Peikoff: The Great Pretender

[Philip Coates]

And, no, Ayn Rand was not there. That's the kind of thing I'd certainly remember.

I would have thought, whoa, what does she think about this outburst, this expulsion? And, I am pretty sure I would have addressed my question to her. And P would have said 'neither I or Miss Rand will take questions about this.'

[Brant Gaede]

A third or a half the room walked out and got their refunds. Of those who remained (I hadn't bought any tapes), I was the only one who was not too intimidated to ask a question.

Didn't they make you sign something to the effect that you would never purchase a Branden book in order to take these courses? How exactly did that work?

WTF? I was there. If anybody walked out it was a one or two anybody. I missed that for I was seated on the side. And there wasn't any white hot fury. There was a very strong Peikoff statement to the effect that he had heard Branden was selling BPO records and that if anyone there was buying those or thinking of buying would they (please?) leave (and get a refund). I don't recall anybody having to sign any anti-Branden thingy either. And it wasn't a course on logic, but on logical fallacies.

--Brant

Edited July 8, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Brant Gaede]

Another reason I think it was at the beginning is because I remember being distracted during the lecture and having time to formulate my question in such a way as to say 'the principles of logic you are teaching us' and to not be a question directly about the split.

Yeah. It was right at the beginning.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

And, no, Ayn Rand was not there. That's the kind of thing I'd certainly remember.

I would have thought, whoa, what does she think about this outburst, this expulsion? And, I am pretty sure I would have addressed my question to her. And P would have said 'neither I or Miss Rand will take questions about this.'

I didn't see her, but there were a lot of people there. Why would she attend a course on logical fallacies?

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Now that I've calmed down a little, Phil, please consider that there were a lot of people at this first lecture and if one or two hundred had walked out and gotten refunds as they went, it would have taken all evening to process them and they would have been backed up to the lectern.

--Brant

Edited July 8, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Philip Coates]

> it wasn't a course on logic, but on logical fallacies. [brant]

It covered more than that. Just as a logic textbook does. I took notes. It was a course on logic:

Ayn Rand Bookstore:

Introduction to Logic (CD)

by Leonard Peikoff

An opportunity to learn reasoning through an examination of the standard topics taught in introductory courses in Aristotelian logic. A means to evaluate your own thinking processes.

(Audio CD; 30-CD set; 26 hrs., 59 min.)

[Philip Coates]

> please consider that there were a lot of people at this first lecture and if one or two hundred had walked out and gotten refunds as they went, it would have taken all evening to process them and they would have been backed up to the lectern. [brant]

It was at the back of the room. I don't recall one or two hundred in attendance - smaller turn out than for his 'big' or more popular courses later on. I believe they filed to the very back and he started his lecture while that was going on, so it didn't interfere. Nor do I think it would have taken 'all evening'...it would have been done well before the lecture was over. Once the lecture started, I wouldn't have been paying attention to processing in the back. In my minds' eye, I see a long room with a desk in the back for processing and an elevator on the other side at the back. The elevator rode up right into the room. I remember that elevator because of an incident that occurred in it with me and Henry Holzer and an older friend of mine from upstate New York. It was probably a hotel, but a smaller room than the hotel ballroom - at the McAlpine hotel - where he did Understanding Objectivism and so many of his other courses. His 'big' courses that filled the McAlpine ballroom had, I'd say, three hundred people.

I watched and attended to the people getting up and leaving: lots more than one or two people. My recollection is it seemed to me like the numbers I gave, because people were getting up all around, but I was struck by how many and how P was cutting the size of his audience of the movement. And how utterly dumb and destructive that was.

Edited July 8, 2010 by Philip Coates

[Brant Gaede]

> it wasn't a course on logic, but on logical fallacies. [brant]

It covered more than that. Just as a logic textbook does. I took notes. It was a course on logic:

Ayn Rand Bookstore:

Introduction to Logic (CD)

by Leonard Peikoff

An opportunity to learn reasoning through an examination of the standard topics taught in introductory courses in Aristotelian logic. A means to evaluate your own thinking processes.

(Audio CD; 30-CD set; 26 hrs., 59 min.)

It was a course on logic in the sense that you needed contradistinction to the fallacies. An actual logic course would have required many, many more lectures and I'm sure the requirement of reading a good text on logic before doing the course. That CD must refer to a different course given later. Frankly, it sounds like a conflation of memories. You did a lot of Peikoff courses subsequently, which I did not. The material overlap would have been considerable.

