Why Nobody Takes PARC Seriously Anymore

[Ellen Stuttle]

Next...

I have a thought experiment to propose for those who have read Ayn's journal entries in PARC:

Suppose...

Suppose that, when Ayn wanted to resume the affair, Nathaniel had said blunt words to this effect:

"Ayn, you're too old, and you're too moralistic to boot -- a characteristic which dampens one's ardor. You mostly don't turn me on anymore. Meanwhile, I've become attracted to Patrecia and have started an affair with her."

What do you suppose the result would have been?

I find this offensive, Ellen. He'd still be a confessed liar. You are ripping these people out of their contexts just like PARC did; for a "thought experiment"?

Brant, I find your finding this offensive silly. The point of my "thought experiment" -- apparently, from a later post, it's the wording which troubles you; it's common wording in circles I move in -- is an attempt to bring "quicker than thought" to the mind of the person who has read Rand's journals how that person thinks Rand would have reacted if Nathaniel had told her the truth straight out.

I don't see where you get "He'd still be a confessed liar."

Ellen

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[Barbara Branden]

Bill, thanks for the quote. It tells me what I wanted to know.

Barbara

[Ellen Stuttle]

Shortening the context to get to the main question and answer:

[....] I'm asking for the gut reactions of the reader of Ayn's journals. What do you feel, immediate "gut" reaction, would have occurred?

[....] My gut reaction - massive explosion would have happened. Would it have been any worse? Probably not, long term anyhow. But did what so many of us have done on one thing or another in our lives - not confront something and let the situation decay day after day until the situation comes out in the open anyhow.

When I read Judgment Day the first time (and MYWAR later) I was definitely gripped with the drama of the narrative - and the sense of being trapped which NB reports feeling.

ANd my reading of Rand's journals, years later, only served to reinforce that initial impression.

Bill P (Alfonso)

That's my reaction also. I think the break would have happened four years earlier. Rand wrote some of her major essays, including especially "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology," during the intervening four years. If the break had happened in 1964 instead of in 1968, I wonder if those essays would have been penned.

Among the manifold ironies pertaining to PARC: During the early stages after its publication, people were asked so often by Casey Fahy as to have the effect of a refrain: "Have you read PARC?" Fahy and Valliant talked about the book as if there would be found therein great new revelations which should change one's assessment of "the Brandens."

The one thing I feel that I learned an answer to from PARC, an answer which satisfied me on a question I'd had for a long while (since before even the publication of Passion), was whether Nathaniel was right in his belief that Rand would never have accepted his having a sexual relationship with Patrecia. The details of what Rand says about Patrecia in the journals convince me that he was right.

Ellen

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[Ellen Stuttle]

I heard from my friend. The Peikoff course he played a lecture from was "The Art of Thinking," one of the lectures down the row in the sequence, probably farther along than the halfway part of the course, but he doesn't remember off-hand the lecture number.

Ellen

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[Ellen Stuttle]

Michael,

I think your analysis in post #394 is very good.

I'll comment on just one detail. This isn't meant to nitpick; it's just a thought that leapt to mind as I read the sentence.

When people condemn Nathaniel, I wonder what they would have done in his shoes.

The thought was: "They wouldn't have been in his shoes." I mean by this, the people you're speaking of are people who wouldn't have gotten near to impressing Rand to the extent Nathaniel did. They wouldn't have had any chance of being in the circumstance with her he was in.

Ellen

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[Alfonso Jones]

Michael,

I think your analysis in post #394 is very good.

I'll comment on just one detail. This isn't meant to nitpick; it's just a thought that leapt to mind as I read the sentence.

When people condemn Nathaniel, I wonder what they would have done in his shoes.

The thought was: "They wouldn't have been in his shoes." I mean by this, the people you're speaking of are people who wouldn't have gotten near to impressing Rand to the extent Nathaniel did. They wouldn't have had any chance of being in the circumstance with her he was in.

Ellen

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Well put. Extremely well put.

Bill P (Alfonso)

[Ellen Stuttle]

Group-think strikes again.

[Here]

James ...

Did you realise that Leonard was getting even with Ayn when he gave you the Journals, as you quote Babs claiming on O-Lying? Did you miss that he was salivating with anticipation?

