Objectivism and Sources by Neil Parille

One of the things I’ve noticed having followed the Objectivist movement for close to thirty years is the extreme reliance of Objectivist authors on secondary (and often outdated) sources and the constant use of previous Objectivist writings in place of original research. As a result, Objectivists tend to fall for urban legends at a rate higher than any group I can think of. I’ll present some examples and give a few potential explanations.

The Fountainhead: Leonard Peikoff

The first book by an Objectivist philosopher (other than Ayn Rand) was Leonard Peikoff’s The Ominous Parallels in 1982.  This book, which was heavily edited by Rand, claimed to show that Nazism was caused by Kantian philosophy and that the influence of Kantian-inspired philosophy in the United States was leading to similar results. Say what you want about the thesis of the book, one of Peikoff’s main sources for Hitler’s thought was the work Hitler Speaks (also known as The Voice of Destruction) by Hermann Rauschning, a Nazi leader in Danzig who later left the Nazi Party and moved to the US. While Rauschning may have met Hitler a time or two, it’s unlikely he had any private conversations with him much less enough to fill a book. The Hitler quotes Peikoff used portray Hitler at his nihilistic best, e. g., “the Age of Reason is over.” A friend told me that when he first read Peikoff’s book that he thought the quotes were “too good to be true.” I can’t blame Peikoff for using the book because it wasn’t known at the time that it was spurious, but it was known around 2000 that the book was largely, if not completely, fraudulent. Unfortunately, Objectivist author Craig Biddle quoted from the book in his 2002 Loving Life (a summary of Objectivist ethics) and Andrew Bernstein in his 2005, The Capitalist Manifesto.

Objectivism and War by Neil Parille

The Ayn Rand Fan Club (YouTubers Scott Schiff and Willliam Swig) has a new episode entitled “Objectivism and War,” which discusses the views of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff and Yaron Brook on war, focusing on the status of innocents in war.  Rand’s comments, albeit off the cuff, don’t seem consistent or entirely thought out.  She says, in response to a question about war with the Soviet Union:

Why is it important to be concerned about politics?  Why should we care about having the right social system?  Because our lives are dependent on it.  Because those systems, good or bad, are established in our name, and we bear responsibility.  So that the Soviet citizens who are innocent I hope someday will be destroyed in a proper war along with the guilty.  There aren’t very many innocent ones, and they’re not in the big cities—they’re mainly in concentration camps.  

Robert “Rewrite” Mayhew in his edition of Rand’s Question and Answers, toned down her response a bit, adding a new sentence -- “If we go to war with Russia” -- to make her call for the death of innocents (now put in scare quotes) appear conditional.

But we must care about the right social system, because our lives depend on it—because a political system, good or bad, is established in our name, and we bear the responsibility for it.

If we go to war with Russia, I hope the “innocent” are destroyed along with the guilty.  There aren’t many innocent people there; those who do exist are not in the big cities, but mainly in concentration camps.

Scott and William then mention Peikoff, who was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly shortly after September 11, 2001.  Peikoff called for the use of nuclear weapons against Iran and said what kind of weapons to be used was entirely battlefield issue to be determined by the military in the war zone.  As William says, even of utilitarian grounds, there are good reasons not to use nuclear weapons since many of the people killed who would have been allies or even spies for the United States.  I’m no expert on Iran, but I get the impression that the base of the regime’s power is in the countryside.  Using nuclear weapons against the major cities could increase the support for the regime and perhaps radicalize the fence sitters.  Best I can tell, the entire leadership of the Ayn Rand Institute has either called for the use of nuclear weapons against Saudi Arabia and Iran or at least said it should not be taken off the table.  Never considered is that there are European countries where the Islamic population is now approaching ten percent.  The ARI doesn’t seem to have given any thought on what might happen in, say, London (now fifteen percent Muslim) should the spiritual capitals of Islam be attacked with nuclear weapons.  Likewise, it isn’t clear how attacking Iran and Saudi Arabia would stop terrorism.  For example, how would the 2016 Nice truck attack (which was carried out by a Tunisian living in France) been prevented by an attack on Saudi Arabia or Iran?

Objectivist Round-up, August 2025

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

Objectivist Round-up, July 2025

1. The Ayn Rand University press recently published Harry Binswanger’s 1975 doctoral dissertation, The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts.

2. The ARU press also published a collection of essays by Binswanger, Ayn Rand’s Philosophic Achievement and Other Essays.  You can read the Philosophic Achievement essay here and here.  I found this interesting:

Ayn Rand’s esthetics depends upon her entire philosophical base, from metaphysics through ethics. Yet her basic explanation of art is quite simple: “What an art work expresses, fundamentally, under all of its lesser aspects is: "This is life as I see it." ...

