What quality Rand scholarship looks like

I've just had the pleasure of reading the first chapter of Volume Three of the Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies Series, Foundations of a Free Society: Reflections on Ayn Rand's Political Philosophy (2019).  It is by Darryl Wright (one of the members of the Society's steering committee), and is titled, "The Place of the Non-Initiation of Force Principle in Ayn Rand's Philosophy."  It is available as a free sample at the book's website.

(Polemical paragraph...)
It puts all the Rand-bashing hackery ranging from sloppy to reckless out there in a very different light.  Rand-bashing (as distinct from fair and honest criticism, which I anticipate in the later chapters of this book; the bashing basically characterizes Rand as a cruel hack herself who appeals only to pimply adolescents) is all blatantly dishonest, every last bit of it, and every Rand-basher qua such, without exception, is a blankety-blank lowlife.  Here is just one recent example of it at reddit's badphilosophy subreddit, a forum which purports to highlight and ridicule the myriad examples of usually-amateurish thinkers and ideas falling afoul of respectable and serious philosophical practice (supposedly Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris are egregious offenders in addition to Rand).  The blankety-blanks at the askphilosophy and main philosophy (sic) subreddits are little better when it comes to Rand.  (Reddit as a whole is toxic/leftist/structurally dishonest in its political aspect; its upvote/downvote model - itself structurally dishonest - is a lower-pleasure-indulging popularity contest rather than a truth-seeking mechanism.) There is no excusing said behavior given all the scholarship that's been available for decades now from professional philosophers/scholars demonstrating that Rand can be understood adequately by competent and careful interpreters, and the bashers will be judged accordingly in the eyes of history.  They have obstructed progress on the wider consideration of crucial neo-Aristotelian philosophical themes (as are in evidence in Wright's article, Den Uyl and Rasmussen's work, Tara Smith's book, Sciabarra's work, etc.).  Speaking of which, Volume Four of the Society's series, in preparation, is specifically focused on Rand's comparative relation to Aristotle, the man whom no one but philosophically ignorant STEM-lords and whatnot dare to bash (and whom, as the man said of his teacher Plato, not even the wicked have the right to praise).

One of the virtues of Wright's article is to situate Rand's thought within certain themes and controversies in philosophy as they've been traditionally approached.  It is particularly memorable how Wright masterfully summarizes (and it is only a summary or condensation) Rand's epistemology or theory of proper cognitive functioning - which, as any serious student of Objectivism knows, makes fundamental reference to the role of hierarchy and context in knowledge-formation.  I like his reference not just to concept-formation but concept-maintenance, an active ongoing process that incorporates new information.  It had always struck me as a bit odd how Rand and Objectivists would speak of the formation part without explicitly referencing the maintenance part.  Bashers might say that this is an example of Objectivists' being sloppy and incomplete, but the Objectivists (most of them, usually) are implicitly if not explicitly intellectual perfectionists doing the best with what time and resources they've got, no thanks to the so-called professional mainstream.

An example of where Wright ties themes in Objectivism to 'mainstream' disputes occurs on p. 38, footnote 26, where he brings up the familiar notion of observation being "theory-laden."  He ties this to the 'Objectivism-speak' about the "prior context of general knowledge that guides the assimilation of the evidence."  Another fine example of Wrights tying-in of themes is his characterization of Rand's concept of knowledge as awareness (Rand uses the phrase "mental grasp") as distinct from 'justified true belief.'  I remember back in the day (the previous century most likely, probably on Jimmy Wales' MDOP) first being introduced to the interpretation of Rand's conception of knowledge as awareness, and it had always struck me as very plausible or correct given the difficulties that arise with the traditional 'justified true belief' formulations.  It strikes me as one point on which epistemologists might take a helpful cue from Rand/Objectivists/Peikoff.  (Wright more than once references lecture 1 of Peikoff's Induction in Physics and Philosophy course, a lecture which also made a favorable impression on me.)

Wright raises an example of an item of genuine knowledge as follows:

"A concept classifies together a potentially unlimited class of the referents to which it applies, and an inductive generalization similarly purports to identify the attributes of or relations among an unlimited set of particular instances. For instance, a statement such as “The human body absorbs vitamin D from sunlight” condenses a wide body of (ultimately perceptual) evidence and applies to an unlimited number of cases past, present, and future." (p. 35)

“The human body absorbs vitamin D from sunlight” is as incontrovertible an item of knowledge as any, which should tell you right off that skeptics are in the weeds and shouldn't be taken seriously.  The only issue of real concern is the how for arriving at/validating such an item of knowledge, which is a yuuuuge topic but . . . well, to apply the principle of induction here I'm going to go to the Series page at UPitt Press's website, click on the Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology (2013) link, go down to the sample link at the same location I found the Wright piece's sample link at the Foundations of a Free Society link, and voila, Gotthelf's article, "Ayn Rand’s Theory of Concepts: Rethinking Abstraction and Essence."  See?  Induction works.

One word to note in Wright's paragraph above - one that caught my attention when Peikoff used it in one of the early lectures of his Advanced Seminars on Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand course - is the word "condenses."  What conceptual knowledge/awareness does is to condense the vast range of perceptual observations/awareness, with higher-order abstractions or also what Rand terms abstraction from abstraction, condensing the more rudimentary concepts into broader classifications and ultimately into organized theories or sciences or episteme.  This condensation-function of concepts is referenced directly by Rand with her discussion of unit-economy.  I apply the principle of unit-economy a lot in my postings when I provide contextualizing hyperlinks so that all the content doesn't have to be reproduced in one blog post (since blog posts can get long enough as it is...).  They serve more as a file-folder (using Rand's imagery) to reference as the need arises.  (It helps to organize one's mental contents really well, in order to make the recall function that much more useful/effective.)  It's a very nice principle to have induced and to apply, since contextualization of bold and controversial-sounding claims (e.g., Rand-bashers qua such invariably are scum) is fucking great.

It should be pointed out that Wright's article situates Rand's principle of the non-initiation of force within her broader philosophical theory, i.e., it contextualizes it for purposes of what follows in the book.  The whole point of Rand's having formulated an epistemological theory (explicated in fuller detail in Peikoff's works, most importantly OPAR) is a practical one: in order for a human being to flourish most effectively, the human must exercise the conceptual/knowing faculty most effectively, for which the human requires a systematic guide for operating, i.e., for organizing mental contents.
This has something to do with the principle of dialectic, what Sciabarra identifies in fundamental terms as the art of context keeping, which has fundamentally to do with mental integration, which fundamentally guides the principle of the wikipedia hyperlinking format as I'm sure Wales was well aware of.  I mean, heck, Wales' introduction to Objectivism was the Lexicon.  Note also that Rand's description of the fundamentality of philosophy in human cognition is exactly-correctly reflected in the hierarchical fundamentality of philosophy in wikipedia's hyperlink structure.  So to recap: Wales induces an organizing principle from the Lexicon, applies it to the now-widely-used wikipedia, proves Rand right about philosophy's fundamentality, and the Rand-bashers have what to stand on, exactly?  Zilch.  Well, they do have a point (by accident) about her polemics (most notably her Kant ones), but they're way bigger offenders themselves in that regard, so they still lose.

As one might have induced from the above, the above organizes and condenses a lot of principles into a few paragraphs, buttressed by the presumptively-knowledge-expanding function of internet hyperlinking.  (In the internet age, what's the Rand-bashers' excuse, or the excuse for blatantly ignorant opinion-formation generally?)  The perfectionistic/perfective condensing habit takes cultivation and effort to form and maintain, and that effort is one of focusing one's mind, and it is this act of focus that is the irreducible fundamental element of human volition or free will.  As I'm sure Wright explains in full detail in his next chapter in Foundations for a Free Society, "Force and the Mind," and as Peikoff explains in detail in lecture 8 ("The Evil of the Initiation of Force") of his Objectivism Through Induction course, physical force is antithetical to this volitional knowledge-formation-and-maintenance process.

Force is the partly or wholly successful attempt to substitute the free and independent judgment of a person's mind/intellect with someone else's, and that is antithetical to the cognitive requirement of objectivity, i.e., of the necessary processing of mental contents for knowledge and decision-making in the service of one's life/flourishing.  (Rand introduces this point in the language of objectivity or of the objective/intrinsic/subjective triad in her essay, "What is Capitalism?" of which no one has even attempted a rebuttal in 50+ years, it's that definitive and final in the essentials.)  Rand uses the term "physical force" to emphasize that it is a physical action that severs the relation between the victim's (free) thoughts and (coerced) actions - the closest thing to an actual real-world duality or opposition between the mental and the physical, if you will.  See also my recent posting, "The core libertarian principle explained" for more.

