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[George H. Smith]

I never said that "it is in the nature of "genius" to be deluded."

You're saying it, albeit in obfuscated language. You call it "intellectual eccentricity." But really you're talking about delusion.

Shayne

Maybe he is, really, but "intellectual eccentricity" doesn't have to encompass delusion. It is basically a reflection of individualism manifested best in a free society.

--Brant

You're quibbling. Go back and see what he actually *means*.

Shayne

What I actually meant by "eccentricity" is how it is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary: "Deviation from the normal, expected, or established."

None of this has anything to do with delusions, unless you happen to think that all nonconformity must be based on delusions. I certainly don't believe this. Do you? If you do, then all Objectivists, neo-Objectivists, and libertarians are delusional, by your standards.

Ghs

[sjw]

What I actually meant by "eccentricity" is how it is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary: "Deviation from the normal, expected, or established."

None of this has anything to do with delusions, unless you happen to think that all nonconformity must be based on delusions. I certainly don't believe this. Do you? If you do, then all Objectivists, neo-Objectivists, and libertarians are delusional, by your standards.

Ghs

Your Jedi mind tricks don't work on me.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

This is absurd. The only people who would confuse eccentricities with delusions are mediocrities who believe that their way of living is the only "right" way, and that people who disagree must be deluded in some fashion.

I won't name any names, of course.

Ghs

Do you think you're sly with your conceptual shell games? What I don't understand is why Brant's giving you the opening.

Shayne

You are the one who has been giving me openings. This might not happen if you read my posts with more care and gave more than a few seconds of thought to your replies. You have a bad tendency to shoot from the hip, and you are notoriously inaccurate when you do this.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

Warning, Will Robinson! Warning! Phil might take this as an opportunity to come back onto OL with a civility lecture.

--Brant

[sjw]

Warning, Will Robinson! Warning! Phil might take this as an opportunity to come back onto OL with a civility lecture.

--Brant

Well, in that case I'll have to apologize to the old Jedi Master ;)

Shayne

[Xray]

I hate to say this, but I suspect that Rand would not have disagreed with or objected to virtually anything that Peikoff has done, said, or written since her death.

The same Rand who spent the better part of a dozen years either rewriting, or hectoring him into revising, The Ominous Parallels? Not at all likely.

I wasn't thinking about matters of style, which are relatively unimportant. I was referring to the various positions that Peikoff has taken on matters of substance.

Ghs

Like Ayn Rand, Peikoff is an "Objectivism is a closed system" advocate.

Imo Rand knew exactly what she was doing when she chose Peikoff as her 'heir'.

For with Peikoff, she could be certain that he would fight tooth and nail to keep the system closed.

Edited June 1, 2011 by Xray

[Brant Gaede]

I hate to say this, but I suspect that Rand would not have disagreed with or objected to virtually anything that Peikoff has done, said, or written since her death.

The same Rand who spent the better part of a dozen years either rewriting, or hectoring him into revising, The Ominous Parallels? Not at all likely.

I wasn't thinking about matters of style, which are relatively unimportant. I was referring to the various positions that Peikoff has taken on matters of substance.

Ghs

Like Ayn Rand, Peikoff is an "Objectivism is a closed system" advocate.

Imo Rand knew exactly what she was doing when choosing Peikoff as her 'heir'.

For with Peikoff, she could be certain that he would fight tooth and nail to keep the system closed.

While this is true enough, it wouldn't save Peikoff from her disapprobation if she were suddenly to reappear on the scene, assuming she didn't learn something significant on the other side.

--Brant

[Martin Radwin]

I hate to say this, but I suspect that Rand would not have disagreed with or objected to virtually anything that Peikoff has done, said, or written since her death.

The same Rand who spent the better part of a dozen years either rewriting, or hectoring him into revising, The Ominous Parallels? Not at all likely.

I wasn't thinking about matters of style, which are relatively unimportant. I was referring to the various positions that Peikoff has taken on matters of substance.

Ghs

If this is so, it doesn't speak very highly of Rand as a philosopher during the latter years of her life, considering the appallingly low quality of the work done by Peikoff since her death.

One thing that Peikoff permitted, for which I could only imagine Rand would have wanted to strangle him had she been alive to see it, was the bastardization of her work in "Ayn Rand Answers", in which her replies were modified throughout the book in such a way that it's impossible to tell what she did and didn't actually say. Rand had a thing or two to say about second handers who modify the work of others without their consent. Of the many sins committed by Peikoff and his roving band of second handers, that was probably the most despicable one of all.

Martin

[George H. Smith]

I hate to say this, but I suspect that Rand would not have disagreed with or objected to virtually anything that Peikoff has done, said, or written since her death.

The same Rand who spent the better part of a dozen years either rewriting, or hectoring him into revising, The Ominous Parallels? Not at all likely.

I wasn't thinking about matters of style, which are relatively unimportant. I was referring to the various positions that Peikoff has taken on matters of substance.

Ghs

If this is so, it doesn't speak very highly of Rand as a philosopher during the latter years of her life, considering the appallingly low quality of the work done by Peikoff since her death.

One thing that Peikoff permitted, for which I could only imagine Rand would have wanted to strangle him had she been alive to see it, was the bastardization of her work in "Ayn Rand Answers", in which her replies were modified throughout the book in such a way that it's impossible to tell what she did and didn't actually say. Rand had a thing or two to say about second handers who modify the work of others without their consent. Of the many sins committed by Peikoff and his roving band of second handers, that was probably the most despicable one of all.

Martin

You make a good point here (about changing Rand's words), one that had not occurred to me when I made my comment.

