Branden vs. Peikoff on Forgiveness

[Selene]

Michael:

Very nice!

Right underneath the craziness is a deep well of wisdom.

Adam

[Dennis Hardin]

My main concern with regard to Peikoff--or any other thinker--is simply that of assessing the validity of what he says. Since many people regard him as the leading expert on Objectivism, this becomes even more important in his particular case.

He has a great deal to offer. There is no question about that. Despite its flaws, I still think OPAR is a major achievement. And I'm looking forward to reading his book on the DIM hypothesis. Understanding Objectivism--a book based on the superb course of lectures he gave shortly following Ayn Rand's death--will be released in a few days, and I'm very eager to read it.

At the same time, much of what he says is also very destructive to Objectivism, and, therefore, damaging to the cause of spreading Objectivist ideas. The only antidote to that destructiveness--especially with respect to using morality primarily as a tool of condemnation--is understanding where he goes wrong and clarifying a more rational alternative.

I certanly don't waste any negative emotional energy on Peikoff or any other public figure whose statements I might criticize. Fot the most part, I save my emotions for the people I deal with in my personal and professional life. In that context, I agree that holding on to negativity tends to have a destructive impact on one's overall well-being. That's why I operate on the principle of benevolence toward just about everybody, and avoid those people whose behavior makes such benevolence difficult or impossible.

At the same time, cognition does indeed demand evaluation, as Peikoff says in "Fact and Value." I would have to say that, morally, Peikoff--like most people--falls into that vast gray area Ayn Rand describes in "The Cult of Moral Grayness." One cannot "forgive" behaviors that the person refuses to change. But since Peikoff is not (thankfully) someone I must deal with on a personal level, that's purely an intellectual issue for me, not an emotional one.

[merjet]

Regarding "cognition demands evaluation" and "cognition imples evaluation":

Proper evaluation requires proper recognition of one’s state of knowledge, i.e. also what doesn't know. Imagine a person who believes that every cognition demands moral evaluation. That person would be overzealous to pass moral judgment and would do so on a fragment of evidence, evading any evidence which would indicate a different judgment.

In Fact and Value Peikoff also gave the contrapositive of his principle, i.e. that non-evaluation implies non-cognition. A paraphrase: If the person did not pass moral judgment, then the person learned nothing!

[Dennis Hardin]

Regarding "cognition demands evaluation" and "cognition imples evaluation":

Proper evaluation requires proper recognition of one’s state of knowledge, i.e. also what doesn't know. Imagine a person who believes that every cognition demands moral evaluation. That person would be overzealous to pass moral judgment and would do so on a fragment of evidence, evading any evidence which would indicate a different judgment.

In Fact and Value Peikoff also gave the contrapositive of his principle, i.e. that non-evaluation implies non-cognition. A paraphrase: If the person did not pass moral judgment, then the person learned nothing!

You seem to be taking a quasi-religious interpretation of evaluation here, as if the act of evaluation always involved an explicit act of “passing moral judgment." That's a misunderstanding of what evaluation means from an Objectivist perspective. In Objectivism, evaluation simply means awareness of the beneficial or harmful relationship of some aspect of reality toward oneself and one's own life. This is Objectivism 101. Here is how Nathaniel Branden explained this issue in The Psychology of Self-Esteem:

As man's tool of survival, reason has two basic functions: cognition and evaluation. The process of cognition consists of discovering what things are, of identifying their nature, their attributes and properties. The process of evaluation consists of man discovering the relationship of things to himself, of identifying what is beneficial to him and what is harmful, what should be sought and what should be avoided.

The Psychology of Self-Esteem, P. 63

I have no idea what you mean when you say that constant evaluation requires making judgments based on fragments of evidence. Neither cognition nor evaluation properly occurs in a vacuum. Both processes require an awareness of the full context of one's knowledge, and that includes an awareness of the unknown. To make an evaluation outside that context – in other words, to take a concrete-bound approach to knowledge – is transparently irrational.

In the course of daily living, obviously, much of the process of conscious awareness becomes automatized. There is no need to be constantly engaged in a conscious process of re-evaluating aspects of reality with which we are familiar, any more than there is any need to identify every car we see as a “car.” But the process of identification and evaluation continues on a subconscious level, and becomes conscious again in response to something new and unfamiliar or, based on prior experience, potentially harmful.

[merjet]

You seem to be taking a quasi-religious interpretation of evaluation here, as if the act of evaluation always involved an explicit act of “passing moral judgment."

You're way off target. First, I know that evaluation can be (a) a moral one, or (b) whether a statement is true or false.

[Dennis Hardin]

You seem to be taking a quasi-religious interpretation of evaluation here, as if the act of evaluation always involved an explicit act of “passing moral judgment."

You're way off target. First, I know that evaluation can be (a) a moral one, or (b) whether a statement is true or false.

Evaluation always implies a standard of value, and truth or falsehood is certainly one such standard. So is monetary worth, or level of competence or skill, or the effectiveness of means to ends, etc. The term can mean very different things depending on the context. So what?

I made very clear that I was using it in the context of moral evaluation—i.e., good for me or bad for me.

Once again, I have to say I have no idea what point you are making, or how this shows that I am "way off target."

[MrBenjamatic]

Nathaniel Branden and Leonard Peikoff on the topic of Forgiveness:

Let's suppose a person has done something that he or she knows to be wrong, immoral, unjust, or unreasonable: instead of acknowledging the wrong, instead of simply regretting the action and then seeking, compassionately, to understand why the action was taken and asking where was I coming from? and what need was I trying in my own twisted way to satisfy? — instead of asking such questions, the person is encouraged to brand the behavior as evil and is given no useful advice on where to go from there. You don't teach people to be moral by teaching them self-contempt as a virtue.

