Robert Tracinski's article "What Went Right"

[Robert Campbell]

Today, I had a chance to look up the article that got Robert Tracinski booted from ARI.

I've never spent much time reading The Intellectual Activist, because of the Peter Schwartz legacy. For many years I expected nothing out of the newsletter but predictably dreary ARI-approved opinions. I can see now that I was not being entirely fair to TIA, at least since Tracinski became the guiding force over there.

Tracinski's article "What Went Right" is currently available on his site at

http://www.intellectualactivist.com/php-bi...cle.php?id=1095

It's well worth reading, and not just because Tracinski rejects the hell-in-a-handbasketism so prevalent among orthodox Randians. He further appreciates that precisely because academic philosophy has grown less and less relevant to the wider culture in which it operates, its potential to damage that wider culture has correspondingly diminished. He won't buy the line of reasoning according to which philosophy dominates science, so science cannot get better unless academic philosophy does.

And he refuses to endorse the doctrine that rotten ideas are always more powerful than good ones, so among those of "mixed premises" they will always end up driving the good ones out. He specifically takes his opponents in Rand-land to task for assuming that anyone who accepts religious ideas is forever and irreversibly in the grip of rotten ideas--an assumption that leads directly to the typical ARIan writer's insinuation that no Muslim can be reasoned with, hence to end the threat of Islamic imperialism all must either be killed, or terrified into submission.

Robert Campbell

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Tracinski's What Went Right articles are a tour de force. It's time the Orthodox Objectivists return to the real world, abandon their pessimism and generally look at the world as the complex, chaotic and wonderful place it is and where facile, rationalistic analyses of world events and intellectual trends have little explanatory power.

Jim

Edited January 2, 2007 by James Heaps-Nelson

[Chris Grieb]

Jim; Well said. Thank you! You will be missed in Towson.

[Chris Grieb]

Robert; Thank you for the link. What a great article. The fall of zero population growth as an idea is a story that was missed by many of us. I have been aware of Julian Simon for a number of years but the reminder was wonderful. Simon's ideas have carried all before him.

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Chris,

Thanks, I'll miss everybody at the Seminar too. It's been 4 years since I've seen my in-laws in Taiwan so it's time to go back. I will eagerly await reports back on how it goes.

Jim

Edited January 2, 2007 by James Heaps-Nelson

[Robert Campbell]

Part 5 of "What Went Right" is out now.

Tracinski argues that Aristotle's philosophy had to follow major advances in Greek science, drama, and legislation, as well as Socrates' and Plato's efforts to frame philosophical issues.

Definitely worth a read at

http://www.intellectualactivist.com/php-bi...cle.php?id=1097

Part 6 is still to follow.

Robert Campbell

[Roger Bissell]

Those interested in following both (?) sides of this issue may want to check out Robert Mayhew's extended commentary on Robert Tracinski's piece. Mayhew's comments ("What Went Wrong with Robert Tracinski's Account of the Ancient Greeks?) were posted over on Diana's Poodle Poop web site:

[sjw]

Interesting that he uses the phrase "trickle-down theory of intellectual influence" to describe ARI. I used a similar phrase to describe them here, months before he published that:

http://forindividualrights.blogspot.com/20...fix-system.html

"This approach is based on Ayn Rand's ideas about how ideas flow from the culture's intellectuals to the media and then to the culture in general. To change the culture, you need to go through this top-down educational process. Let's call it the "trickle-down" theory of ideas (hint: how much of Ayn Rand's influence has followed the trickle-down pattern up to this point?). One thing that follows from this is that it's too early for a political movement based on individual rights. Because clearly, the universities are not fixed yet, so how can we work on the areas that flow from them?

With ARI's approach we are--at least at the moment--at a political dead-end. Oh well, might as well sit and wait for the New Intellectuals to show up."

[Bidinotto]

Robert Tracinski's posts to date that are most relevant to this topic can be found here:

http://www.intellectualactivist.com/php-bi...cle.php?id=1095

http://www.intellectualactivist.com/php-bi...cle.php?id=1096

http://www.intellectualactivist.com/php-bi...cle.php?id=1097

Robert Mayhew's critique of Tracinski's viewpoint is posted here:

http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2007/01/wha...tracinskis.html

What do I think of all this? In answer to a correspondent who wrote me for my opinion of Mayhew's critique, I sent the following response.

