Ellen Stuttle

I think I'd be interested in reading this thread, but it's coming through on my browser with an incredibly long line-width -- I suppose because of the very long URL Ciro posted in a post Fri May 19, 2006 10:34 am. (I used hard-breaks in posting this.) Is it possible for Kat or Michael to "do something" about the line-length? Ellen ___

It's been rattling around in the back of my mind, occasionally in the forefront, that there's a gap of communication between those of us who experienced AR in person sufficiently often to have been left with a felt sense of her "presence," her particular "aura," her "way of coming across" -- whatever words work for you -- and those of us who didn't. Those in the former category seem to understand the description "honest," whereas those in the latter category seem to bring up this detail and then another and thus to not accept the description. I'm coming to think that maybe a different wording is needed, maybe something like "ferocious directness." The quality I'm talking about pertains to her way of going straight AT an issue, as if on a pinpointed lazer beam "whap," the way she didn't appear to entertain questions of "how what I'm saying might sound to my listener." But then, of course, there will be the objection: But she was reported to be sensitive to context and to give a lot of people a feeling of her uniquely hearing them (this isn't something I experienced myself since I avoided direct conversation with her, but it's something I've heard reported by a number of people who did have personal one-on-one exchange with her). And maybe also the objection that she described herself as using the word "selfish" "for the reasons that it bothers you" (words to this effect). Fact is, I agree with Barbara on the difficulties of describing Ayn Rand -- and Barbara would have those difficulties even more so than I do, given the many-years-closeness of her relationship with Ayn. Ellen ___

Well, that's interesting to me in itself, Roger, that you don't hear the "hectoring" tone. To me you sounded as if you were trying to hammer some point into my head -- and I'm still not clear what point, where you think we're disagreeing. It seems as if you think I was trying to defend Diana, but I wasn't and even said I wasn't. You write: What I was saying is simply that she could not have planned to write THAT document in advance of the first week of April because she didn't have the two key features which she used as the centerpiece of her case until then. Maybe we're miscommunicating on the word "planning." I had understood the question to be, why didn't she write it earlier? My point was that she couldn't have, not that document (though, as indicated, I thought there was the earlier intention to say something about her now taking the gloves off re Chris's work). I wasn't attempting to defend her putting the thing together in haste and posting it just when she'd be taking finals and then leaving, if that's what you understood me to be doing. Anyway...the perils of list communication. Speaking of which, I'll be Inn Communicado (as a personage from another list might say) for the next couple days -- getting ready to leave for a Jung Association lecture tonight, and then there's a workshop tomorrow. I hope I won't have been found guilty when next I have time to check list posts of having ducked out of controversy... ;-) Cheers, Ellen ___

Roger, From the tone of your remarks -- which sound as if you're hectoring me -- you seem to think that you're contradicting what I said, but I fail to see the contradiction. Robert, The email to Joe was at the end of the first week of April, somewhat more than two weeks before "Dialectical Dishonesty." I think Diana could have written that article in a couple weeks. The piece isn't well written; it's repetitive, diffuse, and poorly organized, not a polished work. And Diana appears to be able to write fairly quickly, judging from the output she keeps up on her blog while meanwhile working on a doctorate. Ellen ___

