The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out


Robert Campbell

Recommended Posts

And I believe Jennifer Burns was on the right track when she gave Leonard Peikoff credit for convincing Rand that Immanuel Kant was Historical Bad Guy Numero Uno...But I've never seen much of anything out of Peikoff on aesthetics that gives an impression of being his own thinking. So this Kant-as-father-of-modern-art bit keeps bugging me.

Well, I think that the claim that Kant was the cause of Modern art could be taken as an example of someone not doing their own thinking. Peikoff, or whoever else in Rand's circle may have influenced her opinion, could have begun with Rand's conclusion that Kant was the most evil man in history, and then, in a case of not doing their own thinking, allowed that conclusion to taint their reading of Kant's aesthetics, and then reported to Rand that they had found further confirmation of his evil.

I've argued with many Objectivists who seem to be completely blinded by Rand's opinion of Kant, to the point that they're incapable of understanding the meanings of words. Kant could say, "Murder is bad, mkay?" and they would cite his saying so as proof that he thought that murder was good.

An example is Objectivists quoting Kant statement "Every affection of the strenuous type (such, that is, as excites the consciousness of our power of overcoming every resistance) is aesthetically sublime," and their somehow not seeing the key phrase in that sentence: "as excites the consciousness of our power of overcoming every resistance"!

Or their citing this statement, "...we are capable of attaining to the idea of the sublimity of that being which inspires deep respect in us, not by the mere display of its might in nature, but more by the faculty which is planted in us of estimating that might without fear, and of regarding our estate as exalted above it," and their somehow not seeing the key phrase: "regarding our estate as exalted above it."

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 245
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I'm pretty sure that as of November 1970 she had never read one book by Kant. That's when I went to the Bronx Community College to hear her speak on some forgotten subject. During the Q n A some guy bluntly asked her if she had ever read a single book through by Kant. Instead of simply saying "Yes" or "No" she rambled for a while essentially avoiding the question. If she had said "Yes" and she hadn't that'd have been a lie. If "No" that would have been an embarassment. No way was she going to out-right lie. I interpreted all that to the conclusion she had never read through any book by him but wasn't going to admit it. Frankly, I doubt if she had read very much of him at all. Why? Because she could have answered "No, but . . ."

It's my understanding that Rand's comments on Kant being the evil father of Modern art weren't made until the 1975 revised edition of the Romantic Manifesto. So it still seems unlikely to me that TheBrandens™ would have been the ones who misinformed her, but that it was probably Peikoff or Sures or someone else who hadn't been excommunicated and who had both an interest in aesthetics and in confirming Rand's opinion of Kant's evil.

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jonathan,

If the remarks didn't appear till 1975, that's a clue.

In which case, my money is on Mary Ann Sures.

Peikoff has written about aesthetics—he even goes on for a while about the Aeneid, in one of the DIM chapters, and the Divine Comedy, in another—but whenever he has, it's always read to me like direct cribbing from someone else.

Robert Campbell

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The idea that the authority of Ayn Rand, who never read Immanuel Kant, exempts all of her followers from ever having to read Kant...

is kind of like...

the idea that the authority of (fill in the blank), who never read Herbert Spencer, exempts all of his/her/its followers from ever having to read Herbert Spencer.

Enough already.

Robert Campbell

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think Mary Ann Sures gave some kind of a course on esthetics at NBI in the late 1960s.

I just found the package of The Dim Hypo in my carport, left there by the USPS. Could have been there since Monday. LP spent seven years creating it so I'll give him due respect in reading it even though I fear it's The OM on steroids. The jacket blurb describes LP as "the preeminent Rand-scholar writing today." He had to have approved that statement. It's a lie if he had any real idea what scholaship actually consisted of. Based on what he has done and sanctioned in the past respecting the intellectual estate and papers of Ayn Rand, he hasn't the slightest. He is ignorant of that to the point of obscenity. I personally have the brains and knowledge to be just that after 7-10 years of research and 2-3 years of writing about her and her ideas and their impact and why this and why that. It would be a +700-page wonder and a must go to reference in its own right. I will never write that book; I lack the ambition, time and temperment, but hope someone else does for I want to read it. I'm doing and going to do something else. My point is there is no such scholar today beyond Chris Sciabarra. The only way to go beyond Chris is to incorporate what he has already done and every issue of JARS, just for starters, plus these or those particulars by many others scattered all over the place including the Internet. Peikoff would get some footnotes, maybe many footnotes, but not for any scholarship.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In which case, my money is on Mary Ann Sures.