To wrap up: now that this post has provided a flavor of what quality, clue-having Rand scholarship and Randian method looks like, we can safely flush the willfully clueless Rand-bashers down the toilet and safely give serious Rand scholars the attention and consideration they (and Rand) deserve.  (2019's other "scholarly," university-published (yikes) Rand book, leftist scumbag Lisa Duggan's Mean Girl, provides the definitive contrast case, right down to the blatantly dishonest smear that is its title.  [The gullible ignoramuses in the comments section of a new video with Scumbag Duggan, in which they slime and smear Rand as a sociopath and her admirers as gullible ignoramuses, without showing the least bit of effort at rudimentary fairness and mutual/empathetic understanding - it's like they go out of their way and bend over backwards not to make such an effort - should take a good, hard look at themselves.])  Both the (abnormal) bashers and the (normal) critics tend to say things about how Rand just isn't rigorous or systematic enough in her writings to be taken seriously as a philosopher (or as a world-historically great or important philosopher at least on the level of, say, a Rousseau or a Marx if not a Spinoza or Nietzsche), but the case of Wright and others shows that anyone who studies the relevant materials carefully can identify and explain the rigor and systematicity in Rand's thought.

[Addendum: I've mentioned/link a number of Peikoff's courses but the one that any serious student or reputable scholar of Objectivism needs to be familiar with, just on the basis of its name alone if nothing else, is his Understanding Objectivism one (also in book form).]

[Addendum #2: re Rand's anti-Kant polemics referenced above (and again now), I will at some point address what appears to be an unacceptable part of the ethical theory as he presented it - though not really a part of neo-Kantian ethical theories I've been exposed to, just as with his infamous argument against lying to protect the innocent from a prospective murderer (as distinct from a duly contextualized virtue of honesty that rationally compels taking deceptive measures to protect the innocent from the murderously wicked). What would be unacceptable is that Kant appears to hold the view that continuing life in an indefinitely miserable state rather than committing suicide is the morally preferable option.  That's what Rand gleans from the one passage of his that she ever quotes at any length (from the Groundwork, and which is contained in her "Kant" Lexicon entry just again linked - "It is a duty to preserve one's life..."), about the man who is miserable but continues on out of a sense of duty.  Alternative and perhaps overly charitable readings of the passage are that he's merely applying the otherwise helpful inclination/duty distinction ("duty" meaning the morally obligatory recognized by the actor as such, grounded in Kant's theory in the Categorical Imperative(s) [about which Rand is unacceptably silent all the while she bashes him]).  The Aristotelian virtuous person/character is one for whom virtuous action and desire are harmoniously integrated, where (employing Susan Wolf's terminology as applied to life's meaning) subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness (or perhaps the noble or fine or kalos).  Why not say that remaining alive but miserable, or truth-tellingly exposing the innocent to the murderously wicked, is to treat one's own or the innocent's humanity merely as a means to a theoretical abstraction?  Or, is Kantian ethical method (re: e.g., respecting humanity as an end-in-itself) an empty formalism as some critics have claimed, unless supplemented or contextualized by things other ethical theories consider important?  [Note: I need to study Parfit's impressive-looking synthesis of Kantian with other ethical theories, although a maximally impressive theory would incorporate virtue ethics, of which Aristotle is the most prominent/influential exponent.]  That being said, see my "Core libertarian principle explained" link where principles widely recognized as 'Kantian' or 'deontological' are employed, although in a context that's foundationally Aristotelian/eudaimonist.  [General note about standards for effective polemics, especially philosophical ones: They should follow those Dennett/Rapoport Rules as a matter of habit, which implies that characterization of X should rise to the standard of what seasoned scholars of X accept as accurate (which is how so many anti-Rand polemics can be dismissed from the get-go; the proper standard there might be, "Would Darryl Wright or other Ayn Rand Society scholars or Leonard Peikoff take it seriously?"), and they should be done at enough length to uproot all the assumptions that lead to a complex theory worth polemicizing against.  I've pointed to Mises' polemics against Marxism/DiaMat as an example of how to do polemics, and while they meet the length requirement, I'll have to look at how his characterizations hold up after I go through the high-paywalled Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx published last year.  But he is quoting directly from Marx's condensation/summary statement of historical materialism in the Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy....]]

Maverick Philosopher on Peikoff on the Supernatural

Maverick Philosopher (Bill Vallicella; hereafter MP) goes after Peikoff on pretty much the same topic about which he's gone after Rand/Objectivism/Peikoff before.  (I've discussed MP's take on Rand before, and there's even plenty of GOP-bashing in that link just in case anyone was wondering whether I reserve my political bashings for Demo rats.)  The topic - and MP's area of specialization/expertise on which he has published extensively - is theology (and metaphysics).

I'll try not to repeat what I've said in my earlier discussion linked above.  I'll point out, if I haven't already, that it wasn't Rand/Peikoff's views on metaphysics that brought me to enthusiasm about Objectivism.  In specific branches of philosophy my interest in Rand is stimulated most in aesthetics, ethics, and political philosophy, and in epistemology with special emphasis on matters of method.  It's these matters of method that are covered most extensively in Peikoff's courses, in particular Understanding Objectivism (1983), The Art of Thinking (1992), and Objectivism Through Induction (1998).  The topic of God is hardly discussed at all in these courses, so surely his points of emphasis/focus are elsewhere.  His Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (or OPAR [1991], which is quoted by MP, and which faithfully represents what can be found at the Ayn Rand Lexicon, all the material in which is vetted by Rand herself even if OPAR is not).  By Rand's own attestation (e.g., pp. 666-7 of Letters of Ayn Rand), Peikoff is eminently qualified to teach about her ideas, and it is these above-mentioned "advanced" courses in Objectivism that the actual, flesh-and-blood, longtime students of Objectivism have been immersed in for decades, and of which Rand-bashers are wholly ignorant.  (Let's just say that these long-time students are not on the same page with the Rand-bashers about a whole lot of things Rand and Objectivism, including especially the fundamentality of cognitive and philosophical method to "living as an Objectivist.")

MP makes criticisms of the passage from OPAR about the that are entirely understandable given Peikoff's wording (and without further elaboration from Peikoff that might counter objections from theologians like MP).  MP goes on to say:

It is trivially true that there is nothing natural beyond nature, and nothing existent beyond existence.  But these trivialities do not supply anyone with a good reason to reject the supernatural. It is because of such shoddy reasoning as I have just exposed that most philosophers have a hard time taking Objectivism seriously.  Objectivists should take this in a constructive way: if you want your ideas to gain wider acceptance, come up with better arguments for them.

"Most philosophers have a hard time taking Objectivism seriously" is considerably toned down from previous MP postings on Rand/Peikoff.  Some years ago, it was "Rand is a hack."  Or, perhaps, "she argues like a hack."  Or, perhaps, "She argues like a hack on a subject about which I am an expert."  Or, perhaps, "philosophers don't take Rand seriously."  Now, it's "most philosophers have a hard time taking Objectivism seriously."

I'm supposing that MP has toned down the belittling of Rand in no small part due to efforts by yours truly (through blog as well as non-blog means of communication) to show how and on what subjects she is being taken seriously by professional philosophers, including those without (well-known) pre-existing sympathies to Rand.  There are now three volumes from the Ayn Rand Society (not to be confused with the Ayn Rand Institute, as I've personally witnessed Rand-bashers ignorantly confuse the two) in which Objectivist professional philosophers debate non-Objectivists.  The latest volume, for instance, has (now UC-Boulder philosophy professor) Michael "Why I am Not an Objectivist" Huemer taking Rand seriously enough to devote some of his valuable time to covering (in spite of the proliferation of countless philosophy articles and books that no one human could read more than a fraction of, as he pointed out elsewhere).  There is an exchange between him and the supposedly "intolerant jerk" Harry Binswanger, on the anarchism-vs-government debate, a debate that orthodox Objectivists had supposedly treated as closed as of Rand's 1963 article, or supposedly ran away from upon encountering the subsequent arguments from Rothbard, David Friedman, the Tannehills, et al.  (One might note that none of the three aforementioned were professional philosophers.  It might also be noted that for many hardcore "students of Objectivism" such as myself, spending their time mentally "chewing" the Peikoff courses, the anarchism-vs-government debate isn't high priority unless or until the preconditions for a liberty-respecting society are in place, and that deeper issues of method are much higher priority for both that and for personal happiness.)

