Ellen Stuttle

I don't think so, Phil. That sure ain't the way -- as something whimsical -- it was reported. Ellen ___

Receiving confirmation (from John Enright, a source I trust) after all these years that Harry Binswanger reported accurately a comment he said AR made about evasion has tipped the balance in regard to my repeating something else Harry said he was told by AR. I've debated about telling this but always decided against -- I've never before repeated it to anyone -- because I've always wondered if Harry might have made it up (perhaps in the belief that he was doing AR a service). Again, I got this during the late '70s at second remove from Evan Picoult. Harry told Evan that he once asked AR herself, straight out, the question left begging by Nathaniel's response to "To Whom It May Concern": Had she and Nathaniel had an affair? According to Harry's account, she replied, "No, and he wasn't my type." I.e., instead of becoming angry with Harry for even asking such a question (as Hessen said she did with someone else in another incident -- that incident during the Q and A period after one of LP's lectures), she answered directly, in the negative. I can understand why she would have lied (assuming she did) in response to being queried outright regarding her relationship with Nathaniel by a fairly close associate (Harry was part of what in those days was often called "The Second Inner Circle"), but only on the supposition that it was important to her that the truth be kept secret -- as both of the Brandens have said it was. Ellen ___

Jonathan, Thanks for quoting that material from Chris' Notablog. I wonder what the lines were which were changed. Ellen __

Ellen, Marsha and I heard this exchange as it happened. We were quite struck by it. John Gasp of pleased astonishment: So all this while I've wondered if she really said that, you and Marsha were witnesses!! Wow. Thanks for telling me. (I'm reminded of an Agatha Christie mystery wherein Jane Marple finally solves it after thinking of asking the right person, someone who just happens to know a detail of information needed to explain the motive for a seemingly motiveless crime.) Good to "see" you, if only in listland, John. And please say hi to Marsha for me. Ellen ___

- pp. 75-76, PARC: --START quote In the 1970s the Smiths produced an off-Broadway revival of Rand's play, Penthouse Legend. [...] Kay Nolte Smith and her husband [...], in an act exhibiting unbelievably reckless judgment, changed the dialogue in their production of [the play] without authorization from Rand. [Again, his reference for this is Walker's book.] In such an instance of systematic and personal betrayal, a break was at least understandably in order, simply on the basis of their callous indifference to Rand's personal history [the history of her battles to have her work performed precisely as she wrote it], if not to her artistic integrity. --END quote Does anyone know what the changes were? I attended the production, but I didn't notice whatever they were. Did the Smiths shorten a scene or scenes for reasons of length? Did they change a line or lines which seemed to them dated? Or some other minor editing? I have trouble believing that either Kay or Philip (I knew both of them) would have made any changes which they thought for a minute Rand might be upset by. But the "systematic...betrayal" makes it sound as if the changes were extensive and ones which altered the character of the play. As to the description "callous indifference," I doubt that either of the Smiths would have displayed that to anyone -- "indifference" to some people, sure; but "callous indifference," no, as I thought both of them kindhearted of disposition. Is Philip still alive? Ellen [Edit: I just noticed that Phil Coates is suffering from the flu, but I assume that he's still alive.] ___

- On pp. 74-75 of PARC, Valliant writes: -- START quote In many of these cases [of breakings-off from Rand], it is clear that profound intellectual differences were emerging between Rand and the person involved, if it is not entirely clear that those differences were the proximate cause of the split with Rand. For example, Henry Holzer [...; I have no knowledge of the details regarding Holzer, so I skip that. But he continues:] Allan Blumenthal, a psychiatrist, has asserted that literally "all of Objectivism" was the product of Rand's efforts to cope with her own psychology. He thus appears to have endorsed a form of psychological determinism -- entirely rejecting, it seems, the possibility of objective cognition, a rather fundamental tenet of Objectivism. --END quote Valliant cites as the source (footnote 54) pg. 247 of Walker's book. Does anyone here have that book? I'm curious as to exactly what Walker quotes Allan as having said, since the reported quote, as rendered, is nothing I can imagine Allan ever saying. (Maybe he said that AR's ideas specifically on psychology were a projection of her own psychology; that could be plausible. But unless Allan transmogrified into a different person in the years since I knew him -- i.e., since 1980, granted, a quarter century -- the very idea that Allan ever endorsed any form of "psychological determinism" is bizarre.) Ellen PS to Valliant, if he's still reading this website: In case your book sees a second printing, you have the year wrong in footnote 36 on pg. 398. ___