In regard to the timing of Diana's opus (when she was in the middle of finals and was planning a vacation for afterward), I think something's being overlooked by those who find this "odd." It isn't as if she was planning, as part of her schedule, to write such a thing. I suspect that she was entertaining various cogitations about what to do in regard to the promise she felt she had made to Chris. And I thought that James Valliant was obviously -- in his exchanges with Robert Campbell -- angling to have a reason which he'd feel looked plausible not to publish in JARS. But the immediate triggering event was serendipitous: an email that Chris wrote to Joe Maurone (the one in which he described Diana as "Comrade Sonia"). Diana could hardly have predicted that this email would be written, and that Joe would then share it with Linz and write to Diana herself about it (and that Linz would inform James Valliant about it). Linz and Diana and James, and maybe Joe as well, probably conferred amongst themselves as to who would do the honors of writing up charges against Chris, including excerpts from private emails. Someplace maybe a couple weeks before Diana's long post appeared, Linz hinted at his having received information about an important person, and that more would be forthcoming. (I don't remember what thread his hint was on, though I think it was one of the threads pertaining to Bill Perry's leaving TOC.) In other words, Diana didn't plan the timing and the particulars. I assume she'd have ended up, and probably within the near future, making some form of public statement to the effect that she'd no longer stay quiet about her views of Chris's work. But her doing it now, and in the way she did it, was because of unforeseen and unforeseable circumstances arising. I'm not entering this corrective in order to defend her action. I have a very negative view of the way she's handled her desire to separate from her friendship with Chris. I'm only indicating that the idea that she planned to denounce him at a time when she'd be busy with end-of-the-semester at school -- and then soon thereafter departing on a vaction -- doesn't make sense because she couldn't have planned the catalyzing email. Ellen ___

Um, Michael, speak for yourself? ;-) The person I am discussing isn't "anyone but Ayn Rand," it's Ayn Rand. And I would venture to assert that I am without any trace of finding the idea of Rand's lying to herself "inconceivable." I don't think it's a good explanation, however. I think that AR in fact was a person of some peculiar -- some out-of-the-ordinary -- complexities which aren't easy to understand. (I should qualify that I think every person has complexities which are very far from easy to understand. And I wouldn't claim "fully" to understand anyone, including myself. But I do think that even in a world of strangeness -- the world of human psyches -- AR had puzzling qualities. "God" knows, I've pondered over those qualities many times, many times. At times I feel that I sense the innerness of it -- but never that I can well describe what I sense.) Ellen ___

Roger, I really like that excerpt (2 posts above) from your reflections about different types of thinking in re the differences in reception of Chris' work. As I wrote yesterday on another thread in the Articles forum , although I generally come across in listlife as being of an analytical type -- and although I admit to not being a slouch at that type of thought -- I'm probably even more strongly a visualizing/visionary thinker (through much of my life, I've had actual vision- and vision-sequence experiences). Among my frustrations with the Objectivist world I encountered in New York, and with what I read in the Objectivist literature, was always my sense of a whole part of my psyche, and a tremendously important part to my understanding of life, which was missing, which just wasn't talked about, which was as if it wasn't there (except in slighting references to "mystics") -- and yet which I felt Rand herself had some significant talents in using. I tried during the '78-'80 to arouse some discussions between me and Allan Blumenthal about these issues, with little success. Then in '81 I began to study the work of Carl Jung. Oh, what a year that was (followed by exciting years after). From the start of reading Jung, I felt that FINALLY, there it was, what I'd been looking for, what I yearningly thought of as "real psychology" and envisioned as "a noble well-grown tree" (Jung uses that description someplace) with a vast root system, as vast as the towering branches above. ("On the Nature of the Psyche," in The Basic Writings of C. G. Jung edited by Violet de Laszlo was the first essay I read, and I felt that my life had changed within three paragraphs.) All this might not seem connected in an obvious way to Chris S. and his work. But I think it's relevant to why, from my first encountering Chris' ideas in May 1993, I straight off felt that I understood "the wavelength," that I "got" what he was going for and believed he was onto something important. (The way I first heard of Chris was through a letter, dated May 18, 1993, and prospectus he sent to persons who were planning to attend an IOS colloquium coming up at which he'd present material. Larry was one of the persons who planned to, and did, attend.) The timing of your post is propitious, since this weekend there will be a big Jungian event here. A man named Gary Sparks, a Jungian analyst and one of the leading current Jung scholars, will be in town from Indiana. Friday evening he's giving a talk on the stages of Jung's development of his idea of "the Self." Saturday will be a workshop on Marie-Louise von Franz's Aurora Consurgens, originally published as a companion work to Jung's Mysterium Coniunctiones. I chuckle at imagining what would happen were various Objectivist persons I know or know of to appear at that workshop. The lecture they might at least be able to follow, in outline -- since the outline will have a linear quality to it. At the workshop, they'd likely feel they were listening to a group of lunatics. But those of us attending -- I well know from previous Gary Sparks workshops on von Franz's work -- will be feeling that we're in feast land. And we'll have material to "think," in non-linear way, about for years to come. Ellen Edit: I earlier mistakenly cited The Portable Jung edited by Joseph Campbell as the volume in which I first read "On the Nature of the Psyche," the first essay of Jung's I read. I had two collections of his work back then (now I have multiple complete volume): the Viking selections edited by Campbell and the Modern Library selections edited by Laszlo. There's some, but not much overlap between the works Campbell and Laszlo respectively included. ___

