OBJECTIVIST SCHOLAR, ALLAN GOTTHELF - R.I.P.

[Brant Gaede]

Changed Branden's mind: I'll be blunt. His clients. If you are a young male all kinds of sexual emotions, reactions, even experiences might/may/likely encompass ~homosexual feelings~ or reactions, but it's hormones. It's part of growing up. (Not being female I can't comment for them.) But in going back into childhood using abreactive exercises seeking out ~explanatory trauma~ or influence it might seem superficially to be homosexual this or that and Branden would have had to deal with that, etc. To be effective in his work he would have had to deal with all this and many other issues at face value to start with and not dump moralizing suppositions onto the situation which would have been damnation unto him as a therapist. While Nathaniel lost a lot of his moral voice, which Rand refused to do, because of what he did to her in the 1960s, he didn't need that to be a great therapist. He needed it for broader, general issues, but any therapist who brings moralizing into the therapeutic context is damnably incompetent. Ayn Rand was a moralizer. Branden was a moralizer. Break '68. He left a lot of that crap behind, but crap wasn't all he left. He paid a great and bad price and will carry it to his grave. The man was seduced and traduced but greatly transcended that wronging which was his too, not just hers.

--Brant

You may have a point there. There were a number of happy and well-adjusted gay couples running in the Branden circle in those days, and more than a few thoroughly messed-up straight couples. Maybe the obvious empirical evidence caused NB to rethink his position. 8-)

Ghs

I'll be even blunter, but this is speculative: if he had dumped bs on his clients he would have lost his clients. Coming out of NYC in '68 he had a lot of inertia in his favor in getting clients. To compensate for that playing out he simply had to evolve or fewer clients and less money. He had to dump the Ayn Rand crap. Rand wondered how he could deal with all that "depravity." In the therapeutic context you can deal with the human reality in front of you or that human reality will leave you. Branden was no fool. He invented the sentence completion technique, which to psychotherapy was equivalent to inventing the wheel with an axle with a cart with a mule. He did not invent sentence completion. He took it and, as a wheel, added the axle and the cart and that mule and made it effectively go! He structured it. Comparatively his championing of self-esteem is quite slight. That's theorectical stuff. As to his overall effectiveness as a therapist or the wrong (post 1968) he might have done as one it's impossible to know for there are no data. (I calculated he has seen plus or minus, not much, 10,000 clients.) I can only speak for myself, for instance, not the 24 others in the same group he was dealing with at the time. I matched up pretty good with him. He fucked up once, with me, but with me it didn't count because I was and have always been essentially tough. I went with him where nobody else did, but I don't know if they were scared of him or scared to go where I went. I was pretty creative. From my experiences with him I figured that if I were to become a psychotherapist I'd have fewer clients and demand more of them, not in the context of therapy but in the context of how they were living their lives. Branden could deal effectively with many clients in the context of therapy but not take it home with him. Doctors are similar. Since I personally take everything home with me I could never be a doctor or have many therapy clients. This was and is the best. If Nathaniel had my sensibilities he could only have seen a fraction of those he did see and many who could have benefited from him would not have. He always preached, in the California context, it's up to you. This meant if he wasn't the therapist for you go get another! He referred a lot of potential clients elsewhere right off the bat--the most troubled and difficult cases and those who needed individual therapy as opposed to individual therapy in a group context. As far as I know the only true group therapy he ever did was his Intensives starting in 1977 and continuing for at least a few years thereafter.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

Fond memories of Allan, with highest esteem and appreciation. His written works,* [...].

Stephen,

The link you give for Allan Gotthelf's bibliography shows a "Page not found" notice.

I'm glad that Allan was able to finish and see published the 2012 work you cite.

From his Preface to Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotles Biology (2012):

Ellen

[Guyau]

His list of publications can be found at this time by clicking Curriculum Vitae on this page, then scrolling down.

Here is a portion (neglecting much on Aristotle):

Books

2000 – On Ayn Rand.

2012 – Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology.

Books Edited or Co-Edited

1985 – Aristotle on Nature and Living Things.

1987 – Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology* (with James Lennox).

2011 – Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue: Studies in Ayn Rand’s Normative Theory (with James Lennox).

2013 – Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology (with James Lennox).

[2014] – Ayn Rand: A Companion to Her Works and Thought (with Gregory Salmieri).