--Brant

Edited July 8, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Brant Gaede]

> please consider that there were a lot of people at this first lecture and if one or two hundred had walked out and gotten refunds as they went, it would have taken all evening to process them and they would have been backed up to the lectern. [brant]

It was at the back of the room. I don't recall one or two hundred in attendance. I believe they filed to the very back and he started his lecture while that was going on, so it didn't interfere. Nor do I think it would have taken 'all evening'...it would have been done well before the lecture was over. Once the lecture started, I wouldn't have been paying attention to processing in the back. In my minds' eye, I see a long room with a desk in the back for processing and an elevator on the other side at the back. The elevator rode up right into the room. I remember that elevator because of an incident that occurred in it with me and Henry Holzer and an older friend of mine from upstate New York. It was probably a hotel, but a smaller room than the hotel ballroom - at the McAlpine hotel - where he did Understanding Objectivism and so many of his other courses.

This is a correct description as I remember of the back of the room. It's possible that some people went to the back and got refunds, but not half, just a relative few. The place was packed. There were a lot of people there. It was the biggest Objectivist get-together since The Break. It had to have been a hotel ballroom. There was one isle down the center and others to the far sides. I believe one could have been there one time for one admission as opposed to the full tuition so subsequent lectures wouldn't have been so crowded. I was amazed no one in the front-center didn't stand up and do a John Galt stop-the-motor-of-the-world exit. I didn't want to myself, but I was aware that exiting down the side as I would have had to do would have no dramatic effect whatsoever. I could see most of the room and saw NOBODY get up and leave, but a few could have; if not right then then a little later.

--Brant

it was a long room

Edited July 8, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Brant Gaede]

Based on what has been written so far I strongly suspect Phil has conflated two different courses, one on logical fallacies and a subsequent one on logic. I also stand by my understanding of what Peikoff said and when he said it which seems to be Phil's too. Some people could indeed have gotten up and walked out getting refunds as they went. Phil was in a much better location than I to witness that. There were, however, many more people there than Phil remembers. I think they came out of NBI inertia and to get a first-hand feel for the general Objectivist situation post-break. They didn't have to buy the entire course to go to that, I think--not recall. If so the idea might have been to use the first lecture as an implicit sales pitch for the full course.

--Brant

edit: If you had say 15 seats flanking each side of the isle and ten rows, that right there would have been 300 people: there were many more than ten rows; there were many more seats all the way across than 20, say 30. Could have been 20? No, not enough. 20 rows of 30 seats = 600 people. 30 rows of 30 seats = 900. Many more is not believable. 900 isn't either. Even half of that would have been 450, still a lot of people. My bad and best guess is 500 to 600 were there. We could say 24 across and 20 rows deep and get nearly 500.

Edited July 8, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Robert Campbell]

In addition to NBI there was the Foundation for the New Intellectual, a non-profit. Holzer announced its creation in The Objectivist and, a year or two later, Nathaniel Branden's resignation as trustee.

In 1977, there was a little notice in The Objectivist Calendar giving a new address for the Foundation, and announcing that Allan Blumenthal was "no longer associated" with it.

I wonder how much longer it lasted.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Also, though I don't have any independent verification on this score, I've heard tell that Edith was either the or a prime instigator in complaining about David Kelley's talking to libertarians, with the eventual result of the Peikoff/Kelley split.

Although I have no trouble with the view that Peter Schwartz and Harry Binswanger were buffaloing Leonard Peikoff during the run-up to his split with George Reisman and Edith Packer, this other item is one of a great many Stuttlian tales that I recommend receiving with skepticism.

Given David Kelley's refusal to fall in line with condemning Barbara's book unread, and Schwartz's published "review" of said book, why would Schwartz have needed Edith Packer or anybody else to encourage him to denounce Kelley?

Besides, The Objectivist Forum kept going long enough to be able to publish a review of The Evidence of the Senses—and never ran one. A reasonable interpretation would be that by 1987 Binswanger was also on Kelley's case.

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

Robert, all in all Ellen's memories as perhaps opposed to some of her interpretations of same are quite excellent of those (NBI) years. I cannot comment on most of her 1970s' ones as I can't provide enough over-lapping confirmations of mutual experiences.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

In addition to NBI there was the Foundation for the New Intellectual, a non-profit. Holzer announced its creation in The Objectivist and, a year or two later, Nathaniel Branden's resignation as trustee.

In 1977, there was a little notice in The Objectivist Calendar giving a new address for the Foundation, and announcing that Allan Blumenthal was "no longer associated" with it.

I wonder how much longer it lasted.

Robert Campbell

I wonder if the foundation ever did anything to speak of, especially post-break.

--Brant

[Philip Coates]

Subject: The Suicidal Stupidity of Excommunication and Factionalism

> people getting up and leaving...how P was cutting the size of his audience of the movement. And how utterly dumb and destructive that was.

Now that I have recalled this decades-old stuff, I want to add something to this before leaving it:

P. had said in effect that any idiot could see the truth on the Branden-Rand exchange of essays. But, let's suppose for a second that everything his side said was correct and everything on the other side false or misleading -- and this also applies to the later Kelley schism papers. Even if this were so, you are talking about lots of us at that time being highschoolers or college age or "newbies". Or at different stages of maturity and understanding regardless of age.

