Objectivist Round-up, October 2024

1. The Ayn Rand Institute’s Elan Journo interviewed Harry Binswanger about Alexandra Popoff’s new biography of Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand: Creating a Gospel of Success.  The biography of Rand is part of Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series. While I think Popoff goes a little too far in finding Jewish influences on Rand and her works, Binswanger can’t even concede it’s metaphysically possible.  Binswanger thunders: “Rand was not influenced!”  Apparently, it’s all or nothing for Binswanger.  (How this is consistent with the Objectivist view that it’s ultimately a handful of intellectuals who drive the benighted masses is beyond me.)  Binswanger takes a jab at Barbara Branden’s 1986 biography of Rand, The Passion of Ayn Rand.  He doesn’t name Branden but concedes the author knew Rand.  He then takes a jab at the 2009 biographies of Rand by Jennifer Burns and Anne Heller.   They want to describe Rand as crazy (none of them does) and want to find heightened influence on Nietzsche on Rand “because they want to.”  Apparently, no take on Rand other than Binswanger’s can be made in good faith.  At the end of the interview Binswanger takes exception to Popoff’s claim that Rand’s husband Frank was “meek.”  Binswanger gives a couple examples of Frank’s supposed assertiveness.  I don’t think these examples undercut the portrayal of Frank by other biographers.  In any event, since ARI associated writers have contested over the years that Frank consumed alcohol to excess in his sad, final years why doesn’t Binswanger attack Popoff for confirming this (she had complete access to Rand’s archives, a fact never mentioned by Binswanger or Journo)?  Journo asks Binswanger about how Popoff quotes him but doesn’t acknowledge that Popoff corresponded with him.

2. Yaron Brook was asked about David Harriman’s editing of The Journals of Ayn Rand.  There has been controversy about this for a long time, in particular when Jennifer Burns published her 2009 biography of Rand, Goddess of the Market. Burns reported that Harriman rewrote sentences where Rand was tentative to be more emphatic to conform with her later thinking.  Harriman even moved paragraphs around. (Similar editing plagued 5 other posthumous works.) While Brook doesn’t mention Burns or discuss the nature of the changes, he says that while someone could quibble with this or that editing decision, the editing was supervised by Leonard Peikoff and Peikoff approved the work. Brook also says one can always compare the book with the originals, which is untrue. The Archives are open for the most part only to supporters (but see above and below).

Objectivist Round-up, September 2024

1. The first biography of Ayn Rand in fifteen years just came out, Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success by Alexandra Popoff.  Chris Matthew Sciabarra reviews it.   Popoff is interviewed here.

2. Phil Donahue passed away recently.  He interviewed Rand two times: here and here.

3. The Ayn Rand Archives has enjoyable presentation: Ayn Rand In Film and On Stage.

4. Leonard Peikoff’s daughter Kira is attempting to place him under a conservatorship.  According to Leonard this was prompted by his changing his will, giving half of his estate to his wife and half to Kira. Peikoff said he is unable to pay his legal fees because he had given so much of his estate to Kira that he has little left. After Peikoff’s letter was published, it was discovered that his wife is 28 years younger than him and was his caregiver.  Peikoff and his wife (whom he married two years ago) purchased a $3.7 million dollar home in San Diego.

Neil Parille Revisits Question: Is Objectivism a Religion?

In 2008, I published a blog post, Is Orthodox Objectivism a Religion?  A lot has happened in the last sixteen years – the retirement of Leonard Peikoff, the publication of three biographies of Ayn Rand, several schisms, etc. – so I think it’s time for an update and a potential re-evaluation.  As with my 2008 piece, my discussion of Objectivism is limited to Objectivists associated with the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) unless otherwise noted.

1. Rand saw herself as something of a secular prophet. In the first edition of Anthem, published in 1936, she wrote, “I have broken the tables of my brothers, and my own tables do I now write with my own spirit.” Rand’s writing is frequently apocalyptic as well. She begins John Galt’s sermon in Atlas Shrugged with an Old Testament-like rebuke of a sinful world facing judgment. “I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing—you who dread knowledge—I am the one who will now tell you . . . .”