Barbara, I signed back on hoping that you might have said anything further on this "honesty" business. It's one of those which are hard to pinpoint, just what one is speaking of in using this description of her. The "honesty" I mean is a lack of any guile, a directness, an apparent lack of knowledge even of how to dissemble. As regards her changed opinions of persons she'd known, I heard of instances myself where she'd exhibit no signs of being aware that she'd ever held a different opinion than the new one. I sort of alluded to this in my first reply to Charles above when I wrote: "And if someone disappointed her, she could then be quick to see the worst." But is this actually "dishonesty," or is it that, her opinion having changed, she'd lost the earlier context? I think she was someone who did not dwell in memories. She did a lot of reminiscing while you were interviewing her, but I don't think she engaged in an activity which I do engage in as a technique, that of tracing back through memory sequences -- as a friend of mine who does the same thing once described this, "trying to keep the thread of the spool straight." Ayn's not making a practice of pursuing memory seems related to her not being introspective, as you described in PAR, her non-soul-searching. She seemed like she was so focused on what she was doing now, on her thoughts, on issues -- and she herself claimed not to be interested in "journalistic" details about people's lives (including her own). The changed evaluation of a person wiping out the previous evaluation would fit this pattern. (And of course it's known that memories can change over time, that memory left alone, without reviewing it, does change. This is one reason why I work at trying to keep the memory traces straight, and have developed various memory methods -- but then other memories, ones I'm not working on, will slide.) I've seen examples close to home of memory changes that I find weird projections of the present backward. (It does seem "weird" when it's someone else doing it.) A common example which has occurred with Larry is his feeling sure that I saw some movie or other with him which in fact he saw in the years before I even met him. Or another example: I have this screwdriver set which is like a "Chinese box" nesting -- an outer screwdriver, about six inches long in the shaft, 3/4" thick, nested within which is a smaller one, etc., down to a tiny one for repairing eyeglasses and such fine-detail jobs. He loves this set, and his memory will slip and he'll think that it's HIS, that he acquired it years ago. But in fact Larry never acquired that screwdriver set at all; my father did, years and years ago; it's a set which my father had in his workroom at our house in Peoria and which Father gave me as a gift. But I don't think there's any dishonesty in these false rememberings. And it seems to me that Ayn's losing earlier contexts re people sounds like a comparable type. What one would have to establish to be sure if the changes were honest or not is whether she knew she was rewriting history. Ellen ___