---------------

I read Mayhew's piece earlier this a.m. What struck me about it is that, in essence, he's rewriting the traditional, rationalistic, "trickle-down-from-the-philosophy-departments" view of Objectivism's philosophy of history and cultural change, in order to deflect criticisms by Tracinski (and others) that it's too oversimplified an account of how ideas really affect culture.

In answer to Tracinski's criticism of the conventional Objectivist philosophy of history -- i.e., that explicit, systematic philosophy doesn't seem to have sole causal efficacy in history and culture -- Mayhew sets up a straw-man account of Tracinski's actual views. Mayhew argues that Tracinski ignores the influence of "implicit philosophy" (or "philosophy in the broadest sense"), and asserts that the Objectivist philosophy of history really incorporates "implicit philosophy" as a causal factor in history. As Mayhew puts it:

The basic world-view of the ancient Greeks (their philosophy in the broadest sense) was already (before Thales) very good--relative to other cultures in the ancient Mediterranean. (I have in mind the implicit philosophy or basic ideas that we find in Homer and Hesiod, c. 8th-7th centuries.) It was essentially a this-wordly [sic] and pro-man outlook, which valued reason and argumentation. As primitive or pre- philosophies go, it provided an excellent potential background for development--a potential that was eventually actualized. But it was still primitive--it was still a conception of the universe as a place inhabited by supernatural deities that one was supposed to accept simply because they had always been believed in--by one's family and one's city.

Note his terms "the basic world-view" and "implicit philosophy" and "philosophy in the broadest sense." What else could these terms mean other than "sense of life"? However, Rand distinguishes "sense of life" from "philosophy." As she wrote: "A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence. It sets the nature of a man's emotional responses and the essence of his character" (from "Philosophy and Sense of Life").

Now compare Rand's definition of "sense of life" with what Mayhew describes as "The basic world-view of the ancient Greeks (their philosophy in the broadest sense... (I have in mind the implicit philosophy or basic ideas that we find in Homer and Hesiod...) It was essentially a this-worldly and pro-man outlook, which valued reason and argumentation."

Can you determine any difference between this description of early Greek "world-view," and early Greek "sense of life"? I can't.

Yet, where Rand carefully distinguishes "sense of life" from philosophy, Mayhew conflates them -- and he then, in effect, criticizes Tracinski for not doing so. By this means, Mayhew pretends that Tracinski is belittling the power of "philosophy" (really, sense of life) as such, and therefore is not really an Objectivist.

This argument is complete sophistry. Tracinski does not argue that sense of life, or "implicit philosophy," has no impact on culture. In fact, he's saying the opposite: that the rationalistic philosophy of history presented by Peikoff, Mayhew, and others does not properly incorporate non-philosophical factors, such as sense of life!

Now, regarding the details of Mayhew's historical account: observe that nowhere does he demonstrate any direct, causal connections between explicit philosophical thinkers, such as Thales, and any specific, subsequent developments or achievements in Greek art and science. To the contrary, note once again this passage from Mayhew:

The basic world-view of the ancient Greeks (their philosophy in the broadest sense) was already (before Thales) very good--relative to other cultures in the ancient Mediterranean. (I have in mind the implicit philosophy or basic ideas that we find in Homer and Hesiod, c. 8th-7th centuries.) It was essentially a this-wordly [sic] and pro-man outlook, which valued reason and argumentation.

But doesn't this beg Tracinski's basic question: Where did Homer and Hesiod's "this-worldly and pro-man outlook" come from...since it preceded the emergence of explicit philosophers such as Solon and Thales, and the rest of the thinkers whom Mayhew cites?