Another example that illustrates my point rather boldly is the way philosopher John Hospers approached Rand's ideas.  The place of Hospers in the "Rand and philosophy" timeline is discussed here.  I note there that: (1) Hospers was a well-respected member of his profession, including having served a term as president of the American Society of Aesthetics; (2) Rand's ethical ideas made a deep and lasting impression on him; (3) Rand basically converted him to libertarianism; (4) Hospers wrote a glowing tribute to Atlas Shrugged in 1977; (5) Hospers thought Rand's ideas serious enough that he encouraged her to publish her ideas in professional journals; (6) Hospers wrote a comprehensive guide to classical music listening (which I would have found more useful than I did had I not encountered classical music some years before discovering his guide), which by itself shows he's not exactly a lightweight on aesthetics; and last but not least, (7) in his aesthetics text, Understanding the Arts (1982), he quotes from Rand once, but the quotation pertains to the most central and fundamental of concepts in Rand's theory of art, sense of life.

Now, I can only (safely?) assume that had Hospers encountered some writer on art theory other than Rand who discussed sense of life, he would have mentioned or quoted them.  But sense-of-life appears to be a distinctively Randian contribution to understanding the nature of art.  So, is it Rand's or Hospers' fault that "most philosophers find it hard to take Rand's aesthetics seriously"?  AYFKM?  The best explanation I can think of here is that Rand's Romantic Manifesto is a grand work in aesthetics, the product of a lifetime of thought by a philosopher-artist, and that "most philosophers" have (for whatever reason) failed to recognize its merits.  (The first two chapters of The Romantic Manifesto are titled "Philosophy and Sense of Life" and "Art and Sense of Life," BTW.  The most advanced essay in that collection of essays is "Art and Cognition" from 1971....)

There are other examples which can be gleaned from my linked Rand-and-philosophy timeline.  In The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand (1984), did editors and contributors "Dougs" Den Uyl and Rasmussen somehow do an inadequate job of showing how and where Rand should be taken seriously?  Their chapter on Rand's metaphysics, "Ayn Rand's Realism," shows what they take to be Rand's carrying on the Aristotelian torch.  Heck, Rasmussen is a Catholic philosopher and theologian, so if MP is looking for a conversation with a philosophically-trained Christian Rand-enthusiast on theological matters, he can contact Rasmussen and (probably) learn more about how or why, e.g., a Christian philosophy professor could also be a Rand-enthusiast.

Suppose, however, that Rand/Peikoff produce arguments about God that theologians or metaphysics experts find unimpressive, and one were to draw the conclusion that if such unimpressive arguments are the fruit of Objectivist method (in those courses the non-Objectivists much less the committed Rand-bashers know next to nothing about), then the method must not be all that impressive.  (See, I've anticipated a counter-point that MP might bring up.)  I've pointed out above about how these issues of method are key to Objectivist epistemology (and I take chapters 4 and 5 especially of OPAR to be distillations of the methodological subjects Peikoff covered in so many of his courses).  The concepts of context and hierarchy, especially, are central to Objectivist method.  And there's no guarantee that one will apply these methodological principles correctly in all areas, a point I made in my post about how to criticize Rand effectively.  Heck, one of my own takeaways from the constant admonitions from Peikoff about keeping context is that to engage in polemics or debate generally, one needs to establish a grasp of the opponent's context, which is to make every effort to characterize their positions as they would characterize the positions themselves.  (The Rapoport/Dennett Rules, in other words - rules flouted 100% of the time by Rand-bashers, BTW.)  And that's one big issue I take with Rand's philosophical polemics, as I've made well-known.  (I think her political polemics are spot-on; for instance, compare her treatment of the Comprachico "educators" with their most loyal [ideologically-inbred] spawn two generations onward in every left-dominated institution you look at.)

As to the bearing of Rand/Peikoff/Objectivist method on the subject of God and the supernatural, the connection isn't all that hard to draw, although I don't draw it in the realms of metaphysics/existence or theology, but in the realm of epistemology/knowledge.  They are hardcore anti-Platonist Aristotelians who base all knowledge, all context and all hierarchy on what first comes through the senses.  The notions of God and the supernatural - notions set over and against nature, to use Hegelian terminology - don't have a place in knowledge according to Rand/Peikoff.  There isn't an induction from the range of perceptual concretes that will get us to God (and Rand/Peikoff emphatically don't agree that the timber of humanity is irredeemably crooked...).  But I'll mention, again, that a neo-Aristotelian like Rasmussen surely has some different thoughts about that.  In the interests of engaging fully in the art of context-keeping, there should be rigorous back-and-forth between Objectivists and theologians (any neo-Aristotelian ones, especially) as and when personal contexts (interests, priorities) dictate.  Perhaps the Ayn Rand Society will get around to that.  In the meantime, their focus has been on ethics (Vol. 1 of the Society's Philosophical Studies series), epistemology (Vol. 2), and politics (Vol. 3).  The upcoming fourth volume is on the theme of "Ayn Rand and Aristotle," and that's the one I'm really anticipating very eagerly because, well, Aristotle isn't exactly a lightweight - along with Plato and Kant he has more SEP entries by far than the rest - and you have experts on both Rand and Aristotle, academic scholars no less, who think there is a high degree of similarity between these two thinkers.  A considerable number of these experts are pictured right there on the Ayn Rand Society website.  (The late Allan Gotthelf had the distinction of being both a leading scholar of Aristotle('s biology) and a long-time associate of Rand's.)  Past steering committee members not pictured/listed there include Douglas Rasmussen and Tara Smith.  And you can bet that Prof. Smith knows all about Rand's unique place in the (Aristotelian) virtue-ethical tradition which has seen a recent revival in academia.  (When Rand wrote "The Objectivist Ethics" in 1961 - presented at an academic symposium, BTW, probably with Hospers' encouragement - virtue ethics was hardly even a thing at the time, as ethics was dominated by Kantian and utilitarian schools of thought, along with non-biologically-based accounts of value or goodness.  Rand's theory is (and was presented as) a bold alternative to those schools of thought.  Nozick took up the Randian argument as late as 1971, only for the "Dougs" to show in 1978 how Nozick missed the Aristotelian character of Rand's argument.  See again the linked Rand and philosophy timeline for the links.  Is it that Rand's argument was spotty or shoddy and that trained academics like the Dougs had to step in to buttress the case?  Or does it go to show that some philosophers have identified things in Rand that other philosophers missed, and that those who have identified those things also happen to be strongly Aristotelian?  Gee, ya think?  How else does Smith's Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist (2006) get written?)

As much of the preceding makes evident, my issue here isn't so much about the quality of this or that argument or conclusion but rather about how philosophical inquiry by trained practitioners should be conducted.  There are leads available to be pursued, and they're not exactly obscure or lightweight.  I haven't even mentioned the lead that is Sciabarra's exhaustively-researched work (including the university-press published Journal of Ayn Rand Studies of which he is lead editor).

Now what I would like to know is how, despite all the available non-obscure leads, there is still so much ignorance and hostility toward Rand/Objectivism out there.  The underlying problem there goes well beyond anything specifically Rand.  The problem hits home for someone like MP/Vallicella who finds there to be so much ignorant hostility toward theism in light of available philosophical theology (and he perceives Rand/Peikoff to be one source or instance of such).  It's a serious, huge, perhaps monumental problem to be overcome.  It is a problem which humanity on the whole has not yet developed a shape of consciousness (to wax Hegelian again) sufficient to overcome.  Perhaps humanity as a whole has missed the point of Plato's Republic all this time, in spite of the not-so-obscure lead in the form of philosopher-ruler Marcus Aurelius (to which no politician I know of today remotely compares).  But it is a problem I have been documenting exhaustively in this blog for diagnostic purposes.  The problem would be solved if a critical mass of humanity were to bring the art of dialectic to a high level.  And guess what: given the leads I've noticed, homed in on, and pursued, Rand's philosophy - and the Aristotelian tradition in general - has a particularly valuable role in providing the tools to practice dialectic at the highest level.  (Hegel and Aristotle, anyone?  Come on, already, ffs.  [I found out about this book in particular by searching multiple university library catalogs for books on Hegel, BTW.  It's available in e-format, even.  Insatiable curiosity carried to the highest level, anyone?])

Notes on dialectic

Or: An exercise in advanced differentiation and integration* 75+ hours fasted (with electrolyte water), listening to some favorite music, and cannabinized with just a couple hits of very-residual kief.  (* - "Consciousness, as a state of awareness, is not a passive state, but an active process that consists of two essentials: differentiation and integration." --Rand, ITOE, first sentence)

Also: How a dialectic between leading philosophers in history and the likes of Ayn Rand might realistically play out, given a now large and ever growing roster of prominent philosophy professionals now taking a serious interest in her thought.

How might Nietzsche and Rand have 'dialectized' to reach a conclusion they could agree on?  Nietzsche spoke of an 'overman', but Rand spoke more matter-of-factly of 'man the rational animal,' a position she claims to have shared in a very deep sense with Aristotle and also Aquinas.  ("The three As" Rand would call them.  She thought very highly of her own philosophical ability, but didn't proclaim to have surpassed these other two.  But the only other philosopher she acknowledged a philosophical debt to, is Aristotle.)