Just a note of clarification: I wasn't meaning to imply, in not specifically addressing the "honesty" characteristic in regard to "To Whom It May Concern," that I think Rand displayed honesty in that statement. I've never thought she did. As I've discussed in some previous posts in the Branden Forum (will fill in links when I have time to search), it seemed to me crystal clear from my first reading that she was not telling "the whole truth," since she doesn't give the evidence which would be needed to support her charges. Taking the defense, however, I feel that I can understand why she'd have written such a thing in the heat of rage (I've often thought it was amazing that New York City didn't explode from the irruption of how angry she'd have been when she found out the extent to which NB had been lying to her). I feel that I can understand why she wrote it -- though her then proceeding to publish it, instead of tearing it up, or putting it in a drawer, and substituting just a short factual statement of her disassociation with Nathaniel, and Barbara, I think was unwise to the point of megalomaniacal. Also I think that she herself made the affair the whole world's business in going ahead and publishing what she'd written. But where I think a greater dishonesty than that involved in publishing the document itself came in was in her then not explaining with a subsequent admission, i.e., her not following up by acknowledging that she shouldn't have levied such extreme charges without the supporting evidence and that she'd left out a major part of the story. All this, though, still doesn't change my opinion that "very honest" is an accurate description of her prevailing psychology. I think of the details pertaining to "To Whom It May Concern" as aberrant from her characteristic functioning. Ellen ___

Charles, I've read your analysis twice, and I find it very perceptive about the quality in AR I describe as "naive." (I wonder if Barbara will agree; my expectation is, yes, at least in the main.) But there is the "other" factor, too, the factor I've described as "absolutism," as the best word I've been able to find for it, though I'm not really satisfied with that. As I understand her, she both had the quite real "benevolence" you describe AND she had an intertwined characteristic of moral ferocity, of implacable judgment. Think, e.g., how often she used such descriptions as "implacable" for her hero characters. Or, e.g., (quoting from memory), "His was the face of an executioner -- or a saint." (Was it Ragnar she described like that?) Think, too, of her ascription of motives to those she considered bad persons: "the hatred of the good for being the good," e.g., is mild. She could get more extreme -- and at length. So, although, yes, she was very benevolent, she could also be thoroughly unrealistic in delineating what she imagined to be the state of mind of large numbers of people, and thoroughly harsh in condemnation of that supposed state of mind. And if someone disappointed her, she could then be quick to see the worst. So all of that was also part of the situation with Nathaniel. It's like he had two categories he could be in. Either he really was the great soul she'd become convinced he was (and her image of what "a great soul" such as she'd thought him to be would do, especially in this case in the relationship with her, was itself unrealistic). OR he had to have betrayed his greatness -- as she describes him as having done in "To Whom It May Concern." Middle ground doesn't seem to have been an option she could accept in his case. (Though she does talk in the journal entires of having a "formal" relationship if he turned out to be less than the great man she'd thought him, she also expresses strong doubt as to whether this would be possible. And I doubt that it would have been. For one thing, suppose she concluded he was less than a great soul, by her standards, would she still have felt comfortable having him teach her philosophy? Would her disappointment in him have led to her concluding that he wasn't competent as the head of NBI? More generally, would she have been able to "live in peace" with the disappointment? Judging, for instance, from what Allan Blumenthal told me about her never being able to let it drop concerning his, and Joan's, esthetic differences with her, would she have been able to let drop something of the magnitude of Nathaniel's not being her image of him?) Ellen ___

