Neil Parille

It's difficult to come to a firm conclusion on the question of whether or not Rand supported charity. She did say it was ok to help your starving neighbor who was down on his luck and she did support a group in Holywood that helped struggling artists. But whether she thought it was OK to send a check to starving people in Asia is unclear. I do think Rand was right to stress a couple things: the tendency for altruism to spin out of control and the primacy of production.

Brant, I was paraphrasing from memory. Rand does say around three times that one "should" help people in emergency situations, so I assume she means something close to "morally obligatory".

I've read a few things by Schwartz, and I can honestly say that I haven't learned one thing about Rand, Objectivism or anything else from his writings.

I think Rand was trying to distinguish between two approaches to ethics: the claim that people should primarily (or exclusively) serve their own self-interest; and that people should primarily (or exclusively) serve the self-interest of others. There really aren't good terms for these approaches, so she settled on the rather ham-handed terms "selfishness" and "altruism." There are certain problems with these words, but I'm not sure if there are any better ones. I do think there is a problem that Rand tries to shoe-horn certain behavior that most of us would consider altruistic into the "benevolent" or "selfish" categories. For example, if I fight for my country knowing that I will die, I find it hard to call that selfish. Likewise, in The Ethics of Emergencies Rand said one is morally obligated to save a drowning stranger if doing so doesn't pose great risk.

There are more than a few disanalgoies [sic] here. JARS is about Objectivism, Rand and issues that are related to these. Astrology and astronomy are different subjects, notwithstanding certain similarities. Mr. van Horn says: "This means that sloppiness in philosophy is not just a matter of personal taste, but that it is inexcusably wrong." By this standard, all non-ARI journals are "quack philosophy." Why would and ARIan want to publish in The Journal of Metaphysics or some such journal, since they are all dominated by pseudo-philosophers. But of course, even ARI types love to have their articles published in big-name journals. And it would be nice for Ms. Hsieh and Mr. van Horn to pick out a couple of articles in JARS that they consider good and a couple they don't (with explanation) so that the rest of us would have some idea what their complaint is. For some reason I doubt they will.

I wrote a brief essay on the subject of Rand's totalism -- http://solohq.org/Articles/Parille/Totalis..._Ayn_Rand.shtml

But doesn't this contradict Rand's view of concepts?

Robert, Here is something I found. This is the description of FC's Grammar and Writing Course: "Nonfiction writing is a form of communicating one’s ideas clearly. Contrary to popular myth, good writing is neither 'inspirational' nor 'mystical.'” Here is Rand's The Art of Fiction on page 2: "What is colloqually called 'inspiration' . . . is actually the subconscious summing up of the premises and intentions you have set for yourself. . . . Most writers today . . . take the attitude of the worst medieval mystics."

Robert, I think that the ARIans have not commented on the Texas State situation because they don't want to draw attention to the fact that the ARI has rather restrictive policies on what its members must believe, etc. One might think that the actions of a large state-operated secular university would be of greater significance than those of a relatively small private school, but apparently it doesn't support Peikoff's claim of the grave threat of the religious right.

Prof. Campbell, I think Texas State was correct to refuse the Anthem Foundation's offer. In this respect, I commend Dan Barnes' excellent piece of philosophical detection on Founders College -- http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.c...d-contrast.html

Robert, That's an excellent point. (BTW, when I said that Peikoff's version tended to support Barbara Branden's account in PAR, that I was referring to Rand being dismissive of the statistical correlation between smoking and cancer.) Incidentally, if Barbara'a account is correct (and I don't have any reason to doubt it), it's pretty clear that when Peikoff recounts some aspect of Rand's life or personality (that she had a temper), we are entitled to ask what he is omitting.

This argument of Peikoff's strikes me as quite wrongheaded. If a large percentage of people who smoke get lung cancer, then there is good reason to believe that smoking causes cancer. There are a great many drugs whose mechanisms are unknown. Incidentally, Peikoff's comment tends to confirm what Barbara Branden says in PAR about Rand's smoking.

Robert, Thanks for this excellent post. While Prof. Gotthelf may currently consider himself at "arms-length" from the ARI, there is nothing in his 2000 book On Ayn Rand to indicate that he had any misgivings about Peikoff or the ARI. Nor has he, to the best of my knowledge, attempted to stake out a middle ground in the various disputes. Gotthelf and Bernstein are free to disagree with some of the articles in JARS, but it is indeed ridiculous to ignore the numerous solid pieces that have been published. If these folks want to take the position that only those associated with ARI have anything good or interesting to say about Rand, they should come out and say it.