Aristotle, the 'fountainhead of dialectic,' as Chris Matthew Sciabarra, author of Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism (published 2000 by PSU Press, so exhaustively researched as to have a 48-page or approximately 1300-reference bibliography, which is at least 3 times what any other impressively researched academic book would have; the man is thorough) (Also, he wrote an also-thoroughly researched book on Rand, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (1995, PSU), containing the most complete bibliography of Leonard Peikoff materials, especially including Understanding Objectivism, an essential reference source for serious understanding of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, Peikoff having spent oodles more time discussing philosophical issues with Rand than anyone else, etc. etc., although philosopher (and a serious well-reputed academic one at that) John Hospers also took Rand seriously enough to spend a lot of time discussing philosophical topics as well; but it's materials like Understanding Objectivism that one needs to master in order to be a seriously qualified scholarly commentator on Rand), dubbed him.

Hold on, let's say that it was Aquinas (say) dialecticalizing with Nietzsche (say), and while I haven't spent nearly the time studying these two that I had studied Rand's ideas (mainly for their claimed and real similarity to those of Aristotle, the fucking MAN...although much of my understanding of the fucking MAN comes from solidly reputed secondary sources, e.g., John M. Cooper's 1975 Reason and Human Good in Aristotle...), I can kinda imagine how a dialectic between (pre-Revelation-and-death) Aquinas and the (pre-going-mad) Nietzsche might have transpired, given the basic sensibility-vibe that I get from the various research sources (both primary and secondary) I've consulted on these two.  But what if we hypothesize that Nietzsche got to know Aquinas and Aristotle and Rand better than he apparently did, how might a dialectical synthesis between these four (say) figures transpire?  What sort of 'overlapping consensus' might they reach?

But wait, for Nietzsche to have become more familiar with these thinkers (most importantly Aristotle?), we have to hypothesize that, at minimum, he had a few more decades of intellectual productivity in him, and as we know from Aristotle and others and hopefully first-hand to a great extent, intellectual productivity is a very lofty thing for a human being to aspire to.  I don't know how long it would have taken for Nietzsche to get around to a serious and close study of Aristotle.

One thing I do know, is that in Walter Kaufmann's (leading Nietzsche scholar and fairly prominent philosopher in his own right) translation of Beyond Good and Evil, namely aphorism 287 (or is it 257) about the noble soul having reverence for itself, Kaufmann makes a footnoted reference to Aristotle on the great-souled man.  But it's that same aphorism that Rand had originally considered placing at the beginning of The Fountainhead, my pick for her best novel even though Atlas Shrugged has a great many virtues, as aesthetics-expert Hospers highlighted.  This is during the phase of her career when Nietzsche was her primary intellectual influence (aside from herself, obviously) (and there was also Isabel Paterson), but it was within a few years that Aristotle (and secondarily Aquinas) became the chief intellectual influence to the point she acknowledged a philosophical debt only to him.  Anyway, all three of the thinkers - Aristotle, Nietzsche, Rand - seem to be in fundamental agreement about a great-souled man or noble soul having reverence for itself, a fundamental component of Rand's distinctive variety of egoism for sure.  So why isn't she taken that much more seriously by academic philosophers already?  Good question.  One thing is, few if any of them were in the epistemic position that, say, Hospers was in, now were they.

Anyway, if we could get these three rather meticulous thinkers to agree on that premise - I say if, but I think it's a given? - about the great-souled and (therefore?) Randian-egoistic man, then shouldn't that inform a dominant new paradigm in ethical thinking?

What is dialectic, anyway?  Sciabarra refers to it as "the art of context-keeping" (a fundamental focus of Understanding Objectivism, the chief methodological 'treatise' of Objectivism, duh.), and I take his Total Freedom to be a pretty complete - indeed 'dialectically complete or perfectionistic' - exercise in the art of context-keeping, starting with that fucking massive bibliography.  (There are two books that I know of with larger bibliographies: Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature (Rand's phrase "in the name of the best within us" comes to mind in this context) and T.H. Irwin's monumental 3-volume, 5000-ish-page-equivalent The Development of Ethics (OUP, 2008).  Irwin is I think definitely most impressed with the Aristotelian-Thomistic ethical tradition, no surprise given how he compares them exhaustively with prominent alternatives including even Kant.  All three of these books strike me as seriously impressive; what if they were in some way dialectically synthesized together along with the putative Aristotelian-Nietzsche-Randian synthesis about ethical egoism or individualism or eudaimonist-individualism or individualist-perfectionism, etc.

And funny I should bring up individualist-perfectionism, since that's a key theme of neo-Aristotelians Douglas Rasmussen (a Catholic who could be the leading authority on how Randian and Thomistic thought might be synthesized) and Douglas Den Uyl.  Funny I should bring them up, since they did a response to Nozick on the Randian argument and I hadn't even brought Nozick up.  Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia was praised on the back cover by some prominent philosopher type as exhibiting an unsurpassed 'dialectical sensibility,' which it arguably does.  Does this mean that he out-dialecticizes Rawls?  Does anyone out-dialecticize Alan Gewirth, who wrote the book Self-Fulfillment (1998, PUP, at age 86, mind you) and Reason and Morality (1978, Chicago UP), the key themes of which are defended in Deryck Byleveld's daunting-looking 1991 book, The Dialectical Necessity of Morality: An Analysis and Defense of Alan Gewirth's Argument to the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC)?  That book looks thoroughly researched as well.  Does dialectical completeness require some sort of positive rights after all?  But if everyone adopts an Aristotelian-Nietzsche-Randian ethos about eudaimonistic individualistic perfectionist dialectical-completist, etc., would positive rights ever be a factor at that point, with everyone flourishing so?  But is that realistic?  Well, let's say we stage for a national audience a debate (well, dialectic) between long-dead but now-taken-very-seriously figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, et al, and see what kind of overlapping consensus they reach.

I'm not talking about intellectually lazy trolls on social media, now, I'm talking serious dialectical synthesis here.

Assume that all these thinkers in this staged debate/dialectic are adequately informed of at least a lot of the scholarship and philosophical writing that has occurred since their actual lifetimes.  Would they all at least agree that you can only hope to match but not exceed Aristotle?  Dougs Rasmussen and Den Uyl (RDU) appear to do so, and they're pretty dialectically complete, too, and they also happen to be in fundamental agreement (from all available indications) with Sciabarra about that (Aristotle the fountainhead of dialectic being among them, eudaimonism in ethics being another, and so on).  Indeed, one must think of post-2000 RDU writings as having dialectically presupposed Total Freedom (a unit that condenses another 1300-ish units, we might say, or the way an internet link can condense a reference to a wider context within one word...), which makes it that much more dialectically complete.  (What if Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism and (RDU's) Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (2006, PSU) translate into essentially the same idea?)  But have they dialecticized with Gewirth?  Not that I know of, beyond Den Uyl's 1970s article on what he then referred to as Gewirth's Principle of Categorial Consistency or PCC at the time, but I do remember reading Rasmussen vs. Sterba in a 1987-ish book, The Catholic Bishops and the Economy: A Debate, and I'm not sure the debate there was resolved to my complete satisfaction.

(okay, that was composed during a listen of the 50-minute album Yellow House by Grizzly Bear, currently #6 on my list of favorites.  to be continued, or have I made my point? ^_^ )

also, context-keeping and integration (a key focus of Rand's, and Peikoff's lecture courses and books) are essentially the same process.  I.e., integration and dialectical synthesis are the same process.  Where does Marx fit into all this, I haven't even mentioned him yet.  But then I have to bring up Mises and Kolakowski, i.e., see how they fit into, i.e., integrate with these other concrete instances (of thinkers), and so on and so on.  But how can I understand all these other thinkers to the same extent, with the same resource-constraints, that I studied and understood Rand so extensively?  (My one "peer reviewed professional literature publication" is on Rand.  My book was reviewed by a few esteemed peers (including an academic neo-Aristotelian philosopher) and passed with flying colors, I also think it's pretty good shit...but almost sure to be overshadowed by BLTP....)

also, dialectical completeness has something fundamental/essential to do with perfectionism in the philosophical tradition (of whom Aristotle was an exemplar, given his dialectical completeness, i.e., perfectionism and - therefore ultimately - intellectual perfectionism).  Also, Rand is some sort of intellectual perfectionist (although she didn't seem to think that theoretical contemplation was the highest or most noble of the intellectual activities, but seemed to include all activities resulting from intensive focus, a fundamental that would lie at any account of 'Randian perfectionism' and perhaps arguably any similar perfectionist account such as the Dougs').