You guys are making it very hard for me to stay out of the discussion. You keep saying these things that I want to comment about (many more things than I possibly can comment about). Charles describes me as having a good analytical mind. Without meaning to deny that, yes, I think I am rather skilled at analytical thought, the impression of me which comes across in list exchanges is misleading. It's partly an artifact of the medium, and of my difficulties with that medium. Looking at a computer screen tends rapidly to "freeze" my picture-thinking ability, which is a strong ability. Fact is, the way I talk -- conversing in person -- is much more like the way Jenna writes than it is like the way I write. Even now, just in the time it's taken to type the above two paragraphs, I'm feeling the "freeze" setting in -- I'm losing all the thoughts which were bubbling as half-verbal/half-pictorial form when I sat down to type. One image, though, if I can try to capture something of this... I've periodically been "thinking of" it (seeing it) the last week or two because of Paul's talk of alternate styles of "lensing" and of viewing people (in one style) as "nodes" in a network of relationships... Some years ago, when on a bus headed toward downtown Hartford (I remember where I was: going down Woodland and then turning onto Asylum around the perimeter of the St. Frances Hospital property; often visual/kinesthetic images of the context in which it happened will stay with me with one of these visualization things), I had a vision/visualization of "the web of human influences." (I describe this as a "vision/visualization" because it was halfway between, not quite a true "vision." A true "vision," as I use that term, is just there; it is what it is and is seen -- in "vision space" -- as one would see the perceptual surround one is in. It isn't alterable by playing with it; it's presented, not formed by one's actions. A "visualization," however -- again, as I use the term -- is subject to intent, to playing around with, to deliberate manipulating. Sometimes I have experiences which are a bit of each: the basic image is just presented, but then I can play around with the image and alter it.) I saw the image of humans as if each human were a particle density -- rather like a particle concentration in a wave packet of "wavicles" -- on an extended plane, a plane going out, out, out beyond the boundaries of sight. The plane was the moving NOW -- the always-progressing, never-stopped current "time." Each human trailed and arose from, as from a sort of central personal "theme," a long, extended slim filament like a central "root," or maybe more like a slim axon of a neuron. Feeding into the node of each person on the NOW plane was a vast network (sort of "dendrite"-like) of prior influences converging from previous interactions with others as previous loci of the moving plane. And the persons were connected on that moving plane by current interaction tendrils. Plus extending forward from each -- into future, not-yet-realized possibility -- were thinner projective filaments of anticipatory thought and intent. The actual image was "of course" (those prone to visualization will understand why I say "of course") MUCH more complex than is possible to describe using words. The whole image was of a constantly growing, interweaving and re-interweaving of, as I described it above, "the web of human influences." I.e., Paul, your talk of "nodes" connects for me. I add, re Jung: In his first major book -- the publiction of which decisively precipitated the break-in-the-works between Jung and Freud -- titled in the English version "Symbols of Transformation," he discusses at length what he calls "two types of thinking." I suspect you'd find much of value in that discussion. Sorry, I can't type in sections. (Jung is nothing if not long-winded; excerpting just doesn't quite do the job.) The book is available as a separate volume. But volumes from the Collected Works are unfortunately expensive. You might want to try used-book stores or a university library. Ellen PS: There's much more I'd like to comment on. My thoughts at this time keep revolving around issues of the "sociology" of the Objectivist world. There do seem to be some important changes occurring (Linz I think is right to that extent). Plus, since I'm good friends with Chris S., I'm paying much more attention to the details of current debates than I expect I would otherwise. I feel that my thoughts have been "detoured" from the concerns I'd anticipated I would be focused on at this time (meaning, in this general period of time). But I'm reading exchanges on other topics here -- for instance, on this thread -- and I hope that later I'll be able to revert to the subjects I'd rather be thinking about. ___

The last time that subject came up when Lee was here, he didn't remember specific sections of the Kelley book off-hand (and we had too many other topics in process to get out the book). A general problem Lee has with Kelley's presentations is Kelley's way of using so many qualifiers, pinpointing just what Kelley is saying is non-trivial. Particular issues are those of primary/secondary qualities (is Kelley accepting the distinction or not?), and Kelley's seeming to accept Rand's idea of "sensations integrated into perceptions," an idea which Gibson would have considered flat wrong, since Gibson held that we abstract from a perceptual world rather than constructing percepts from "atoms," as it were, of sensation. I, like Roger, am going to be curious to hear a comparison of what Binswanger and Kelley say this summer. Lee's had a number of exchanges with Harry on the issue -- but my impression is that Harry hasn't quite become a "Gibsonian." Ellen ___

I think that either Linz himself made the story up, trying to reawaken some (waning) interest in his dramatics. Or someone else made it up and told it to Linz. The story is (a) out of character as something NB might have done (but then Linz isn't exactly a good judge of NB's character); and (B) of a piece with other misinformations being spread on SOLOP. And if Linz really had anything, why didn't he post the message? Not as if posting private email is considered a no-no on his list (although not as if the full text of any of the private emails excerpted has been posted either -- instead people are expected to trust Diana, JV, Joe M. that they're fairly excerpting the "relevant" parts). Ellen ___

