The Scandal of the Founder's Reading List

What makes the Founder's reading list so curious, is not so much the inclusion of books Rand liked, but the inclusion of books Rand didn't like. Hence, we find Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which Rand regarded as the most evil novel ever written; and we also find the inclusion of Theodore Dreiser, an author whose writing Rand regarded as no more competent than that of a typical high school student. Why the inclusion of books Rand didn't like? Some might think it's an attempt to give the devil his due; or maybe merely a way of trying to prove that Founder's is not a slavishly Randian institution after all. However, there is a much easier explanation. The reading list includes books Rand didn't like because these are books that Rand mentioned, and the individual who is most likely responsible for that list, Gary Hull, is a notorious intellectual light-weight who probably has never read at least half the books on his list. After all, it was Hull who, at a party some twenty years ago, expressed credulity at the size of von Mises' books, saying, in effect: "How can anyone read books that are so long!" Hull choose books mentioned by Rand because he had no other way of figuring out which books are important and which aren't, since his reading is so limited.

The trouble is, of course, that some of the books Rand mentioned but disliked are not terribly important. Sinclair Lewis is a fine writer, but he's not a major figure worthy of study in a college literature course. Thomas Wolfe was an immensely talented writer, but his work is excessively narcissistic and, if the truth be told, a disaster for American letters. John O'Hara is a minor figure almost entirely forgotten today. As an additional problem, there are all those books that Rand never mentioned yet which certainly are important—or at least more important than the works mentioned above. Rand seems to have confined reading to classics that she like (or happened to read while attending school in Russia) or early 20th century books. She seems to have known very little (or at least she never mentioned) the lion's share of eighteenth and nineteenth century English and American literature. She never mentioned in print Fielding, Austen, the Bronte sisters, Thackery, Trollope, Dickens, Melville, James, Crane, Eliot, Meredith, Hardy. Major Twentieth century figures she wrote nothing about include Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, Waugh, Faulkner, and Bellow. She also some gaping holes in French literature: Stendhal, Maupassant, Proust, Gide, Giono, etc. etc.

The real issue we have people who are not well-read trying to set up a Great Books curriculum, and that just doesn't, nor can it ever, work. Worse, such a curriculum is, in a deeper sense, at odds with Objectivism itself, because any student who read and absorbed and understood the best that has been thought and said during the course of Western Civilization could not possibly remain an Objectivist. What makes great books great is their ability to describe and illuminate the great insights into human nature and the human condition. Yet it is precisely these great insights that Objectivism tries so very hard to ignore or deny!

The College 4 Ayn Rand Fans

Founders College ad in the Christian Science Monitor online:




Compare and contrast this with Founders College Professor Robert Garmong's denials to this blog last week:

"Those who want to read Founders as an "Objectivist college" are doing an enormous disservice to our students. That is not our stated goal, nor is it my goal as a professor. To those who have raised bizarre and irrelevant criticism of Founders, based on nothing but their own bias against Ayn Rand's ideas, I would recommend that you study the fallacy of the Argument from Ignorance."

Despite these and other embarrassing contradictions of Dr Garmong's claims, neither Dr Garmong nor the College's PR firm have responded to our requests so far for elaboration.

(thanks to sharp-eyed commenter Neil Parille for the catch)

The Obvious Parallels

The principals at the controversial new Founders College have been at considerable pains to deny any ongoing Objectivist connection to, and influence at, the College. Gary Hull, the long time Ayn Rand Institute speaker who founded the College, claimed the original plan of an Objectivist College "fell by the wayside." Founders CEO Tamara Fuller said the Ayn Rand connection "distracted" people and claimed that the college "never intended to teach Objectivism." Most recently, Founders Professor of Philosophy Robert Garmong wrote to this blog calling such criticisms "bizarre and irrelevant" and "based on nothing but...bias against Ayn Rand's ideas." He also recommended that those who raised such issues - presumably us included - "study the fallacy of the Argument from Ignorance."

We at ARCHNblog have already highlighted over the last few weeks the many connections between Founders and Objectivism, and also, less formally, the Ayn Rand Institute. The Ayn Rand Institute, run by Rand's appointed intellectual heir Leonard Peikoff, is the seat of Objectivist orthodoxy, and encourages Rand's thought to be followed to the letter. Any deviation from Rand's views or personal criticism of Rand is strongly discouraged - an oft-noted irony for these apparent advocates of individualism. Is ARCHNblog's pursuit of these connections as bogus as Garmong claims? While many of the specifics of Founders curriculum are still vague, the outline of their Novels 1&2 curriculum is on-line, along with an outline of their Drama curriculum. We ran a detailed comparison between these two curriculums and Ayn Rand's own highly distinctive and well-recorded views on literature and drama from sources such as The Objectivist Reference Centre combined our own research. The result was an almost perfect match: (apologies for formatting in some browsers)

Founders College       "What Ayn Rand Read"
Novels 1&2 Curriculum   Objectivist Reference Centre
----------------------------------------------------
Victor Hugo             Victor Hugo
Fyodor Dostoevsky       Fyodor Dostoevsky
Nathaniel Hawthorne     Nathaniel Hawthorne
  The Scarlet Letter      The Scarlet Letter
Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis  Sienkiewicz Quo Vadis
Tolstoy Anna Karenina   Tolstoy Anna Karenina
Thomas Wolfe            Thomas Wolfe
Walter Scott Ivanhoe    Walter Scott Ivanhoe
Alexander Dumas         Alexandre Dumas
H.G. Wells              H.G. Wells
Jules Verne             Jules Verne
Calumet K               Merwin&Webster Calumet 'K'
Mickey Spillane         Mickey Spillane
Theodore Dreiser        Theodore Dreiser
Sinclair Lewis          Sinclair Lewis
Thomas Mann             Thomas Mann
Margaret Mitchell,      Margaret Mitchell,
 Gone With the Wind        Gone With The Wind 

Novels 1&2 cont.       Other References:
O. Henry                O. Henry, (The Ayn Rand Column)
                    One of Rand's favourite writers
Donald Hamilton         Donald Hamilton (Ayn Rand Column)
Balzac                  Balzac, (Romantic Manifesto)
John O’Hara             John O’Hara,
Frederic Brown          Frederic Brown, (Romantic Manifesto)
Kafka                   Kafka  (Peikoff, Ominous Parallels)
The Scarlet Pimpernel    "A...fiction hero loved by Rand"

We do not consider our above references are complete, and welcome any additional connections readers might note. However, what is astonishing is the sheer slavishness with which Ayn Rand's personal and often eccentric literary tastes have been followed by a College publicly purporting to offer a broad, objective (as opposed to Objectivist), liberal curriculum to its students.

However, remarkable as this is, it seems Founders College's Drama curriculum even manages to outdo the Novels course in intellectual forelock tugging. A comparison here shows that Founders Drama course has been lifted bodily from Ayn Rand Institute head Leonard Peikoff's "Eight Great Plays," along with a couple of firmly Ayn Rand-approved extras and of course a couple of Rand's own plays.

Founders College      "Eight Great Plays"
Drama Curriculum       Leonard Peikoff course
----------------------------------------------
Antigone                Antigone
Othello                 Othello
Le Cid                  Le Cid
Don Carlos              Don Carlos
An Enemy of the People  An Enemy of the People
Saint Joan (G.B. Shaw)  Saint Joan, G. B. Shaw
Monna Vanna             Monna Vanna
Cyrano de Bergerac      Cyrano de Bergerac

Founders Drama cont.    "What Ayn Rand Read"
The Browning Version    The Browning Version
The Winslow Boy         The Winslow Boy

Founders Drama cont.    Other ref.
The Miracle Worker     "the only epistemological play
                    ever written."- Ayn Rand
Night of January 16th   Ayn Rand
Ideal (unproduced)      Ayn Rand

Once again we have an almost perfect match, with the only exception being Aristophanes "The Clouds" from Founders list (Aristophanes is however lectured on by the Ayn Rand Institute's Robert Mayhew, so presumably he is approved). One also notes that Ayn Rand, a minor playwright even by the most generous standards, gets no less than two plays in Founders drama curriculum - one of which, "Ideal" was never even produced. Shakespeare, or George Bernard Shaw, by comparison, only get one.

So despite the strong claims of the college's principals, it seems that once again the parallels between Founders, Objectivism, and the Ayn Rand Institute are all too obvious. So far I have emailed Professor Garmong inviting him to answer some direct questions about his claims, but he has not responded. I have also emailed Founders College's PR company seeking further contact information. They have also yet to respond. Certainly as far as Professor Garmong is concerned, it seems it is he himself who is either "ignorant" of his own College's stated curriculum, or is misrepresenting it. We also note that Bryan Niblett, Dean of the Faculty and teaching Writing and Literature is one of the staff who does not appear to have any overt connection to Objectivism or the ARI to date. We would be most interested in Professor Niblett's comments on the subject.

