Neil Parille

Dan, This is from The Ominous Parallels, page 255: "It was the universe that had been hinted at, elaborated, cherished, fought for, and made respectable by a long line of champions. It was the theory and the dream created by all the anti-Aristotelians of Western history." Note: not just that Kant, et al. taught some bad things that even in some sense resulted in the concentration camp. It was their "theory" and "dream."

Barbara, I agree that the ARI is a problem for the advancement of Objectivism. Yet, I get the impression that it has become a bit more flexible in recent years concerning access to the archives and the like. At some point in the future, the policies of the ARI will be no more relevant to Objectivism than the policies of the keeper of the Heidegger archives are to the advancement of Heideggerianism (of course, I'm not comparing the two and in fact haven't read Dr. H in years).

When I was in high school, it seemed like LFB was one of the few ways that libertarians, individualists and Objectivists could keep in contact with each other. The internet is great, of course; but lets not forget where we came from.

I've always found McCartney a bit too smug and self-absorbed, particularly given the rather substandard quality of his music in the last 20 years (of course, I don't know the guy). But, like Kanye West said in Golddigger: If you ain't no punk holla' we want pre-nup WE WANT PRE-NUP!, yeah It's something that you need to have 'Cause when she leave yo' ass she gon' leave with half

I'm watching it now. Anne Heller said that her biography will be out next summer, which is good news.

Robert, I do think Rand would be outraged at Mayhew editing her words (in Ayn Rand Answers) or Peter Schwartz reissuing The New Left. Rand, it seems to me, wanted academic approval of Objectivism, but at the same time wanted to denounce academics with whom she disagreed no matter how sympathetic they might be to her ideas. It's quite a tight rope.

I'm not sure what's so objectionable about having tear-out pages or a link to ARI. I don't I have a huge problem with Peikoff publishing his intros to Rand's books, but if he wants to advance Objectivism, maybe he should publish some original stuff. Unfortunately, the ARI carries on some of the worse aspects of Rand's personality and movement. I bet that if she were alive, she would probably support its general approach to things.

I haven't had the chance to stop by a book store and peruse the book. Does he discuss Rand in detail?

Interesting, how would the NYT know it was Lester Kraus? I did a google search and he doesn't show up.

I would mention for the record that I contacted Ms. McElroy about my piece and suggested that she might find it interesting, given Valliant's praise of her review. (In fact, it was her suggestion, in a follow-up email, to post it.) After she posted it, I wrote her thanking her and mentioned in passing that my essays had generated some controvery with Valliant, including his accusations that I am dishonest. With respect to Ms. McElroy's claim that "From a follow-up note, Mr. Parille clearly did know this [importing an infight] would be the case and he did not inform me ...for whatever reason," this assumes that I knew what would happen on her website. I did not (and still don't) know whether it is a moderated site, whether she planned to permit comments on the article or whatever.

I did a search and it was something like "Identity - Reason - Egoism - Capitalism." It would be interesting to nail down the details of all this given the claims of Valliant and others concerning Rand's supposed tolerance of esthetic disagreements.

Ellen, What did "IREC" stand for? I've never heard of the magazine. What a bunch of "uncompromising individualists."

Pointing out that Rand had a bad side constitutes "assaults on a profound value"?

Alfonso, To the best of my knowledge no.

I would emphasize what Robert and Chris said. For example, Peikoff's induction course is $205. It looks to be 14 hours long. I can purchase an 18 hour Teaching Company course for $70. (If I get the download, it's only $50.) In fact the von Mises Institute has all its lectures free. If Peikoff has solved the problem of induction and validated human reason as the blurb claims, he should try to publish these epoch-making findings, or at least make them more accesible. (And, if I recall correctly, Kripke's Naming and Necessity are transcripts of lectures he gave.) And Chris is correct - we've been told for years that various books will come out.

