Why Nobody Takes PARC Seriously Anymore

[william.scherk]

I just read the latest on the "Exploitation" thread on SOLO.

Would you please inform James Heaps-Nelson that Barbara did not write the script of the movie of Passion?

I did here.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen,

We are on the same page about this. (Incredible, I know, but true. )

Michael

Yes, I've thought all along that if the issue could be expressed clearly enough to discern the page, we would be on the same page about this.

Which is one of the reasons I stay here despite the number of non-same pages we're on on some other issues. ;-)

Ellen

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[Ellen Stuttle]

I just read the latest on the "Exploitation" thread on SOLO.

Would you please inform James Heaps-Nelson that Barbara did not write the script of the movie of Passion?

I did here.

THANK YOU, kind sir!

E-

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[Reidy]

If nobody takes this book seriously, why are we all talking about it? 329 posts in 18 days works out to more than 18 a day.

[Daniel Barnes]

Where does either express that purpose?

I stand corrected; let's say "apparent" purpose.

I think you're stretching for it to get a contradiction between the quote you give from Rand and that from Peikoff:

I think Rand and Peikoff are the ones stretching it. If the forms are eternal, outside of time and space, and independent of man's mind, they are thus primary.

Thus Plato's is not a "primacy of consciousness" doctrine. Simple.

(The attempt to make the consciousness in question God's instead of man's is just faux).

As I say, Valliant's PARC is simply Rand and Peikoff's intellectual history writ small. He learned his moves from his heroes.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Groan.

"perfectly consistent replies," JV says: see, if you can stand it.

He's referring to a list of 6 so-obviously NOT "perfectly consistent replies" RC quoted here.

What I'd like to know is: Can he truly not read any better than that? Maybe not, considering things he wrote in his own book. Or does he know he keeps changing his story and yet feels no compunction about calling the story consistent -- aware he's being read by people who can see clearly it isn't?

He really puzzles me.

Ellen

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[Ellen Stuttle]

If nobody takes this book seriously, why are we all talking about it? 329 posts in 18 days works out to more than 18 a day.

Who's the "we all"? You haven't posted anything before on this thread. You might notice if you read the thread that PARC has hardly been the only subject talked about.

Ellen

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[Dragonfly]

If nobody takes this book seriously, why are we all talking about it? 329 posts in 18 days works out to more than 18 a day.

People just enjoy watching train wrecks.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I think you're stretching for it to get a contradiction between the quote you give from Rand and that from Peikoff:

I think Rand and Peikoff are the ones stretching it. If the forms are eternal, outside of time and space, and independent of man's mind, they are thus primary.

Thus Plato's is not a "primacy of consciousness" doctrine. Simple.

(The attempt to make the consciousness in question God's instead of man's is just faux).

As I say, Valliant's PARC is simply Rand and Peikoff's intellectual history writ small. He learned his moves from his heroes.

She wasn't making the consciousness in question God's -- and she considers the idea that God's will is primary as "primacy of consciousness" metaphysics.

I think what she was talking about in the particular quote you cited was epistemological. I'll have to check it in context.

My point was about there not being a contradiction between her saying that according to the doctrine of the Forms "the presence of any notion in man’s mind proves the existence of a corresponding referent in reality" (by reality meaning the real reality, the world of the Forms) and Leonard's saying that the Forms exist "independent of man's mind."

I think you go very unjustly overboard in you credit even Leonard Peikoff with being no better at thinking than Valliant is.

Ellen

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[Robert Campbell]

Daniel,

As rough as I've been on Leonard Peikoff, I would never claim that Jim Valliant learned his endless smarm, sleaze, doubletalk, and flagrant self-contradictions by copying him.

One of the many things the Zealotry has failed to consider is: what kind of person would need a Jim Valliant for a defender?

The late Robert Vesco, maybe.

Surely not Ayn Rand.

Robert Campbell

[Daniel Barnes]

I think you go very unjustly overboard in you credit even Leonard Peikoff with being no better at thinking than Valliant is.

It seems to me that Plato and Kant get about the same treatment from Rand and Peikoff as Nathaniel and Barbara Branden get from James Valliant, only Valliant researched his subjects more energetically.

While Peikoff is no doubt smarter than Valliant, neither are stupid. That's not the issue. The issue is whether either of them are, or ever were, interested in the truth.

[Daniel Barnes]

One of the many things the Zealotry has failed to consider is: what kind of person would need a Jim Valliant for a defender?