In one of the threads on SOLOP Mike Mazza commented about Harry Binswanger's HBL list, indicating that said list doesn't require "orthodoxy" (or a similar description). I can't find the post, and I'm not sure what thread it's on. I recall that he in particular referred to debates between Harry and some others, one of those others Lee Pierson, who's had an ongoing debate with Harry for several years over issues of consciousness. Possibly those from SOLOP following posts here (there are some, this is obvious) will notice if I post here correcting Mike Mazza's view of the LP/HB exchange: Lee Pierson is someone who's been a friend of mine for more than 30 years (and indeed I've been a sounding board during those years in his working out his views re consciousness, views which I think are on an important right track). Lee never had any use for Nathaniel Branden, hasn't even read more than a little here and there of Branden's post-split work. He thinks that the original "self-esteem"-issues idea has merit -- but of course that was propounded while NB was still in AR's good graces. Although Lee says he "likes" David Kelley, he's by no means a personal friend of David's; and he's thought ever since the time of the parting of the ways between Leonard Peikoff and David Kelley that LP was correct in "Fact and Value." (Plus, he thinks that David gets details wrong in the latter's interpretation of Gibson in The Evidence of the Senses. Lee is very familiar with Gibson's work, and was Gibson's last doctoral student.) I thus comment to contravene Mike Mazza's apparent belief that "orthodoxy" isn't required in participating on HBL. According to my understanding of Harry's list, there's an actual "loyalty oath" pledge required, an oath which disavows any support of (or contact with) those Harry considers "enemies of Objectivism." Am I wrong about this requirement? Ellen ___

Paul, your reply isn't giving me much to go on in terms of what works of Jung's might be good starting places to recommend. Jung's work is enormous and complex and has so many different aspects to it. You speak of the "metaphysics" of "the collective unconscious," but I can't tell what "image" you have of that, what you think such a "metaphysics" might be. For instance, do you find the "metaphysics" of what's today being called the field of "evolutionary psychology" suspect? Along with one of the leading Jung scholars, a man named John Haule (pronounced HEW-el), who's writing a book on this subject, I think that Jung was ahead of the curve in glimmering the evolutionary basis of the human psyche. Possibly if you could spell out a bit what it is you've understood Jung to be saying (from the intimations you picked up from your brother and elsewhere), this would give me more to go on. The third weekend in May there will be a talk and workshop here by another of the leading Jung scholars, Gary Sparks. I'll ask Gary if he could suggest some relatively compressed sources (probably by others besides Jung himself) for acquiring an introductory sense of Jung's view of anima/animus dynamics. Ellen ___

WSS wrote: Cresswell is a long-time close-comrade-in-arms of Perigo's in the battle against EVUL. You're likely not having a fit of paranoia. Contra Cresswell, I enjoy your writing a lot. I became a fan with the first couple posts of yours I read on RoR. Ellen ___

Paul wrote: You haven't invented a new word. It's a word I've heard, read -- and used -- on a frequent basis for the last twenty-five years of being involved with Jungian psychological theory. I wonder if you've ever read any of Jung's work. It sounds as if you haven't but as if you would find him very interesting, at least on the issue of male as compared to female psychology. Aion is where the full anima/animus theory is delineated, but that's heavy going. I'll point you to easier sources first if you lack familiarity with Jung but are curious. Ellen ___