You might be right. I just don't know enough about Sures' ideas and attitudes. The only thing of hers that I've read is excerpts from her essay Metaphysics in Marble, which is Objecti-tarded enough to easily qualify Sures as displaying the type of mindset that would be likely to approach Kant with blinding hostility.

I'd be very interested in hearing or reading her 10-lecture course, Esthetics of the Visual Arts, which is reported to have been written in consultation with Rand, but it doesn't appear to be available anywhere in any format. Perhaps it was the source of Rand's erroneous opinions?

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the remarks didn't appear till 1975, that's a clue.

In which case, my money is on Mary Ann Sures.

Robert (and Jonathan),

I agree about Sures. Here's part of the reason, and it's all about framing. Fortunately I found all the pertinent stuff I need to quote online.

What happens when you are a theory in search of proof? You frame your thinking through your theory so much that you perceive things differently. You overemphasize certain things until they become out of context and you simply don't see others. Scientists call this "confirmation bias."

Here is Mary Ann Sures interpreting art through Ayn Rand's version of history, where philosophy is treated as some kind of personified actor making people behave in certain manners (see the title essay in For The New Intellectual for an exposition of this view).

Sures wrote an article in 1969 called "Metaphysics in Marble." It appeared in The Objectivist. You can read an excerpt at The Objectivist Reference Center: Sures Excerpt: On Auguste Rodin. The following quote from her article is from there.

By the second half of the nineteenth century, [...] philosophy shattered man's self-confidence. It fashioned a view of man which raised a mixture of disillusionment, doubt and hopelessness to the status of man's essence. That view was given visual expression in the work of Auguste Rodin.

As a characteristic of his work, Rodin introduced an element that had been rare in sculpture since the end of the Middle Ages: human ugliness. His figures combine ugliness with extreme physical discomfort, expressing his subjects' state of mind. His figures are presented in bent, twisted, strained, squatting and huddled positions; musculature is distorted; faces are left unfinished. The surfaces of the material, usually bronze, are highly polished, but beneath the sheen one can distinguish uneven ridges and hollows that make the skin texture look broken and unhealthy.

She Who Was Once the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife is the seated figure of an old, naked woman, with gnarled limbs, sagging skin and shrunken breasts. Her sharp, thin shoulder blades protrude from her wasted back; one arm is drawn behind her, with the hand open, palm out, fingers outstreched, as if she is repelled by her hideous appearance and cannot bring herself to touch her own body. [....]

One of Rodin's most famous and popular works, The Thinker, sums up his view of man's wretched state. The figure is seated, hunched over in a position that combines strain and limpness. The muscles in his arms, legs and toes are knotted and cramped. The size and development of his body indicate that it was once powerful and energetic, but is now exhausted. His external, physical state reveals his inner strain: the strain of engaging in mental activity.

Man, talk about being in avenging angel mode! Notice that this framing of Rodin comes from Rand's framing of history as a puppet of philosophy.

But when you frame well on a frame that exceed its true scope, it becomes powerful enough to entrap others, even influencing good first-hand minds like Barbara Branden. (See further on for an example.)

Back in 2005, when I first started posting online at SoloHQ, there was a discussion to an article Michael Marotta wrote called A POINT OF DISPUTE: Thinking about The Thinker. He quoted from "Metaphysics in Marble" by Sures in his article, but he rejected her frame.

Instead, he used a frame of looking at The Thinker with all innocence and thinking with his own mind to try to figure out what personal good (like inspiration) he could get from the work. He tried to get into the head of the sculpture, so to speak. He did not approach it as proof of a theory (Rand's historical frame), then seek out some physical characteristics in the sculpture to confirm this stylistically while calling the conclusion "sense of life." Look at what he said (among some other pretty thoughts in his article):

... he is immobile.

He is not redirecting rivers or reshaping mountains because he is thinking. Thought, not action, is the essence of man. Thought is the spark which ignites the engine of action. Once man decides, he is capable of attempting anything and achieving much. But thought comes first.