Founders College Professor Writes to ARCHNblog

Under the name "Friscodog" an ARCHNblog commenter - presumably Founders College Philosophy Professor Robert Garmong - makes the following statement:

"I am the philosopher hired by Founders to teach the introduction to philosophy courses, so I believe I have some standing to comment on this school.

As long as I am at the helm of the Founders philosophy department, students will be educated on the major ideas behind the Western tradition. ALL of the major ideas, not just Objectivism.

Before you assume that my personal adherence to Objectivism will lead Founders to a bias in favor of Objectivist ideas, please do me, and Founders, the honor of checking the readily-available evidence of my fairness as a professor and a grader. There are plenty of sources available out there (e.g., pickaprof.com, ratemyprofessor.com). You might also wish to check my statement of teaching philosophy, as outlined on Founders' site.

Founders College will not hold adherence to Objectivism as its standard of right and wrong, not as long as I am involved with this enterprise. Founders expects its students to be prepared to discuss all of the philosophical tradition.

Those who want to read Founders as an "Objectivist college" are doing an enormous disservice to our students. That is not our stated goal, nor is it my goal as a professor.

To those who have raised bizarre and irrelevant criticism of Founders, based on nothing but their own bias against Ayn Rand's ideas, I would recommend that you study the fallacy of the Argument from Ignorance."(edited slightly for spelling)

Mr Garmong is referring to coverage of Founders College on this blog (here, here, here) and elsewhere (subscription required) over the past few weeks.

Once again, claims such as Mr Garmong's above seem to clash with both the historical origins of Founders - it was started by by The College of Rational Education Inc. in 2005, which by its own description exclusively applies Ayn Rand's philosophy to all its undertakings - and its current staff composition, which is composed of at least 50% dedicated Objectivists (the Chronicle of Higher Education article underreports this figure). Further, much of the course descriptions and surrounding rhetoric have a strong Objectivist character - for example, the Literature reading list. Thus, it is hardly "bizarre" and "irrelevant", as Mr Garmong writes, to raise these issues. Rather, it is a reasonable conclusion that is consistent with the facts so far.

Given the vague and even murky nature of Founders origins and mission - even CEO Tamara Fuller says on an Ayn Rand related site, there's been "a lot of mystery" surrounding it - it would be helpful if Mr Garmong was willing to answer a few direct questions. If he is, he could email me at estigon2001atyahoodotcodotnz for a short list. I will be happy to publish his answers in full.

Ayn Rand as Pop Culture Shrapnel

"If you discovered the existence of a Martian who had a rational mind, but a spider's body, would you classify him as a rational animal, i.e, as man?...In the case of the rational spider from Mars (if such a creature was possible) the differences between him and man would be so great that the study of one would scarcely apply to the other, and, therefore, the formation of a new concept to designate the Martians would be objectively mandatory." - "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology", Ayn Rand, p73, 1968




- "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars", David Bowie, 1972

Ayn Rand Contra Biology

Over at David Friedman's blog, another libertarian, William H. Stoddard, makes this interesting comment:

"Consider, for example, how Ayn Rand's foundational arguments in
ethics go astray by assuming that every organ and function of a
living body exists to further the survival of the individual organism
-- a hangover from Aristotelianism, I think. Narrowly, she doesn't
take into account the functions of the gonads, the external
genitalia, or the mammaries; broadly, she doesn't consider that
individual survival itself is a means to longer-term ends, or, in
less teleological language, is selected for its capacity to
contribute to inclusive fitness."

This is a very apropos point to the ARCHN thesis; that Rand's philosophy cannot account for, and indeed ignores, basic facts of reality, such as biology. Elsewhere Stoddard, who appears to have a generally favourable view of Rand, contributes a thoughtful criticism of her ethics, pointing out the important inconsistencies between her philosophic positions and her fictional examples, and suggesting how her work might be more usefully interpreted - he suggests personal "legacy" as a promising grounding for ethics.

We at ARCHNblog agree, incidentally, that Rand is far more inconsistent and contradictory as a writer and thinker than she is portrayed to be by her followers. Wider recognition of this fact is necessary, I think, before her work can be usefully discussed.

(thanks to Mike Huben for the tip)

'Gary's Gulch'

As covered by ARCHNblog over the last week, the latest Chronicle of Higher Education now carries (subscription required) the Founders College/Objectivism connection in some detail, wittily calling it "Gary's Gulch."

While the CHE notes the Ayn Rand Institute orientation of founder Gary Hull and Philosophy Professor Robert Garmong, and that Art History Professor Lee Sandstead is an Objectivist, it has overlooked that Business Professor Steve Gedeon is also an Objectivist, and that both the latter also have ARI affiliations. (It is unlikely that the CHE would know much about the significance of this in Objectivist politics). The CHE also overlooks that, contrary to claims of the college's ideological neutrality, ARI-friendly Objectivists make up at least 50% of the faculty announced to date.

In the latest twist in this somewhat murky saga, the CHE semi-confirms what an anonymous commenter suggested here a few days ago: "More surprising than Founders' public move away from objectivism (sic) is that Mr. Hull has largely cut his ties with the institution. He remains a shareholder in the founding corporation and will serve as a consultant to the college, but Ms. Fuller says he will not have a role in day-to-day operations."

This, however, seems to still clash with the statement on Founders website from March 14 that since stepping down as CEO, Founders' founder Hull has the role of "Chief of Educational Research and Development with responsibilities for cultivating the faculty, developing the curriculum and teacher training, and maintaining the highest level of academic standards."

This role seems hardly like that of a mere "consultant," so it seems that Hull has wound his involvement back even further since March. The CHE report sheds no light on why:

"'It's his personal choice,' (CEO Tamara K. Fuller) says, declining to elaborate. Mr. Hull has been mum, not returning repeated calls and e-mail messages from The Chronicle over a six-month period."

The CHE report also mentions that scholar Eric D. Daniels "has also backed out of the venture" and that he, like Hull, is also mute, saying only, "I am not and will not be involved, and have not been for about a year." The CHE does not mention the fact that Daniels is another ARI-friendly Objectivist. However, the CHE does mention that "Mr. Daniels taught in Duke's Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace, which Mr. Hull directs. It is one of several programs supported by the BB&T Charitable Foundation, an arm of a financial-services company whose chairman and chief executive officer, John A. Allison IV, describes himself as an admirer of Rand."

This turns out to be yet another ARI connection, as ARCHNblog notes that John A. Allison IV is a "major contributor to the Ayn Rand Institute."

While an official relationship between the ARI and Founders does not seem to exist, given the accumulation of clear yet less formal relationships between Founders and the Ayn Rand Institute, it seems difficult to countenance claims that there is "absolutely no connection."

The CHE takes a somewhat skeptical approach to the project:

"But even before the doors open, Mr. Hull's dream looks like it's beginning to crumble. He has backed out of the project's day-to-day operations, the college's chosen accreditor is in hot water with the government, and enrollment has fallen far short of the 140 students the college hoped to open with in September....The college has reduced the anticipated size of its first class from about 140 students to between 15 and 20. Ms. Fuller plans to supplement the college's revenues by continuing to operate an inn on the South Boston property and by building a retirement and lifelong-learning community nearby.

To float the enterprise, Ms. Fuller and several anonymous investors have put up $10-million, according to documents submitted to the state council. The investors have also taken on $17.1-million in debt, according to the documents, including the purchase of a former plantation, with a 160-year-old mansion, for a campus....The campus also has a spa, swimming pool, a Doric-columned mansion, crumbling slave quarters, and, according to local lore, no fewer than 30 ghosts. This fall the ghosts may outnumber the students. So far, just 10 have enrolled."

New Intellectual 'U': Update

I've now updated my original post below about Founders College, as some anonymous commenters were claiming that there is "absolutely no connection" between the college and the Ayn Rand Institute. In fact, as my update confirms, at least 50% of the faculty to date are committed Objectivists with obvious ARI orientation. Perhaps our commenters are not aware of this. Or alternatively, the apparently Objectivist orientation of the college (it is the "brainchild" of long-time ARI speaker Gary Hull) is not perhaps considered helpful in the marketing of the college to the wider community (one commentator accused us of trying to "marginalise" the college by exploring this connection).

As Greg Nyquist remarks in comments,"the Objectivist view of education, as expounded by Leonard Peikoff, is actually one of its least objectionable theories. The practical sum of it is little more than the Great Books with the eccentric addition of Rand's reading list," and futher,"given how bad so much American college education actually is, this would be an improvement for most students." I would tend to agree, with the caveat that this would depend on just how, for example, the literary list at Founders is taught - whether it would strongly reflect Rand's particular artistic opinions or not. This is not clear at this stage.