Barbara, I'm quite interested by your and Phil's discussion on the O'ist-lexicon meaning of and on the nature of (which might not be the same as the O'ist-lexicon meaning of) "evasion." That's a subject I puzzled about for years, until it got to seem like "angels on pinheads" and I put it aside hoping to find a fresh approach later. In the course of my puzzling during the late 70s, I sometimes thought of a comment which I'd heard Ayn reported as having made, and which I wondered if she really said -- since if she actually said this, it seemed to me that she herself didn't understand what "evasion" was defined as meaning in her own writings. So I'd like to recount this incident and see if it squares with anything you recall having heard her say. [Edit: I told this confusingly. The way I heard about the incident was because Harry had told the story to Evan at some point when the two of them were together; Evan in turn told me. But the incident Harry was talking about occurred at a lecture he attended -- I assume during one of LP's courses -- where Ayn was present.] The circumstance was a conversation between Harry Binswanger and Evan Picoult -- I don't remember the exact setting, whether they were having dinner together or were both attending an O'ist social event, or what. Harry had written something he wanted Ayn to read, and he'd asked her if she'd gotten around to it. She said that she was having trouble managing to read anything except mystery novels. (This was in the years after her operation; she was tired.) Then she added: "I know that I'm evading, but at least I'm conscious that I'm doing it, so it's not as bad." HELLO? But... Isn't "evasion" supposed to require being conscious that one is "putting out of one's thoughts something one clearly or dimly knows one should be thinking of" (there I'm quoting AB's formulation of the definition)? But her statement implies: (1) that there could be, in her view, NON-conscious "evasion"; and (2) that non-conscious "evasion" would be worse morally than conscious "evasion." So, puzzlement: Did Harry get right what she said? (I feel sure that Evan correctly reported what Harry said, since Evan was very meticulous about getting remarks he quoted exact -- or specifying that he didn't remember precisely if he didn't.) Ellen ___

Michael, Yes, the rhetorical devices in PARC-- or I suppose that in lawyerly language, they might be called "leading statements" -- are as thick as a swarm of gnats, and need some strenuous effort to keep brushing aside. Ellen ___

I've now read the first 59 pages of PARC. I see that I'm going to end up having to write something lengthy attempting to disentangle Valliant's legitimate complaints against features of the way in which the Brandens told their tales from the issue of the truth in what they told. For instance, on pp. 58 and 59, Valliant points to the lack of documentation for the Brandens' accounts of the "group-therapy"/"trials" occurrences. He's right in saying that a non-informed person reading those accounts isn't given enough supporting material to have a reliable basis for assessment. Nonetheless, there is evidence which the Brandens don't report which backs up their stories. Another for instance, his indicating that the entire, or at least the major, source of the repressive atmosphere in New York O'ist circles might have been the Brandens themselves. But then why did that atmosphere continue for 8+ years after NBI had folded and the Brandens had moved to the West Coast? Etc. Ellen PS: Roger, thanks for the good wishes about the eye problem. It isn't a problem with my vision as such; it's neuromuscular (painful twitchings and pullings in muscles, including those of the eye orbits), a long-term, and worsening, aftermath result of a mild case of childhood polio. ___

I just read the concluding pages of PARC (I still haven't yet read Part I or the commentary interspersed between Rand's Journal entries). Again, I'm struck by a sense of irony: You see, there was a psychotherapist in the post-split New York Objectivist world who did have the "soul of a rapist" which James Valliant ascribes to Nathaniel Branden: Lonnie Leonard. Yet I believe that for all Rand's naivety, she'd never have been fooled by the likes of Lonnie. (Just being in a room with Lonnie made my skin crawl. Several times in late 1970/early '71 I was in a room with him, at a course being given by Allan Blumenthal. Then, to my relief, Allan and Lonnie went their separate ways and Lonnie quit attending the course. This was some years before the extent of Lonnie's nefarious activities was revealed.) (For those who haven't heard of him: Lonnie was engaged in systematic undercutting of his clients' self-esteem. He was eventually brought to trial and lost his license to practice in New York on grounds of sexual malpractice -- that is, enticing female clients into having sexual relationships with him. Ellen Plaisil, one of those who instituted the suit, wrote a book about her experiences -- a book titled, notice the pun: Therapist. Unfortunately, the book's out of print. There was more to the story, however, than Plaisil told: Lonnie also had techniques that he used with male clients, such as discouraging their pursuit of the career choice they actually wanted, attempting to deflect them from good romantic choices into bad ones, and a lot of other stuff, for instance at one point giving a loaded gun to a client who, though he loved Lonnie, was angry with him and taunting the client to shoot him. Also he orchestrated a sort of musical chairs of sexual partners amongst his clients. He expounded the LL theory of "maximizing" one's "scorecard" romantic desiderata by testing with various partners, keeping score, and then testing with further partners. And speaking of lying, he had a convoluted web of stories he told to keep each of the clients with whom he was messing around from finding out about the others. In sum, Lonnie was a for-real version of what PARC presents Nathaniel as having been.) Ellen __