I, too, suspect that the older guard (the first generation -- Peikoff, etc.) would be leery of her. She has past errors to counteract (having webmastered NB's site, having been involved with IOS/TOC to begin with), in addition to the unattractiveness of the way she's gone about the Sciabarra issue. But the second generation (Brooks, etc.) might not be as cautious. (I don't know, I hasten to add, what any of them thinks of Diana. I haven't myself seen any of the older ones since the second half of the '70s, and I've never seen any of the younger ones except Ridpath.) Ellen PS: Clarification as to what I mean by the "older" and "younger." I'm thinking in terms of who were among the initial New York group, thus including Binswanger and Gotthelf (who were part of what was called the Junior Inner Circle) and Schwartz (who became part of that circle after the Brandens/Rand split) as "older." Ridpath is, I believe, chronologically close to the same age as Harry B., but if I remember right, he came along later; I don't know if he ever knew Rand. (Complexifying alliances still further: Gotthelf took a long time after "Fact and Value" and then "Truth and Toleration" appeared "considering" the issues. I think it wasn't until David invited NB to talk at the IOS Summer Seminar in 1996 that Gotthelf definitely lined up with the ARI folks -- though I suppose he'd been in contact with them. He and Harry were friends back when -- although Gotthelf remained on friendly terms with Allan B. after the latter split with Rand. Gotthelf is harder to "peg" than some of the others.) ___

I see that Robert Campbell alerted Michael to the chronological error while I was writing the following post, and that Michael has already entered a correction. I'll go ahead and post this nevertheless, since it contains an additional point. MSK: You have the chronology wrong, Michael. Lindsay, for some time, wasn't keen on reading PARC and was rather pooh-poohing toward it. He even needled Chris about having expended so many words on the book. In one post he said he might read it and write a review, but certainly not X-number words. At the time when PARC started to become a preoccupation on SOHOHQ, Linz was still extolling Barbara. He called her "Majesty," and she had a "Holding Court" column on the SOLOHQ website. It was only after "Drooling Beast" and then Barbara's seconding Kilbourne that Linz changed his tune about Barbara. Subsequently, she became evil incarnate. An irony there: his maudlin post about Chris, hoping Chris will return to being "the pure soul" who shared with him (Linz) "the night of The Flood," is doing just what Barbara is accused of having been vile for doing -- i.e., seconding a public opinion expressed which was bad form to publish. But whereas I classify the Kilbourne article, and Barbara's follow-up, as lapses of judgment, I classify Diana's denunciation of Chris as disgusting and Linz's appeal to Chris as stomach-turningly cloying. Ellen PS: My excerpting and commenting on only that particular section of MSK's post isn't to be taken as therefore (through not mentioning them) signing on to the interpretations in the parts I didn't comment on. I haven't even read the full post yet, and besides am loath to give further display to the "he said/they said" debates by discussing details. It's just that Michael's remarks about PARC leapt out at me as being backward in the chronology. [Edit: Spelling error corrected, I hope before Mike Hardy saw it. ;-)] ___

Yes, I know that Minerva is the Roman version of Athena. ;-) That's the point, mixing up the Greeks and the Romans. A most peculiar error for me to make, given that I have extensive background in those mythologies. Btw, speaking of Graeco-Roman mythologies: "Artemis" is the Greek version of "Diana." I have quipped in various private conversations with close friends that we're headed for the next O'ist female deity; first we had Athena, now we'll have Artemis. Ellen ___

I referred to a post of MSK's the location of which I couldn't remember. Michael provides a link (here) and the pertinent quote. Michael adds that I "made a statement in the opening post that could be misconstrued by those more bent on arguing with ill will," viz.: "Michael says something to the effect that the anger against Russian Radical was because of the demonstration of Rand's growing from intellectual roots." Michael corrects: Granted, the wording I used is likely to be picked on by those "bent on arguing with ill will." And the wording isn't ideal in any case. But the emphasis is somewhat different from Rand's acknowledged "debts" to specific philosophers. The image I was trying to present is that of an organic growth -- that she actually "grew" within an intellectual "soil" (climate of thought), a "soil" (climate of thought) which was Russian. I can't believe I wrote "Minerva" instead of "Athena," where was my mind? I'll footnote the error in the original post, but won't correct it now, since it's been quoted. Ellen ___