[2014] – Concepts, Induction, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge (with Richard Burian).

[2015] – Ayn Rand and Aristotle: Philosophical and Historical Studies (with James Lennox and Gregory Salmieri).

Chapters in Collections on Ayn Rand’s Work

2010 – “Dagny’s ‘Final Choice’.” In Essays on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

2013 – “Ayn Rand on Concepts: Rethinking Abstraction and Essence.” In Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology.

[Neil Parille]

Ayn Rand: A Companion to Her Works and Thought (with Gregory Salmieri) is listed in the CV as coming out in 2013. The book isn't mentioned at all on Amazon or the publisher's website, last I checked.

I wonder why the book has been delayed.

As Rand becomes better know, I imagine publishers will expect a little more balance on a book like Rand. Maybe that happened here.

-Neil

[Ellen Stuttle]

Harry Binswanger's Tribute

This gives a few details about Allan's battle with cancer.

Allan Gotthelf

Harry Binswanger

It is with extreme sadness that I must report that yesterday Allan Gotthelf passed away. He had fought off cancer for some 17 years, but clear earlier this summer it became clear that the cancer had reached a point of no return. After several weeks of progressive decline, he died peacefully in his apartment, attended by nurses and his beloved friend, Cass Love - who did truly heroic work in attending to and caring for Allan in his final months.

Allan was a close friend for almost 50 years. We roomed together for a year while we were both philosophy graduate students at Columbia, and we continued as both friends and intellectual allies ever since. I have many delightful memories of Allan's warm, benevolent, twinkle-in-the-eye personality. I may share some stories at another time; in this sad hour, I want to pay tribute to Allan for his character virtues.

First, and above all, Allan was a thinker, a philosopher. He not only taught philosophy, wrote philosophy, and read philosophy, he lived and breathed philosophy. His two gods were Ayn Rand and Aristotle, and he has made important, lasting contributions to the literature on each.

On the Objectivist side, there is his excellent brief book, in the Wadsworth series on important philosophers: On Ayn Rand; there are the two collections he edited with Greg Salmieri for the new series: Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies; and soon to come is the Wiley-Blackwell's Companion to Ayn Rand, which he co-edited with Greg, and is a contributor to. On the Aristotle side, there are so many publications that I'll just name the last one, a 400 page compendium of his life's work: Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle's Biology, which was published last year by Oxford University Press in their series, Oxford Aristotle Studies.

And all of this work, and much more, he did while fighting cancer. His attitude toward his disease was calm, objective, and scientific. And that made it courageous. He took an active role in informing himself of the available doctors, treatments, etc., and he often talked with me about the chemicals he was being administered, how they worked, what the expected results were, and how the actual measured results were going. But he fully accepted the fact that he could not become a medical expert, and could only judge whether what the best doctors were telling him made sense. It did make sense, and it kept the cancer at bay for many, many years (and I don't believe he ever expected more; a complete cure was never on the horizon).

In conclusion, I'm happy to point you to two excellent sources of information on Allan: his Wikipedia entry (which he approved of), and an intended epilogue for On Ayn Rand, that was never published but is now on the website of the professional association Allan led since 1990: The Ayn Rand Society (an affiliated group of the American Philosophical Association):

www.aynrandsociety.org

Allan Gotthelf - long live his achievements, long live his spirit.

© 2013 TOF Publications, Inc. Discussing Ayn Rand's Philosophy of Objectivism

Ellen

[Neil Parille]

His two gods were Ayn Rand and Aristotle,

And some people have the audacity to say Objectivism is a cult!

[Ellen Stuttle]

Oh, c'mon, Neil. Blech.

Ellen

[BaalChatzaf]

His two gods were Ayn Rand and Aristotle,

And some people have the audacity to say Objectivism is a cult!

Short of a cult. It was a movement.

[algernonsidney]

I'm actually sorry that I never got to meet him. That's only because of his friendship with Dan Fauci--I would trust Dan with my life.

And I have almost no interest in meeting any ARI scholars.

[Guyau]

Hi Chris,

You wrote Fauci, I thought Gotthelf, Jersey, Tony’s wife. I liked her especially in Paris, most especially in her lines at the ruins before the Cluny, but the closest I can get is here. Anyway, I never heard of Dan Fauci.