Why anonymous commenters would so strongly seek to deny the college's connection with Objectivism and the ARI, when this is obviously the case, is also not clear.

Update:Neil Parille provides a highly useful link in comments which perhaps begins to explain some of the above. From there we get to this story from News 14 Carolina

"There are other questions about the college. Its license application says Founders College will be operated by The College of Rational Education Inc., a nonprofit corporation in North Carolina. According to papers filed with the North Carolina Secretary of State's office in March 2005, The College of Rational Education "shall be exclusively operated as to provide a reality-based, rationally grounded education, by applying Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, to all of the Corporation's activities and undertakings."

Hull is quoted as saying that this idea "fell by the wayside." The story also adds that according to Hull, as with anonymous commenters here, that "there is no connection between Founders College and any particular philosophy or outside organization such as the Ayn Rand Institute, for which he has written articles."

However, Hull's claims, which date from almost a year ago, seem contradicted by reality. The fact is that at least 50% of the current faculty of Founders are longstanding Objectivists with some form of ARI connection. Further, while not much is yet clear on the content of Founders courses, what few specifics are evident - for example, the Literature course reading list - is highly suggestive of orthodox Randian influence, and guest lecturers include self-described Objectivists such as psychologist Dr Scott Adams and ARI writer Andrew Bernstein. Much of the Founders site's writing echoes Objectivist rhetoric. Finally, with its $12m campus and "fine dining" facilities it is clear there is some serious money behind it, if not clear exactly whose.

Thus the situation, like so much else in the ever-shifting world of Objectivist politics is murky. Founders seems to have started out with a strong Randian direction, but this has been diluted; possibly in the face of marketing realities, either reluctantly or strategically. The downside of this dilution is what seems to be increasingly strong criticism of the project and Hull personally from some sections of the Objectivist community. Perhaps Hull's decision to leave Rand to fall "by the wayside" - at least in his publicity - has also compromised his standing to some degree with the ARI.

Nonetheless, despite Hull's claims, there remains a strong Objectivist, and indeed ARI flavour to the Founders project. Unless there is another schism in the works - something that is always a possibility - this seems to be the underlying direction the college is taking.

The Objectivist Plan to Defeat Islamic Terrorism

The article by John Lewis outlining the Objectivist plan to defeat Islamic Terrorism linked in Daniel Barnes' post below provides such a superb example of what is wrong with Objectivism that I can't refrain from commenting on it. By attempting to view the world through the prism of Rand's philosophy, Objectivists are unable to appreciate and grasp the complicated web of critical factors making up a given situation.

Not surprisingly, the first thing Objectivists get wrong is human nature. Lewis begins his screed by paraphrasing Thucydides: "Even though circumstances may change, human nature remains the same; and certain human elements—especially moral and psychological factors—are at the root of all wars." Lewis is here off to an auspicious start, much better than one would expect. Thucydides was a very wise man who understood human nature and, for that reason, grasped the motive forces of history. But Lewis immediately distances himself from Thucydides' wisdom by adding: " We can disagree with Thucydides about the identity of those factors, and reject his pessimistic view of human nature..." The question, however, is not whether Thucydides' view of human nature is pessimistic, but whether it is right. And if the course of human history is anything to judge by, Thucydides is in fact right. That is why he is still read nearly two and half millenia after his death.

Cut loose from the most important knowledge of all (i.e., knowledge of human nature), Lewis can proceed to advance his utterly clueless views about foreign policy:

History is clear [writes Lewis]: All-out force against fanatical killers is both practical and moral. It led us to our two most important foreign policy successes—the defeats of Germany and Japan in 1945—and to the permanent peace with those nations that we take for granted today. Such a course was practical and moral then, and it is practical and moral now—an affirmation, and a defense, of life and civilization.

This is an example of foreign policy dictated by ideology. James Burnham defined ideology as “a more or less systematic and self-contained set of ideas supposedly dealing with the nature of reality (usually social reality), or some segment of reality, and of man’s relation (attitude, conduct) toward it; and calling for a commitment independent of specific experience or events.” That, in a word, is what is wrong with Lewis' analysis: it insists that we follow strict, inflexible principles regardless of the specific situation at hand. If we do a little simple analysis, applying intelligence and good judgment to the predicament faced by the United States and the West, we will quickly discover how absurd and misguided Lewis really is. Lewis wants us to give the Islamic world, particularly Iran, an "ultimatum" demanding "unconditional surrender." "When the enemy balks at the ultimatum," he counsels, "atomic bombs are dropped on his cities." Now let us consider what would happen if the U.S. attempted to follow this policy. In the first place, a nuclear attack on Iran would so horrify the rest of the world that the United States would find itself entirely isolated. We would almost certainly lose all our European allies, including Great Britain, and, even more critically, we would lose access to the oil in the Middle East. The social turmoil in the Islamic world caused by a nuclear strike against fellow muslims would force the leadership in Saudia Arabia and other oil producing countries to boycott the U.S. And even if (per impossible) no boycott occurred, the oil infrastructure in the Middle East is so fragile that even a nuked Iran could knock it out, especially given all the support they would get from muslim sympathizers in oil producing countries. Lewis, guided only by his simple-minded ideology, is under the illusion that the President Bush refuses to attack Iran because he is a pragmatic altruistic. This is nonsense. The United States has not attacked Iran for the simple reason that such an attack would pose a serious threat to the oil supply from the gulf. If that supply is cut off, the United State's economy -- indeed, the entire global economy -- would experience a serious downturn that could have catastrophic social and political consequences in the West. The turmoil here in America could be so dramatic that the government, just to get by, might very well have to declare martial law.

Lewis has absolutely no appreciation for how complicated the real world situation actually is, nor does he have a clue how many factors are involved in judging what would happen if the U.S. pursued the policies he and his Objectivist cohorts advocate. To take just one example, has he or anyone at the Ayn Rand Institute kept eye on the financial situation in the world? Does anyone there understand the extent to which banks in the United States, prompted by the Federal Reserve and an irresponsibly deregulated banking system, have extended credit and expanded the U.S. money supply? It's not clear that it would take much to bring the entire economy down, with our over-leveraged asset and real estate markets, and mountainous piles of debt ubiquitous throughout the whole system. There are very compelling reasons explaining why the U.S. has not bombed Iran. It is not currently a viable option. In the real world of fact, rather than the imaginary world of Objectivist ideology, there are oftentimes no easy solutions. Not all problems are soluble, even if we apply Objectivist "reason" to them. Life is tough. To try to evade this by describing it as "pessimistic" or the "malevolent universe principle" is merely to place one's head firmly in the sand. But, as Thomas Carlyle reminds us, "No Ostrich, intent on gross terrene provender, and sticking its head into Fallacies, but will be awakened one day,--and in a terrible a posteriori manner, if not otherwise!"

Ideology is almost always about evading hard facts. Part of the appeal of Objectivism is that it provides an over-simplified view of the world that explains all the ills of mankind as due to a failure to follow "reason," which in concrete terms means: a failure to follow Ayn Rand, a woman with no particular expertise or insight into human nature or the human condition and whom von Mises once described, so exasperated was he by her intransigent bullying nonsense, as a "silly little Jewish girl."

Objectivism: Incompatible With Christianity, Apparently

The Chronicle of Higher Education carries the story of Ashland University's clash with Objectivist and Anthem Foundation fellow John D. Lewis over tenure. The posturing and bellicose Lewis, who is perhaps best described as yet another wannabe-tenured radical, is being spun as something of a martyr; indeed, the incident is being inserted by the Objectivist faithful into Leonard Peikoff's master prophesy of the forthcoming Christian Fundamentalist takeover of America. However, while it does seem clear that the recently appointed president of Ashland is indeed a Christian Fundamentalist (his name, Frederick J. Finks, is straight out of an Ayn Rand novel), it is equally clear that given both Lewis's devout anti-theism and penchant for hysterical rhetoric, and the fact that Ashland was founded by the Brethren Church and has its own Centre For Religious Life, that conflict was pretty predictable. And while the Centre states that "The difference between AU and a Christian college is that faculty, staff and students do not have to adhere to Christian beliefs in order to work at or attend" it also states "Ashland is different from a state school because Christian beliefs and ministry is encouraged and supported on campus." I don't read anywhere that Ashland encourages and supports the empurpled denigration of Christian views that Ayn Rand is famous for.

Personally, I think John D. Lewis' tenure could have been rejected on far more straightforward grounds - for example, the fact that he writes childish, reality-free tracts like this.