This is close to my question, but not quite; mine is more like "how is it that a James Valliant has become her defender?"

[Neil Parille]

Dan,

I don't know much about the status of future ARI-sponsored works on Rand's life, but there are at least two in preparation. Why didn't these writers get "tasked" to write a response to the Brandens? Perhaps serious ARI associates know that, while there may be nits to pick, the Branden books can't be dismissed so easily.

-NEIL

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[Alfonso Jones]

Ellen,

We are on the same page about this. (Incredible, I know, but true. )

Michael

I'm amused by the spectacle. I hope you two are, also.

Bill P (Alfonso)

[Brant Gaede]

One of the many things the Zealotry has failed to consider is: what kind of person would need a Jim Valliant for a defender?

This is close to my question, but not quite; mine is more like "how is it that a James Valliant has become her defender?"

Barbara Branden, in spite of any deficiencies in her biography, is Rand's primary defender. Nobody else is even close. Leonard Peikoff, aside from Rand herself, is the primary explicator of her philosophy thanks to OPAR. Valliant is defending no one. He is attacking the Brandens. His trick in PARC is to use Rand to attack Nathaniel Branden then hit Barbara with his backhand. It goes--grossly over-simplified--like this: Nathaniel was bad therefore Nathaniel is bad therefore Barbara is bad. Kind of a guilt by proximity and last name. Valliant is using Rand to attack the Brandens with the sanction and aid of Peikoff prior to the publication of PARC, but apparently not much if any since. This makes Valliant a serious Rand diminisher thanks to Peikoff. Too bad LP didn't make the choice to be his own man after AR died.

--Brant

[Daniel Barnes]

Too bad LP didn't make the choice to be his own man after AR died.

Yes, and you raise an interesting point incidentally in that he also could have done that while Rand was still alive...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If nobody takes this book seriously, why are we all talking about it? 329 posts in 18 days works out to more than 18 a day.

Pete,

This is a straw fire that will burn out before too long. It is mostly confined to OL and Siberia Passion, so it is not really part of any big picture. Anyway, the issue is not whether PARC is being taken seriously as a research document. Those days are over. Only zealots do that anymore.

The only saving grace research-wise is the series of Rand's excerpts, but even that is marred seriousness-wise since Valliant picked them for publication at his sole discretion and asks the reader to take him on faith about his selection criteria.

The actual issue is how someone as boneheaded as Valliant can fake his way into some kind of hypocritical endorsement from an Objectivist organization because he sings a party line of Branden hatred.

The issue is tribalism with a pseudo-intellectual sanction for smokescreen versus respect for facts and scholarship.

The thing is so over-the-top that it borders on bigotry and that is highly disturbing to some people who do, or would like to, take Objectivism seriously.

Michael

[Alfonso Jones]

Too bad LP didn't make the choice to be his own man after AR died.

Yes, and you raise an interesting point incidentally in that he also could have done that while Rand was still alive...

Can either of you cite a few examples of when Peikoff has ever shown himself to be an INDEPENDENT thinker? His courses have certainly had much to offer at time - in particular, in my estimation, those which were earlier - prior to Rand's death - when Rand surely had substantial input. What would you regard to be the most significant ways in which he has shown himself to be an independent thinker? The DIM Hypothesis? Something else? His stated position seems to be, roughly, that in what he says he doesn't want to knowingly go beyond what Rand has said in writing (best), or to him personally - as key in his intent to accurately preserve Rand's thinking.

I think it may have been too much to hope for one to hope Peikoff would, after Rand's death, begin to express himself more independently.

Bill P (Alfonso)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Anyway, the issue is not whether PARC is being taken seriously as a research document. Those days are over. Only zealots do that anymore.

The only saving grace research-wise is the series of Rand's excerpts, but even that is marred seriousness-wise since Valliant picked them for publication at his sole discretion and asks the reader to take him on faith about his selection criteria.

I want to add to this thought. Even publishing free chapters on Solo Passion does not increase readership of PARC, much less anyone taking it seriously as a research document. Where is it referenced? On blogs of zealots, that's where. And even then, there are blessed few quotes.

Where else? Nowhere, that's where.

The ONLY reason those Siberian threads get any traffic at all is because some of Valliant's critics have told him unequivocably to his face where the logical and factual problems are in his writing and he sometiems melts down when he gets cornered. People like to see others melt down. That is one of the leftovers from our primitive inheritance.