That's nearly as hilarious as one of Campbell's conspiracy theories.

"Babs" didn't claim that. I did. She agreed with my view that Leonard has resentments against Ayn and against Nathaniel.

[Here]

Just About as Nutty

I'm just curious how exactly that fits with their image of Peikoff the Goddess Worshipper who can acknowledge no wrong in Rand?

There's no problem reconciling discrepant views which aren't held by the same person. I do not think that Leonard Peikoff is such a Goddess Worshipper he's too blind to see that the entries show Rand in a less than entirely flattering light. I said that I don't think he's that blind.

Realizing that OL members aren't a group-mind with uniform opinions sure might help in sparing needless puzzlements.

Ellen

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[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

If ever there were a legitimate use for a concept like "social metaphysics," I think these people do it justice. Notice that all their arguments make sense if you replace metaphysics with people. They are incapable of analyzing an idea without attributing a moral standing to the person expressing or attributed with thinking it.

Notice that the idea of trying to understand a person's motivation (in the case of your idea of Peikoff) is such proof of "Bab's" foolishness that mockery is in order. A small detail, like getting the fact right of who actually proposed that, is not really important to such a mind. The metaphysics is not important. The person is. To him, if she didn't say it, she should have and that's good enough for proof.

This is pure normative replacing cognitive stuff.

Also, to these people, the idea that a person can worship someone defines that person, not as a human being, but as a metaphysical entity: a worshipper. A real human being has conflicting emotions (which, incidentally, is one of the main reasons man needs a consciously chosen ethical code). A worshipper qua metaphysical entity does not and the possibility of such a creature harboring unbidden resentments violates the law of identity in the mind of the person who has so corrupted his cognitive processes.

I have tried hard to understand what makes these people tick. How did they corrupt their thinking so badly? Then I got it. Once I filter their statements through a "people first, then reality" standard of cognition, I can finally see the logic.

The metaphysical premises of their concepts, which should be axiomatic concepts like existence and so forth, are their evaluations of different people. This is an extension of normative replacing cognitive thinking, but it is worse. In the normal aberration, if a fact contradicts the value, the fact is ignored or misrepresented in the concept. In the social extension, if a fact contradicts the feelings about a person, the fact is ignored or misrepresented in the concept. The feelings are axiomatic and the concept is built on them.

Incidentally, I think I just stated the cognitive method used in bigotry.

I know such tribalism was not the original meaning of the concept of social metaphysics, but it certainly fits the idea like a glove.

Michael

[Alfonso Jones]

Perhaps the canonical example of this is Peikoff's challenge in a Ford Hall Forum speech - where he suggests, as a way to decide what to believe about Rand and the varying statements which have been made about her, that the listeners ask what they want to believe about Rand. ('m trying to remember if it was in the 30 Years with Ayn Rand or in the FHF where Peikoff read the paper Rand had planned to deliver before her death, but am not certain.)

I have always regarded that as a low point. Perhaps rhetorically stirring in the emotional moment, but an atrocious example of reasoning along the lines of "it must be true because I want it to be."

Bill P (Alfonso)

[Daniel Barnes]

She agreed with my view that Leonard has resentments against Ayn and against Nathaniel... I do not think that Leonard Peikoff is such a Goddess Worshipper he's too blind to see that the entries show Rand in a less than entirely flattering light. I said that I don't think he's that blind.

Just so I've got this straight: You're arguing that behind the rather abject Rand-worship he puts out front-of-house, Peikoff harbours some simmering resentments. That's why he allowed (or perhaps encouraged) Valliant to make the amazing blunder of publishing her verbatim diary entries in PARC, even though - as Valliant seems weirdly unaware - they make her look not only pretentious but almost seriously delusional. Are you saying Peikoff did this consciously, or as a kind of paraprax?

Edited June 7, 2008 by Daniel Barnes

[Neil Parille]

Just so I've got this straight: You're arguing that behind the rather abject Rand-worship he puts out front-of-house, Peikoff harbours some simmering resentments. That's why he allowed (or perhaps encouraged) Valliant to make the amazing blunder of publishing her verbatim diary entries in PARC, even though - as Valliant seems weirdly unaware - they make her look not only pretentious but almost seriously delusional. Are you saying Peikoff did this consciously, or as a kind of paraprax?