People are supposed to know everything Rand said was accurate because they know the author of Atlas could never make a mistake, never be over-emotionally involved? REALLY? No respected figure is ever wrong, or fallible? And everyone in the room at that Logic class includes no one who just recently read Atlas and is struggling with whether or not Rand is right on issue X or Y? How would that follow?

Why on earth would you first claim everyone can judge complicated personal disputes when they were not even involved and did not know the people? And then why would you assume people of all ages, levels of sophistication and maturity would be unconfused by eloquent writing on the side he doesn't agree with?

And, above all, there is something you just don't do:

You don't expell people or excommunicate them or condemn them morally for what they don't know yet.

The whole function and pride and attitude of a teacher is to teach. By definition you teach people when they don't already know. You teach them in exactly the areas that they don't know which are very important. Don't condemn them beforehand that they can't read between the lines in other people's disagreements and fights, that they can't see the nature of libertarianism (even if you think it has a unified nature, which of course it doesn't).

Don't ask people to take sides on things they don't understand yet. And don't disapprove of them in any manner whatsoever (let alone refuse to deal with them) just because it's something you are strongly convinced of.

And since what is not moral is also not practical, you end up cutting yourself off from, pissing off, alienating a huge potential audience, allies, people of basically similar views on philosophy.

Your emotions are not tools of cognition. The depth of your outrage, anger about issue X are not a criterion for not communicating about X or to those who don't understand X or who at a certain point of development disagree about X.

Patience. Calmness. Equanimity. Lack of Personal Condemnation and Intimidation ("Anyone who knows anything about Objectivism...")

The principle is you -never- ask for blind loyalty. You ask for conscientiousness, willingness to study. And honesty.

Note that virtually everything I've said in this post applies not only to excommunications but to morally condemnatory factions and factionalism as well.

(This is all so obvious that I'm almost embarrassed to have wasted a post on it.)

Edited July 8, 2010 by Philip Coates

[jriggenbach]

This is all so obvious that I'm almost embarrassed to have wasted a post on it.

I for one am embarrassed for you, Phil.

JR

[Reidy]

I believe the Foundation sponsored and organized the 1969-70 philosophical Q&A sessions that are in ItOE.

[Brant Gaede]

I would say, Phil, that viz. Objectivism Peikoff was the de facto tribal leader with Rand in the background. People didn't want to get banished, but most simply drifted away over time as they saw things more clearly. Of course new blood was always coming in the front door, but NBI numbers were not maintained.

--Brant

[Robert Campbell]

I once inquired about offering a Peikoff course on tape: his 1976 lectures on The Philosophy of Objectivism.

The year was probably 1978 (I would have to dig up old correspondence to pin it down). It was definitely before Barbara Weiss quit working for Rand, because I spoke to her on the phone.

I asked whether there were restrictions against "Branden readers." The answer was no, not any more.

I was told, however, that anyone who took the course had to certify that he or she was not a member of the Libertarian Party or some other libertarian organization.

Written statements did not have to be collected; rather, it was up to the person who rented the tapes and presented them to vouch for the allegiances of those present.

I suspect that Leonard Peikoff's admission criteria changed, perhaps more than once, between 1969 and 1982.

Robert Campbell

[9thdoctor]

This is all so obvious that I'm almost embarrassed to have wasted a post on it.

I for one am embarrassed for you, Phil.

I think Phil’s post is a good thing for newbies to read in the context of this thread. There’s convincing evidence that this material is not obvious to many in Rand-land. OTOH, no one who has posted to this thread got anything new from it; in fiction this would be called a plot dump or an idiot lecture. Meanwhile the people who need to read it are warned away because of the "inherently dishonest" and "odious" posters among us. Damn sheep.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen, my memory of events surrounding what I asked and how he replied is accurate. It happened to me and shocked me, which is why I remember the details...and my memory about situations where I have an interaction, am personally involved tends to be pretty accurate. As for white hot fury, that was very clear from his face and that he was holding it in, trying to control himself. I must have been close enough to see that.

You could be right about the "white hot fury," which you might have seen sitting close to the front. I didn't get a "white hot fury" impression, but I was sitting toward the very back -- in the left row facing the podium.

As for 1/3 to 1/2 leaving, yes they did: He asked them to go to the back of the room and get their refunds -now-. And I watched those people get up and go. Wouldn't have made a lot of sense if nobody moved -- these are principled people.

There, both in regard to the numbers and his saying get the refunds -now-, I think you must be wrong. My memory of the audience size agrees with Brant's estimate of something on the order of 500. (The lay-out of the room we're all agreed on, except I don't recall if the elevator opened directly into the room, only that the entrance was on the left in the back.) One-third to one-half leaving during a lecture (or alternately before he started lecturing) would have made a commotion for which I have no recall.