New Intellectual 'U'?

The Ayn Rand Institute looks like its got its very own university, Founders College, kicking off this year.

For a flavour, here's the Novel course's reading list:
Victor Hugo, Dostoevsky, Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Hawthorne (especially The Scarlet Letter), Quo Vadis, Tolstoy (esp. Anna Karenina), Walter Scott (esp. Ivanhoe), Alexander Dumas, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, O. Henry, Calumet K, Mickey Spillane, Donald Hamilton, Thomas Wolfe, Balzac, John O’Hara, Frederic Brown, Kafka, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Gone With the Wind, Thomas Mann, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis.

Hmmm. Looks like pretty much the usual suspects. No doubt Tolstoy and Thomas Wolfe fans are for the high jump, whereas a suitable appreciation of Mickey Spillane will get you an A+. Not that I'm knocking pulp of course. I'm a big Matt Helm fan myself.

Update: A couple of anonymous comments insist that there is "absolutely no connection" between the ARI and Founders. I based my post on the facts that long time ARI supporter and writer Gary Hull, as Anonymous put it "designed the core curriculum and teacher training, a brilliant achievement in rational education" in addition to recently stepping down as CEO and Chairman, and who is, according to Founders website, staying on as "Chief of Educational Research and Development with responsibilities for cultivating the faculty, developing the curriculum and teacher training, and maintaining the highest level of academic standards" - something that seems to clash with Anonymous' claim that Hull "has no involvement with the operations of the college whatsoever."

Further, Founders' Philosophy Professor Robert Garmong is a regular writer for, and presumably a supporter of, the ARI. Some of his work can be found on the ARI site here, here, and here.

Also, Founders Business Professor Steve Gedeon seems to be a member the ARI-supporting Toronto Objectivist Association, an organisation which also carries Founders opening as a news story on its website. We also find that Robert Garmong, and the presumably related Dina Garmong have also contributed articles and "educational lectures and events" here.

Additionally, Founders Art History Professor Lee Sandstead is also described here as an "Objectivist Art Historian", who has written for The Intellectual Activist during its ARI-endorsed period. Interestingly, two reviews of Sandstead's writing are the only on-line articles in the archives of, you guessed it, the Toronto Objectivist Association. Sandstead also seems to have personally maintained a chronology of Ayn Rand's life and works, and speaks at events promoted by ARI supporters.

Thus we find long term Objectivists, and ARI supporters at that, are at least 50% of the faculty thus far announced, in addition to the college itself being reportedly ARI supporter Gary Hull's "brainchild." Given the extremely small size of the Ayn Rand Institute in the scheme of liberal academia, this composition seems unlikely to be coincidental.

We will also leave aside intriguing hints like the makeup of the reading list, and the general tone and rhetoric of the site itself.

Thus our anonymous commentator's claim - "There is absolutely no connection between ARI and Founders College" - seems itself highly questionable. But then perhaps this is just another of Objectivism's famous "contextual" absolutes. Their other claim - that we are "labeling the college as ARI-related" and that this is "unfair, unsupported and only serves to marginalize something you have not bothered to research" is therefore likewise.

However, in the spirit of open-mindedness, I will add a question mark to the post heading, and rephrase the opening line similarly. And if our anonymous commentators would be prepared to step forward and name themselves, then perhaps we might take their comments a little more seriously.

Ayn Rand Quote of the Week 2 - 6/7/07

"There is no place for whim in any human activity - if it is to be regarded as human." - Ayn Rand, "Art And Cognition" p78

Understanding Objectivist Jargon Pt 12: "Benevolent Universe Premise"

"Benevolent Universe Premise" = The universe is in fact neutral. Thus, success and happiness are metaphysically to be expected. This is because the universe is indifferent to you. If you act in accordance with Objectivism you are certain to achieve your values. Unless there is some kind of accident, in which case, you won't. Hey, that's the universe for you. If this seems to make no sense, just remember that Ayn Rand always thought and wrote clearly and precisely, not like other philosophers.

Understanding Objectivist Jargon Pt 11: "Malevolent Universe Premise"

"Malevolent Universe Premise" = the view that the universe is somehow inherently hostile to man. Who exactly holds this odd view, and if this was the case, how man might have survived thus far in what is undoubtedly a cosmically unfair matchup is not clearly explained.

Ayn Rand Quote of the Week

"Painting [re-creates reality] by means of color on a two dimensional surface."
- Ayn Rand, "Art and Cognition"

ARCHN Quote of the Week 5/7/07

"To sum up, Rand's theory of certainty was a byproduct of her hunger to preserve various uniformities of thought and feeling among her closest friends and disciples. Since this hunger did not square with her belief in individualism, nor with her rejection of agression, she sought to justify it by devising a theory which would allow her to get away with claiming that her beliefs and emotional reactions were absolutely true and certain. This rationalization granted her the right to bully and manipulate her disciples into behaving precisely as she saw fit. In so doing, she ended up depriving them of the very individuality that her philosophy purportedly sought to uphold." - Greg Nyquist, ARCHN p178

Rand's Place in Philosophical Traditions

Rand was fond of dividing the intellectual world between the Aristotleans and the Platonists, as if everyone, fundamentally, falls into one camp or the other. This division, however, is far too narrow. It leaves out several other basic philosophical positions, such as naturalism and German transcendentalism.

Both Plato and Aristotle arose out of the Socratic philosophical tradition, which holds, in the words of Socrates himself (as transcribed by Plato) "that Reason [is] the disposer of all" and that if anyone "is interesting in finding out the cause or generation or destruction or existence of anything, he must find out what [is] best for that thing." Things are to be understood by their uses and purposes, not by their elements or antecedents. Hence we find Plato arguing that the eyes, nose, and mouth are in front of the head, because the front is the nobler side! And in somewhat the same manner, we find Aristotle coming up with the concept of final causes, which expresses this methodology at its most abstract.

Aristotle tried his best to integrate this Socratic-Platonist philosophy with common sense, which accounts for Aristotle's popularity with thinkers like Rand. But the methodology of the tradition—a methodology satirized by George Santayana when he compared it to the chorus Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire, which sings that opium puts people to sleep because it has dormitive virtue—runs deep in Aristotle, as it does, unfortunately, in Rand herself. The whole idea of founding a metaphysics on axioms, is inspired by this dubious Socratic methodology. And the notion of reality as logical—this too, Rand owes to Aristotle and the Socratic tradition.

The naturalist tradition, on the other hand, eschews this sort of nonsense. According to naturalism, matters of fact cannot be determined by logical constructions, for the simple reason that the external world is not a logical system. It doesn't not conform to "reason," whatever that may mean! Naturalism instead asserts two very simple but, from a Socratic point of view, heretical principles: (1) "Nothing arises in the world that we may use it, but what arises brings forth its use." Here we have "that discarding of final causes on which all progress in science depends," comments Santayana. And (2) "Nature is her own standard and must be accepted on her own terms, not on ours." Or in other words, the world does not exist for the convenience of our intellects! Nature must be accepted as she is, not as how we, or our philosophical principles, wish her to be.

Now although Objectivism frequently gives lipservice to naturalistic ideas, fundamentally Objectivism is not a naturalistic philosophy. It belongs to a different philosophical tradition. Hence Peikoff's assertion that philosophy has a veto right over all other disciplines, including physics. Or consider the statement "contradictions cannot exist in reality." How do Objectivists know that? Have they run empirical tests? No, of course, not. They "deduce" it from their axioms. Well this is really no different than Plato deducing the circularity of the planets' orbits from the divininity of the circle as a form. It's the classic metaphysical gesture of determining matters of fact from logical, moral or rhetorical constructions. It is not the way scientists work in empirical disciplines like physics and chemistry, where conjectures are inferred from facts and then corroborated through extensive empirical testing. Nature is its own standard, and to find that standard we must consult nature!

Orthodox Objectivist Questions Randian Theory of History

Since I regularly attack orthodox Objectivists for failing to demonstrate any intellectual curiosity or rigor, it's only fair to point an example of at least one (now former) orthodox Objectivist who has shown at least some capacity to think outside the Randian box. Robert Tracinski, editor of the Intellectual Activist apparently has created a bit of stir amoing the ARI faithful because of his criticism and partial rejection of Rand's theory of history. "I do not mean to deny the crucial importance of fundamental philosophical ideas," Tracinski writes, "but to suggest that the relationship between philosophical ideas and all other ideas, and the means by which ideas are propagated in a culture, is more complex than Objectivists have recognized." Most interesting is Tracinski's explanation of why he's moving away from the Randian theory. He found that when trying to do journalistic work on a daily basis, he kept running across utterly novel experiences that could not always be easily integrated with his pre-existing knowledge. In other words, experience was teaching him that not everything in the world could be explained either by Rand's philosophy or by philosophy in general, leading him to conclude that "Any valid new observation or theory in a specialized field is based on an immersion in facts and observations, and on a whole range of lesser integrations and preliminary conclusions derived from those observations," a conclusion that veers toward my own position.