I believe in Nathaniel's memoirs he says Rand excommunicated Leonard Peikoff to Denver for a while for failing to advocate Objectivism seriously enough. Does anyone know the details?

-NEIL

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Edited June 7, 2008 by Neil Parille

[Neil Parille]

Ellen,

Thanks for your comments.

There is really something strange about Valliant's methodology.*

Generally, when people who know person x say that y's description of x is accurate, that enhances y's credibility. And when certain details of y's version are corroborated, ditto.

Yet in Valliant-land, this doesn't help y's credibility (in fact, in may hurt it because it is further evidence of a conspiracy).

And has Valliant told us why Peikoff's account of Rand is to be taken at face value when he appears every bit as biased as Rand's "critics"?

-NEIL

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*I read somewhere that "method" is the appropriate term.

[Brant Gaede]

Just so I've got this straight: You're arguing that behind the rather abject Rand-worship he puts out front-of-house, Peikoff harbours some simmering resentments. That's why he allowed (or perhaps encouraged) Valliant to make the amazing blunder of publishing her verbatim diary entries in PARC, even though - as Valliant seems weirdly unaware - they make her look not only pretentious but almost seriously delusional. Are you saying Peikoff did this consciously, or as a kind of paraprax?

I believe in Nathaniel's memoirs he says Rand excommunicated Leonard Peikoff to Denver for a while for failing to advocate Objectivism seriously enough. Does anyone know the details?

-NEIL

He taught at the University of Denver for a year or two. While he may have been on Rand's bad side for a while, I doubt he was sent to Denver. You go where the jobs are. He had just gotten his doctorate but no teaching rec. from Sidney Hook.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

Valliant on SOLO:

Here

Had the notes in PARC been published prior to the publication of PAR or JD -- i.e., before the Brandens had had a chance to concede the existence of an Affair themselves -- Peikoff could've exposed as lies the 1968 statement they both put their names to all the sooner -- and before they had "corrected" their own deceptions (without, of course, admitting to those prior deceptions.)

Valliant is so mucked up about that, there's no tomorrow. It was the Peikovians who had to CONCEDE an affair had occurred. The Brandens had nothing to lose and everything to gain by revealing it. The Brandens had refrained from revealing it in the 1968 statements because of honoring their vow to Ayn never to reveal it, a vow they subsequently decided, I think entirely validly, they should no longer be bound by. (More strongly: I think they were unwise to make the vow to being with, and, considering the nature of the break with Ayn, had valid reason to consider themselves no longer bound by it as of 1968.)

The twists whereby Valliant interprets the 1968 Branden statements as covering up the affair, instead of as refraining from revealing it, are incredible. The Brandens had basically sworn on their "immortal" souls never to tell anyone else about the affair. Ayn knew this when she made reference to the statement Nathaniel had given her (his paper about age) which she described as so offensively irrational without saying what it was about.

Nathaniel was thus in a terribly awkward spot. He didn't want to say anything about the sexual issue, but he couldn't just let her description of that paper go unanswered, so he made the only job of it he could think of making in time-pressured circumstances by indicating that she wanted an affair while not saying they'd had an affair.

Valliant scrambles the context out of all resemblance to the reality of the circumstances and motives. Branden was under fire and had to say something, and he had to say it pretty quickly to try to forestall the damage to his reputation if the details of her charges weren't answered.

As I've told this forum, I was there the day the galleys of "To Whom It May Concern" were typeset, and I talked to Barbara after I'd read them. (I'd never seen Barbara before then.) My first question to her was, pointing at the galleys which were on her desk when I entered her office, and speaking in voice tones of dismay, "What are you going to do about it?" The extent and gravity of the charges seemed to me plainly to require an answer.

She replied: "We have to do something. She's trying to ruin his career. We weren't going to reply, because she'd said she'd just write a brief announcement, but THIS [tapping the statement] has to be answered."