The transhuman muscles -- knotted from a life of impossibly hard labors -- reflect the invisible and intangible power of thought. Do you want to see how strong ideas are? Look at The Thinker. Those arms, that back, those legs, are the concepts, axioms, abstractions, and conclusions which are the essence of humanity.

He is immobile because he will not act -- cannot act -- without thought.

This clash of frames happened a little later in the discussion in an exchange I had with Barbara over The Kiss. You can see how she used Sures's frame for Rodin (and I am convinced this was simply from absorbing it from the general culture of being around Rand's circle during the heyday, not from her approaching Rodin's work because she was interested in it).

As I look at "The Kiss" carefully, there are some very strange things about it. The couple are not holding each other; his right hand is lying limply on her, barely touching, and there's no tension in it; her left arm seems to go off into space, not making contact with anything but his cheek. And I can't figure out what his body is doing: his torso and left arm are going in one direction and his legs in another; they can't be part of the same body. Either she has three legs, or his body is broken in half. And his hand and one foot are too big for the rest of him. Sorry, but all this bothers me so much I can barely see anything else.

Now, here I came.

I was dazzled back then by being able to talk to her online after dreaming about it for years, so I was loathe to disagree with her. But my frame was so different than hers on Rodin. It was very similar to what Michael M had, and I had carried it in my heart for years. I came up with it by myself and latched on to Rodin, from among so many other artists back then, because of that frame I had devised all by myself. It was precious to me. I even used to own a coffee table book of Rodin's sculpture that I actually kept on my coffee table. Here is what I wrote in response:

What I have always seen is that this is not a still kiss, but a fraction of a second during the start of a kiss in motion - the moment between the last vestiges of resistance and doubt to the full giving over to it. The placement of the arms and legs seem to convey an emotional tension to me that both man and woman consider this to be a Very Important Decision and Act, and it is especially powerful to me in suggesting the overcoming of hesitation. I also see a kind of broad swirl starting from the base and ascending to the culminating kiss (the point where my perception of the swirl stops).

I love this thing!

Barbara told me my interpretation made sense (which is one of the reasons I love her :smile: ), but her or me being right or wrong is not my point.

It's how a mental frame can make you see things differently.

I don't consider Rand to be immune from this. With respect to her and Kant, I believe that she was in a feedback loop with her disciples on an historical frame she, herself, created--i.e., philosophy is the prime mover of history.

And it grew so much that she ended up in an odd place. All she could see of Kant was what fit into her frame, just like all Sures could see of Rodin was what fit into hers. And Rand, being Rand, was not one to see what she considered to be evil and be silent. So off she went and the rest is history.

It Sures is. :smile:

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

MSK,

I'd like to see more (and Sures' old 10-lecture course would be the best place to look for it), but "Metaphysics in Marble" does read like the work of a person who might try to find the origins of modern art in the Critique of Judgment.

I'm not a visual art critic or a sculpture critic, but from what I've seen of Rodin's work in museums I don't get Sures' interpretation of him at all.

I've reread many of the articles in The Objectivist, for one reason or another. Never the Sures piece. I expect there's a reason why.

Robert Campbell

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What happens when you are a theory in search of proof? You frame your thinking through your theory so much that you perceive things differently. You overemphasize certain things until they become out of context and you simply don't see others. Scientists call this "confirmation bias."

Yep, "confirmation bias," that's the term that keeps floating around in my head when I hear the Official Objectivist misinterpretations and misrepresentations of Kant.

It Sures is. :smile:

Not to piss on your cute comment, but I think I've heard her name pronounced as "SOO-reez," and not "Shoorz."

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Robert,

In my study of cults, the Sures have always been at the back of my mind as quintessential cult followers. (In continuing this post, I'm not going to look up stuff and quote it since I have to get some work done today, but it all exists and I can find it if needed.)

I first became interested in them during a discussion with an ortho-Objectivist, Tom something-or-other. You might know who I mean. He studied at Julliard School of Music and only came out in prominence to defend Valliant's boneheaded tome, PARC, when it came out (and for a year or two thereafter).

We were discussing moral perfection and he claimed he knew of some morally perfect people. I asked who and he responded Charles and Mary Sures. I knew nothing about them at the time, so I just let it slide. But the curiosity of trying to find out what morally perfect people might be look like stayed in the back of my mind since then.

And, since then, I have become more familiar with their story and writing. They are gentle people, but fanatical. They are the kind that really scare me with cults.