All of Mayhew's subsequent blather merely obfuscates that damning point: that huge achievements in the arts and other cultural institutions [of Greece] were already underway prior to, and to all appearances independent of, the subsequent work of theoretical philosophers. Moreover, the best Greek philosophizing -- that of Aristotle -- came at the very end of the period of Greek flourishing, not at its beginning, and seemed to have little influence in preventing Greece's subsequent decline and fall. Factors other than philosophy alone must be considered in order to account for all this.

And that is the essence of Tracinski's common-sense criticism of the conventional Objectivist account of the impact of ideas on history.

Finally, there is this from Mayhew:

In light of this [Mayhew's account of Greek development], it simply makes no sense to say: first there were major developments in medicine and history and the arts, and then there were the major developments in philosophy. (I'll have something to say on the arts shortly.) They all developed at the same time and no doubt influenced each other--in complex, fascinating ways that specialists try to detail--and there was no doubt a spiraling effect.

Note: "there was no doubt a spiraling effect." In other words, Mayhew is acknowledging another of Tracinski's key points: that ideas and developments in other fields influence each other, and the culture, in all sorts of complex ways. Those other "developments" most assuredly have causal impacts long belittled as secondary or derivative in the rationalistic philosophy of history, as pushed by Peikoff and his associates.

Mayhew concludes: "But there is no reason to think that anything other than philosophy--especially the basic philosophical outlook that I sketched at the outset--was the most fundamental force driving the culture."

Yet by his own historical account, which fails to adequately explain the huge achievements of Greek culture even before Thales, Mayhew cannot and does not demonstrate this conclusion. The onus of proof remains on Mayhew (and Peikoff, et al.) to provide a theory that takes this apparent causal disjunction into account.

[Neil Parille]

Funny, I just finished reading F. M. Cornford's classic (1912) work From Religion to Philosophy which makes the point that certain philosophical ideas which later became predominant in Greek thought were inchoate in religious ideas going back to Homer and Hesiod. These philosophical ideas could not have developed without the religious background.

[Reidy]

Another interesting book along these lines is Merit and Responsibility by Adkins. It traces the ancestry of what eventually, with Plato and Aristotle, became philosophical ethics, through centuries of earlier literature.

[Bidinotto]

In case my preceding post wasn't clear enough:

The conventional, rationalistic philosophy of history as promoted by Peikoff, Mayhew, and Company has long been vulnerable to obvious empirical challenges, such as those recently put forth by Tracinski. It simply fails to explain historical causation in many instances. Why did the greatest philosophers of ancient Greece come at its end, not its beginning? Why was Europe the generator of Enlightenment philosophy, but why were Enlightenment ideas only fully adopted and institutionalized in America? Etc. Tracinski dared to question their rationalistic model: that philosophy, and only philosophy, is the ultimate source of all cultural change.

Well, the ARI crowd had to respond. Their method?

To redefine the term "philosophy" so elastically as to make it seem able to explain, or cause, anything!

Specifically, the Mayhew Method of criticizing Tracinski (immediately endorsed by the rest of the ARI claque) appears to be this:

(1) Inflate the definition of "philosophy" so broadly as to include almost any vague attitude, notion, or sense-of-life outlook anyone has ever held (e.g., "philosophy in the broadest sense," "implicit philosophy," "primitive or pre-philosophies," etc.);

(2) proclaim that the (undeniable) historical impact of all this "philosophy in the broadest sense" refutes Tracinski's contention that other factors, not just "philosophy" (which he meant in the narrow sense), have important causal influences upon history; and thus

(3) declare that by ignoring the power of "philosophy in the broadest sense," Tracinski proves that he doesn't take "philosophy" seriously as such -- and, hence, cannot be an Objectivist.

Cute, eh?

[Neil Parille]

Bob,

I find it unclear to what extent the Enlightenment caught on in the US as compared to other countries. Some (or many) of the Founders might fall within this tradition, but at the same time that quickly gave way to a rise in religion, Transcendentalism, pragmatism and who knows what. Revolutionary France was probably more of an Enlightenment country than the US. Some intellectual historians (such as Ellis Sandoz) have argued that the Founders had something of a pessimistic view of man which prevented them from trying to redo everything like the French revolutionaries.

[Bidinotto]

Neil, for a very different and utterly persuasive counter-view, try The Empire of Reason by Henry Steele Commager. A magnificent and inspiring work.