Glad to hear you’re still alive. Hope you and loved ones are doing alright.

Stephen

[Neil Parille]

I was exaggerating a little. Maybe "secular religion" is a better way to describe orthodox Objectivism.

-Neil

[Guyau]

From The Times, Trenton:

Philosopher Allan Stanley Gotthelf died of cancer at age 70 on Friday, Aug. 30, at his home in Philadelphia, in the company of his dear friend Cassandra Love. A memorial service will be held Saturday, Sept. 7, at 10 a.m. at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan, NY; burial will be at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY, at 3 p.m. He is survived by Ronald and Cassandra Love, and their sons Zach and Ian Barber (whom Allan regarded as his family), by his many friends and students, and by his sister, Joan Gotthelf Price.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From The New York Times:

David Charles (Oxford University) speaks of Gotthelf's "decisive role in the renaissance of scholarly and philosophical interest in Aristotle's biological writings," and Alan Code (Stanford University) comments that "no scholar has had a deeper and more lasting impact on the scholarly understanding of Aristotle's biological corpus than Allan Gotthelf." Gotthelf made this impact through a series of path-breaking essays now collected in Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle's Biology (Oxford University Press, 2012) and through the conferences and workshops he organized. These events formed the basis for two books: Philosophical Issues In Aristotle's Biology (Cambridge University Press, 1987), which Gotthelf co-edited with James G. Lennox (The University of Pittsburgh), and Aristotle on Nature and Living Things (Mathesis, 1985). The latter book, which Gotthelf edited, was in honor of his friend and mentor David Balme (University of London), and after Balme's death in 1989, Gotthelf shepherded several of his projects to publication. In 2004, Gotthelf's "contributions to the study of classical philosophy and science" were celebrated at a conference at the University of Pittsburgh, which led to the volume: Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Allan Gotthelf (Cambridge University Press, 2010), edited by Lennox and Robert Bolton (Rutgers University). Gotthelf met Ayn Rand in 1962, in connection with lectures on her philosophy that he attended. Rand took an active interest in philosophy students, and over the next 15 years, he had the opportunity for long philosophical discussions with her. Gotthelf is one of two friends whose expressions of interest Rand said prompted her to write Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, which has become one of history's best-selling works on epistemology. Gotthelf was an active participant in Rand's famous 1969-71 Workshops on that book, an edited transcript of which now appears as an appendix to the book's second edition (Plume, 1990). Gotthelf was a founding member of the Ayn Rand Society, a group affiliated with the American Philosophical Association, and he held the Society's highest office from 1990 until his death. Since April of 2013, he has shared that office with Gregory Salmieri (Boston University), his former student and frequent collaborator. Gotthelf co-edited (with Lennox), and contributed essays to, the first two volumes of the Society's ongoing Philosophical Studies series, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. He is the author of On Ayn Rand (Wadsworth, 2000), and is co-editor (with Salmieri) of Ayn Rand: A Companion to Her Works and Thought (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming).

[Ellen Stuttle]

Gee, I wonder who wrote that New York Times piece (Stephen's post next above). I think it must be someone Rand friendly. It isn't a piece to be expected from The New York Times. Might it be something put out by ARI or the Ayn Rand Society?

Ellen

[caroljane]

Ellen, it was in the Obituary section which is paid for by the relatives of the deceased. .Published as submitted

[Guyau]

Yes, it coincides with an ARI press release. That notice continues:

Of Gotthelf’s work to bring Objectivism to the attention of the academic world, Yaron Brook, president of the Anthem Foundation and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, said, “In the natural course of pursuing, and achieving, his values, Allan became a great ambassador for Ayn Rand’s ideas. Because of his knowledge, reputation, and benevolent persistence over the years, Objectivist ideas have begun to see a long-deserved, serious consideration in the academic world. His death is a profound loss. His legacy will inspire Aristotelians and Objectivists alike for generations to come.”

Objectivist philosopher Harry Binswanger, a lifelong friend of Gotthelf, said: “Allan saw his love of Aristotle and of Ayn Rand as of a piece. He was right, because Aristotle and Rand do advocate the same fundamentals: the commitment to reason and to living life fully, realizing one’s highest potential as man.” This was an estimate shared by Rand, who said of Aristotle that “If there is a philosophical Atlas who carries the whole of Western civilization on his shoulders, it is Aristotle.”