Nathaniel's explanation of the contents of his paper might have been worded more accurately if he'd had leisure to think longer. He does imply that the age difference would have been a barrier at any time in his relationship with Ayn. But finding wording which wouldn't have implied that while still not revealing that he and she had had a sexual relationship would not have been easy.

E-

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[Ellen Stuttle]

She agreed with my view that Leonard has resentments against Ayn and against Nathaniel... I do not think that Leonard Peikoff is such a Goddess Worshipper he's too blind to see that the entries show Rand in a less than entirely flattering light. I said that I don't think he's that blind.

Just so I've got this straight: You're arguing that behind the rather abject Rand-worship he puts out front-of-house, Peikoff harbours some simmering resentments. That's why he allowed (or perhaps encouraged) Valliant to make the amazing blunder of publishing her verbatim diary entries in PARC, even though - as Valliant seems weirdly unaware - they make her look not only pretentious but almost seriously delusional. Are you saying Peikoff did this consciously, or as a kind of paraprax?

I doubt he had any such deliberate thought as, "I'm going to get even." As I've said a number of times before, I think the question of what to do about those diaries was an awkward one for him. There's been discussion on the list of why he didn't try to get them published with one of the name trade publishers he uses, or alternately why he didn't publish them under ARI's aegis. As to the first possibility, for one thing there's the question if a name trade publisher would want to publish those diaries stand-alone. I have some doubts on that score. Others here disagree with me. But suppose a name publisher would have taken them. I think, as I said, that Leonard Peikoff isn't so completely spellbound by Ayn's image that he can't see at all that those diaries aren't a plus to enhancing her image. For the same reason, they'd cause problems for publishing under ARI auspices. They'd need the right context to try to present them well.

So what to do with them? (If he left them to be published after his death, he'd not have control over how they were published.)

James Valliant's having posted an earlier version of PARC on Fahy's website gave him -- this is how I initially saw it -- a staunch Ayn defender not officially connected with ARI.

But upon reading the book, I was of course "impressed" over and over by how badly it's presented and argued. Truth to tell, I could do a better job of critiquing the Brandens' books, though I think their portraits of Rand are mostly correct; and I think I could do a better job of casting the diaries in as favorable a light as they can be cast.

So then I was presented by a puzzlement: Did Leonard not know what he was getting? Was he expecting a better job than was done? Unfortunately, I'd never seen the original website version of Part I of PARC. And no one I know who had seen it had saved it or could well remember it. But I thought that maybe the original version hadn't had all the tendentiousness and excesses and faulty arguments.... Maybe it had been more straightforward and factual.

Jon Letendre has recently said, however, that, no, it wasn't any better presented. He read it in detail and even made some suggestions to Valliant. I'm trusting Jon's assessment. From what I've seen of Jon's posts I expect his assessment and mine would agree.

So that leaves me with the question: What can Leonard have been thinking? Had he lost his mind? Didn't he know that book would hurt not help Ayn's reputation if serious scholars got hold of it?

At that point I thought, well..., he does have underlying grudges against AR. I have heard of little ways in which he reveals these. (And, no, I'm not going to provide the details.) Plus I'm sure, from my own assessment of what he was like in the '70s, that his finding out about that affair was a bad shock to him. And I'm sure, from things I was told by persons who knew him well, including his first wife, of his having jealousies and resentments against Nathaniel back when (and thus would have been upset at the thought of Ayn's having an affair specifically with Nathaniel).

So...I conclude that a grudge factor is among the factors operative in his allowing the diaries to be published in PARC. It's the only plausible, to my mind, way I can think of at the moment at add up all the pieces.

Ellen

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Edited June 7, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Robert Campbell]

Perhaps the canonical example of this is Peikoff's challenge in a Ford Hall Forum speech - where he suggests, as a way to decide what to believe about Rand and the varying statements which have been made about her, that the listeners ask what they want to believe about Rand. ('m trying to remember if it was in the 30 Years with Ayn Rand or in the FHF where Peikoff read the paper Rand had planned to deliver before her death, but am not certain.)

Bill P,

This passage is in "My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand."

I quoted it over at SOLO a while back, and concluded that Leonard Peikoff was really saying, "When it comes to Ayn Rand, I'm nonobjective and I'm proud!"