Also, Norton's eudaimonist perfectionist individualist self-actualization-ethics fits into all this quite beautifully, synthesizing ancient Greek themes with themes from modern psychologists like Jung (a big 'individuation' guy) and Maslow (hierarchy of needs or objective goods).

Ok so that's about an hour and 8 minutes worth of output, not bad I guess.  Some promising, uh, leads anyway.

also this should tie in (integrate) closely with any philosophy curricula for children, duh.

1.5hrs spent after edits/additions, and the cannabuzz is gone.  later?... (Next up?: How would Aristotle blog, cannabanized and fasted?  Or: Aspiring to great-souled dialectical perfection/integration/kalon, etc.)  (Is this one chock full of enough thorough-research-derived contextualizing links/leads yet?  Hell, I hadn't even brought up Hegel yet, but Sciabarra incorporates his insights as well.  And what did Hegel think of Aristotle?  Surely Ferrarin (2001, CUP, post-dating Total Freedom by one year...) has insights there.)

Ayn Rand's cameo appearance

In the Verbal River of Gold department:

You'd think that in all the discussion about Ayn Rand (widely known/loved/hated author of The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), and originator of a philosophy she called Objectivism) that has been generated in American culture to date, the subject of the author's one cameo appearance in her novels would not have gone almost totally undetected in that discussion.  But no.  What we have here is a failure to integrate.  On the one hand, we have all this discussion about the author and her novels, and on the other hand, we have near-complete ignorance among the populace as to where that author made a cameo appearance.  But an analysis of that cameo appearance both (a) demonstrates the awesomeness of Objectivism and (b) points inextricably to a massive, gaping plot hole.

This may well go down as one of the biggest checkmates in history, for nearly everyone concerned.  Not for me, though.  I got here first. ;-)  Anyway, the eventual outcome of said checkmating is going to be awesome, for all concerned.

The likes of Bill Maher are a triviality at this point, squashable little roaches.  (Easy, just get 'em cornered, and drop something heavy on 'em.  Reisman's Capitalism comes readily to mind.)  Simply ask Leonard Peikoff what he thinks about Rand's Objectivist philosophy at age 78 or thereabouts, compared to what he thought about it at 19.  He'll probably tell you that her philosophy is all about the fundamental need of mental integration for successful human living.  You can also even ask Rand's former associate until 1968 (but hardly an "ex-Objectivist" - an impossibility given the right training, BTW; I've reached this absolutely certain conclusion inductively based on observation of countless real, concrete, serious students of Objectivism who are all perfectly normal, happy, and functional), Nathaniel Branden.  Or Allan Gotthelf, for crying out loud.  Bill Maher doesn't understand jack shit about Ayn Rand's ideas.  Simple as that.  Checkmate, asshole.  (Now into Maher mocking sneery-voice mode.)  Hey, here's a clue for you, asshole: Paul Ryan isn't Leonard Peikoff!  I've got proof right here:

Paul Ryan:

"I'm congressman Paul Ryan from Wisconsin, chair of the House Budget Committee and the 2012 GOP Vice Presidential nominee."

Now. Here's Leonard Peikoff:

"I'm Leonard Peikoff, the foremost authority on Ayn Rand's philosophy. If you have questions about what Rand really thought, I'm the best guy to ask.  I have written a book, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991), which presents a fundamental, tightly integrated view of man and his relation to existence.  My lecture courses are available for purchase for around $10 each, or roughly 40 cents an hour.  The coming generation of highly-information-savvy college students interested in Ayn Rand's ideas are gonna just love these; I'd seriously and strongly urge today's philosophy professors to prepare themselves for the coming stampede.  Bill who?"

Methinks that the likes of Bill Maher are guilty of a psychological phenomenon known as projection, seeing as how the grotesque caricature involved resembles no serious adult students of Objectivism.  So their attributions of whatever psychological shortcomings in their fantasy version of "Objectivists" come from somewhere within them.  Maybe Maher at 19 was a clueless idiot, more or less like he is now?  This is a much, much better, simpler explanation than that it's Rand and not Maher who's the asshole here.  And if Maher's so great and intellectual and so concerned about the root of the country's ills, why doesn't he at least have Chomsky on his show as a regular, much less an actual student of Objectivism with a clue?  (Don Watkins would be a great choice of guest for Maher's show, would he not.  He's the one currently teaching the up-and-comers all about writing and communicating objectively and compellingly.)

(Also, I hate having to take "l"s out of "Mahler" just to spell this asshole's name right.  Can we not have any more talk about him until he's been whipped into intellectual shape?  Thanks.)

Reminder: 11 days to go before I go on strike.  Pity about poor Catherine, though.  Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

The "Ayn Rand is for children" meme, cont'd

[A continuation upon an earlier theme.]

If you pay attention to the cultural discourse about Ayn Rand and her philosophy, Objectivism, you will have heard it a thousand times: Objectivism appeals to people in their teens or college years, but then they outgrow it.  Our head-of-state said as much in a recent interview.  This supposedly explains why Objectivism supposedly doesn't get much respect from academic philosophers, who are by and large grown up, responsible, and empathetic human beings.  In nearly every thread on reddit's /r/politics subreddit, the most-upvoted comment on any thread with "Ayn Rand" in the title is that by-now well-worn, brief but non-witty quote comparing Atlas Shrugged and Lord of the Rings.  Ayn Rand's writings are allegedly for the socially awkward high-school rejects, the naive, the naively idealistic, the maladjusted, those who don't understand human nature, those who are self-centered to the point of narcissism, and so on.

First off, I think it betrays a fundamental sense-of-life difference between Rand and her critics when the "intellectual adults" lecture the idealistic youth on their naivete - who demand, in essence, that justice prevail in this world, that most everyone - in principle - can see the moral truth and act upon that recognition, and the like.  The "adults" say that we soon learn "in real life" that we must be practical, that we must compromise, that we must conform, that wisdom comes from a resigned acceptance of the world the way it is, and so on. Ayn Rand's sense of life, what appeals to those idealistic youth, is her outright and absolute rejection of a dichotomy between the moral and the practical - that individual integrity is all that we have in our soul to hold onto, and that it wouldn't be considered "practical" in the mind of a Howard Roark, given his ideals, to surrender his soul.  (Practical - in terms of what?)  Ayn Rand, in other words, endorses the "benevolent universe premise" - i.e., the idea that a rational way of life on earth (to quote her hero, John Galt, near the very end of his radio address) "is real, it is possible, it is yours."  In other words, she completely repudiates cynicism.

Perhaps it says a whole lot about the current state of the world that so many people are cynical - that cynicism is considered to be a sign of maturity and wisdom! - that they did indeed abandon the ideals they held in their youth in order to embrace a life of stale practicality and safety - that, in the most vicious cases, they embraced the divine right of stagnation, to employ a phrased used by former Rand associate Nathaniel Branden, who wrote an essay by that title.  Cynicism is not so much an attitude about the world as it is a statement about oneself - and, tragically and needlessly, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in the people who accept, endorse, and practice it.

So, is that what the aforementioned Rand-diminishers actually mean to say when they couch their diminishing in the terms they do - as in, say, a defense mechanism for their own cynical sense of life?  Or, as they might purport to explain in explicit terms, it's because Ayn Rand's egoistic philosophy appeals to some a-social, anti-social, socially-naive, socially-insensitive, perhaps even sociopathic aspects of the human personality - that Rand's philosophy amounts, in essence, to a rationalization for such base and inadequate tendencies in human nature.  Now, that sort of objection doesn't exist on a sense-of-life level so much as an intellectual-interpretive one, and in that case what it demonstrates - in short - is an ignorance of her ideas and/or a failure of reading- or ideas-comprehension.

Now to the original point of my post.  I'm going to concretize in such a way as to make it empirically impossible for the "Rand is for socially-awkward teenagers" meme to gel with real-life instances.  The instances I want to discuss here are instances of people who undoubtedly understood Rand's ideas the way they are meant to be understood.  The real deals, not the random asshole who somehow or other latched onto Rand's ideas.  These individuals are the following, during the decade of the 1950s and first half of the 1960s: Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, Allen and Joan Blumenthal, Alan Greenspan, Elayne and Harry Kalberman, Leonard Peikoff,  Mary Ann Sures.  These are the individuals who comprised the "Collective," Rand's "inner circle" of students and associates.