Binswanger continued, “Allan was a thinker, a philosopher. He not only taught philosophy, wrote philosophy, and read philosophy, he lived and breathed philosophy. His two heroes were Ayn Rand and Aristotle, and he made important, lasting contributions to the scholarship on each.”

From all of us at the Anthem Foundation and the Ayn Rand Institute, some of whom had the honor of calling Allan a friend, thank you, Allan, for your wisdom, your knowledge, your devotion to a philosophy of reason and life, and your own shining example of a life well lived. You are deeply missed.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Yes, it coincides with an ARI press release. That notice continues:

[....]

Binswanger continued, Allan was a thinker, a philosopher. He not only taught philosophy, wrote philosophy, and read philosophy, he lived and breathed philosophy. His two heroes were Ayn Rand and Aristotle, and he made important, lasting contributions to the scholarship on each. [emphasis added]

Note the change of word from "gods," Neil. I really doubt that it was your mocking that word (#31) which resulted in the change. Probably someone friendly - maybe even Harry himself - noticed the infelicitous opportunity provided for just such a remark as you made.

Ellen

[Guyau]

Brian Leiter has a notice of Allan Gotthelf’s death in his popular Leiter Reports.

A highly regarded scholar of Aristotle (especially his philosophy of biology), Professor Gotthelf was emeritus at the College of New Jersey, and had taught more recently, with support from the Anthem Foundation, at the University of Pittsburgh and Rutgers University at New Brunswick. His Rutgers page has some information about his work. (He also (alas!) had a side interest in Ayn Rand—hence the Anthem Foundation support—though being much smarter and a much better scholar than Rand, he was capable of making her work seem more philosophically interesting than it actually was. He was particularly good at developing NeoAristotelian themes that he claimed to find in her work.)

To say that Gotthelf was much smarter and a much better scholar than Rand is not off the page of possibility, indeed the latter is actual for sure. But to say that Gotthelf made Rand’s work more philosophically interesting than it actually was speaks Prof. Leiter’s ignorance of or animus towards Rand’s work and Gotthelf’s work pertaining thereto.

I’d like to mention that when Leiter refers to Gotthelf having a side interest in Rand, “side interest” is not a putdown (though the parentheses for all Rand connection and the “alas!” are a putdown). It is simply a fact of the academic world that one could not have Rand as one’s primary scholarly contribution and attain a seat. You need to be expert in something else, and that will be your main sell, at least before tenure. That is fine really, as there is plenty in philosophy, besides Rand’s philosophy, of which it is thoroughly worthwhile to become expert. Prof. Leiter’s notice does transmit the widespread message to those interested in entering professional philosophy that they better not (for most if not all Departments and academic journals) show respect or affinity towards Rand and her philosophy before tenure, indeed, they better not mention they have noticed Rand and her ideas.

Academia gets embarrassing about this sometimes. I have great respect for the scholarship of Richard Kraut in Greek philosophy, as well as respect for his own position in ethics put forth in his What Is Good and Why? That work cashes ethics right here in our present civilization, with today’s personal and family situations, yet when Prof. Kraut poses an opponent philosopher of the egoist stripe, he poses Hobbes. He never mentions the name Rand in the book, even though she is the most famous proponent of egoism in our culture and even though the theory she formulated is far more sophisticated and developed than that of Hobbes. As is well-known here, I do not subscribe to ethical egoism of any stripe, but I do subscribe to objectivity and justice, and I can see a misrepresentation of Rand’s thought and an averting of the eye.

[Brant Gaede]

Stephen, what is your basic understanding of "ethical egoism"? I've got an ego and think I am ethical, but that can't be what the term means.

--Brant

[anthony]

Just sayin, but it seems often that a person who most exemplifies a virtue, implicitly, is the one who is quickest to disclaim it explicitly.

[Brant Gaede]

Just sayin, but it seems often that a person who most exemplifies a virtue, implicitly, is the one who is quickest to disclaim it explicitly.