Needless to say, there was much self-twisting into pretzels in lieu of a sensible response.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

He taught at the University of Denver for a year or two. While he may have been on Rand's bad side for a while, I doubt he was sent to Denver. You go where the jobs are. He had just gotten his doctorate but no teaching rec. from Sidney Hook.

Brant,

Leonard Peikoff's sojourn at U of Denver has been presented by Nathaniel Branden, at least twice, as a consequence of Dr. Peikoff's being banished from Ayn Rand's presence for a time.

For what it's worth, Leonard Peikoff's capsule bios (on his books, at the ARI site, etc.) usually don't mention that he taught at Denver.

Robert Campbell

PS. This is the first time I've heard that Sidney Hook refused to write a positive letter of recommendation for Leonard Peikoff. That is near-fatal in academic philosophy. How did Dr. Peikoff later get a job at Brooklyn College [sorry, Brooklyn Poly—see below]?

[Ellen Stuttle]

He taught at the University of Denver for a year or two. While he may have been on Rand's bad side for a while, I doubt he was sent to Denver. You go where the jobs are. He had just gotten his doctorate but no teaching rec. from Sidney Hook.

--Brant

His sojourn in Denver was referred to as his "exile" by people in Rand's circles, and that's the way NB talks about it in Judgment Day. (I don't recall if he used the exact word "exile," but he talks of Rand's being fed up and sending Leonard off to Denver.) Obviously, LP had to have gotten a job offer, and those don't just show up by snaping fingers. The impression I get is that there were some other places where he might have gotten an assignment in the New York vicinity, but she told him to take the Denver slot. This is an impression only; I've never heard the details.

Ellen

PS: Robert, re his job at Brooklyn College [brooklyn Poly; see Phil's post below]. IIRC, he was hired by the English department. He did teach a seminar on the philosophy of science. I sat in on that. I recall that during "the Putsch at Poly," as it became known -- one of those student attempted take-over things of a kind going on a lot then -- he did a lot of talking in the faculty meetings, and faculty members were heard to ask who he was, if he was on faculty. (I heard this question being asked; I was there because I was doing volunteer typing for them, at Larry's request -- Larry was running the computer work for the registrar while taking some courses he needed to make up before going to grad school. It was a "wild" few weeks. ;-))

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Edited June 7, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Philip Coates]

> PS. This is the first time I've heard that Sidney Hook refused to write a positive letter of recommendation for Leonard Peikoff. That is near-fatal in academic philosophy. How did Dr. Peikoff later get a job at Brooklyn College? [Robert]

Robert, as much as I hate to stoke the trivia orgasm, two facts: (i) Hook did give a favorable recommendation - his exact words were "don't let this one get away!" (ii) Also, Leonard taught at Brooklyn Poly. Brooklyn Poly although its name has changed -since- was never called Brooklyn College, which is and was an entirely different institution where Hospers taught and Rand spoke. And which already existed. It is located about five miles south, south of Prospect Park on the other side of downtown Brooklyn.

(I cross-posted with Ellen, who makes the same naming error).

[Ellen Stuttle]

(ii) Also, Leonard taught at Brooklyn Poly. Brooklyn Poly although its name has changed -since- was never called Brooklyn College, which is and was an entirely different institution where Hospers taught and Rand spoke. And which already existed. It is located about five miles south, south of Prospect Park on the other side of downtown Brooklyn.

(I cross-posted with Ellen, who makes the same naming error).

Oops. I edited the post to insert "Brooklyn Poly," though leaving the error so your correcting post makes sense. Of course I knew, though wasn't noticing, that the school was called "Brooklyn Poly[technic]" at the time of which I was speaking. But I had always thought, until I read your post, that Brooklyn College was an earlier name for Brooklyn Poly (now called Polytechnic University). I goofed, then, in something I wrote in some quotes from Hospers' memoir. Gotta fix that, if it isn't past the fixing time-limit.......

Ellen

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[Daniel Barnes]

So that leaves me with the question: What can Leonard have been thinking? Had he lost his mind? Didn't he know that book would hurt not help Ayn's reputation if serious scholars got hold of it?...So...I conclude that a grudge factor is among the factors operative in his allowing the diaries to be published in PARC. It's the only plausible, to my mind, way I can think of at the moment at add up all the pieces.