None of these individuals were angsty teens at the time.  None of them were intellectual imbeciles.  None of them (during that period of time, anyway) behaved or lived dysfunctionally, and none of them - many of their various "fallings-out" or breaks with Rand notwithstanding - ever came to repudiate the core of Rand's Objectivist philosophy, most fundamentally her prescribed neo-Aristotelian, sense-based methods of reasoning in dealing with ideas (which have gone on to be explained at length in Peikoff's books and courses on Objectivism, and in such academic scholarly literature as Sciabarra's Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, which is the only "outside" secondary literature on Rand to date to incorporate the entirety of Peikoff's lecture course series (along with tons of other material) into its research - and guess what, it ends up being quite clearly enough a very positive assessment of Rand's ideas!).  (Only after the mid-1960s did the Brandens in particular (Nathaniel most pathologically) choose to evade the principles they had accepted and espoused; point being, it wasn't the ideas they espoused that led them to their dysfunctional lifestyles and the 1968 Break that torpedoed a flowering movement and set it back decades.)

So, how is the "Ayn Rand is for awkward angsty teens" crowd to handle these high-level-understanding concrete instances?  There's only one thing it can do, short of abandoning that stupid meme: evade.

This is pretty much what the whole mainstream of Rand-ridicule amounts to.  Pathetic, innit?

All I know is, Rand's (neo-Aristotelian) Objectivist philosophy is an example of a perfectivism, and these ridiculers and diminishers most decidedly are not.  Rand FTW.  Game, set, match.  Done deal, pal.  Checkmate again, assholes.  Ain't integration fun? / You can't refute perfectivism. :-)

Peikoff's The DIM Hypothesis: a review

This posting probably wouldn't fit the usual formal standards of a book review, but that's not my concern.  I want to get my comments out there, in whatever order they come out.

(Some context for newbies: Leonard Peikoff is heir to Ayn Rand's estate and her foremost interpreter.  If people understood Objectivism as well as he and Rand did, the world would be a heck of a better place.  The DIM Hypothesis (2012) is the latest of his books.)

First off, it's an important book to read if only because it's very much thought-provoking in its basic thesis, i.e., that modal inquiry helps us to figure out large-scale historical trends.  Dr. Peikoff actually makes some rather modest claims on behalf of this work in the preface/intro part of the book, apparently under the (correct) belief that his hypothesis at the very least needs to be put out there and mentally chewed however much it need be chewed.  I think it would be hard to come away from this book not having one's thinking forever altered in regard to understanding history in terms of modal change.  This is not to say that Peikoff gets it right in his analyses as to all the specific modes - what they are, when and how they apply to a given culture - but one almost surely cannot help thinking that there is contained in his analyses significant germs of truth.

So what is this talk of modal inquiry all about?  As you might have guessed or already know, Peikoff divides modes or methods of integration into three main categories: I for integration, a process which seeks a (conceptual) One in the (perceptual) Many, based purely on secular sense evidence, a mode for which Aristotle is the prime exponent; M for mis-integration, a mental process that leads ultimately in essence to a focus on the (supernatural) One at the expense of the (natural, perceptual) Many, a mode for which Plato, with his Form of the Good, is the prime exponent; finally, there is D for disintegration, a modal opposite (if you will) of M, which is a secularized approach to knowledge focusing on (perceptual) concretes at the expense of any unifying theory, which Peikoff says was brought about as a distinctively modern approach by one Immanuel Kant.  D would be the flipside of the religionist coin which holds that if God is dead, everything is permitted, only the D mode in its extreme or pure form would reject God or the supernatural in favor of "everything goes."

Peikoff makes further distinctions within the two "bad" modal types, the M1 and D1 versions being unstable mixtures of I and M and I and D, respectively, and the M2 and D2 modes being the "pure" variant which would be brought about by consistent application or implementation of the Platonic/M or Kantian/D modes, respectively.  The Renaissance, for instance, was characterized by M1, a mixture of secular and supernaturalist modes, following the Middle Ages which was a pure M2 period and preceding the early modern (still M1) and Enlightenment (I) periods.  There's a handy table on the very back page of the book that provides the "standing on one foot" version of the DIM hypothesis as applied to nine different major epochs of human history.  Only ancient Greece and the Enlightenment receive the I designation.

Peikoff spends the first half of the book explaining how, in a few of the major epochs (Greece, Rome, Middle Ages, Modern), the mode dominant in each culture translates into representative cultural products, namely literature, education, science or physics, and politics.  Here is where I began to get wary because many of the examples he offers as indicative of a culturally dominant mode have such a contrived flavor to them.  Okay, just for instance: totalitarianism is said to emphasize a One (the state, the ruler, the Volk) taking precedence over or dominating the many (the individuals).  What's more, not only does Peikoff say that modern eastern and central Europe was characterized by an M2 mode (associated with Communist ideals - socialist realism in literature, dialectical teleology in science, and "instilling communism" in education) and was "therefore" totalitarianism in politics, but he also says that the Middle Ages, also M2, was politically totalitarian (the One societally being the Church as God's representative, with a One politically being a King).  Now, maybe Peikoff has it correct and the mainstream historians have it wrong, but nowhere else (except perhaps in New Atheist-type literature) have I seen the western Middle Ages as being characterized by totalitarianism politically.  Now, sure, the culture was authoritarian and repressive but . . . is this splitting hairs?  I suppose we could look to the socio-cultural structure of modern-day Islamist theocracies as examples of the M2 approach; are they totalitarian, or something else?  Are they importantly different from western medieval theocracies, which had a more "Greek" relative to "Abrahamic" influence?  Does the person of Jesus vis a vis the person of Mohammed make a crucial difference to the overall flavor of their (measurements-omitted) respective authoritarian cultures?

Anyway, that's kind of a side note.  What I really want to object to is the continuation of very bad "Objectivist polemics" against Immanuel Kant.  How right (or wrong) Peikoff gets things about Kant plays a significant role in Peikoff's modal analysis as applied to the post-Kant modern world.  Looking at the book's index under the entry for Kant, we get "father of nihilism, [pp.] 38-39, 174-175, 350n15" and then "in ethics, self-sacrifice for its own sake, [p.] 37".  Now, perhaps there is some historical narrative that points to a Kantian influence leading to the nihilism that Nietzsche takes up the challenge of overcoming, but I doubt that it's a narrative you'd see coming from Objectivist circles who insist on buying into the anti-Kant polemics that bear little to no resemblance to interpretations of such Kant scholars as Paul Guyer, Christine Korsgaard, or Allen Wood.  Getting from Kant as arguer for how the categories are employed in uniting the world of sense into an orderly Nature, or as arguer for reason as the source of the Categorical Imperative in its two formulations, to Kant as father of nihilism, would be so convoluted on its face as to invite derision.  Kant's influence did indeed spawn a number of different philosophical traditions or schools, be they German idealism, or Nietzsche-as-foil, or Pragmatism, or Rawlsian contractualism, or post-modernism and its offshoots (definitely not a good thing, IMHO; if you want D2 in concrete manifestation, it's a prime candidate), . . . or sensible and straightorward scholars like Guyer et al.  What's more, once the analytic-synthetic dichotomy was widely (though not universally) abandoned in philosophy in the wake of Quine's "Two Dogmas," and when Aristotle and others have made a resurgence in the academy, Kant has ended up being - while still greatly influential on modern philosophizing - more like a foil if not punching-bag for many.

Peikoff is careful to point out that there are a lot of contributing factors to historical change, not merely the presence of a dominant mode.  The modal analysis might suggest something on the order of a necessity between an underlying dominant mode and historical cultural shifts, but to take the example of the Greeks, the dominance of the Aristotelian-style approach was ended by historically-contingent displacement brought about by military conquest.  (That left M1 to assert its dominance in the West over the next few hundreds years, which paved the way for M2 Christianity.)  The modal analysis can generate "prediction" only in terms of probabilities, as Peikoff reminds the reader in the last chapter (which I'll get to in a moment).  Anyway, the notion that Kant's philosophy paved the way for late-modern culture almost surely ends up being complicated by a significant number of factors, enough to render it close to implausible.  It carries with it about as much plausibility as the leftist notion that Ayn Rand's ideas have had a significant impact on the culture in Washington D.C. (i.e., District of Cynicism) much less on Wall Street.  How much attention does the general public (in America especially) pay the intellectuals?  Okay, so a better question to ask would be: how has the intellectual culture indirectly impacted on the general culture?  But what is that intellectual culture?  Is it really so Kant-influenced as to be D1-ish?

As perhaps the most glaring instance of clumsy fact-handling amidst an otherwise intriguing presentation of theory, we get this on p. 304: "Today, however, the ideas of Aristotle are absent from Western culture and have been so for well over a century."  Good lord now, really?  I mean, a lot really does stand or fall on the truth-status of that claim, so we'd want to be damn sure to get it right in pursuit of non-shoddy analysis and prediction.  There are enough dubious claims like this throughout the book that one would have to do a lot of independent fact-checking and study and general observation of concretes to integrate into an explanatory whole, and that's what it ultimately comes down to in thinking about whether Peikoff's translation of modes into cultural manifestations (literature, science, politics, education) really lines up with the best explanation of the facts.  The virtue of this is the food-for-thought element; how much Peikoff's specific analysis throws us off the scent of perfectionistic correctness is another matter.