Oh, people are much too varied, but I don't think much of disclaiming a virtue. Not bragging about it is another matter. You live what you are. I think I need more integrity. Integrity can be such a complicated, difficult thing to see and understand, much less act on. I'm not talking about obvious stuff, however important that is and it is. It's about being true to you, but to do that you need to understand who you are, what you want and need. Part of that is understanding others too, though of course they're not to be as well understood as yourself. In fact they can be misunderstood for in that thoughts can happen that illuminate an issue. All part of what I consider my continuing liberal arts education. For instance, I had the mobile vet come over today to put my chocolate Lab to sleep. He had taken a decided turn for the worse. In one more month he'd have been seven. Middle age for this breed. As the vet pointed out for a dog not seeing a vet for two years is like a human not seeing a doctor for 14. Saga hadn't seen a vet for four and I had been slow to see something was wrong and decisively and aggressively act on it. That's 20-20 rear view vision but in my eyes still a failure of my integrity. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. But living is a constant litany of failures you truck through until your trucking is through. You can't mix up perfection with integrity; you need trying your best ("I didn't hire you for your best, whatever that is") aiming for the job well and properly done--aiming for something akin to art in a particular unavailable to the general. That's because today's success will be followed by tomorrow's failure or seeming failure. Real success is not possible without failure after failure after failure. What succeeds is perseverance plus just showing up. (80% according to Woody Allen.)

So, I wonder if Stephen would consider me an "ethical egoist," practicing and advocating same. I want to get my brain around what he thinks that is. I think the key is in my view of the particular vs the general. The general pertains to ethical egoism and the particular for the striving. The general is stasis, the particular is in the striving. Now think about this: the end consequence of Orthodox, Randian Objectivism is stasis. The Objectivism I embrace is the constant human striving for life and of life itself. Utopianism vs reality. What is a Randian hero but a statue and the greatest on-the-face-of it-hero moved the least? Look at Dagny and Hank. Heroes. Until they went on strike. Until they stopped moving. That was to be another expression of heroism--was it? They are properly redeemed qua art by knowing they are statues and looking at them as if they were. Then you will see the greatness of her art, but was it what she wanted you to see? The working title of Atlas Shrugged was "The Strike." After the first run of the John Galt Line, the novel began to swim in a sea of increasing stasis as hoi polloi did exactly what John Galt did: stop producing. Hoi polloi was there before he was! Today they are bankrupting this nation, starving statism like tape worms starving the infested. So what if John fully knew what he was doing and hoi polloi didn't know anything but where the it was?

--Brant

powered by Famous Grouse

Edit: this is only a think piece; if I were to rewrite it it would read quite differently especially the idea of stasis and Objectivism and the nature of a Randian hero. I wasn't properly centered before writing it.The best way to get so centered is to go and re-read parts of her novels. I am most thinking of AS and the purposeful clarity of her writing therein which marked her most mature literary transition. The one person I can think of who expresses herself with that same above board clear and deceptively simple style is Barbara Branden. AS is like an ice berg that floats 95% above the water. Sure there are hidden meanings calling out for deconstructive analyses--it's not all above the water--but Rand was putting it all up and out to her reading public to the extent she was able. AS is the mother ship or the mother not only of Objectivism but all that which has been born of it most of it hidden from the public and not all of it necessarily good.

Edited September 6, 2013 by Brant Gaede

[Ellen Stuttle]

Brant, I'm sorry about Saga.

Please forgive the severe editing. Certain sentences hit home as expressing something which got lost by Rand along the way.

Real success is not possible without failure after failure after failure.

Remember where she writes in The Fountainhead of all the mistakes which went into Roark's trash bin?

The Objectivism I embrace is the constant human striving for life and of life itself.

Kira's Viking with his sword: "To a life which is an end in itself." An image which I think of, along with "There is no evil thought [...]," as expressing the central message she strove to present but ended up countervailing with increasing rigidity.

Ellen

[Guyau]

Brant, thanks for these stimulating reflections. Sorry about your dog.

By ethical egoism philosophers can mean different things, some broader and some narrower than the kind of interest to me. By ethical egoism I mean any morality in which every morally virtuous act derives its virtue ultimately soley from benefit to the agent, to that self and its life. Some acts may benefit others, but that benefit is not the ultimate source of the moral virtue of the act. Implicitly, I’m interested only in such theories in which the benefits are actual, not simply everything an agent might think or feel to be beneficial to himself or herself. Rand’s theory of ethical egoism fits within that strain. Her ethical theory is not all wrong, very far from it. But I don’t think the challenge of soundly defending such an egoism has been met by Rand or any other philosopher.