The question is: now that Tracinski has taken this one step away from orthodox Objectivism, will he be inexorably led, by the logic of that one step, away from Objectivism? Some orthodox Objectivists have accused Tracinski of moving away from Objectivism in order to become a conservative. I don't see that yet. He still seems pretty orthodox on most other points of Objectivism. However, once an individual makes that first step away from strict doctrine, the first thing that happens is that other orthodox Objectivists turn on him and essentially drive him out of the fold. Now Tracinski may be able to find refuge with the TOC crowd, where he's sure to be welcomed. But rejecting Rand's theory of history is a pretty big deal. It's much more important to Objectivism than most of Rand's admirers and critics realize, because it gives the philosophy an almost quasi-religious eschatological force. It provides Rand's disciples with a secular form of salvation which promises the (nearly) inevitable triumph of Objectivist values (see Rand's Playboy interview for more info). Once you reject this theory, it's just a short step to asking what else might be wrong with Objectivism. After all, Rand's main focus in epistemology (i.e., theory of concepts, problem of universals) is clearly motivated by her theory of history; the one follows the other like the cart follows the horse. So to doubt the one is to (at least potentially) experience doubts about the other. Once, however, you begin doubting Rand's epistemology (and there's a lot of evidence compiled by cognitive scientists that give compelling reasons for such doubts), it's just a short step to doubting many other doctrines in Objectivism, particularly the Aristolean methodology embraced by Rand and her rather naive politics.

The Shorter ARCHN: Chapter 2, "Theory of History"

A series of handy short summaries of the main arguments of ARCHN for those unfamiliar with the book. For more detail, you can read ARCHN online by clicking on the sidebar link

A utopian view of human nature such as Rand’s will inevitably lead to a utopian theory of history. Such a theory usually posits that man is inherently good, and that any evil he might have done throughout history is the result of some external factor. For Marx it was an unjust economic system, for Rousseau modernity itself; for Rand, the effect of bad philosophical ideas. If man had only possessed a truly rational philosophy, none of the horrors of the past need have taken place.

According to Objectivism, the most important issue in human existence is how man should use his consciousness. “In the life of man,” writes Leonard Peikoff, “epistemological, metaphysical, and moral ideas – which means: philosophical ideas – are the ruling power.” (OPAR, p451) Ultimately every decision a man makes reflects his fundamental philosophical views, and this naturally this thesis expands to cover all of history. But where do these views come from? Well, Rand believed that only a small part of the population takes the trouble to define their views through conscious deliberation; these are “the intellectuals,…the guides, the trend-setters…”, who are the “transmission belts…between philosophy and culture.” Through their own incompetence in the defense of reason, the intellectuals had lost sight of reason’s prime mover, Aristotle, and had submitted to the evil of Immanuel Kant and his destructive Critique. This resulted, ultimately, in the horrors of the 20th Century such as Soviet Gulags and the Nazi death camps.

How does Rand’s theory stack up against the facts? Since it is beyond the scope of “Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature” to empirically verify the causal factors of every period in history, three specific evidentiary claims made by Rand and her followers are examined.

1) Christianity is responsible for Dark Ages in Europe
2) The growth of statism in America is the byproduct of altruistic morality
3) German philosophy is responsible for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi death camps.

On examining 1), it turns out that as usual Rand and Peikoff provide little or no hard evidence for their contention, only a lot of vague insinuation and oratical exaggeration. It turns out that the Dark Ages are far more likely to have been the result of severe trade contraction due to the Islamic military stranglehold over Europe from 7th to the 9th centuries, combined with the Danish and Norwegian barbarians laying waste to much of the North and West, than the rise of Christian belief. Likewise, contra Peikoff’s claim that it was due to the rediscovery of Aristotle, the subsequent Renaissance can also be readily attributed to the retreat of these influences, and subsequent revival of trade and prosperity. Further, if, as Peikoff contends, the asceticism of Christianity was the decisive influence in society, we would expect to find such societies economically destitute and culturally stagnant. Yet this is quite false, as of course the Renaissance marks the apogee of Catholic Church’s dominance over Europe.

As to 2) we again find that this is undercut by a fundamental fallacy – that institutions such as governments are always the product of conscious moral design. In fact, we find the expansions of state power in America was largely brought about by unintended developments in the institutions of the Federal Government, especially Congress, such as ‘pork-barrelling’ and ‘log-rolling.’ These expansions of state power are arrangements that have little or nothing to do with ‘altruism’ or self-sacrifice, and everything to do with the exercise of politics for self-interest and mutual advantage.

Finally, turning to 3) we note once again that Peikoff offers no concrete evidence for this speculation. He is also simply incorrect in claiming Kant, and Hegel advocated “irrationality.” Some of their ideas may have been irrational, but this is hardly the same thing. Further, as the writings of the aforesaid are extremely vague, they are just as subject to the reverse interpretation – one could easily claim that they were responsible for the liberation of the death camps, so one be so inclined. It also appears that far from preaching abstruse doctrines of irrationalism, altruism and collectivism, much of the Nazi’s actually rather limited success came from standard demagoguery like “Freedom, Work, and Bread”, as well as capitalizing on the substantial underlying anti-Semitism that existed in Germany as it did in much of Europe. Even then this did not capture a majority for the Nazis, and Hitler’s subsequent ascent to Chancellor owed more to standard backstage political manoeuvering than the advocacy of any specific philosophical doctrines.

To conclude, it seems that the Randian historical narrative is merely an exaggerated romantic invention, which on examination turns out to be both shallow and factually inaccurate.

(Summary of "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" by Greg Nyquist, Chapter 2)

Formal Versus Practical Meaning in Objectivism

When examing any philosophy or ideological belief system that oversteps important realities, it is important to distinguish between the formal and the practical or real meaning of the doctrine in question. The formal meaning is the literal meaning. But for the very reason that the literal meaning does not correspond to reality the doctrine cannot be followed unless it is transformed into something else. So, for example, the formal meaning of the Objectivist theory of history is that social conditions are determined by which system of philosophy appears the most compelling in the minds of intellectuals. Since this doctrine is not true and will not lead to the results predicted in the theory, Objectivists don't follow it literally. While they all give lip service to it, their behavior does not follow logically from it. If Objectivists were logical, they would seek to make every effort to present their philosophy in as favorable a light to as many people as possible. They would also seek to answer all serious objections made to their doctrines. Yet we don't find orthodox Objectivists doing this. Instead, we find them intentionally limiting exposure of their doctrines (e.g., they won't talk to libertarians, for instance) and refusing to engage with their critics. Although they often seek to challenge the status quo, they do so only within venues that they can control, so they can avoid any really serious challenge. When they nevertheless are confronted with challenges from others, rank and file Objectivists often become scornful, angry, and resentful. They regard those who disagree with them with a blistering contempt. Although ever so sensitive to any critic who even mildly distorts some aspect of the Randian creed, they demonstrate no conscience at all as far as distorting the views of their ideological opponents, thus making their espousal of selfishness take on a sinister aspect in the eyes of disinterested bystanders. In brief, the behavior of Objectivists, particularly when it comes to their attempts to spread the Randian philosophy, are not terribly rational nor do they make any sense when judged in relation to Rand's philosophy of history.

So what then is the real, practical purposes of Rand's philosophy of history? If the behavior of Objectivists is anything to go by, this theory would appear to have several practical purposes having more to do with the unique psychopathology of the Objectivist faithful than with logic or rational behavior. First, Rand's philosophy of history gives Objectivists the comforting illusion of potency and self-importance by suggesting that the course of history can be changed merely by arguing about abstruse points of metaphysics and epistemology; second, it helps to justify the Objectivist's instinctive loathing and mistreatment of those who refuse to agree with him (such people are evil because their espousal of wrong ideas threatens individualism and civilization); third, it justifies not getting involved in anything as messy, difficult, and threatening to one's ego as politics (because politics doesn't really lead to social change; only arguing about philosophy accomplishes that); and fourth, it helps justify shunning any person or group perceived as a threat to Objectivism (because such people are the most evil of all, since they consciously pursue evil values, and having any contact with them only gives their ideas a moral sanction they don't deserve). Hence the real, practical, behavorial effect of Rand's philosophy of history is to justify that disagreeable mixture of arrogance and hostility on the one side and self-complacency and lack of initiative on the other that exemplifies most Objectivists when it comes to spreading their philosophy. The typical Rand follower simply wants to enjoy the comforting illusion that, eventually, everyone will agree with him and his ideas will be vindicated without ever having to do anything too strenuous or risky to make it happen.