Alright, obviously I haven't made good on my departure, and I don't suppose I'll manage to retire for awhile to much-needed hibernation as long as this Sciabarra thing is raging. I'm really pissed -- really pissed -- at the attempt to defame possibly the best mind (next to Rand's own) which has come out of the (broadly defined) Objectivist world. In one of MSK's posts about "Dialectical Dishonesty" -- I'm sorry, I forget which one -- Michael says something to the effect that the anger against Russian Radical was because of the demonstration of Rand's growing from intellectual roots. That feature of Chris's thesis -- her having an intellectual past in currents of thought she experienced during her early years -- was indeed a major source of the initial outcry against Chris, probably even more than the dialectical stuff as such (though the talk of "dialectics" was important too). It might be hard to believe today -- and much of the change in belief has come from Chris's often-vilified efforts -- the extent to which people then, when they first heard of Chris's thesis, held the "premise" that Rand, just as the Rand mythology told it, had sprung like Minerva from the head of Zeus, with her philosophy already formed in nucleus and having next-to-zero predecessing origins. (This was a "premise" -- I've come to hate the word because of the way it's used in O'ist-ese -- which I had long thought was absurd; thus I was among the people who applauded what Chris was doing from the time of his first presentation, I forget which year, at an IOS seminar. Which is how Chris and I first started corresponding.) To the extent Rand herself acknowledged any origins, she especially denied any Russian origins, given her extreme negativity toward Russian culture in general. But here was Chris, establishing Russian sources. He received flak from the beginning, even from the "open" school of thought. (A side comment, though Chris doesn't go into this much in his work, since he's more focused on philosophic and societal-systems issues: even in her novels I think there's a clear Russian influence, the philosophic novel having been a Russian tradition.) Ironically, as things ended up, Chris was the one who dug up evidence which supported Rand's recollection of taking a course with Lossky. So in the end the ARI folks began, too, to listen to this out-of-the-square thinker in the Objectivist world's midst. They've ended up wanting access to what he learns from his Russian contacts -- while all the while keeping him at a long arm's length. They, too, have come to believe in "Russian origins," while still decrying the scholarship, and the integrity, of the pathbreaker whose research findings they'd like be informed of. Ellen PS: ERRATA. I wrote, above, "like Minerva from the head of Zeus." This should have been Athena, which I know perfectly well. Can't quite believe I did that. (Since the sentence has been quoted in other posts, I left the error.) ___

Charles, thanks so much for the compliments. I assure you, the pleasure is mutual. I read all of your posts and am always interested by them. I just have so little available time for response, I rarely say anything in reply. I understand about the book-burning image. Confronted with really setting fire to a book....holy of holies desecrated, even if it's a book you hate, the very idea of book-burning....... <horrors>. Ellen ___

Excellent analysis, Charles. There is, though, one enlightening conclusion which can be drawn from Rand's own journal entries, provided the effort is made to concentrate on what Rand in fact wrote while setting aside what Valliant tells you she's saying: that Nathaniel's intuition was on target in his belief that there's no way it could have worked out for him to have both a sexual relationship with Patrecia and a continuing relationship (even "formal," for business only) with Rand. I always wondered if he was right in this intutition. (I suspected he was.) I feel that now I know. Ellen ___

MSK: I'd expect he's quite good at trial work. I think I'd have pegged him for a prosecuting attorney, even if I hadn't already known of his profession, by within 50 pages of PARC -- and the prosecutor-presenting-a-summation technique gets more and more obvious as Part I proceeds. He's smooth, smooth at leading the case to the conclusion he wants while misdirecting attention from the flaws of logic. Supposing I were a teacher of logic, I would assign as a project reading Part I of PARC and attempting to identify the argumentative sleight-of-hands. (Part II, of course, also contains such techniques, but becomes more complex to dissect because of his psychological commentary on her psychological commentary. More than straightforword skills at logic is needed to see the problems there.) Ellen ___