Summarizing in a sentence: If he was a monster, then she was an idiot. You can't properly argue for the first contention without implying the second. Ellen ___

A last word from me on all this, since my eye-related troubles are getting to the place where I truly can't even continue attempting to keep current with reading elists, let alone with posting thereon: If Nathaniel Branden really was the Svengali-type figure those who want to paint him as rotten to the core would have us believe he was, then Ayn Rand really was naive to such an extent she looks like an utter fool ever to have placed any value on him at all. The irony is that the worse they paint him, the more naive they make her look (and in my opinion her journal entries make her look pretty naive without needing help). Ellen ___

Jonathan, Summarizing your inability to imagine yourself doing as described: You can't imagine yourself being AR. It was just about axiomatic with her that whatever she was doing was of course rational. (Thus the cancer diagnosis was a big shock, since she believed that cancer was caused by bad premises, and since she couldn't have bad premises...). Ellen __

Responding to a post by Kat (from several back in the queue): Kat, can you name the people to whom you're referring? Who is it that you think said that he (I believe all the responders on the RoR thread were guys) would ignore the lost child in the wilderness Michael proposed as an example? I think even Luke said that he himself would of course share food with the child. So I think would any of the people who responded to Michael. And I agree that "most people" would -- indeed, so enormous a percentage of "most people," the number of those who wouldn't help in the situation Michael described is vanishingly small. There is where the disagreement lies, as to whether or not ignoring the child should be "considered criminally negligent." If you want to argue that it should be in libertarian rights theory (of which O'ist theory is a subcategory), then what's needed is a case being made as to why. A sense of moral outrage, no matter how widely that sense of outrage would be shared (and to repeat, I think it would be nearly universally shared), just isn't an argument. That, I believe, is the point that Michael's responders were attempting to make to him. Yes, it is obvious that most people would rescue the child; the likelihood of there even being such a circumstance in which an issue of law would arise is incredibly remote. To begin with, the hypothetical is stretching it: how did this kid get abandoned in the wilderness, and how did the adult happen upon the kid? But just suppose...some kid is taken on a wilderness trip by a parent or parents or other responsible adult(s) (an adult other than the child's parents taking a child along in such circumstances could be considered to have accepted temporary guardianship responsibilities). And suppose the adult(s) meet with an accident and are killed or so disabled they can't move to help the child and some other adult who just happens to be out there in that very stretch of "wilderness" comes upon the child, an adult who just happens to have plenty of food and who leaves the child abandoned and uncared for... How is the existence of a law going to make any difference? Do you think that someone so heartless as to leave the child uncared for is going to be worrying about being brought to a court of law? Who is going to know? But your next paragraph introduces the kicker, and the reason why Objectivists would become concerned at the principle being enunciated: Notice your wording, Kat: "compel its citizens by law to act in the interest of saving a child's life": Do you mean a law which states specifically "Any adult finding a lost child in the wilderness must attempt to care for that child"? Or do you mean something so vague as the wording you used? The wording you used could be stretched to cover an exceedingly large number of circumstances in the daily lives of all of us. This is the big worry here, over a law which requires being one's brothers' chilren's keeper. Where do you draw the line if you pass such a law? How do you word it so as to confine it only to the kind of emergency situation in which it wouldn't even be needed precisely because the number of adults who wouldn't help in the imagined circumstance is so minutely small? I agree that politics is built on ethics, but I disagree that they're putting a political principle ahead of an ethical principle. No one is saying that it would be morally justifiable not to help in the circumstance Michael proposed. I'd venture to add that suppose such a scenario did occur, and suppose any of those guys responding to Michael on RoR found out about it and were alone with the person who had left the child to die, they'd take measures into their own hands and whup the perpetrator -- and a court of law would look the other way. Ellen ___

Dragonfly: Possibly I was conflating the two titles. The paper I meant was the Electrodynamics one; I haven't tried to read the photoelectric effect paper (or the others from that year). Ellen __