Nothing much to change here.

Neil Parille Review Latest Rand Biography

Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success by Alexandra Popoff is the first biography of Ayn Rand since the 2009 biographies of Rand by Anne Heller (Ayn Rand and the World She Made) and Jennifer Burns (Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right).

As readers of the Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature Blog know, the first biography of Rand was Barbara Branden’s biography The Passion of Ayn Rand, which was published in 1986.  Branden’s biography was largely commendatory; however, she first revealed that Rand and Nathaniel Branden had an affair and alleged that this affair led to Rand’s husband Frank O’Connor’s excess consumption of alcohol (which is well documented for his sad, final years but less well documented in the 50s and 60s).  Because Barbara Branden had a falling out with Rand in 1968, Objectivists associated with Rand’s heir Leonard Peikoff were encouraged to dismiss this book out of hand.  Peikoff went so far as to denounce the book (while saying he would never read it) as an “arbitrary assertion.”  This culminated in Peikoff’s friend James Valliant’s 2005 dishonest hit piece, The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics, which purported to show that Branden’s biography (and Nathaniel’s memoirs) were lies from beginning to end.

Objectivist Round-up, August 2024

1.  The big news, by far, this month is the publication of a new biography of Ayn Rand in the prestigious Yale University Jewish Lives series by Alexandra Popoff.  It will be published August 6.  Based on a review in the Washington Post and the limited page views on Amazon it seems well worth reading.  It will be the first biography of Rand since Anne Heller’s and Jenniefer Burns’ 2009 biographies.  Popoff was given access to the Ayn Rand Archives and says she admires the Burns and Heller biographies (which largely confirm the accuracy of the Branden accounts).  Her goal, as she says, is to discuss Rand in the context of her Jewish upbringing.  Why was Popoff given access to the Ayn Rand Archives?  Was it because it’s a niche publication published by a prestigious press?  Has the ARI given up on an eventual authorized biography?  Inquiring minds want to know.

2.  Another book about Rand: Ayn Rand and Advaita Hinduism.  I know next to nothing about this branch of Hinduism so at 66 dollars I’ll likely pass.

3. I’ve often considered writing an essay about the Objectivist / Ludwig von Mises take on Nazism.  Fortunately, David Gordon did it for me.

Objectivism and Transgenderism

Charlotte Kushner over at the americanthinker.com has written a harsh critique of ARI's attack of Matt Walsh's documentary "What is a Woman?" While Kushner's article makes some interesting points and lands a few well aimed blows at Onkar Ghate, Chief Philosophy Officer at ARI (what a title!), what interests me more is the general view taken by ARI on this contentious issue. The position of ARI, as far as I can make out, is that there is nothing wrong with transgenderism and that there is no reason to object to individuals transitioning from one gender to another. This is notable if for no reason then it's not likely  that Rand would have agreed with this. But it's also interesting in that there are reasons to doubt that Rand herself could have provided a cogent argument against the morality of transitioning based on the principles of her own philosophy.

There are four basic positions on the trans-issue:

1. Gender dysphoria is both a real and a dire condition which can be successfully treated through a surgical intervention by which the individual is turned into a kind of replica of the gender he/she identifies with. This treatment is so effective at curing the individual's suffering that it can and should be used on minors. Transgenders are often to brutally treated by society that they deserve to have their medical expenses compensated by the state (i.e., taxpayers) and/or insurance companies.
2. Gender dysphoria is likely real and a dire condition, but to "cure" it by surgical intervention is so radical and invasive that only adults should be allowed to make use of it. Minors should not be allowed to transition because it's just too risky. What if they live to regret the irreversible changes inflicted upon them?
3. Whether gender dysphoria is real or not is besides the point. Transitioning is just too extreme a cure for the condition. That such procedures should be allowed against children is a scandal. Psychologists who manipulate minors into transitioning and the surgeons who perform the operation deserve prison sentences. Adults, however, because they are adults and hence free and sovereign citizens, should be allowed to transition, but they must bear all their medical expenses and not become a burden on tax payers (or insurance companies).
4. Any kind of transitioning or puberty blockers should be illegal, because it's against the laws of God and/or the universe. Gender dysphoria, to the extent that it is real, is a mental illness that needs to be treated with psychology-based interventions, not physical mutilation. Those who transition become perpetual patients (i.e., they need constant medical care and access to hormones), and this means they'll likely become a burden on an already over-burdened medical system.