You can probably find it on Amazon; if not, try Bookfinder.com -- a great online source of new and used books.

[Neil Parille]

Bob,

The book I had in mind was Ellis Sandoz's A Governmet of Laws. I'll read Commager's book. (I recall it was Commager who said that Reagan's calling the Soviet Union the "evil empire" was the worst presidential speech in history so I doubt I'll find it utterly persuasive.)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

Thank you very much for your thoughts on this. I have only skimmed over Tracinski's articles so far, but I liked what I have seen. I have greatly enjoyed some of the positive commentaries, especially yours.

There are two important points on how ideas impact a culture that should be mentioned. They have been set forth by David Kelley and Chris Sciabarra respectively. Here is a quote by Kelley from The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand (p. 40-41):

IDEAS AND ORIGINAL SIN

When we say that an idea has consequences, we are saying that the idea is a cause from which certain effects follow through a sequence of necessary steps. In the cases we’re concerned with, the sequence begins with the philosophers who originate and develop the idea. When the idea becomes widely accepted in philosophy, it spreads to other disciplines, where thinkers incorporate it into their theories. It then expands into the culture at large through the work of artists, journalists, commentators, and other intellectual retailers, who apply the idea to countless matters of detail. In time it becomes an element in the dominant psychology of an age, predisposing people to accept the kinds of art, behavior, and institutions that are consistent with the idea.

When Peikoff writes of this sequence, he describes it as inexorable. The effect of injecting Kant’s ideas into the cultural mainstream, he writes, “has to be mass death.” Kant “unleashed” Lenin, Stalin, Hitler “and all the other disasters of our disastrous age. Without the philosophic climate Kant and his intellectual followers created, none of these disasters could have occurred; given that climate, none could have been averted.”4 These are very strong claims about historical causation.5 To say that the process is inexorable, that none of the consequences could have been averted, is to assume that the individuals who serve as links in the causal chain had no choice in the matter. These individuals must, in effect, be helpless and unwitting carriers of the intellectual virus.

[4. This footnote references "Fact and Value" by Peikoff.

5. This footnote includes a comment by Kelley criticizing Peikoff's claim that Kant's ideas are the major source of 20th century totalitarianism.]

So it is clear that an idea will not affect a culture unless the individuals in that culture hold it, er... individually. For each individual to hold it, he needs to become convinced of it. This is a complex series of steps as it involves the contexts of an enormous number of individuals, not merely a set of programmable robots or some kind of collective mentality. The lack of taking this into account is the main flaw with the "trickle-down" theory when it is put forth as the sole major cause of historical events.

The second observation by Sciabarra is that history needs to be analyzed dialectically, which to him means analyzing history from the viewpoint of several different contexts. This is the only way to get a full picture when such a large group of individuals is involved.

Thus, the "trickle-down" theory is only one perspective among several, not the sole major cause of culture. Peikoff apparently agrees with this in another place. According to the lectures on the DIM Hypothesis provided on the ARI website, Peikoff already recognizes that integration is not a complete theory of cultural analysis. Peikoff emphasizes that it is valid only where the "trickle-down" can be detected, and that is not in all cultures. He doesn't use that term, but the description is the same. So if "trickle-down" cannot be detected in many instances for the purposes of DIM, why is it valid in those same instances for other theories, like in the present discussion of the Greek culture? This seems to be a very selective and subjective application of the "trickle-down" theory.

I have a work coming from someone outside the Objectivist sphere (but whose work fits within the Objectivist framework). I think this work will be extremely important in providing some basic guidelines for dialectical analysis of culture (thus provide guidelines for which parts of a culture can be worked on to change it). It has impressed me and a few other intellectuals I highly respect so far (I have shown it to them for comments). More later about this.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Robert and Neil; Weren't there two Enlightenments going on? One was French, the other was Scottish or English . The English-Scottish one effected the American colonies. The French one led to the French revolution. I concede I maybe oversimplifiing.