I seriously doubt many people actually read all those long posts. They want the sizzle, not the bacon.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

While Peikoff is no doubt smarter than Valliant, neither are stupid. That's not the issue. The issue is whether either of them are, or ever were, interested in the truth.

As to Valliant, I don't know. I've debated quite a bit if it's just incompetence or if it's incompetence plus dishonesty. Some of the manoeuvers he employs, I doubt could be explained solely as incompetence.

As to Leonard Peikoff, yes, he was, very honest, once upon a time. He subverted his own psychology, and he himself tells, in one of his lecture courses, the story of how he did it -- though he doesn't describe what he was doing as being a subversion; he describes it as an example of the correct procedure to employ in certain sorts of circumstances.

I've twice before posted about this: here and here.

I'll quote the relevant parts from both posts.

Re your [REB's] description of his "tend[ing] to get confused and misled (from Rand's perspective)," and thus "often ha[ving] to have his head rotated 180 degrees back to its normal position" --

In one of his lecture courses, I think "The Art of Reasoning," he talks about this and says -- and recommends as a method (gasp!!!) -- that he had to learn to suppress his questions (since he knew that Rand's answers were right, so he had to "suppress" his sideshoot thinking until he'd gotten the right answers firmly enough in mind he could trust himself not to be misled. I heard this tape one Thanksgiving when one of the friends who spend Thanksgiving with us brought the course in which it appears for part of our Thanksgiving Seminar entertainment, but I might not have remembered correctly which of his taped lecture series that is.

[....] One detail [i had in mind then to discuss] concerns Valliant's depiction of Branden's depiction of Leonard Peikoff's proneness to being swayed by the perspectives of philosophers he was studying in graduate school.

Here is Valliant telling the tale:

[pp. 175-176]

Nathaniel Branden delights in describing Leonard Peikoff as having an "embarrassing" problem during the course of his studies at New York University. (With the famous Sidney Hook as his advisor, Peikoff earned his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1964.)

"If, for example, [Peikoff] was studying the philosophy of John Dewey he could very easily fall into Dewey's perspective without noticing it, accept the premises of Dewey that he in fact knew to be mistaken, and then proceed to panic." Rand would spend a good deal of time helping him with successive waves of confusion. This happened, it seems, with almost every philosopher Peikoff encountered, from Plato to Wittgenstein. Branden says that he was "mystified" by Peikoff's conduct and even wondered why Rand tolerated it.

One might ask whether Peikoff originally "knew" those other ideas to have been "mistaken," as Branden is claiming for him, since he had so easily lost them, but for Branden, it seems, belief needs no more than a first impression. Extensive study and a detailed comparison of Objectivism to previous philosophies, Branden seems to wonder--how could these disturb anyone's "convictions?" [punctuation error in original]

Branden explains that Rand would become angry and impatient with Peikoff, and that he once even came near to what Branden calls "excommunication." However, Peikoff always eventually found Rand's arguments more sound even though he was determined, no matter what the effort involved, to understand them thoroughly before declaring his level of certainty to be what it was not.

[....]

Peikoff told the truth about what was going on in his head to Rand, to his teachers, to his chosen counselors. Peikoff gave every new philosophy he studied a fair hearing. He could still be persuaded, he was still open to new perspectives. Peikoff had to be convinced of each and every thing--every inch of the way and in competition with all other ideas--before fully adopting it.

But--Presto!--Branden's magic works its sleight of hand and Peikoff is suddenly cast as "the Randroid," the cult-leader, the intolerant "yes-man" of Objectivism, not Branden himself--in perfect form, again projecting his own identity onto his opponent.

In addition to other questionable features of Valliant's rendition, there's a problem of its being discrepant from what Peikoff himself says about those years. In one of his taped courses -- I think in "The Art of Reasoning" -- Peikoff talks about his tendencies to be swayed, and about what he ultimately did. (I don't have any of Peikoff's taped courses; but our friend Lee Pierson sometimes brings one or another set at Thanksgiving, and as part of the "Thanksgiving Seminar" we'll listen to a lecture or two. Possibly someone else here could identify exactly which course and which lecture is the relevant one.)

Leonard says that it can sometimes happen that a person knows that such and such is the right way of understanding an issue, but the person might be perplexed by questions the person can't answer. He describes this as having happened to him when he was graduate school, his not being able to resolve various doubts vis-a-vis Rand's views. He says that the technique he ultimately employed was that of suppressing (enunciated with emphasis in the lecture) the questions, that of not continuing to pursue them. Deliberately suppress the questions, he recommends to others who might have a similar problem, set them aside, don't pursue them, until one has firmly in mind the correct approach which one knows to be true. He elaborates at some length on this counsel, which my friend Lee described as "TERRIBLE advice." Quite so, I think.