The history of esthetics is perhaps even bleaker than the general history of philosophy. The 2300 years stretching from Aristotle’s Poetics to The Romantic Manifesto is practically a void; philosophers of art have seemed to be discussing some mysterious, inaccessible entity — not art. Their sterile disquisitions on “the sublime and the beautiful” and their contrived theories of “art as play” or “art as pure form” bear no discernible relationship to the actual paintings, dramas, symphonies, and sculptures that constitute the history of art.

The history of esthetics isn’t my strong suit, but I doubt nothing useful was written for 2300 years and that no one ever said something to the effect that art expresses, “this is life as I see it.”  Binswanger’s essay is rather abstract so it’s difficult to critique.  Some years ago I did a series on Ayn Rand’s originality.  See here, here, and here.

3. Objectivist Conference 2025 is happening in July in Boston.  

4. James Valliant is interviewed about the Leonard Peikoff and Kira Peikoff situation.

-Neil Parille

Objectivist Round-up, June 2025

 1. The Ayn Rand Institute Archives are now searchable, but the on-line Archives seem limited to Rand’s letters.

2. Sam Tannenhaus just published his long-awaited biography of William Buckley, coming in at 900 pages (plus endnotes).  I was naturally interested in what he said about Ayn Rand.  It’s only one paragraph and oddly refers to Rand as an “[Alfred J.} Nock disciple.”  He confirms (citing an interview of Buckley by Anne Heller) that Rand’s first words to him were, “You are too intelligent to believe in God.”  I was surprised that Tannenhaus (who wrote a biography of Whittaker Chambers) didn’t mention Chambers’ review of Atlas Shrugged in National Review.

-Neil Parille

Objectivist Round-up, May 2025

1. Harry Binswanger doesn’t like Harvard, and in particular its philosophy department.  I’m no historian of philosophy, but I have read some works by the philosophers he mentions, and like many Objectivists, Binswanger wants to give the worst possible interpretation to these thinkers.

2. Yaron Brook and Onkar Ghate discuss whether important to know Rand’s life to understand her philosophy.  After listening to it three times, I’m not sure what Ghate and Brook think.  In any event, contrary to Ghate, Rand’s post-Atlas Shrugged depression is well-documented.  Ghate strangely says it’s hard to know much about Rand’s personality f you didn’t know her.  Brook says, quoting Leonard Peikoff, that Rand didn’t consider herself a genius.  This, if true, must be the first case of false humility in Rand’s life.  Allan Gotthelf once told Rand, “You’ve done for consciousness what Aristotle did for existence,” to which Rand responded, “that’s true.”

The Curse of Ayn Rand's Heir (Neil Parille)

The Atlantic Magazine published a lengthy article, The Curse of Ayn Rand’s Heir, which discuses Leonard Peikoff and his relationship with Rand and the Objectivist movement and also Peikoff’s daughter Kira’s conservatorship action (which she ultimately withdrew).  I thought the article was fair and balanced, to coin a phrase.  I note that the author, Chris Beam (who interviewed me for an hour or so), mentions that before his marriage to his nurse Grace Davis, Peikoff gave Kira $2 million, so maybe Peikoff’s contention (through his spokesman James Valliant) that he was cash strapped has some truth to it.  (Before the marriage and the $2 million payment, Peikoff bought a $3.5 million home for him and Davis to live in).  The article mentions that Peikoff is leaving Rand’s books to a committee but doesn’t speculate as to how Davis will be able to pay the mortgage and other expenses after he passes.  (Something tells me that Davis and her son – who lives at the house – aren’t planning on “downsizing” after Peikoff goes to his reward.)  Some Objectivists claimed the article was a “hit piece” noting that The Atlantic has a reputation for being left of center.  But I think anyone who reads the piece can see that Beam (whose politics I don’t know) just wanted to tell an interesting story.  Had he wanted to attack Peikoff, he could have dwelled on Peikoff’s rewriting of Rand’s posthumous material, his breaks with other Objectivists, and the restrictive policy of the Ayn Rand Archives.  He mentions these things in passing.

As Greg Nyquist said a while ago, no one seems particularly interested in what Rand would have wanted.  Of course we may never know.  When Rand died Peikoff was childless so she may have assumed that Peikoff would leave his estate to Objectivist causes.  Yet at the end of the day it’s hard to imagine that Rand would have wanted a fair portion of her estate to go to people who probably never heard of Objectivism until recently.  In any event, I think my conclusion stands: while Peikoff may be competent, it certainly looks like he is being taken advantage of.