[Victor Pross]

Anybody:

In regards to the issue of this “inexorable historical causation”—I take it to be so as well---IF the intellectuals and populace of any country freely accept a given (largely homogenous) philosophy—if, I repeat, that is what they do. Once they do, then the consequences will be what they will be. This does not mean the moral agents acting have lost their free-will. This is my understanding of Peikoff.

What am I getting wrong here?

-Victor

Edited January 22, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Neil Parille]

Chris,

Yes. And the Scottish Enlightenment was more conservative. As Sandoz shows, the most influential teacher of the founders was Scottish born Calvinist minister John Witherspoon who combined Calvinism with Scottish common sense philosophy. He taught at Princeton. (He also advocated hard money.)

http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/f...e/?id=110008512

[Chris Grieb]

Neil; Thanks for the reply. Is Roussou considered part of the Enlightment? Neil; You maybe interested to know that Washington has a statue of John Witherspoon. Didn't Witherspoon preach a sermon take off his robe and reveal he was wearing a Continental Army uniform and go off to war? He was also in the Continental Congress.

[Bidinotto]

Neil: Forget about Commager's own politics, which are liberal: they only show up in Empire of Reason in the form of his personal disagreement with the Founders about the perils of unlimited democracy. However, he describes the Founders views on this accurately and well. Other than that, the book is a magnificent tribute to the Enlightenment era, so much so that I simply couldn't imagine one better.

Commager's point about the differences between Europe and America included the fact that institutional (largely political-economic) barriers in Europe prevented it from enacting much of the Enlightenment agenda; that America, precisely because of its newness and freedom, could enact that agenda and did. These institutional barriers, then, served as their own "cause." Other causes could be cited at various times: for example, plagues, droughts, economic catastrophes, dictators, invasions, assassinations, and other emergencies can completely divert the course of a nation or culture, compelling people to pursue directions and actions contrary to prevailing intellectual trends. Then, of course, there's the intervention of that little causal factor known as "volition."

To say that people must have an "idea" in their heads in order to act is a simple truism; to say that such ideas must be "philosophical" is not -- not unless "philosophy" is defined so elastically as to mean almost any notion at all. In which case, "philosophy" has simply become a synonym for "mind," which is a vacuous version of the "power of philosophy."

Remember, the traditional Objectivist account of the "power of philosophy," and how ideas "trickle down" from philosophers and academics into the culture, is described in the David Kelley quotation provided by Michael Kelly yesterday (above). It is a very tidy model of ideas descending from academia and spreading out into the culture through various intellectual levels and branches -- something like an inverted tree, with the roots at the top.

Of course, Tracinski is not denying the power of philosophy, nor the validity and importance of Objectivism. He is merely saying that the actual reality of the transmission and acceptance of philosophical ideas in a culture is much less tidy and more complicated than that model -- and I agree with him. For that transgression, he is being written out of the Objectivist movement by ARI, on the absurd grounds that he really doesn't believe at all in the "power of philosophy."

Interestingly enough, however, Ayn Rand herself did not publish a formal account of any such a "philosophy of history": here are the only things SHE ever wrote publicly, as compiled yesterday by long-time ARI acolyte Betsy Speicher.

Now this poses an interesting problem for Peikoff and ARI. If "Objectivism" is ONLY what Ayn Rand herself wrote and said (ARI's claim), but Rand never provided any formal "philosophy of history," then how can Peikoff and ARI now declare that their "trickle-down" theory of the philosophy of history is part of Objectivism -- and how can they thus conclude that by challenging it, Tracinski (or anyone else) is not an "Objectivist"?

Understand that this latest Objectivist movement controversy, like all those preceding it, is not ultimately about who is right or wrong on some such theoretical point. It's solely about exercising control over that movement. It's about forbidding anyone to even question Peikoff and ARI muckamucks on any point of their theology, no matter how peripheral, and still retain the label "Objectivist."

[Bidinotto]

I agree with Robert Campbell's observations about the merits of Tracinski's thesis.

Incidentally, ARI's academic strategy -- placing scholars in philosophy departments, in order to implement the "trickle down" theory -- is patently refuted by Ayn Rand's own example. Rand managed to launch a philosophical revolution and to recruit thousands to it (including ARIans) without ever getting a Ph.D., holding an academic position, or publishing in established scholarly journals. And she did it largely through writing FICTION.