I also think that the described method was Leonard's salvation, as he saw it, since remaining in AR's good graces was of tremendous importance to him and he feared what would happen if he kept on not being able to set aside his doubts.

Ellen

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It was his "salvation, as he saw it." It ended up being his downfall as an independent intellectual.

As to why he chose Valliant to publish AR's diary entries, that question keeps coming up. Jon Letendre says (here) that the original website version of PARC was no better argued than the final book. (I'd wondered if the original version was pretty straightforward and factual, and then was elaborated into its current form.) It does seem to me, if Leonard knew the kind of work Valliant would write, that a motive other than just replying to the Brandens was involved. I suspect some getting even with Ayn Rand for her not having confided in him about the affair and for having had an affair at all with Nathaniel -- against whom Leonard, I feel sure, must have had his resentments as did the others in the Collective.

Ellen

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Edited June 4, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Mike Hardy]

While Peikoff is no doubt smarter than Valliant, neither are stupid. That's not the issue. The issue is whether either of them are, or ever were, interested in the truth.

It is rare to see an attempt to incite one of us grammar-nazis made so blatant. Let me copy-edit this paragraph:

"Although Peikoff is no doubt smarter than Valliant, neither is stupid. That's not the issue. The issue is whether either of them is, or ever was, interested in the truth."

Mr. Barnes, you violated the Geneva Convention against torture by doing this to me. -- Mike Hardy

[Ellen Stuttle]

Mr. Barnes, you violated the Geneva Convention against torture by doing this to me. -- Mike Hardy

I politely didn't correct it by writing "is" in square brackets when I quoted it -- due to writing in haste, I've made some pain-producing errors myself recently. ;-)

Do you suppose the grammar error is what brought this thread at last to silence?

Hi, Mike.

E-

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[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A few days ago, I sent an email to a person giving a brief overview of Nathaniel Branden's contrbutions to Objectivism. I decided to put it here just in case some people reading this thread do not have much familiarity with Nathaniel's work. Although it is sketchy and could probably be improved and tweaked, I think it gives a pretty good start for further reading.

NB's main contribution to Objectivism is a lecture course entitled "Basic Principles of Objectivism" which he taught at NBI to a whole generation of Objectivists (including, incidentally, Peikoff). He wrote this course under the eyes of Rand. He also developed several other courses, but they were not nearly as popular as that one was.

After The Objectivist Newsletter (later called The Objectivist) started being published by him and Rand (they were partners), Nathaniel presented a series of articles on psychology in them. Some of these articles were repeated in his lecture courses on Objectivist psychology. These articles were later the bulk of The Psychology of Self-Esteem, his first book.

Rand tried to block the publication of that book since it was published right around the time they fell out. She repudiated Branden to the maximum she could, but this book ended up being a major embarrassment since it was mostly done with her sanction and it became very popular. Orthodox Objectivist people get real uneasy when it is mentioned because they want to condemn Nathaniel as the devil incarnate, but cannot deny the work without denying Rand.

After Nathaniel went off on his own, he developed the Self-Esteem movement in therapy (if that is what it can be called). His involvement with Objectivism was sporadic over the years since the break and he changed his thinking on several issues. Here is an essay from 1984 (2 years after Rand died) that gives some of his differences:

The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand: A Personal Statement

This has been picked apart by the zealots, who would find evil in the words "the," "but," and "a" in that essay if they could get away with it. They also level the charge that Nathaniel waited until Rand died to make these differences public, but that is not true. There is at least one main interview with him mentioning much of this that was published during her lifetime, but I do not know if she read it. (I strongly suspect she did.)

After Barbara released her biography of Rand in 1986 (4 years after Rand died, but Rand learned from Barbara that she was writing it right before she died) and publicly admitted that Rand had had an affair with Nathaniel, the reaction of the people around Peikoff was to dig in and become very hostile. Up to that point, they had denied that there had been an affair. Barbara actually broke her promise to Rand to never disclose the affair in order to write the biography. I personally think she did the right thing.

Then Nathaniel followed a few years later with Judgment Day. As he mentioned some intimate things about Rand, like the way she would stretch a naked leg up in the air after making love and asking him if her legs were sexy, these images drove the orthodoxy crazy. I get a kick out of imagining them going nuts at night and not getting any sleep over this.