I'm late in catching up to the rights discussion on RoR -- and to Michael's article here. I didn't have time to read any of the list discussion until late last night. Michael, I think that your essay is excellent and searching -- and accurate in its delineation of dynamics, and correct in its assessment of what most people would think on this issue. However, I think that Jim and Ciro are correct in their replies. There is no right TO life. A right is a right to freedom of action, not a right to be taken care of. The issue of the status of children is a very difficult issue (one which has been debated at seemingly infinite length over the years on the Atlantis lists). I think there is work needing done with the Objectivist viewpoint on this. My own rather sketchy opinion (I don't specialize in rights theory) is that the parents take on an implicit contract to protect and care for the child until the child is old enough to care for him/herself and that the parents can be charged with negligence and stripped of their guardianship prerogatives if they don't perform responsibly. But that no other adult except the parents has any obligation to the child (unless guardianship is legally transferred to some other adult(s)). As to your question about how the concept of rights can lead to issues in which an action is immoral but shouldn't be illegal: because rights is only a subcategory of ethics, not the whole ballpark. A right is a freedom of action morally defensible by force. Ethics is very much wider than circumstances pertaining to force. Ellen ___

Dragonfly (to me): Blush. Right. (Does blushing have something to do with photodynamics?) Yes. Even though I don't understand all the details, I can recognize the straight-to-the-point compressed brilliance (another pun on light imagery). Ellen ___

I'll add to Michael's post giving the page-number breakdown of PARC that from the page on which -- i.e., pg. 237 -- Valliant starts quoting the Journal entries in consecutive order, it's easy to find her words extracted from his (except for some interpretive bold-faced insertions) because her words are indented. Thus, I just read the indented parts, skipping his margin-to-margin-type-style inserts. Also, the book is coming down in price on Amazon. I waited to buy it until the cost minus shipping -- since I have unlimited free shipping on Amazon, being a "frequent flyer" there -- had reduced to less total than a clean used copy plus shipping: I prefer to buy books new when I can. But there are used copies available, plus shipping, for maybe $10 or so total. If people are interested in what she said, I consider the book worth buying for the sake of the Journal entries themselves (entries which, as I probably needn't repeat by now, I interpret in a rather different light than that which the book's author, judging from his elist posts which I've read, casts on her words; I will read the whole book, as time permits, but my main interest was specifically in her direct writings on the subject). I draw people's attention to a chronological issue which MSK's summary makes clear: her entire set of entries comprises less than 8 months -- 11/27/67 to 7/13/68 -- nearing the break with Nathaniel (and BB, though there's no discussion of the reasons why AR ended up breaking with Barbara as well). Ellen ___

Well...my all-time favorite is Origin of Species. ;-) And I do see the awesome beauty, brilliance, and parsimony (though I can't follow every detail) of Einstein's 1905 "The Photodynamics of Moving Bodies," the paper from the five in his Annus Mirabilis which introduced what came to be called special relativity. And there is Newton's Principia, which I'm coming to appreciate more and more through perusing the magnificent I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman 1999 first translation into actually readable English (plus Cohen's erudite commentary, which is as long as the original text). Ellen ___

Jonathan, The journals reprinted in PARC don't address any of the sorts of issues you asked if they do. The description "journal" might be misleading if one thinks of that with the connotation of a diary sort of "journal." The entries aren't "diary"-like in character. Instead, they're AR organizing her thoughts while she's analyzing something which is perplexing her. They're in the style of her working out her thoughts in regard to her novels and/or philosophic issues, only in the case of these entries they're marshaling her thoughts about NB. What she writes is more like a "case study," more like something a clinician would write, than like personal musing about her feelings. And she stopped discussing the issue in her journals when she split with NB. (Or at least, she stopped on the assumption that Valliant's report that there aren't further entries is trustworthy. I see no reason to doubt that it is. His interpretations of what she said, I assume I'd disagree with, given posts of his I've read -- I haven't yet read his commentary in the book. But I see no cause to disbelieve his description of the sheer recording details -- such as his substituting spelled-out names for names she abbreviated, and his leaving out occasional references to other people besides the principals, and there not being further entries after the Split.) Apparently, once Rand had found out what was going on, that was the end of her feeling any need to analyze the mystery, and she stopped writing about it. Ellen ___