Now one of the claims of Objectivism is that it can determine questions of morality through "reason." But how would "reason" determine which of these four positions is, from an ethical point of view, most correct or valid?  It seems like whenever people talk about this issue, whether it is Yaron Brook, Matt Walsh, or Joe Biden, the main issues at stake are assumed as kind of moral axiom that cannot be questioned or denied.  And no wonder---because, as George Santayana reminds us, "The ultimate intuitions on which ethics rests are not debatable, for they are not opinions we hazard but preferences we feel; and it can be neither correct nor incorrect to feel them." If you are horrified by the sufferings of gender dysphoria and are convinced that radical surgical interventions can bring an end to all this suffering, then it's hard not to conclude that either the first or the second position is the morally "right" one. But if on the other hand you find yourself horrified at the idea of genital mutilation and creating permanent wounds that have to be kept in an unhealed state, you'll be hard pressed to regard gender assignment surgeries as anything but an abomination that needs to be put down by the force of law. But in either instance, where is the "reason"? It is certainly not found in the mere feeling of horror.

Objectivists have failed to add anything to this controversy through their so-called "reason." They have merely expressed their various preferences, and then quibbled in bad faith about the rationalizations used to justify rival positions. Ghate and company have it out for Matt Walsh. So they put the worst possible interpretation on everything he says and act like this somehow makes them "rational." Ghate contends, for example, that because Walsh went to Africa to ask some tribesman what they thought of men trying to become women, this constitutes evidence of a desire to return to a more primitive state---as if Walsh is eager to give up all his wealth and access to modern conveniences in order to live in a grass hut in Africa. Walsh of course has no desire to live in a grass hut and Ghate's inuenndo is just another of the usual smears that Objectivists of the more orthodox stripe often specialize in. 

Objectivist Roundup, July 2024

1.  Another month and another Kindle Book.  The Atlas Society just published Robert Tracisnki’s Pocket Guide to Ayn Rand.

2.   The Ayn Rand Fan Club had an interesting discussion of “Social Hierarchies In and Out of Objectivism.”  They mention a recent interview with economist Walter Block who was involved in the Objectivist movement in the 1960’s.  He confirms the cultish side of Objectivism and says Rand would excommunicate people if she thought they were failing to see the implications of her thought.  They also include an interview with up-and-coming Objectivist psychologist Gena Gorlin.  Gorlin is asked if she’s read Nathaniel Branden’s The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (a post-Split book).  She says she hasn’t read it or much of Branden.  She says he’s a minor figure in psychology and implies his theory of self-esteem is outdated.  Certainly, Branden’s exaggerated view of the importance for self-esteem hasn’t held up well in recent research (for example, it’s been shown that criminals have high self-esteem and even commit crime to keep their self-esteem up).

3.  The Ayn Rand Institute Press just published a collection of writings by Tara Smith and others called The First Amendment.  I enjoyed Smith’s essays and in particular her discussion of religious exemptions to government laws and regulations.  Of note is Onkar Ghate’s essay on the “separation of church and state.”   As long time readers of the ARCHN Blog know, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government.  States could and did support religion in various ways.  Ghate doesn’t mention this or even appear to know this.  He mentions Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist where he coined the phrase.  However, in his Second Inaugural Address, Jefferson wrote, “I have therefore undertaken, on no occasion, to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them, as the constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of state or church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies.”  And what would an essay on religion be without the Tertullian misquote – “I believe because it's absurd”?

4.  The big news this year is that the Ayn Rand Institute is moving from California to Austin, Texas, minutes away from the University of Texas at Austin.  The ARI has purchased the land and will construct an Ayn Rand Center and an Ayn Rand University campus.  I don’t know if there is a backstory here, other than the ARI’s major donor lives in Austin and the ARI funds some professorships at UT-Austin.