I accept and treasure Rand’s insight that the concept value presupposes the concept life. In writing my own ethical system, I shall be challenging her concept of life as well as her concept of human nature. I expect to challenge the way she cashes the end-in-itself character of life, the biological function of mind, and her analyses of duty, honesty, and justice. I have plenty of exciting work to do in the years ahead—a systematic reformation of Rand's philosophy across the board, not only ethics—and it looks likely I shall have those years, pleased to say.

I do not think that Rand’s Objectivism, as philosophy for living on earth, as conceived by Rand and as understood, for example, by its proponents Peikoff, Gotthelf, Branden prior to his separation from Rand, nor by Binswanger, Kelley, Hicks, Salmieri, T. Smith, or Wright is stasis. It all along took and still takes growth as integral to life, learning and creativity as integral to good human life, error as something one can depend on, and live thinking as a moral responsibility.

Anyone who does not think that wherever they have done something truly morally good its goodness is ultimately entirely due to true benefit to their own self and life is not subscribing to ethical egoism in the sense I am concerned with. Rand did subscribe to that sort of egoism and had arguments for it. Hers is an egoism I think has much of value, the sort of egoism whose errors I’ll aim to diagnose and whose insights I’ll aim to supplement.

Rand’s fictional heroes are not statues. They are action, purposeful, struggling, creative action for life, they are life and living mind, every day. Coming away from reading Atlas, with whatever response one had to it, but with Rand never saying another word and no scholars with press continuing to articulate the philosophy in nonfiction, I think one would have the impression that the philosophy set out in the novel was taken by its author to be complete at the basic level on display there. That is a stasis, I suppose, for that level of basic philosophy for life. But surely, for one whose response to the novel was positive, it also came off as having given one keys to making a good and happy life, given one a vision of how good and exciting is the human mind, and set one looking forward to and bound for making one's own life and happiness.

Much of your virtues are virtues in Objectivism and virtues I think true.

[merjet]

Ethical egoism per Wkipedia.

Anyone who does not think that wherever they have done something truly morally good its goodness is ultimately entirely due to true benefit to their own self and life is not subscribing to ethical egoism in the sense I am concerned with. Rand did subscribe to that sort of egoism and had arguments for it. Hers is an egoism I think has much of value, the sort of egoism whose errors I’ll aim to diagnose and whose insights I’ll aim to supplement..

What makes "something truly morally good"?

[Guyau]

.

Good morning, Merlin. I’ll have to find out. You are right, however, that I remain in the primacy-of-existence-as-applied-to-value outlook, much as embraced in my 1984, but ready to extend much further (not here, in a future book).

[anthony]

Brant: "I think I need more integrity". Makes my point, really - only someone who's striven for long years towards integrity, could discount their gains in it. Believe me, even people who hardly know you recognize it, where you do not. Correctly so, I believe - the primary purpose is not to come over as honest for others - integrity is for its own sake- but the power of the secondary effect on people shouldn't be overlooked.

Integrity is the biggest one, as the 'executive arm'- of dedication to, and love of, truth, as I get it: Truth in action, I guess. ('Honesty' doesn't quite say it). All the rest stems from it and finishes with it, I think.

All I'll add about ethical egoism is that evidently in Objectivist terms it has a single, fundamental thrust, which is to make the living of life easier and more enjoyable for a person, not weightier; in part, understanding the boundaries where they should exist, and knowing when to blow them away.

Another observation, is the ambivalence I think I've seen in O'ist circles about the value of other people to one in terms of rational selfishness. There's a hint of perceiving them as 'ends to one's own ends'. If I'm right, I counter it (again, as the primary). Rational egoism entirely opens up when one views others as ends in themselves, first and foremost, too. Certainly, I think Rand's intention was never such a narrow, constrained view.

I consider 'perfectionism' to be the worm in the apple. Perfect to whom, or for what? The drive to excellence is distinctly different. You've already alluded to this false dilemma so, like the rest of my maundering, I'm preaching to the minister.

Yes, we try - we fail, more often then not, and our successes are often internal and go unnoticed, especially to oneself. What a superb struggle!

Really sorry about Saga, he surely had a grand life and will be remembered.