Apparently Nathaniel and Ayn bickered a lot. Nathaniel gave his side of the story, which was nothing more than his side of the story. Only a fool would take one side of a broken intense love affair as the gospel truth.

Nathaniel later felt he had been too harsh on Ayn since he gave vent to some accumulated resentment in a few passages. So after 10 years, he rewrote some parts of the book and released it under the title, My Years With Ayn Rand (which has the interesting abbreviation of MYWAR, i.e "my war"). The orthodoxy took every account of bickering he presented and every criticism he had of Rand and turned them inside out, saying that each case proved how Rand was great and Nathaniel was evil. They also had a field day with the parts he cut out of Judgment Day, which they claimed he did out of shame, yada yada yada.

Nathaniel's books after The Psychology of Self-Esteem cannot be called Objectivism, but they were directly influenced by it and many Objectivists consider them as an extension. They have sold into the millions. No one on the orthodox side has come even close to this achievement and they do not forgive him for it.

Also, The Atlas Society has invited him several times to their seminars. I think they are doing the right thing on the basis of major historical interest alone (although the difference in ideas makes for extremely healthy premise checking). But some quarters in the Objectivist world consider this high treason to Rand.

There is a lot more, but I have to stop for now. I hope these comments gave you some initial perspective.

btw - When the orthodoxy gets away from Branden hating and trying to save the world, some of them do some very good work.

[Alfonso Jones]

Mr. Barnes, you violated the Geneva Convention against torture by doing this to me. -- Mike Hardy

I politely didn't correct it by writing "is" in square brackets when I quoted it -- due to writing in haste, I've made some pain-producing errors myself recently. ;-)

Do you suppose the grammar error is what brought this thread at last to silence?

Hi, Mike.

E-

___

If only 't were so simple.

Bill P (Alfonso)

[Neil Parille]

I agree with Ellen that it's hard to know what's going on in Valliant's mind. Just yesterday he gave version 7 or 8 of why he came to the conclusion that there was no 1981 meeting between Barbara Branden and Rand:

The letter which might have corroborated that a meeting took place, a letter Ms. Branden mentioned, is not among Rand's letters at the Archive.

Rand preserved her letters, I saw them, and I cited a couple in PARC which had never been mentioned anywhere before.

It's absence made me dubious of such a meeting, though nothing else in PARC was reliant on this idea in any way.

Valliant has now posted a somewhat revised version of his chapter "Mullah Rand." Finally he admits that his description of the break with Dr. Blumenthal wasn't accurate.

In the original PARC, he said:

One could never have guessed it from reading Ms. Branden's book, but it was they [Allan Blumenthal and Henry Holzer] who left Rand. (PARC, p. 75.)

However, Dr. Blumenthal as quoted in PAR:

I telephoned Ayn and said that we no longer wished to see her.

And Valliant accuses me of having a "reading problem"!

Valliant's new version is:

Indeed, it was not Rand who ended the relationship with either of them, but, rather, it was they who left Rand. [in point of fact, it appears that Rand did end the relationship with Mr. Holzer.]

But when I first pointed out to Valliant his misrepresentation of the break with Dr. Blumenthal, did he concede he made a mistake? Of course not. I got typical Valliant evasion:

I had no need to quote Ms. B quoting the Blumenthals, Neil, since it was Ms. B who had absurdly "lumped" all of Rand's breaks into the same package -- not me. Why don't you quote Ms. B about that?

Incidentally, in the revised PARC, he adds this:

Despite the fact that Ms. Branden herself relates the Blumenthals' account, most writers dependent on The Passion of Ayn Rand nonetheless suggest that it was Rand who had initiated these breaks. In his recent history of the libertarian movement, Brian Doherty, citing Ms. Branden, flatly states that Rand "kicked out of her life" all but two of her original "Collective"–Greenspan and Peikoff. (See, Radicals for Capitalism, p.232.)

Actually, this statement in Radicals for Capitalism is keyed to footnote 22, which doesn't mention Barbara or PAR.

Branden isn't responsible for any distortion of her book. In any event, there is a sense in which Rand kicked the Blumenthals out of her life. Rand was impossible to be around and Joan even suspected that Rand was trying to force a break. But PAR does not conceal the fact that they called Rand and said they didn't want to see her any more. Ellen posted lengthy excerpts from this section of PAR at post 243.

Edited June 4, 2008 by Neil Parille