Rand's Intellectual Influences — Concluding Thoughts

In a series of posts, I have attempted to infer some of the intellectual sources of key concepts in Rand's Objectivist philosophy. The purpose of these investigations is not to question Rand's originality, or suggest she stole her best ideas from other thinkers, but to emphasize that she had to get her ideas from somewhere. Unless we adopt the supposition, haughtily dismissed by Rand herself, of innate ideas, Rand must have gotten her ideas either through direct observation and/or by contact and interaction with the ideas of others. Now ideas about history, epistemology, social change and the like cannot be made solely through direct observation. They must be formed through contact with ideas found in books and in the conversation with other people. As Rand is not known to have been a volumunious reader, it is likely that she was (perhaps unwittingly) influenced by the intellectuals she conversed with, which, in the thirties and forties, were primarily "conservative" intellectuals, such as Isabel Patterson, Leonard Read, and Henry Hazlitt. All influences, of course, were run through the Randian filter, so they were often transformed into something else by the time Rand got done with them.

Now in Objectivism we can trace two types of ideas: those ideas that are core to Rand's thought and psychopathology and that probably would've remained the same regardless of how she had been influenced; and those ideas that stem from the concepts and notions she found herself exposed to in the intellectual circles in which she travelled. An example of the first type of idea is Rand's support of selfishness, which she stubbornly adhered to despite the protestations of Nathaniel Branden. An example of the second type of idea is her contention that the failure to solve the problem of universals is the main cause of modern irrationality. This notion was, I suspect, suggested by Richard Weaver's central thesis in his book Ideas Have Consequences. Had Weaver not written and published that book, Rand may have never been exposed to the idea of regarding the issue of universals as central to the modern world. And if she had never been exposed to that idea, her theory of history must have taken on a different aspect. She would've had to come up with a different scapegoat for modern irrationality. A different scapegoat, however, would've shifted her focus in epistemology from the issue of universals and concepts to something else. In that case, IOTE would've been a very different book.

So in Objectivism we can trace substantive ideas that find their root in Rand's particular way of thinking and responding to the issues life confronts us with; and then we have ideas that are merely formal and arbitrary, that easily could've been different if Rand had travelled in different intellectual circles and been exposed to different ideas. In the theory of history, the substantive idea is the notion that abstract ideas determine the course of history. Rand's seems to have taken this as an axiomatic idea right from the start. However, the actual form this idea took, the actual abstract ideas that would, for Rand, determine history, was probably determined second or third hand from Richard Weaver, and would've been different had she never been exposed to Weaver's thesis.

Intellectual Sources of Rand's View of Universals

"Most philosophers did not intend to invalidate conceptual knowledge, but its defenders did more to destroy it than did its enemies. They were unable to to offer a solution to the problem of universals." --Ayn Rand

Where did Rand acquire this odd notion that the so-called failure to solve the problem of universals has brought about a major crisis in Western Civilization? Consider the following take on universals:

"A 'universal,' to philosophy, is our conceptual categorization of a thing. Is there, for example, such a thing as Apple? We know the things so categorized... But does Apple have a real existence? Occam said no, won the debate, and put Western Civilization into reverse gear... It is very difficult to see where [Occam] erred.... The mistake was incredibly subtle. To deny 'Apple' is, in the end, to deny the reality of human concepts. It is to deny the workings of the human mind..."

Sounds suspiciously similar to Rand. Is this perhaps by one of her less orthodox followers? No, not at all. It's by George Roche, former President of Hillsdale College and someone who despised and probably never read Rand. So where did Roche get this notion that the ills of Western Civilization can be traced to the philosophical issue of universals? Roche's source is Richard Weaver's book Ideas Have Consequences, published in 1949. Is it possible that Rand's original inspiration for blaming the problem of universals for crisis of Western Civilization also came from the same source? But where else could it have come from? Rand is not known to have been widely read in philosophy. She only, we have been told, read synopses. She was, it is true, a history major, but she got her degree at a Soviet University, and if her philosophical writings are any indication, she does not appear to have had more than a superficial knowledge of history. So once more the question arises: where else but from Weaver could she have gotten her odd notions about the problem of universals? It is entirely conceivable that one of her conservative acquaintences brought up the Weaver's thesis during one of Rand's intellectual bull sessions; that from hence, Rand absorbed the thesis and integrated it into her own philosophy, altering it somewhat in the process but not substantially changing it; and then she introduced it to the world in her essay "For the New Intellectual," published in 1961. Weaver's thesis clearly would have appealed to Rand, because it gives importance to an issue that hardly anyone has cared about since the age of scholasticism, when the philosophy of Aristotle, Rand's master of masters, dominated the intellectual scene.

Understanding Objectivist Jargon Pt 10: "Anti-concept"

"Anti-concept" = any vague, confusing or poorly defined term. Which would include the term "anti-concept" itself. More simply, any concept Ayn Rand was anti.

Intellectual Sources of Rand's View of Kant

Where did Rand pick up the notion that Kant's philosophical aim was to destroy reason to make way for faith and mysticism? Given that Rand probably never read Kant and that what she wrote about Kant has been refuted several times by two of her admirers (Walsh and Seddon), how can we account for Rand's declaration that Kant is the "man who closed the door of philosophy to reason"?

Kant, it is true, did admit in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Reason that "we have to deny knowledge to make room for faith." But this is hardly the equivalent of full-fledged attack on man's conceptual faculty. Where, then, did Rand get the idea that not merely Kant, but his critical philosophy, is opposed to reason?

One possibility is Chapter 4 of George Santayana's Reason in Common Sense. While it is unlikely that Rand ever read Santayana, she may have got Santayana's take on Kant second-hand through someone who had read him. Of all the major philosophers that came before Rand, Santayana's view of Kant comes closest to Rand. "Kant," writes Santayana, "had a private mysticism in reserve to raise upon the ruins of science and common-sense. Knowledge was to be removed to make way for faith." Santayana contended that there lurked a "sinister intention" in Kant's substitution of faith for knowledge. "[Kant] wished to blast as insignificant, because 'subjective,' the whole structure of human intelligence, with all the lessons of experience and all the triumphs of human skill, and to attach absolute validity instead to certain echoes of his rigoristic religious education.... Nature had been proved a figment of human imagination so that, once rid of all but a mock allegiance to her facts and laws, we might be free to invent any world we chose and believe it to be absolutely real and independent of nature. Strange prepossession, that while part of human life and mind was to be an avenue to reality and to put men in relation to external and eternal things, the whole of human life and mind should not be able to do so!" As for Kant's morality, Santayana regarded it as a "personal superstition, irrelevant to the impulse and need of the world. [Kant's] notions of the supernatural were those of his sect and generation, and did not pass to his more influential disciples; what was transmitted was simply the contempt for sense and understanding and the practice, authorized by his modest example, of building air-castles in the great clearing which the Critique was supposed to have made."

Rand would have agreed with virtually everything in Santayana's critique, particularly about Kant's motivation, except that she would have wished to translate it into her own strange philosophical terms. Kant, she argued, invalidated man's knowledge on the grounds that man's "consciousness possesses identity." This is intolerably vague. How much better is Santayana when he writes: "Conceptions rooted in the very elements of our being, in our sense, intellect, and imagination, which had shaped themselves through many generations under a constant fire of observation and disillusion, these were to be called subjective, not only in the sense in which all knowledge must obviously be so, since it is knowledge that someone possesses and has gained, but subjective in a disparaging sense, and in contrast to some better form of knowledge. But what better form of knowledge is this? If it be knowledge of things as they really are and not as they appear, we must remember that reality means what the intellect infers from the data of sense; and yet the principles of such inference, by which the distinction between appearance and reality is first instituted, are precisely the principles now to be discarded as subjective and of merely empirical validity."

We find an echo of Santayana's argument in Rand when she writes: "[T]he attack on man's consciousness and ... on his conceptual faculty has rested on the unchallenged premise that any knowledge acquired by a process of consciousness is necessarily subjective and cannot correspond to the facts of reality." But how much better is Santayana's explication of the same point! Santayana gets right down to the heart of the matter without the scholastic trappings that Rand brings to the table with her penchant for reducing all disagreements to a failure to observe the law of identity and the other Objectivist axioms. Of course, Santayana had a huge advantage over Rand: he had actually read Kant in the original German and had even studied Kant in Germany under German professors. So his criticisms, whether one agrees with them or not, at least are well-thought out and plausible. Rand's criticisms, to the extent that they're plausible at all, merely repeat those of Santayana. But in rewording them in terms of her own philosophy, she weakens them and opens herself to criticism. (Peikoff is even worse in this respect.)

