1. The Ayn Rand Institute’s 2025 Objectivist Conference was held in July. ARI president Tal Tsfany gave an address about the ARI’s future. The most interesting part was the discussion of the new archival finds (see below).
2. Chris Sciabarra has a lengthy post, the ARI at Forty.
3. ARI honcho Yaron Brook is preparing courses for The (Jordan) Peterson Academy. The Peterson Academy also features courses by Open Objectivist Stephen Hicks. Shouldn’t Brook be working more with Ayn Rand University than Peterson (who is sympathetic to Christianity)?
4. Long time Objectivist writer Andrew Bernstein has a new collection of essays Aristotle Versus Religion. One thing I’ve noticed about Bernstein and some other Objectivists is their extreme reliance on secondary (and often outdated) sources. Bernstein’s main source for the history of Europe is Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization (1945-1975). Bernstein cites it 64 times. As an atheist and Objectivist, Bernstein isn’t a fan of Christianity. Fair enough, yet many of his claims about Christianity are second-hand and often unsourced. The atheist historian Tim O’Neill has a website that refutes the numerous urban and semi-urban legends that Bernstein has accepted uncritically.
Here is an example of Bernstein’s “scholarship”:
The Apostle Paul, for example, wrote: “The more they [the Greeks] called themselves philosophers, the more stupid they grew . . . they made nonsense out of logic and their empty minds were darkened.”
Bernstein doesn’t even quote Paul directly but instead Charles Freeman’s 2002 book, The Closing of the Western Mind:
“The more they [non-Christians] called themselves philosophers,” he tells the Romans (1.21-22), “the more stupid they grew . . . they made nonsense out of logic and their empty minds were darkened.”
For whatever reason, Freeman used the 1966 Jerusalem Bible (an English translation of a French translation). However, the most widely used English translation of the Bible in scholarly circles is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), which says:
20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse;
21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools;
The use of the words “philosophers” instead of “wise,” and “logic” instead of “thinking” in the Jerusalem Bible is idiosyncratic. I can’t find a single English version that translates the Greek text that way. The revised New Jerusalem Bible (1985) translates Romans 1:21-22 similar to the NRSV. In context, Paul seems to be referring to human beings as a result of the fall, not to Greek philosophy or logical reasoning.
4. The Ayn Rand Fan Club has a lengthy discussion of the Leonard Peikoff/Kira Peikoff Bellis situation.
—Neil Parille
2 comments:
Jordan Peterson is an odd duck. He seems like the type who commits himself passionately to whatever his latest obsession is. I listened to an audiobook of his that he narrated; by the end of a certain chapter he was literally choking back tears as he read his own words. It was … strange. I can see him liking Rand; both of them make emotionally charged arguments couched in intellectual terms.
Since its founding, one of the objectives of ARI has been to try to penetrate academia with their own people teaching courses on Objectivism and related to Objectivism. In most colleges and universities, it's very difficult for any Objectivist to (1) get a Phd, and (2) get hired as a professor. If the Peterson Academy is willing let Brook teach some courses, he's going to jump at that opportunity. I wouldn't be surprised, however, if ARI has paid Peterson for the privilege of giving these courses. But there's definitely pressure on Brooks (and ARI in general) to try to things on behalf of "outreach," and this would be one of them.
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