Ghs

[Xray]

I hate to say this, but I suspect that Rand would not have disagreed with or objected to virtually anything that Peikoff has done, said, or written since her death.

The same Rand who spent the better part of a dozen years either rewriting, or hectoring him into revising, The Ominous Parallels? Not at all likely.

I wasn't thinking about matters of style, which are relatively unimportant. I was referring to the various positions that Peikoff has taken on matters of substance.

Ghs

If this is so, it doesn't speak very highly of Rand as a philosopher during the latter years of her life, considering the appallingly low quality of the work done by Peikoff since her death.

One thing that Peikoff permitted, for which I could only imagine Rand would have wanted to strangle him had she been alive to see it, was the bastardization of her work in "Ayn Rand Answers", in which her replies were modified throughout the book in such a way that it's impossible to tell what she did and didn't actually say. Rand had a thing or two to say about second handers who modify the work of others without their consent. Of the many sins committed by Peikoff and his roving band of second handers, that was probably the most despicable one of all.

Martin

You make a good point here (about changing Rand's words), one that had not occurred to me when I made my comment.

Ghs

Do we have Ayn Rand's exact original words to compare them to Peikoff's version?

Edited June 1, 2011 by Xray

[9thdoctor]

What do you think Rand should have ostracized Peikoff for?

Creating the Ayn Rand Institute? Didn't she specifically forbid that, particularly using her name in that way? I think Barbara wrote about this somewhere at length. But this is all speculative, contra-factual history. How can we say what her reaction would have been to the biography, to the fall of the Soviet Union, to 9/11...it's white noise.

Do we have Ayn Rand's exact original words to compare them to Peikoff's version?

See the Rewrite Squad thread.

[Greybird]

I hate to say this, but I suspect that Rand would not have disagreed with or objected to virtually anything that Peikoff has done, said, or written since her death.

The same Rand who spent the better part of a dozen years either rewriting, or hectoring him into revising, The Ominous Parallels? Not at all likely.

I wasn't thinking about matters of style, which are relatively unimportant. I was referring to the various positions that Peikoff has taken on matters of substance.

Nor was I thinking primarily about matters of style. (Why would you think that I was? I talked about rewriting, period, without differentiating those two factors.)

As it happens, I do seriously doubt that Rand would have protracted the writing and publishing process that long for "the first Objectivist philosopher other than myself" if she didn't have notable differences with Peikoff on matters of substance. That is, if the Brandens' accounts are to be given credence, where Rand was frequently impatient with Peikoff about such matters — in philosophic reasoning, rather than historical facts.

Rand was undoubtedly also concerned with style, and given the plodding Peikovian prose that came out in Parallels, any attention of hers to that must have had little effect. (OPAR flowed considerably better.)

But that clearly wasn't enough to push Peikoff's book among three publishers (and, probably, three spent advances) over 13 years, from 1968 to 1981. Not when she wanted to see her one remaining protégé get into commercial print.

[Xray]

Do we have Ayn Rand's exact original words to compare them to Peikoff's version?

See the Rewrite Squad thread.

I looked for it using the "Search" function and found this thread: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8853&hl=%20rewrite%20%20squad%20%20&st=20

A Note on the Rewrite Squad

I have temporarily blocked public access to Robert Campbell's thread, The Rewrite Squad.

Kat and I received a "Demand for Immediate Take Down - Notice of Infringing Activity" from Mr. James Young on behalf of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. regarding the material in that thread that quotes Mayhew's Q&A book. Mr. Young calls himself an "Internet Investigator." I don't know if that is a lawyer or not, but no matter.

<.....>

Is the public access to the thread still blocked?

Edited June 2, 2011 by Xray

[william.scherk]

Do we have Ayn Rand's exact original words to compare them to Peikoff's version?

See the Rewrite Squad thread.

I looked for it using the "Search" function and found this thread:

[ . . . ]

Is the public access to the thread still blocked?

Nope. It has been tidied. A very informative thread indeed. The Rewrite Squad.

[Xray]

Do we have Ayn Rand's exact original words to compare them to Peikoff's version?

See the Rewrite Squad thread.

I looked for it using the "Search" function and found this thread:

[ . . . ]

Is the public access to the thread still blocked?

Nope. It has been tidied. A very informative thread indeed. The Rewrite Squad.

Thanks for the link, William.

[Xray]

By "Objectivist philosopher" Rand meant someone who agreed with her and someone she had sanctioned. Anyone who was involved in Randian college groups during the 1960s, as I was, knows first-hand how sensitive Rand was on this subject. We were warned not to call ourselves Objectivists, under the threat of a possible lawsuit. (If memory serves, Holzer actually initiated some lawsuits.)

The term Objectivist is no registered trademark or anything. How on earth can one initiate a lawsuit over such issue???

For example, suppose I called myself an "Objectivist" because I happen like the term (which I actually do btw - imo it is an excellent name for a philosophy which focuses on facts and reason - which doesn't mean I agree with Rand's premises on many things, like e. g. capitalism being a moral ideal) - while calling myself an Objectivist would no doubt produce 'comunicative confusion', legally I would of course be allowed to use the term for my own philosophy.

We had to settle for "Students of Objectivism." Rand obviously considered "Objectivism" to be a trade label for her ideas.

And you all complied to this demand?

Who was allowed then (aside from Ayn Rand) to call themselves an Objectivist?

If Rand were still alive, do you think she would approve of anyone who posts regularly on OL calling himself or herself an "Objectivist"? No, of course she wouldn't. She would be outraged.

See above.

Of course she would be outraged, but she would have no legal right to prevent me from using the term.

Edited June 17, 2011 by Xray