the top of this thread that the "evil" story told by Childs isn't in the Walker book.  Walker did quote that story, but it isn't indexed under the entries for the respective participants other than the one for Childs himself.  It's on page 261.  I came across it while looking for something else.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

On May 4, 2016 at 0:29 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Rather than use the quote button at the bottom of the post, select the text you wish to comment on and a small black rectangular quote button will appear

Thanks.  However, the quote button doesn't appear on my tablet.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

21 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

Contra you, Peikoff wasn't proceeding in a way contra Rand.  She didn't say that one is to make an aesthetic appraisal first, before evaluating morally and reacting emotionally - or even that one should necessarily make a "purely esthetic appraisal" at all.  She was merely cautioning that the two types of evaluation aren't the same.

Ah, now I see!!! With your electron-chase mindset, with its inability to grasp anything above the electron level -- no molecules, cells, leaves, trees or forests -- you apparently think that Rand's stated method of "objective esthetic judgment" applies only to "purely esthetic appraisals" of art, and not to moral evaluations of art?!!!

So, your position seems to be that when one views a work of art and makes moral evaluations of it, Rand's view would have been that one need not follow the same method that one uses when making esthetic evaluations?!!! Is that what you're saying?

In other words, one is to "identify the artist's theme, the abstract meaning of his work (exclusively by identifying the evidence contained in the work and allowing no other, outside considerations)" only when making esthetic judgments, but when making moral judgments of artworks, one may subjectively and arbitrarily choose at whim whether or not one wishes to identify the artist's theme based exclusively on the evidence contained in the work?

Your little theory is that Rand's notion of objective moral judgment of works of art is that one may ignore the evidence in the work, import one's one fanciful, subjective content, and use his feelings and emotions as his criteria of judgment? Even though she said that "a philosopher does not approach any other branch of his science with his feelings or emotions as his criterion of judgment, so he cannot do in the field of esthetics" [my bolding], you're saying that she actually believed that viewers of art, especially the heir of her estate, should morally judge art using any method that they wish, including basing their judgments on their feelings and emotions, as well as just randomly ignoring content or willfully misinterpreting it as what they want it to be?

Hahahahaha!!!!

What's the next electron that you'll unsuccessfully chase?

 

21 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

You also continue to display your ignorance of chemistry.

Boring!

No, I don't have an ignorance of chemistry. I think the problem is rather that you have an ignorance of aesthetic effect.

Anyway, as I've said before, I'm not interested in watching you go all electron-chase over the term "electron chase," and how you imagine that it reveals my alleged ignorance of chemistry. So, you might as well stop begging me to beg you to elaborate and explain and elucidate and electron chase.

J

[Jonathan]

I wrote:

On April 20, 2016 at 2:53 PM, Jonathan said:

Peikoff answers a question about why he likes Michelangelo’s Dying Slave better than the David:

http://www.peikoff.com/2016/04/04/why-do-you-like-michelangelos-the-dying-slave-more-than-the-david/#.VxAx6APzDmY.facebook

 

The gist: Peikoff digs the Dying Slave because he see it as representing “man right after sex, right after orgasmic fulfillment.”

 

He sees the slave’s ropes as “his T-shirt, which is all that was left, uh, after his actions.”

 

Ya know, Peikoff's aesthetic hermeneutic method reminds me a lot of Derrida, or at least of analyses by others of Derrida that I've read.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

On May 11, 2016 at 0:11 PM, Jonathan said:

[...] you're saying that she actually believed that viewers of art, especially the heir of her estate, should morally judge art using any method that they wish, including basing their judgments on their feelings and emotions, as well as just randomly ignoring content or willfully misinterpreting it as what they want it to be?

No, I'm not saying that Rand thought viewers (responders generally) should morally judge art by "any method that they wish."  But neither did she think - contra your description - that responders are supposed to make a "purely esthetic appraisal" before judging a work morally, or even that a conscious moral response should - or typically does - precede the "sense of life" response which she said is the responder's immediate reaction.

As to judging morally, she hardly thought that one has to assess every detail in relationship to a theme, etc.  Do recall that she thought one could have a moral response to the very idea of an imaginary art work.

Specifically regarding the Peikoff example, he wasn't making a moral assessment either.

Your "compliment" was as malapropos as if you were to congratulate someone for disregarding the rules of football when the person is playing baseball.

 

On May 11, 2016 at 0:11 PM, Jonathan said:

[...] how you imagine that [your "electron-chase" metaphor] reveals my alleged ignorance of chemistry.

No imagining involved.

Ellen