Barbara wrote: Yes. And it's an example provided by Leonard Peikoff himself during a public speech. Hard to dismiss that one as having its source in the Brandens' accounts of Rand. ;-) Other news... Casey Fahy has posted an article today on SOLOPassion -- a condemnatory article, surprise, surprise. Here's a paragraph which highlights something I'm puzzled about in the case Valliant and he (and others) believe has been presented. I continue to be amazed that neither Valliant nor Fahy seems to see the impossible contradiction in the motivational picture they present. If it wasn't the case that Rand would split with Nathaniel if he told her flat out that he didn't want any resumption of the affair with her and that he was having an affair with Patrecia, then what motive would he have had for lying? If she'd have been as acceptant as Valliant and Fahy say she would have been, the lying was pointless. So what do they see as the motive? Lying for the sake of lying? (To me, btw, it seems perfectly clear from Rand's Journal entries that NB was right in suspecting that she'd split with him if she thought he was having an affair with Patrecia. I've always wondered if indeed she would have. I think that now I know.) Ellen ___

MSK wrote: I think there is an aspect of imitating, but that often there's also a pre-proclivity. I commented on an earlier thread (I've forgotten which one by now) about a tendency toward self-righteousness which predates their discovering Rand in a number of those who end up identifying themselves as Objectivists. There's also, I think, a tendency toward staidness, toward what I'd call, in personal shorthand, "goody-goodiness." I refer again to the characterization of Eddie Willers as an example: "whatever is right." Now, no, I'm not keen on doing "what's wrong," but stating "whatever is right" as one's goal in life? Ick. The moral sternness and straight-lacedness comes through as an attitude in Atlas especially amongst her novels. Whereas this attitude didn't appeal to me, I think it did appeal to a noticeable percentage of those who ended up wanting to use the label "Objectivist." There are a lot of reasons because of which one might be interested by Rand and attracted to her philosophy; but as you've pointed out yourself, Michael, in your "love/hate myth" post and elsewhere, the vast majority of people who admire Rand in various ways don't become "card-carrying." I'll add that amongst those who specifically identify themselves as "Objectivists," there are further breakdowns amongst those who are concerned with purity and those who are looser in their approach (this isn't an identical line of difference as that between the "closed" and "open" school interpretations, though it's related). Ellen ___

Nathaniel still holds the title. ;-) Other contenders for second-place: the powers-that-be at TOC. And, a new (and surprising) contender [sound of trumpets]: none other than Phil Coates (who hasn't even read the Branden biography and memoirs and has persistently decried all the focusing on personality events from 40 years ago). But he's now been given a place on the list of Diana's targets. See: http://dianahsieh.com/cgi-bin/blog/comment...019981203333316 See especially for a good laugh posts 16, 17, 18, 19 Who's the friend who's posting there? (I don't read The Autonomist site, finding it just way too over the top, basically the lunatic fringe.) Ellen ___

MSK wrote: You said a mouthful there, Michael -- although one which would probably be better to discuss on some other thread. IMO, Rand was VERY conventional in her attitudes about sexual relationships. Truth is, this bothered me from the start (since I was very unconventional): I saw resemblances, for instance, between Dagny's and Fransisco's "forest glade" first encounter and my own relationship at the time with a certain person, but...(see my post about Rand's characters, if considered as real persons: I couldn't imagine myself being so ignorant as Dagny apparently was -- she's even presented as surprised that she could be interested in an activity she'd vaguely heard of others participating in). Rand grew up in a Russian cultural scene. She seems to me, though in one respect to have rebelled against the mores, in other respects to have accepted them. And I wonder if Anna Karenina, which she read in highschool -- and hated -- didn't leave a lasting residue of fear of what would happen to the woman in society-flaunting, publicly-known circumstances. The odd thing is, for instance, that at the time of the break between her and Nathaniel, "society" -- the then-"in" mores -- were at the height of "sexual liberation." And yet she feared what the public would think. In truth, there probably wouldn't have been a more auspicious time, in terms of her winning points with cultural leading lights of the era, for her to have been upfront about her unconventional relationship. What I think is that basically she didn't sympathize with "bohemianism" or anything resembling it. Ellen ___

Roger, If you see this entry... I haven't computer-reading stamina for trying to post on RoR, but I keep feeling that the point you're trying to make with your "ontologically" versus "epistemologically" objective distinction isn't coming through to your respondents. I'm not sure if I'm getting it myself, but let my try this way of saying it and see how this "flies" with you: I believe you're saying, in a (long) sentence, that: Facts are only "facts" from the perspective of a knower, that if there aren't any knowers, there aren't any "facts," there's only a non-known ("intrinsic") whatever. Does this seem remotely close to what you're trying to express? Ellen ___