Prof. Campbell, And with the LCMS, the liberals/moderates formed Seminex ("seminary in exile") which eventually was absorbed by the liberal ELCA. Also, Fuller Seminary was started as a semi-fundamentalist school in 1947, and is now rather middle of the road. So only someone who hasn't studied these issues in depth or hasn't been around too long (such as Mr. Mazza) would think that the Ashland brouhaha is all that significant.

As far as the threat of the Christian Right goes, there are dozens of Christian colleges, universities, and seminaries that wouldn't even give someone such as Prof. Lewis an interview, much less tenure. No one comments on this. But when one university (Ashland) reclaims its religious roots (actually an ersatz "Judeo-Christian" religion), some want to make it an example of a sea change in education. One school is hardly an example of a trend (in one direction or another). Actually, in the last 30 years there have been a couple denominations (Southern Baptist and Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) that have become more conservative. Perhaps this has had a change in their schools, but I don't know enough to comment.

Robert, I'd like to see the full text of the grants before I concluded that anyone is lying. For example, the article quotes the final grant as referring to "Professors Thompson and Lewis", but Thompson left in 2004, so maybe there was a later grant. And, the school has been pretty up front about why Lewis was denied tenure.

It does seem a little unfair for Ashland to accept money from the Anthem Foundation and employ Lewis knowing of their atheism and then say "by the way, we don't want to employ atheists." On the other hand, I assumed that it occurred to Anthem/Lewis once or twice that the school might have a change of heart, so that's a risk they took. And Ashland has been around for 125 years and probably tens of thousand of people gave money to the school thinking that it would maintain certain values, in particular theistic ones. Even without Lewis, there is no doubt a much greater diversity of ideas than you would find at the ARI/OAS so the claim of "conservative political correctness" is ridiculous.

Robert, I realize that. Cardinal Ratzinger went so far as suggesting that nominally Catholic universities stop calling themselves catholic, but I doubt that will happen. A good indication of the secularization of US society is that orthodox Catholics actually have to start their own colleges. Brown was Baptist, Yale congregational, etc. Last I read, Princeton actually has some official ties with the Prebyterian Church USA and its seminary even has a few conservatives.

In other words, if Lewis was up-front about his views when he was hired, it seems unfair to refuse to promote him. In the "about" section on the school's website, it states that the school is "historically related to the Brethren Church" and supports "Judeo-Christian" principles. It sounds to me that it is not officially tied to the Brethren anymore and supports a sort of "generic" monotheism. To follow up on what Robert says, there may be a bit of tension between what the school was and what it has become, and some don't like it.

Does the Objectivist Academic Center (or whatever it's called) even have tenure? Would they consider hiring (or retaining) someone who is not a 100% follower of Rand and Peikoff? Of course, there may be contractual and other issues involved (for example why did they hire Lewis in the first place) but, even so, this is just too funny. Maybe Objectivists will explain how Lewis teaching at Ashland or Mayhew teaching at Seaton Hall (Roman Catholic) doesn't involve compromise.

I get the impression that studios believe that AS will not "translate" well into a multi-part movie (at least one for the big screen). I doubt we will see AS in film in our lifetime.

For those who are interested, I've collected all my posts on PARC that postdate the OL article on my blog in the upper right: "The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism, Part II." The combined length of these posts is probably close to the original article. http://objectiblog.blogspot.com/ http://objectiblog.blogspot.com/search/lab...d%27s%20Critics

I question the claim that there are 7 million Moslems in the US. I think that was refuted by lots of folks in 2001.

Wasn't it the Stalinists who said that someone might be an "objective" anti-Communist, while he nonetheless was a "subjective" Communist? Perhaps this was Ms. Cohen's problem. Yes, she believed that she was ("subjectively") advancing Objectivism, but in reality she was "objectively" anti-Objectivist (e.g, anti-Irvine). This was, apparently, Diana Hsieh's fault. However, not having earned her Masters Degree, she was granted a dispensation from form by the ARI.

Dan, Prof. Campbell is of course correct. Valliant does have a "presumption," because anything negative about Rand with the exception of what the ARI sanctions isn't to be credited. Whenever anyone other than Peikoff says Rand was angry, he or she just doesn't understand that Rand's anger was the righteous rage of a moral prophet. "Rand threw every ounce of her justifiable 'intolerance' -- every sincere ethical judgment she could muster -- into the promiscously 'tolerant' culture she perceived around her. The Brandens' real problem with Rand is her moral (they would say 'moralistic') perspective." He then proceeds to discount "the Brandens'" particular examples.