Peikoff's analysis leads him to a (probabilistic) prediction in favor of an M2 religious totalitarianism in America sometime in the coming decades.  (Not if I have anything to say about it!)  The signs of this are the apparent revival of religion in America in reaction to an intellectually-weak (because disintegrative?) secularism.  People do need a sense of all-encompassing order and explanation as a requirement of cognitive efficacy, yes, and since they're not getting that from the "progressive" establishment or agenda, the only supposed alternative is M of some variant.  (His relating of the "material-prosperity-eschewing" New Christian movement to the "anti-material-prosperity" environmental movement, as a potential or actual alliance, is extra-dubious; it certainly doesn't correspond to the universe of facts I've been integrating.)  He does bring up Ayn Rand's philosophy as the I antidote to this trend, but - given our divergent perspective of the facts of the matter - I think he way underestimates the potential of Rand's ideas to help effect a reintroduction of the I ethos to the west.  I mean, what else does $10 per Peikoff lecture course (a 95+% markdown from before) mean for the future?  Does he not fully realize just how many aspiring Randian-Aristotelian grad students will be generated and fortified by these courses?

I also find it highly dubious that late-modern science/physics (physics being the most abstract, all-encompassing and fundamental of the sciences) is predominantly a D phenomenon, but unfortunately I haven't (yet) all the conceptual tools on hand necessary to effectively counter Peikoff's characterization in this regard.

I'd like to propose an alternative explanation for historical trends.  The theme of Atlas Shrugged is "the role of the mind in man's existence."  Peikoff and I both accept this fundamental, but we probably differ in its application to historical analysis.  Let's say that broad historical and cultural change is effected by a uni-dimensional analysis, namely in terms of this criterion: just how well and to what extent has the potential that is the human intellect been actualized at any given point in history?  Let's take Peikoff's proposed M2 mode as an example to reinterpret in these terms: M2 represents a compartmentalized integration: if you look at the mode of integration of the medieval scholars, it's all very vigorous and intellectually-adept . . . within its restricted domain.  Being that it was restricted so, it served as an impediment to a more full actualization of intellectual potentialities.  With the introduction of Aristotle's secular mode of analysis (via Thomas Aquinas), we had an opening-up of the realms of "permissible" inquiry.  Peikoff would characterize Thomism as M1 - as a mixture (of some sort) of religious and secular modes of thought, but let's say that an unambiguously perfected Thomism adopts the key Aristotelian principle that the key to human flourishing is the maximal perfection of the intellectual capacity.

Peikoff is of the belief that an I mode has to be purely secular or else it's some variant of M, i.e., mis-integration.  It's highly doubtful a Thomist intellectual would buy into that (and especially not on the basis presented in the Objectivist literature), but does or should a Thomist intellectual accept the key Aristotelian-intellectualist (what I call perfectivist) principle?  (At the least, the Thomist should.)  That would make the Thomist essentially an ally on behalf of what Peikoff calls the I mode.  If both Jefferson (a deist) and Franklin (a Christian) exemplify (as I believe they both do) the same key intellectualist-perfectivist principle, and if they both clearly exemplify what Peikoff called the healthy I mode of the Enlightenment, then the fundamental division here isn't a secular/religious one, but an intellectualist/nonintellectualist one.  Perhaps in terms of this fundamental division, we can understand various non-I modes as shortcomings in some way or other, perhaps even as I modes just waiting to be lured out.  (I'm reminded of this line from Full Metal Jacket: "Inside every gook is an American waiting to get out.")

Besides, with some exceptions, religious intellectuals who've come up against Aristotle have performed the proper integration as Aquinas did.  There's also the secular aspect of the key American Framers that the right-wing religious propaganda surely cannot succeed at blinding a critical mass of Americans to.  And doesn't someone like Glenn Beck represent a significant non-M2 (non-totalitarian) cultural force in America today?  Peikoff's doom-and-gloom scenario, based on extrapolation from the conglomeration of facts he cites about today's religious right, looks (to me) to be quite incomplete and selective (likely unknowingly on his part).  If we interpret human history in light of the intellectualist analysis I suggest, and therefore in terms of a not-always-steady progress from the primitive hunter-gatherer days, and in conjunction with the actual and growing presence of Aristotelian ideas in American culture, then there is much cause to be optimistic about the future.  I suppose we can use the coming decades as a testing grounds for these respective explanatory hypotheses.  (If I were a betting person, I'd bet things will end up more Aristotelian than religious-totalitarian, compared to the present.)

Overall I'd give Peikoff's book a B- grade, a 6.5 out of 10.  In sum, the shortcomings have to do not with the concept, but with the execution.  There will continue to be shortcomings in any Objectivist literature that adopts the polemical style practiced by Rand and Peikoff.  As long as one can mentally abstract this and other weaknesses from the thoughtful and thought-provoking stuff, then I'd give this book a solid recommendation.  But since I think this sort of project could be carried out quite a bit better than in its current manifestation, I can give it only a lukewarm recommendation.

Given the potential significance of this book and my curiosity as to what I may have missed in it, I've enabled comments (with minimal common-sense moderation) for this posting.  Thoughtful comments a big plus. ;-)  I'm figuring out how to enable comments on this posting.  It appears not to be so simple as changing blog settings.  (I've also been trying to change the stylization of this blog - or at the very minimum experiment with stylization, preview changes, etc. - with little luck there as well.  I guess that goes with the territory of a free blogging platform....)

The "Ayn Rand is for children" meme

It is truer than any of her clueless leftist player-haters could barely begin to realize at this point; they are supremely foolish(ly ignorant) as to the why.

I mean, Kira Peikoff didn't turn out that bad, did she?

Peikoff's Philosophy of Education course (1985, according to the Russian Radical bibliography I have right here, and around the time daughter Kira is born).  Integrate with observable concrete outcome of such an approach, 27ish years later.  (Additional exercise: integrate Understanding Objectivism and The Romantic Manifesto with observable concrete outcome of the UO and TRM approach, namely: this here blog.  Integrate; assign A+ grade, a.k.a.: "Perfective." [Further exercise: Integrate the foregoing with The DIM Hypothesis.  Earn perfectivist medal badge.  Await further instruction, from self, of course.])  Compare/contrast to the Comprachico alternative, which pretty much exemplifies what the educational Left has to offer to the young - and, in turn, the caliber of minds emerging from our current, non-Jefferstotelian public school system.

Check, and mate.

(About the only thing that the Chicago Bozo and I agree on is the need for a philosophically-educated citizenry and - in generic terms - about the current cultural bankruptcy in America.  But I "get" Rand and he clearly doesn't, while I also know when to keep my own yap shut about Nietzsche.  The Reginster book (Affirming Life) was quite helpful, BTW, for understanding Nietzsche.  Why won't the Chicago Bozo even bother to read secondary Rand literature that has a clue about Rand?  It's Salon.com and Alternet.org hit pieces, when it could be Russian Radical, OPAR, Virtuous Egoist, and Gotthelf.  Vice of one-sidedness, I declare for all with wisdom-loving ears to hear!  My knowledge of Nietzsche could totally kick the ass of his "knowledge" of Rand (which amounts to: jack shit), and my study so far has been secondary literature only - Kaufmann and Reginster - in addition to that Fountainhead intro describing the author's sense-of-life similarities to Nietzsche, which ties in with a Kaufmann editorial footnote to a key aphorism, referencing Aristotle and the noble soul as a lover of self, which sheds crucial light on the egoist character of Rand's perfectivist eudaimonism.  All of a sudden, Rand looks like an Aristotelianized post-Nietzschean, which sounds way cooler than what Bozo-Boy evidently has to offer, which reeks of a politicized, Us-vs.-Them, pathologically elitist, mean-spirited, and - worst of all - malevolent-universe-ish mindset.  Consider: Is it some kind of effing accident that the American cultural dialectic is evidently converging on Ayn Rand, an avowed neo-Aristotelian?  No, it is not.  Ayn Rand is for children, and adults, all of whom have a vital need to integrate mentally.  I mean, duhhhh!  Also, my knowledge of the film canon vastly exceeds the Chicago Bozo's, and aesthetics is central to philosophy (just like Nietzsche would have said, Bozo-Boy).  So clearly I'm a vastly superior philosopher than he, at this time.  Also, Aristotle is the obvious perfectivist trump card in philosophical debate, and I'm definitely more Aristotelian than he!  And also much more capitalist in ethos, as anyone with a clue ought to be.  I blog about individualism (and in connection with eudaimonism, a moral theory with uniquely deep meaning-of-life resonance); he does not.  Strike three, the Bozo's out!)