Also, about the "-now-", as I remember he said that he didn't want people who were providing any financial support to the Brandens taking the course. Brant is right that people could attend the *first* lecture without signing up for the course. What I was doing there was attending the first lecture from curiosity to see Leonard Peikoff. I hadn't signed up for the course and wasn't planning to sign up for it -- which I then thought was fortunate, since I had provided some financial support for NB. However, *not* that of specifically buying his records. See the next comment.

(I said NB's tapes, but I actually recall him saying his records, as if they were LP's, which seemed odd to me...I don't recall what the records were on, as I never saw them or was interested in them...probably one of his NBI courses...the Objectivism series, would be my guess.)

Even if he mentioned those records in particular (which I believe he probably did from your specifically recalling the word "records"), I think his comment was wider than just the BPO course, because I hadn't purchased those records but I remember thinking that I would have had to withdraw from the course had I signed for it. I'd been financially supportive of Nathaniel by (1) taking his romantic love course on tapes, a course offered and overseen by Roger Callahan, and (2) purchasing his The Psychology of Self-Esteem -- I think. By the "I think" I mean that as I recall the book was already out and I'd already bought a copy of it by the time Peikoff's course started. Whether the book was already out is a detail which could be verified if anyone has the publication month of the book and the start date of the Peikoff course.

As for whether his statement about please leave and get a refund was at the beginning or the end and your recollection of the end, that's the only point I could be mistaken about. But I do remember it as at the beginning. And, if he wanted people who had given money to NB to leave, don't you think he would not have wanted them in front of him sitting through the entire first lecture? You're going to boot somebody out in outrage and anger, don' you do it right away, right up front?

Brant also thinks it was at the beginning. As to his wanting people who had given money to NB to leave then, however, again, I think the deal was he didn't want them taking the course. The first lectures in these courses (same was done with live first lectures of taped NBI courses) was available to general attendance with the hopes of enticing additional people to sign for the whole course.

Another reason I think it was at the beginning is because I remember being distracted during the lecture by this whole issue. But, on the other hand, having time to formulate my question in such a way as to say 'the principles of logic you are teaching us' and to not be a question directly about the split.

Your memory of feeling distracted during the lecture sounds like strong confirmation that the announcement was at the beginning. What still puzzles me, though, is that I don't remember feeling distracted by the issue during the lecture, as I think I would have been. On the other hand, I don't remember any of the substance of the lecture, so maybe I was distracted and I've just forgotten the distractedness.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

And, no, Ayn Rand was not there. That's the kind of thing I'd certainly remember.

Thanks.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Something further concerning the Foundation for the New Intellectual -- I've included as background all the posts so far on the thread mentioning the Foundation to have them in one reference glump. I've separated them sequentially instead of using nested quoting...

In addition to NBI there was the Foundation for the New Intellectual, a non-profit. Holzer announced its creation in The Objectivist and, a year or two later, Nathaniel Branden's resignation as trustee.

In 1977, there was a little notice in The Objectivist Calendar giving a new address for the Foundation, and announcing that Allan Blumenthal was "no longer associated" with it.

I wonder how much longer it lasted.

I wonder if the foundation ever did anything to speak of, especially post-break.

I believe the Foundation sponsored and organized the 1969-70 philosophical Q&A sessions that are in ItOE.

In the material from Richard and Gen LaGreca Sanford which I described in post #96, there's mention of the Foundation:

from:

Letter addressed to "Dear Objectivist,"

September 7, 1996,

by Richard F. Sanford, Ph.D.,

Page 5

[The material includes the statement, on Page 2, "Please feel free to make copies of these documents and to distribute them to interested parties."]

[sanford is listing and discussing charges against Packer and Reisman. Under the heading "3. Dr. Packer made the lives of the Directors of ARI miserable since the founding of ARI.," he writes:]

[....]

It is revealing that Dr. Berliner demands that Objectivists who were not involved in the ARI-Reisman dispute side with ARI and condemn the Reismans as immoral, and yet Dr. Berliner to this day continues to work with Dr. Packer as one of the two codirectors of the Foundation for the New Intellectual, established by Miss Rand. This business association undermines Dr. Berliner's assertion that Dr. Packer is immoral and impossible to deal with. By Dr. Berliner's own standards, he should break with Dr. Packer by resigning from the Foundation.

Ellen

[Reidy]

I don't believe she "established" it or had any official connection at all, just as she had none to NBI. Sounds like another piece of mythmaking by the people who make her the founder of ARI and Peikoff her "intellectual heir." Here we go again.

[Philip Coates]

> no one who has posted to this thread got anything new from it [ND]

Are you sure? What about the point about not just excommunication but factionalism? Do you think the tiny number of 'frequently flyers' who post all the time are the only readers?

Michael claims this site has wide readership. Do you disagree?