Roger, Actually, I heard the DIM lectures when they were free on the ARI's website. (For all they know, they still are.) Rand was a creative thinker, and I'm willing to cut her some slack given that her training in philosophy wasn't too substantial (not much more than an undergraduate degree from what I recall). But as far as Peikoff goes, I'm not impressed. For example, was it fair for him to attack Cassier in The Ominous Parallels in some snide remark, but not tell his readers that he was anti-Nazi and left for the US after Hitler took over? That being said, I have heard many people whom I respect speak highly of his tape series.

Roger, I base my opinion of Peikoff as a philosopher not just on this quote, but on The Ominous Parallels and OPAR (both if which I've read in full). Peikoff discusses causality in some detail in OPAR. I think there are good reasons to reject skepticism on this and other issues, but I don't think it can be done based on Peikoff's empiricism. His lectures on induction are $210 and his lecture series Objectivism Through Induction are $270. Having listened to his DIM series, my expectation is that they aren't worth this rather high price.

There has been a less skeptical reading of Hume in recent years. A good discussion is H. Noonan's recent book, Hume. I don't deny the existence of causation or the principle that what has happened in the past is a good guide to what will happen in the future, but the solution to the "problem of induction" isn't as easy as Peikoff makes it out. That things have a specific identity (based on A is A) doesn't mean that I know enough about an entity's properties to predict what will happen. Stephen Parrish gives an example in the recent of JARS about protons. Maybe it is their nature to turn into electrons in 2010.

Michael and Robert, This background was quite good. But I get the impression that TOC/IOS/AS just doesn't believe in Objectivism in the way or to the extent that the ARI does. If I were an Objectivist and believed that Rand was the greatest philosopher since Aristotle, I don't think I'd support TOC/IOS/AS given that the material it publishes doesn't seem to be consistently pro-Objectivist. (At least that's my impression, please correct me if I'm wrong.) The ARI is pro-Rand w/o apology. Sure they look a bit silly at times (for example pimping Valliant's book), but at least you know where they stand.

I don't know if Rand ever wrote systematically on foreign policy, but I think she was inclined toward non-interventionism. And as late as 1982 (in The Ominous Parallels), Peikoff opposed US invovlement in WW1 and WW2 saying it was intellectuals who hornswaggled a peaceful & isolationist nation into war. Now ARIans are holding us involvment and conduct in WW2 as the epitomy of a proper foreign policy. Does anyone know why or how the Official Objectivist movement went from isolationist to interventionism?

Michael, I would say that this underscores a problem with Objectivism: its rationalism. Just as Rand "knows" why the streaker did what he did w/o the facts, Peikoff knows why the Nazis came to power. I'm the last to deny the importance of ideas in the rise of the Nazis, but it's also the case that if Hitler's opponents had acted a bit more wisely, he might not have taken over.

Dan, It's unfortunate that no one had the courage or the brains to tell Rand, "Sometimes a streaker is just a streaker."

I did a quick search and found that the streaker was a 33 year old advertising agent who wanted to jump-start his career and make a statement about public nudity (he was for it). Streaking had become such a phenom that Ray Stevens' song "The Streak" had already been written (but not released).

Prof. Campbell, I really think that Peikoff is in the make-it-up-as-you-go-along phase. On his website he says that a professor who risked his life to save students at Virginia Tech was "heroic," but that a student who risked his life to save other students was "weird." What's the difference? I recall listening to his DIM courses and it was the same. I didn't get the impression that had given anything he said much thought, and I recall he changed his opinion mid-stream on whether materialism was "D" or "M."

I think we can imagine situations where even a person who is an eye-witness says something so fanciful or has so little credibility that we would, in effect, reject what they say out of hand or refuse to investigate it further. But Valliant's finding the Brandens (and their "friends") credible when they support what he says but not credible when they say something about his hero he doesn't like is arbitrary. This is from Peikoff's web site: "Anyone who can conceive and create Dagny Taggart is Dagny Taggart—intellectually, psychologically and emotionally. For further details, listen to my talk “My Thirty Years with Ayn Rand” available at the ARI bookstore. " I believe Peikoff was quoted at the time of PAR as saying something to the effect of "consider what kind of person wrote Atlas Shrugged." It is quite breathtaking for LP to urge us to reject what the Brandens say based on a "rationalistic" construction of what Rand must have been.