"Checkmate, asshole."

Two more months of checkmating guaranteed!  And then what?  ;-)

-UP

:-p

A Real-Life Heroine, in Perfectivist Terms

Reddit's /r/philosophy: a fucking joke (and a silver lining)

Exhibit A

It's all too obvious from this example (and it's only one among many) that the malicious, cowardly Rand-hating thugs who infest this otherwise-important social-media outlet for widely-viewed intellectual discourse don't care to have an argument on a level field of play.  (Cowards! Weaklings! BUMS!)  The downvoting patterns are specifically directed at burying Yours Truly's eminently sensible, factually-supported responses to the well-upvoted anti-Rand idiocy that is rampant there.  That's not philosophy, that's a playground mentality intended to deceive the readership about the true nature of the discussion taking place there.  This is the kind of crowd grown and bred by the university philosophy departments these days?  That shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, given the disgusting, pathological, politically-motivated pattern of behavior by a number of "eminent figures" in that profession.

I really don't know how this problem could be solved; it's a failing of the format that would not happen on a genuine Usenet-style format of old.  It's a problem that reddit itself is going to have to fix by some useful and workable change of the format.

(There's also some other software problem that has been resulting in a whole lot of my posted comments being filtered by a spambot for reasons not yet ascertained by the mods there.  Oh, well.  It's discouraging enough to see what I spend much time posting there get buried by anonymous cowards when my comments do show up.  (This is aside from the general feel someone such as myself gets from discussing Rand on /r/"philosophy": that I'm wading through a crowd of irrational bigots, probably much like trying to defend theism on /r/atheism.  [Oh, if you think religious people can be irrational bigots, just watch the way so many of those in the "new atheist" movement react like poo-flinging monkeys toward anyone religious.  "Liberals" can be much lower than the "conservatives" they so often stereotype.])   Discouragement is the malicious cowards' motivation, of course.  I shall have to adjust my own course of action accordingly.  One thing I'm sure of, however, is this: this epistemic aggression will not stand, man.  Not in the long run.  BUP.)

Perhaps the most discouraging thing of all - as a general proposition, not just in terms of concrete instances of injustice or against whom such malicious behavior is directed - is how the stifling of pro-Rand voices has implications beyond merely that for the nature and quality of philosophic discourse.  As Peikoff explained at great length in Chapter 8 of OPAR, on the virtues, the effects of a little dishonesty, by the nature of reality and how all rational cognition is integrated, cannot but spread like a cancer to more and more facets of the dishonest person's existence.  (The case of Nathaniel Branden's progressively worse and increasingly all-encompassing deceptions of Ayn Rand until it blew all up in the end - as it had to - serves as a striking illustration of the principle.)  As anyone who reads this blogs regularly knows, this culture desperately needs an infusion of Aristotelianism in order to address its problems and challenges (much less move above and beyond toward a positive: big-time cultural flourishing).  I don't know how many times it has to happen, for people to get the point that where Aristotelianism (or something like it - e.g., Jeffersonianism) is alive and well, cultures and societies have flourished in ways they didn't before.

As it happens, the single most influential intellectual figure on the American public scene for the last half century up until the present (who else would it be besides Rand?) is - as some of the nation's leading scholars of Aristotle will tell you - also a neo-Aristotelian.  This makes it quite inescapable that in any serious discussion about how to move America forward into a period of enlightenment and flourishing - about what ideas to preach, what behaviors to encourage, what strategies to pursue - the name "Ayn Rand" cannot just somehow be pushed off to the side as irrelevant.  This is simply the nature of things, an unalterable reality, an undeniable absolute.  I think that if there were some way around that, I would have thought of it by now.  But the (perfectivist) principle involved precludes it.  It has to.  Rand shares too fundamental a similarity to Aristotle and Jefferson for it not to be so.  One doesn't have to like this reality to acknowledge it.  Me, I've simply become accustomed to it; it matters not what my feelings about Rand are.  I'm a perfectivist, and she's a forerunner of the idea, and that's all there is to it.

So, given all this, assuming that it's an infusion of Aristotelianism that we need, why couldn't we just say "let's go with Aristotle and/or Jefferson, they provide the best examples to follow."  Okay, but how then do you manage to evade the logical consequence that Rand must enter the discussion?  I can't think of a single fucking way it can happen.  It's either-or.  Either you accept Aristotelianism and Jeffersonianism - and therefore accept Rand in some fundamentally important sense - or you reject Rand and thereby in effect reject Aristotelianism and Jeffersonianism.  The reddit /r/"philosophy" thugs, and all too many people in the academy, have chosen the latter course.  What are the American People going to think about that when they come to find all this out?  "mouse, meet Cat."

If these entities paid attention to Rand like they're supposed to - as Aristotle and Jefferson themselves would if they were around today, since their policy is not one of evasion but integration, particularly with respect to culturally-significant author-figures (this is no-brainer shit, is it not?) - then of course Aristotle would become their center of attention as well.  One need only look at how the really smart people very much influenced by Rand end up being big-time Aristotle fans as well.

As things stand at the moment, most of the non-Randian crowd are completely oblivious to what Leonard Peikoff's lecture courses are all about.  These courses used to be in the hundreds of dollars each, making them prohibitively expensive to the very people - college undergrads - for whom they would make the most difference.  Now, they're marked down to around 10 bucks apiece.  The completely-oblivious crowd does not know what this portends, but I do, and so do those who've listened to and absorbed the material contained therein.  It spells doom for the oblivious ones (if they don't clean up their act).  There's just no getting around the fact that when college undergrads by the thousands upon thousands get their digital hands on these courses, coupled with a growing academic literature on Rand, the older generation of intellectuals is going to be replaced over time by a bunch of Randian-Aristotelians - all for the better, of course.  If I knew of a way around this eventuality, short of Apocalypse stepping the way, I think I would have figured it out by now.  But, well, you know, A is A. ;-)  And /r/"philosophy" is a fucking joke.

But seriously, what do the Rand-haters do in the event that a shit-ton of undergrads have Understanding Objectivism coursing through their veins?  Now that's an ultimate hypothetical right there, a cultural-singularity type of event beyond which we can hardly predict.  Perhaps the question to be asked first, is: will a shit-ton of undergrads have Understanding Objectivism coursing through their veins in the reasonably near future?  If so, why?  If not, why not?  To listen to the Rand-haters, one might think they don't take such an eventuality seriously because, well, of course (for them) Objectivism is obviously shit and always will be.  But they haven't listened to Understanding Objectivism, though, now have they.  So what you then have to ask is whether someone could listen to Understanding Objectivism and come out of it not taking Objectivism seriously.  But all the evidence I've inductively observed tells me that the chances of that happening are slim to none, but then again what if the available sample size is already biased and too small?  (Huh.  What a question to ask.  I wonder what cognitive methodology would boldly facilitate one's asking such questions aimed at establishing the full context.  Gee, lemme think....)  But what if it isn't?  Then what?

Well, then it comes down to an issue of how many of those intellectually-eager undergrads are going to buy up these $10 courses and proceed to go hog wild with their classmates and professors, a scenario where understanding Objectivism becomes the cool new hip fad in a way it just wasn't before.  That might depend in good part on the use of existing media for advertising this material to the right demographic.  That's a fairly capitalistic concept, ones that the people at the Ayn Rand Institute might be more well-attuned to more than just about any of the ideas-merchants out there.  First off, they have Rand books selling like hotcakes, year in and year out.  In the middle of those books are those postcards telling you where you can get more information on things like newsletters, campus clubs, recorded lecture courses, and so forth.  You have a large number of existing Objectivists who've taken these courses telling the newer students of Objectivism on Facebook or wherever that "you've got to hear this course, it will really amplify your comprehension of the philosophy."  It'll be all in (near-)unison directed toward the "newbies."  And guess what, they won't cost an arm and a leg, either!  You could get a couple dozen courses for what used to be the price for only one!  And it's all Leonard Peikoff in his brilliantly engaging and entertaining lecturing style, too!  Wow!  What a fucking bargain, huh?  A steal.  Like, could this be for real?  Did the ARI really do that?  Why listen to music online for free when you could listen to Peikoff for 25 hours for $10?  And maybe instead of getting drunk at the frat party the undies will spend that time doing the more cool thing by listening to a Peikoff lecture.  Just maybe.

What was that about BUP again?  You know, I'm feeling so much better now than when I began this posting.  Took a negative and turned it into a positive.  Lesson: don't let the filthy, scummy, slimy fucks get you down.  Thanks for guiding me in this direction, /r/"philosophy," keep up the bad work! :-D

You can't refute perfectivism. :-)

"Checkmate, asshole."

(Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go tend to my splitting sides.)