And so from this, we can make a generalization which will help place Rand's achievement as a philosopher in proper perspective. You take almost any position that Rand holds, whether good, bad, or indifferent, and you'll find that position more ably supported by someone else.

Hoisted from Comments: Peikoff's Weird Science

Following Greg Nyquist's discussion of the roots of Leonard Peikoff's "The Ominous Parallels", regular commenter Dragonfly chimes in on Peikoff's odd views on science (p276-277):


Dragonfly: Peikoff also argues that scientific theories are influenced by bad philosophy. He mentions Heisenberg's uncertainty relation as an example. No doubt no such thing would exist in Objectivist physics! Further he writes: "Even the professional mathematicians, the onetime guardians of the citadel of certainty and of logical consistency, caught the hang of the modern spirit. In 1931, they were apprised of the latest Viennese development in the field, Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem, according to which logical consistency (and therefore certainty) is precisely the attribute that no systems of mathematics can ever claim to possess." Really a strange version of Gödel's theorem! No doubt Objectivists can point out the error in Gödel's proof? As in his DIMwit lectures, Peikoff uses as reference for his scientific insights the well-known scientific publication The New York Times.


The following observation is also interesting: "Decades ago, the exponents of purposefully guided, objective cognition - which is what scientists had once been - began yielding to two newer breeds: the narrow technicians and the punch-drunk theoreticians. The former are intent on amassing disconnected bits of experimental data, with no clear idea of context, wider meaning, or overall cognitive goal. [Really, Doctor Peikoff? How do you know? Where is your evidence?] The latter - trained in a Kantian skepticism by Dewey, Carnap, Heisenberg, Gödel and many others - turn out increasingly arbitrary speculations while stressing the power of physical theory; not its power to advance man's confidence or make reality intelligible, but to achieve the opposite results. Quantum mechanics, the theoreticians started to say, refutes causality, light waves refute logic [I wonder how they do that?], relativity refutes common sense [and therefore it must be wrong?], thermodynamics refutes hope [???], scientific law is old-fashioned, explanation is impossible, electrons are a myth [where did he get that notion?], mathematics is a game, the difference between physics and religion is only a matter of taste [it is at least bigger than the difference between Objectivism and religion].

Sometimes you can hear some of the less orthodox Objectivists whisper that Peikoff now has lost his marbles, but that he has been so brilliant in the past. Well, it seems he lost his marbles already 25 years ago. Perhaps he has never had any marbles!

The Intellectual Sources of Peikoff's Ominous Parallels

As elucidated in an earlier posting, it had become fairly common during the thirties and forties to blame the rise of German statism on German philosophy. "The popularity of the opinion that German nationalism is the outcome of ideas of German philosophy is mainly due to the authority of George Santayana," wrote Ludwig von Mises in 1940. There is a problem, however, with this view of the matter. Santayana never actually claimed that German idealism logically brought about (or caused) German nationalism and Hitlerism. His claim was much more modest. He believed that German nationalism and German philosophy were both expressions of the German character, so that philosophy, far from being a cause or a logical precondition, was merely a symptom. But conservative intellectuals were eager to blame German idealism, which they despised, for German aggression; and so they assumed as Mises assumed.

Santayana's book Egotism in German Philosophy , originally published in 1915, was seen as a prophetic explanation of the rise of militarism and Nazism in Germany. Of course, it was no such thing, but once the notion had entered the intellectual culture, there was no getting it out. In 1943, Hayek published Road to Serfdom, which was the first book to popularize the idea that there existed parallels between what had happened in Germany around the turn of the century and what was happening in England and America during the thirties. Hayek's book focused almost exclusively on politics and economics; he did not try to put the finger of blame on German idealism. His friend Karl Popper, however, once more played the German Idealism card in the second volume of his The Open Society and its Enemies, which focused on the deleterious influence of Hegel.

Popper's book was published in 1945. The Anglo-American intellectual milieu had undergone a transformation in the thirties. Nazism had forced many of central Europe's most important and influential scholars and intellectuals to emigrate to England or America. Many of these expatriated scholars and intellectuals had studied Hegel under the most advanced Hegelian scholars in the world, and they simply could not accept Popper's view of Hegel as the forerunner of German totalitarianism. There was something of a critical backlash inspired by Popper's Open Society that marks the waning of the view that German idealism caused the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. By the time Peikoff, under the direct tutelage of Rand, began embalming the notion in his book The Ominous Parallels, it had become largely discredited. Extensive research in pyschology, sociology, and history all demonstrated that social change was not determined by abstract philosophy. The belief in the simple causation between philosophical doctrine on the on hand and social crisis on the other belongs to a less sophisticated intellectual milieu.

The trouble with Objectivism, particularly in its ARI manifestations, is that it seems trapped in a kind of time warp: its main notions have their source in ideas Rand was exposed to in the conservative circles she travelled in during the thirties and forties. By the fifties, Rand rarely ventured outside her own hermetically sealed circle of young Objectivist enthusiasts (the "collective"). She knew little--and evinced hardly any interest at all--in developments in cognitive science, psychiatry, neuroscience, historical scholarship, and philosophical scholarship. Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels has its roots in a very shallow, intellectually impoverished soil. It stems from misrepresentations and over-simplifications of the works of Santayana, Hayek, Popper and a few others, as filtered through the unsophisticated conservative intellectuals of the thirties and forties.

The Shorter ARCHN: Chapter 1, "Theory of Human Nature"

A series of handy short summaries of the main arguments of ARCHN for those unfamiliar with the book. For more detail, you can read ARCHN online here:

1) There are two basic conceptions of human nature: utopian and naturalistic. The utopian considers how man “should be”. The naturalist considers how he is. I argue that Rand’s view of human nature is utopian to the core, and her philosophy is a mere rationalization of her romantic notions about how man “should be”.

In an interview with Alvin Toffler, he asked “Do you regard philosophy as the primary purpose of your writing?” Rand replied, ”No. My primary purpose is the projection of an ideal man, of man ‘as he might be and ought to be.’ Philosophy is a necessary means to that end.”

To admit that philosophy is a means to some end other than discovering the truth is to admit that one is merely rationalizing one’s existing beliefs. This, in essence, is what Objectivism is all about. And it is in the vast gap between the Randian ideal of Howard Roark or John Galt and real human beings that the rationalistic, utopian nature of her philosophy becomes most striking.

2) Rand’s theory of human nature is based on the idea that the human mind enjoys complete sovereignty over the body and the will. “Everything we do and are proceeds from the mind,” Rand once declared. ”Our mind can be made to control everything.” Man, we are told, is given his body, his mind, and the “mechanics of consciousness.” The rest is up to him – “he must create himself.” This suggests that man begins as a sort of of empty vacuum which through some mysterious process creates a specific character ex nihilo – out of nothing!

This conviction that man creates himself is fundamental to her entire philosophy. In order for a man to be genuinely ideal in Rand’s eyes, he had to be able to take full credit for all his characteristics. He couldn’t merely have been endowed with them at birth – no, he had to create them out of nothing with his own unaided effort, like Baron Munchhausen pulling himself out of the mire by his own hair.

The most interesting part of this unlikely theory is its moral and psychological consequences – for as a result, man must be entirely responsible for what he becomes. Everything about his character, including his emotions, impulses, desires, motivations, passions is the product of his own choices. So if a man feels improper emotions or immoral desires, it is his responsibility to make the effort to change them by reprogramming his subconscious using reason. “Nothing less than perfection will do,” she declared. This personal Nirvana was what she called being “fully integrated” – where one never experiences any inner conflicts between what one thinks and what one feels, a blessed state where “mind and emotions are in harmony.”

This emphasis on ideas necessarily preceding emotions, when combined with her rejection of the existence of innate ideas, forces Rand into a number of absurd positions – for example, that people have no pre-existing emotional dispositions. One also must conclude that babies have no emotions at birth! There is also the impossible situation of how man makes any fundamental choices, seeing he has no existing motivations. This leads to the rather desperate measure regarding what Leonard Peikoff calls “primary choice” – “…the root choice, the choice on which all others depend…the choice to focus one’s consciousness.” But if man has no existing predispositions, why would he make this choice, one way or the other? Peikoff’s reply: Don’t ask! “It is invalid to ask: why did a man choose to focus? There is no such ‘why.’" This is simply a causa sui – something that causes itself, and is a typical mystical argument, used in defence of the Deity. It is, in short, a miracle; thus to defend this theory, Peikoff has had to resort to the miraculous.