Perfectly plausible, but I would also suggest an alternative, simpler hypothesis. I think that neither Peikoff nor Valliant is stupid, but they are stupid for Ayn Rand. That is, their overwhelming emotional attachment to her - commonly called "worship" - prevents either of them from seeing her even remotely objectively. The delay in publishing of her diaries could be simply due to the usual dead-celebrity-milking process wherein their every fragment eventually gets packaged up and marketed by the heir, whether it's Elisabeth Nietzsche or Courtney Love. Perhaps, given Peikoff's admittedly more painstaking and academic approach, he hadn't got around to figuring how to approach them, as you suggest. Sure, I don't think he's groupie enough to think they're flawless. But I don't see why he'd necessarily get how embarrassing major parts of them are, mainly because he doesn't see how embarrassing major parts of her whole philosophy are either*. Perhaps with Valliant's book Peikoff saw an opportunity to kill a number of birds with one stone - create interest in the diaries (which were not fully published) and their "laser like" psychological insights, and the forthcoming Rand hagiographies, whilst paying out Nathaniel and Barbara (and possibly even TAS) big time, all whilst being able to suitably distance himself from it all.

Then, in the cold light of day after Valliant published, perhaps he realised his mistake.

*It could of course be that he is "suppressing" himself over the diaries, given that it is an avowed part of his intellectual method.

Edited June 7, 2008 by Daniel Barnes

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I think Valliant might agree with me that nobody is taking PARC seriously anymore. See here.

PARC's most "fruitful" days still lie ahead...

One can dream...

At least it is clear what keeps him going.

It is true that being more "fruitful" than PARC has been the last three years is not all that much, so that ain't much of a prediction. Still, my prediction is another and not very flattering to him.

Michael

[Philip Coates]

> I run an open policy that lets on, variously, a mad Scientologist, several crazy Christians, a lewd pomowanking Global Warmonger, sundry anti-Rand "neo-Objectivists" from the O-Lying site whom I unabashedly regard as scum, and Dr. Richard Goode. [Linz, SOLO]

> [same thread] Elijah Lineberry, it will be remembered, was booted off SOLO for a particularly obnoxious post to another SOLOist. He had been provoked, to be sure, but arguably the provocation was richly deserved and overdue—as was his ousting, in the view of many here. After a spell in Coventry, though, Eli was reinstated. [Linz]

Yeah, but the person who **remains booted** - because he is a harsh critic of Solo, points out its flaws and stupidities and above all it's ineffectuality, but does not indulge in the insult marathon, but GIVES REASONS for his criticisms - remains ME.

Who is not a Scientologist.

Not a religoso.

Not an environmentalist.

Not anti-Rand and not a psuedo or neo or partial Objectivist.

But who is a strong critic of incivility and the insults and mud-slinging of Solo.

That's an "open policy", right?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Phil,

You could try this kind of rhetoric (from 6 days ago):

The sooner the United Nations is closed down, and a lot of Communist Dictators and Negroes seeking handouts are sent packing, the better.

Rational racism passion, good faith, and all...

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

He taught at the University of Denver for a year or two. While he may have been on Rand's bad side for a while, I doubt he was sent to Denver. You go where the jobs are. He had just gotten his doctorate but no teaching rec. from Sidney Hook.

Brant,

Leonard Peikoff's sojourn at U of Denver has been presented by Nathaniel Branden, at least twice, as a consequence of Dr. Peikoff's being banished from Ayn Rand's presence for a time.

For what it's worth, Leonard Peikoff's capsule bios (on his books, at the ARI site, etc.) usually don't mention that he taught at Denver.

Robert Campbell

PS. This is the first time I've heard that Sidney Hook refused to write a positive letter of recommendation for Leonard Peikoff. That is near-fatal in academic philosophy. How did Dr. Peikoff later get a job at Brooklyn College?

Ayn Rand wrote (ref. ?) that a well known professor could have given someone he described as a brilliant teacher a recommendation for employment but declined to do so. I opined on the Internet--I forget when and on which forum--that that was probably Hook and Peikoff. Barbara Branden then posted that that was the case.

--Brant