I remember a story about the last day of Jim Jones in the mass suicide at Jonestown. When he announced to his flock that they had to drink the poison Kool-Aid, one pretty lady immediately stepped up, knocked back a dose and went over to the side to die. I don't remember with clarity if she had a child, but I seem to recall that she did, so she fed the child the poison, also.

People like that give me the creeps. And that is the kind of person I believe the Sures are.

(Mary Ann is even on record saying that the trait that most impressed her about Rand was her certainty. This preference is very characteristic of blind cultists.)

On another point, I read a book called Feet of Clay by Anthony Storr. In discussing David Koresh, he quoted a person who knew Koresh from earlier days. The guy said that the way he saw Koresh work was that he would get an urge of some sort then try it out on his followers (usually framing it as divinely inspired or something like that). If he got positive feedback and people started believing it, he would start believing it himself.

This is a trap almost all gurus face with their disciples. Rand faced it, too. I believe people like the Sures had this kind of negative influence on her with ideas, and, to me (at my current understanding of their relationship), this was far more damaging than any of the fawning and overzealous power stuff the Brandens did.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Michael,

I'm also forgetting the guy's last name, but would this be the same Tom who, back in 2005 on SOLOP, likened himself to Dagny Taggart jumping out of the car to get away from Bertram Scudder?

There was some discussion of moral perfection going on around that time.

Facets of Ayn Rand did not strike me as a reliable source on the person being remembered.

Robert Campbell

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, Leonard Peikoff isn't a Rand scholar.

What, you think just 'cos he hasn't read a single biography, or best we know, a single critical study since Whitaker Chambers, that he's not still the top dog of Rand scholarship? Ha, there you go again with your "inherent dishonesty"...

No, wait a minute, he probably read Sidney Hook's piece on FTNI. Close enough for jazz.

Besides, when has the lack of training in a field prevented Objectivist Authorities from posing as experts on any and every subject?

Don’t miss LP explaining Schrödinger's Cat on the Amy Peikoff podcast, linked earlier.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

He read Gore Vidal's 1961 Esquire piece on Rand and made some good points in a letter to the editor, which the magazine titled "Atlas Shrieked." I especially remember the phrase "an ignorance of the history of philosophy that would be shocking in a college sophomore." Maybe too nice to college sophomores but just right for Vidal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

He read Gore Vidal's 1961 Esquire piece on Rand

Ok, but that was the same year as the Sidney Hook thing, so we're agreed that he's up to date with critical material about AR through 1961. He's only missed out on the last 50 years, far as we know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I won't condemn him for this. In the first several years after discovering Rand I used to search out everything written about her, but eventually I realized that it was all the same.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just saw this statement of Peikoff's from his DIPshit book:

‎"Here is a way to identify, in emotional terms, the appeal of each of the Big Three to their champions throughout the centuries. Plato appeals to soaring idealism scornful of the practical. Aristotle appeals to joyful realism on earth. Kant appeals to rage."

Huh? Where does Kant appeal to rage?!!! WTF?

Um, using the DIM method of classification, how would one categorize someone who starts with a desired conclusion (say, an enraged condemnation of a given thinker), and then ignores, misinterprets or intentionally distorts reality to fit that conclusion? In other words, should the DIM method itself, as practiced by Peikoff, be classified as a misintegration or as a disintegration? Which is it?

J

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jonathan,

That's the authentic quote.

I refrained from using it because I wanted to put Peikoff's best foot forward.

It's a good question, what the DIM classification of DIM methodology would have to be.

Robert Campbell

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just saw this statement of Peikoff's from his DIPshit book:

‎"Here is a way to identify, in emotional terms, the appeal of each of the Big Three to their champions throughout the centuries. Plato appeals to soaring idealism scornful of the practical. Aristotle appeals to joyful realism on earth. Kant appeals to rage."

Huh? Where does Kant appeal to rage?!!! WTF?

Um, using the DIM method of classification, how would one categorize someone who starts with a desired conclusion (say, an enraged condemnation of a given thinker), and then ignores, misinterprets or intentionally distorts reality to fit that conclusion? In other words, should the DIM method itself, as practiced by Peikoff, be classified as a misintegration or as a disintegration? Which is it?

J

Hey! Lindsay Perigo is a Kantian!

pass the word

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now