Has any academic ARIan -- or any other Objectivist -- remotely approached her success and influence?

The fact is that the academic "trickle down" model worked best during the Middle Ages, when universities were the sole source of philosophical ideas and their transmission into the culture. But that model is long dead. Today, there are innumerable parallel sources of ideas entering our culture: think tanks as well as countless unaffiliated thinkers, all originating and spreading ideas via the numerous vehicles of modern communication, including self-publishing, the Internet, broadcasting, audio-video recordings and transmission, satellite relays, etc. The university monopoly on ideas has been broken, rendering the old "trickle down" strategy largely irrelevant...as Rand's own example demonstrates. How many of YOU first heard of Ayn Rand from a college philosophy professor?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

I will cross-check the quotes B. Spreicher presented to see if there are more. They sound like a very limited grab-bag and I get the feeling that they were selected by using the word "history" only in her CD-ROM search.

Off the top of my head, I remember reading somewhere a statement by Rand to the effect that the people who change the course of a culture (which is practically a synonym for history in this context) are those who care to step up and present ideas in public. All other people are just conveyor belts of those ideas. This is where I think the "trickle down" theory has its roots. (In this theory, the ones who step up obviously got the core ideas they present from philosophy.)

But her whole concept of "New Intellectual" was founded on a philosophy of history presented in the title essay of For the New Intellectual and it was a bit different. In short, she stated that the people who shape history are those who stand out in thought and actions. She gave rational and irrational categories (with one being the counterpart of the other).

Irrational man of thought: Witch Doctor

Rational counterpart: Intellectual

Irrational man of action: Atilla

Rational counterpart: Producer

Rand stated that the Atilla psychologically needed the Witch Doctor to justify his thinking and world view. But she did not treat the Intellectual the same, at least in emphasis. She focused more on treating the Intellectual as the protector of the Producer against parasites.

In itself, this initial view of philosophy of history is shot through with many items that have no bearing on the "trickle-down" theory. For an Atilla to exist, all he needs is a big club and people to bash. And for a Witch Doctor to exist, all he needs is to make some kind of presentation saying he has higher knowledge than reason and a structure for admitting followers.

Both Producer and Intellectual need freedom (in some measure) to exist.

I believe that this is a much stronger theory of history than "trickle down," and even then, it is not complete. As you mentioned, there are several powerful and often overwhelming factors at work in a culture and not all of them are present all of the time. This is due to the differences between individuals, environmental factors (like natural disasters, for example) and the exercise of volition of each person. The spread of an idea like a virus (Peikoff's metaphor, which I do not like since it implies that volition is not present) is merely one of the pieces of the puzzle. Anyway, how a virus "trickles down" from above is also a mystery. A true virus can start anywhere and spreads by contact to those who are vulnerable. I believe a bad idea can, also.

Michael

[Bidinotto]

In case you haven't noticed, there are a number of rumblings in the ARIan camp itself where people are catching on and challenging the various personal attacks on Robert Tracinski and distortions of his views.

Veteran ARIan Steve Speicher has been outspoken about this sort of thing in recent weeks, such as in this post.

Here's another fellow who concludes, rightly, that ARI jihadists are only giving themselves a public black eye.

Well, there are precedents.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

I skimmed over that thread on THE FORUM for Ayn Rand Fans. The most interesting post I saw there in terms of identifying Rand's theory of history was this one.

Here S. Speicher provides Rand quotes from For the New Intellectual, given barebones below (FTNI p. 28):

The events of any given period of history are the result of the thinking of the preceding period.

This opens an interesting manner of looking at some of Rand's ideas and puts the ones about culture and history in a different perspective. I think it will be worthwhile to research this and see if she held to this view as a premise in her later writing, or whether she intended instead to provide the grounds for the present "trickle down" theory (or even Peikoff's DIM hypothesis).

It is also interesting to challenge this view, for example, I wonder what previous thinking in the Communist world led to the present dismantling of the system.

Michael