. . .Errors of knowledge may be forgiven, [Rand] says, but not errors of morality. Even if what people are doing is wrong, even if errors of morality are involved, even if what people are doing is irrational, you do not lead people to virtue by contempt. You do not make people better by telling them they are despicable. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work when religion tries it and it doesn't work when objectivism tries it.

The great, glaring gap in just about all ethical systems of which I have knowledge, even when many of the particular values and virtues they advocate may be laudable, is the absence of a technology to assist people in getting there, an effective means for acquiring these values and virtues, a realistic path people can follow. That is the great missing step in most religions and philosophies. And this is where psychology comes in: One of the tasks of psychology is to provide a technology for facilitating the process of becoming a rational, moral human being.

You can tell people that it's a virtue to be rational, productive, or just, but, if they have not already arrived at that stage of awareness and development on their own, objectivism does not tell them how to get there. It does tell you you're rotten if you fail to get there.

Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand

And then there is Peikoff. . .

Question: What does it it mean to forgive, and how does one get there?

I looked up “forgiving” in the dictionary and here is what it says: to grant free pardon for an offense. In other words, someone did something wrong, and you take the attitude that well, it's in the past, I have no negative feelings. As far as I am concerned, morally it didn't happen. I certainly think that for lesser things, this is possible. As long as it doesn't imply something evil in the person and it's not something major. For example, someone told me a secret and I inadvertently told the wrong person. The person was annoyed but they let it go. They decided it wasn't deliberate. It wasn’t a major thing and the person didn't think I was evil. So I asked the person if they would forgive me and they said yes.

But if we are talking about a big event and especially something that involves evil, then to forgive is to give a license to evil. The idea of forgiving your enemy is possible only if you want to sacrifice your values. If you think life is worth throwing away, which is what the Christians did when they started preaching that. One of the worst evils of Christianity is this idea of forgive your enemy. To turn the other cheek is a license to corruption. It makes a virtue of sanctioning evil. You can't have a more corrupt morality than that. That's what I think about the Sermon on the Mount. It amounts to: don't judge evil and don't protest what it does to the good. You can't beat that for moral corruption. The Bible has more things in it that are more corrupt than just about anything else. Or as corrupt for sure as anywhere else.

Some might argue that it is wrong to deal with other people as if one is a psychologist, and therefore Peikoff’s position is correct. It is not your place to teach people how to be moral. There is some validity to that position, at least in the context of people you don’t care about. But look again at the question that was posed: What does it it mean to forgive, and how does one get there? The questioner obviously wants to know if there is a way for a person to earn forgiveness. Branden says yes—if you care about the person, you try to understand where they were coming from, and then help them to see that what they did was immoral, because very often they do not see it.

You do not have to be a psychologist to show someone you care about why what they did was wrong, and then give them a chance to earn redemption by correcting their behavior.

Peikoff’s answer to the question “how does one do it?” is that you don’t. He clearly implies that, when it comes to evil, there is no such thing as forgiveness or redemption. To forgive is to sanction and encourage corruption. Banish the person to social Siberia. Period. End of story.

Then Peikoff wonders why more people don’t flock to the Objectivist cause, and blames “tolerationists” like Branden for subverting the concept of objective moral judgment.

Could there be a more vivid way of illustrating the stark contrast between "open" and "closed" Objectivism?

I think it would be fair to say, as Branden was advocating, that brutishly insulting someones immorality won't help them. Didn't, however, Rand say that one musn't sanction and support evil (immorality)? (Rhetorical question of which the answer is yes). Can't one refrain from insulting anothers evils (immoralities) and at the same time refrain from sanctioning and supporting it. I niether approve of nor support some OL member's non-objectivist premises however I do not insult them. It is fair, I think, to say that to condemn someone would be to convict someone as being guilty. There is a difference between knowing someone is guilty of being immoral and checking their premises AND insulting them for being immoral or highlighting their immorality. Rand stressed her highlighting the good before the evil. In one of her interviews she was asked, "So it's important not to be guilty". She replied that it is important to be moral, and added that she stressed the positive and not the negative. It is always extremely practical to stress the positive before stressing the negatives (the cause and effects of not being moral).

When I was condemned, as I've been many times, for condemning forgiveness, I've always ask, "have you ever forgiven someone for being good?" Forgiveness, I hold, is to sanction and support evil; to pat someone on the back after they are immoral and say it's ok. That is monstrous.

[MrBenjamatic]

The question is really: How does someone redeem him/herself?

Shouldn't the individual be responsible for forming their own answer depending on the situation? When can you disassociate a person with their past? You'd have to also ask when can you be angry at a person in the first place.

I have found and have held as truth (for a while now) that all situations and all problems can only be solved by means of virtue. Virtue is the antidote of vice. One cannot be completely virtuous and completely unvirtuous at the same time. Virtue wipes out vice, and, even though the vice which your virtue cured existed, it is just for others to sanction and support your virtue. Moral redemption, I've discovered, can only be bought with virtue. If someone used to be horribly unvirtuous in their past but willed to be virtuous and morally redeem themselves by gaining their values, they are deserving of love. Virtue is the act of gaining and keeping one's values (Ayn Rand). You can only love others for gaining and keeping their values; so long as they've gained their values, and, whether they did or didn't do so in their past, they are worthy of love. Does this make sense?