Similar problems affect her version of “free will.” Since man is born completely tabula rasa there can be no innate psychological tendencies. In other words, to the neutral consciousness at birth, one choice is just as likely as another. Thus all human behaviour arises as a result of habit and accident, and therefore is completely inexplicable and unpredictable. Since no-one, including Rand, actually regards human as utterly inexplicable, this position is hard to take seriously.

3) A theory stands or falls on whether it can be corroborated by empirical reality. So we must ask: what is the evidence for Rand’s theories of human nature? We will look at three issues:

• Do innate predispositions exist? All scientific evidence to date suggests it does. There are general emotional predispositions, such as aversions to incest, general cognitive predispositions, such as the tendency to learn language, and individual predispositions, such as handedness. ARCHN contains a lengthy summary drawn from scientists such as E.O. Wilson and Steven Pinker. In contrast, what evidence does Rand bring in support of her theories? Nothing whatsoever.
• Are emotions purely the products of thinking? While this view may contain an element of truth, it is wildly exaggerated. Not only that, it entirely ignores physiological effects - such as hormones - on human emotions. There is also the fact that newborn babies experience emotions, yet clearly have little in the way of ideas. She even claims man’s thinking “determines his desires” – as if the desire for food was the product of rational cogitation. Once again, we look for her evidence in support of this theory and find nothing.
• Finally, is it possible for men to subject every aspect of their lives to the dominion of reason? Rand is simply confused. She advocates the “supremacy of reason”, whilst at the same time regarding it as a “tool” of knowledge. But no man can live for the sake of a hammer or a broom. She has muddled means and ends. Reason, being a mere tool, can never originate the desires it serves. At best it allows some method of adjudicating between our competing desires.

4) To conclude, although Rand adamantly denied advocating a utopian vision of society, she nevertheless believed in what amounts to the same thing – namely, the “ideal” society of free and rational individuals living under a social system of perfect laissez-faire capitalism. The magic formula through which man can perfect himself for this secular salvation was her philosophy, via which all the conflicts - both external and internal – that have plagued mankind could be banished once and for all. Unfortunately, her philosophy is based on an entirely imaginary view of human nature; thus I contend it is her most serious flaw.

(Summary of "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" by Greg Nyquist, Chapter 1)

The Shorter ARCHN: Introduction

A series of handy short summaries of the main arguments of ARCHN for those unfamiliar with the book. For more detail, you can read ARCHN online here:

Introduction:

Despite Ayn Rand’s obvious importance both as a controversial polemicist and as an American cultural figure, her philosophy of Objectivism has largely escaped the scrutiny of a genuinely intelligent and penetrating criticism. While Objectivists ascribe this to the soundness and irrefutability of Rand’s ideas, in fact Rand was a surprisingly sloppy and maladroit thinker, some of whose most important doctrines are based on little more than a play on words. Even when her conclusions are correct, she is often right for the wrong reasons.

As a result, there is quite a bit of truth to Objectivism, but it is so inextricably mixed with falsehoods and errors that it is in many respects a compendium of half-truths. Nonetheless, despite her non sequiturs, over-generalisations, incompetent formulations, pseudo-empirical references, and other bunglings, she should still be regarded as an important, and even great thinker. Many far more famous philosophers made equally egregious errors.

Rand was a brilliant polemicist and ingenious sophist; hence while her takes on issues from the problem of abortion to the problem of universals often sounded persuasive, they often concealed numerous logical and empirical shortcomings. I believe that Rand is either wrong or confused about many of the central issues of philosophy. She is wrong about the nature of man, the role of philosophy in history, about the validity of induction, about the absolute objectivity of values, about the feasibility of laissez-faire capitalism, and about the nature of romanticism; and she is confused about philosophical idealism, consciousness, the relation between ideas and things, the psychology of altruism.

ARCHN sets out to criticize Rand from both an empirical and a logical point of view. While Objectivism officially adopts the view that all knowledge comes from experience, I will argue that in fact it operates in a highly rationalistic fashion, deliberately avoiding empirical reality and seeking to reduce the universe to a handful of rhetorical constructions.

(Summary of "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" by Greg Nyquist, Introduction)

ARCHN Quote of the Week 13/5/07

"For the most part, (Rand's) theory of essence is merely a justification for arbitrarily ignoring any characteristics found in reality that contradicted Rand's theories."
- Greg Nyquist, ARCHN p164

Understanding Objectivist Jargon Pt 9: "Conceptual Common Denominator"

"Conceptual Common Denominator" = a similarity

The "Conceptual Common Denominator" or "CCD" is surely one of the wooliest terms in the vast sheep station of Objectivist jargon, and is central to Rand's much hyped theory of Concept Formation. However, shorn of its typical verbiage, it merely means something one object has in common with another, or a similarity.

The problem is, of course, that Rand's theory is supposed to solve the age-old problem of universals, or why different things are similar. Her answer appears to be because they have one or more "Conceptual Common Denominators" ie: similarities. So, in classic Randian style, her astonishing answer to the problem of why different things are similar, is...because they have similarities!

William Thomas of The Objectivist Centre is a brave man. Towards the end of this short summary of Rand's theory, he makes a rare effort to actually give some specific examples of Rand's "CCDs." I will leave it to readers to judge the level of profundity the application of Rand's insight to reality reveals.

Thomas:
"Appendix A:
The is a partial listing of some of the Conceptual Common Denominators Rand proposes (many of these are implicit in her presentations of definitions or distinguishing characteristics. Where I could not clearly determine to my satisfaction what the CCD might be, I have included the distinguishing characteristics Rand mentions." (sic)




(The page references are from the "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology")

Conservatism's Role in Rand's Intellectual Development

Chris Sciabarra has tried to dredge up the Russian influence on Rand, but little has been done to illuminate the conservative influence. Although Rand was never a conservative, she was clearly influenced by certain notions about history, philosophy, and the role of ideas in society that were commonplace among conservatives in the thirties and forties.

In 1940, Rand campaigned for Wendel Wilkie. This episode in her career influenced what would later become her philosophy of history. Her frustration at trying to convince people to vote for Wilkie rather than Roosevelt convinced her of the futility of trying to reason with people. But rather than assuming that ideas and reason are impotent, Rand concluded that only political ideas were impotent, because such ideas depended on a metaphysical and epistemological foundation.

This theory that political ideas and receptivity to "reason" depended on the higher branches philosophy was fairly common among conservative thinkers in the 30s and 40s. The theory was largely inspired by a misreading of George Santayana, the most important and respected conservative philosopher of the 20th century. Santayana did not care much for modern philosophy, which he regarded as dismally subjectivist. The two main strands of modern philosophy, German Idealism and British Empiricism, both regarded consciousness (or the experience of consciousness) as the starting point and main focus of philosophical investigation—the only thing "given" in man's knowledge. Santayana considered this view not only mistaken, but foolish and conceited. He had studied philosophy at Harvard, Oxford, and in Germany in the closing decades of the 19th century, when German Idealism dominated Anglo-America and German philosophy. Santayana consequently devoted much of his philosophy to criticizing and ridiculing, with his usual detached irony, all manifestions and forms of German idealism. During World War I he published an essay entitled "German Freedom," which helped popularize the thesis that Hegel's political philosophy is essentially totalitarian at its core. "For liberal freedom, for individualism, [Hegel and his followers] have a great contempt," Santayana wrote. "They say a man is nothing but the sum of his relations to other things... And they further say that a dutiful soul is right in feeling that the world it accepts and cooperates with its own work; for, according to their metaphysics, the world is only his idea which each man makes after his own image, and even as you are, so is the world you imagine you live in. Only a foolish recalcitrant person, who does not recognize the handiwork of his own spirit about him, rebels against it, and thereby cancels his natural freedom; for everywhere he finds contradictions and closed doors and irksome necessities, being divided against himself and constantly bidding his left hand undo what his right is doing. So that, paradoxical as it may seem, it is only when you conform that you are free, while if you rebel and secede you become a slave. Your spiritual servitude in such a case would only be manifesting itself in phenomenal form if the government should put you in prison."

Conservatives during the 30s and 40s were not particularly sophisticated in their thinking, and so they interpreted Santayana's subtle and ironical essay on German freedom in simple cause and effect terms, as if Santayana were declaring that statism is caused by German metaphysics. Hence we find Albert Jay Nock, considered one of the leading conservative intellectuals of the thirties, declaring that Hitlerism, Bolshevism, and Fascism "are all essentially ... branches off the same tree planted by the German idealist philosophers." It is likely Rand was exposed to such notions during her involvement in the conservative movement during the forties. This idea that higher philosophy (namely, "German metaphysics") is the root cause of statism thus became embedded in her mind during her formative years. Later, she would twist this notion for her own purposes, until at last we find it springing forth in the title essay of For the New Intellectual.