That Kelley Creature

Ethics
41

20 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Could you please elaborate?

Here’s an analogy:

  1. There is gravity
  2. We can formulate a theory of gravity
  3. Newton and Einstein formulated a theory on the same subject, gravity
  4. Since both theories cover the same subject, they are the same theory.

In other words, if by theory of gravity you understand: the concept of gravity, then yes, concepts are open-ended and allow for revisions.

If by theory of gravity you understand: a theory about gravity, then different theories of gravity have their own corresponding (closed, non-revisable) concept.

The concept ‘Objectivism’ does not stand for philosophy. It stands for a system of philosophy originated by Rand, distinct from the systems of Aristotle, Giovanni Gentile, Kelley etc.

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On 3/28/2022 at 8:39 PM, Eiuol said:

But these people are philosophically very distinct from Rand, it’s not like they believed the very important things that she believed but simply lacked a common name. 

Yep.

On 3/28/2022 at 8:39 PM, Eiuol said:

By the sounds of it, you seem to equate truth with Objectivism, where anyone who holds correct ideas is an Objectivist.

Nope.

 

Isaac Newton believed in alchemy. This belief was not that far-fetched at the time (after all, the scientific method had only JUST been made explicit for the very first time - by him) and he fully integrated it into his overall worldview: he believed that since it was real, it could be measured, quantified and scientifically understood. And he didn’t JUST believe it! Since he believed this to be true he then set out to prove it, experimentally, by reference to reality.

This was an incorrect belief which was properly integrated, was not arrived at arbitrarily or irrationally and which prompted the exertion of significant time and effort to discover further truths. Perhaps calling him an Objectivist was taking it a bit far, in retrospect, but that’s a display of all the primary Virtues we’re supposed to care about.

It wasn’t a conflation of “truth” with Objectivism, but “rationality” (which does not automatically guarantee any particular truth).

 

And I did track down that quote I had in mind…

Quote

It is important to note, in this connection, that a discovery cannot be patented, only an invention. A scientific or philosophical discovery, which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously known, cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer because: (a) he did not create it, and (b) if he cares to make his discovery public, claiming it to be true, he cannot demand that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission. He can copyright the book in which he presents his discovery and he can demand that his authorship of the discovery be acknowledged, that no other man appropriate or plagiarize the credit for it—but he cannot copyright theoretical knowledge.

It’s from Patents and Copyrights in Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal.

 

On 3/28/2022 at 8:39 PM, Eiuol said:

Quote

But I’ve had a bit to drink (as I said - I’m not living up to my own standards)

I won’t bother then.

I don’t see why since, according to Peikoff in Fact and Value, the primary thing to judge are the ideas I consciously profess (much of which would also be your own ideas); not what I do with them. The notion that actions are the primary things to which “good” and “evil” apply (instead of to ideas) is the position advocated by That Kelley Creature.

 

Did I not mention what a nifty moral standard that is in the OP? I don’t have to actually DO anything beyond holding the correct opinions; if I advocate Marxism then I am the moral equivalent of Karl Marx, and by the same token (mutatus mutandis) if I advocate Objectivism then I am the moral equivalent of Ayn Rand! 

 

Nifty, too, that she wasn’t alive to comment on Peikoff’s convenient moral standard.

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On 3/29/2022 at 3:52 PM, KyaryPamyu said:

Here’s an analogy:

  1. There is gravity
  2. We can formulate a theory of gravity
  3. Newton and Einstein formulated a theory on the same subject, gravity
  4. Since both theories cover the same subject, they are the same theory.

In other words, if by theory of gravity you understand: the concept of gravity, then yes, concepts are open-ended and allow for revisions.

If by theory of gravity you understand: a theory about gravity, then different theories of gravity have their own corresponding (closed, non-revisable) concept.

The concept ‘Objectivism’ does not stand for philosophy. It stands for a system of philosophy originated by Rand, distinct from the systems of Aristotle, Giovanni Gentile, Kelley etc.

And yet Rand explicitly mentioned how Einstein’s theories were a refinement of Newton’s and not a refutation (I believe it was in the ITOE). She also gave credit to Aristotle as her intellectual forefather, which would be odd if Objectivism was a refutation of Aristotelianism. The view of an explosive science in which all of our old ideas are regularly demolished every few decades is precisely what philosophy would be if philosophical systems were conceived of as permanently “closed”.

Hell, under that conception there is no way one could ever link Kant to Stalin or Hitler in any way. Neither of them fully agreed with 100% of what Kant ever said - therefore neither of them was a Kantian. Therefore Kant had nothing to do with the Holocaust or the Holodomor.

 

And yet, every single time Rand ever spoke about Kant’s philosophy it was in terms of essentials; stripping out every last thing which wasn’t a vital component and speaking only of the core of the ideology. We still do this regularly whenever we discuss other ideologies, amongst ourselves - just not our own.

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15 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Isaac Newton believed in alchemy. This belief was not that far-fetched at the time

Actually, he was very much a Christian mystic with all the occult mysticism of alchemy. Newton was relatively rational about physics and questions about physics, but he approached it in a rationalistic way such that he pretty much reduced physics to merely mechanical motions. 

21 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

I don’t see why since, according to Peikoff in Fact and Value, the primary thing to judge are the ideas I consciously profess

Ideas that you semi-consciously profess with a vague haze which prevents clarity of thought. No use talking to you if you are in a self-admitted fog. 

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3 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

She also gave credit to Aristotle as her intellectual forefather, which would be odd if Objectivism was a refutation of Aristotelianism

This seems to be your point:

  1. There is a science called philosophy
  2. Objectivism is true
  3. Therefore, Objectivism is philosophy as such, just with a fancy name
  4. Philosophy must be perfected and expanded

Under this model, the concepts of ‘theory’ and ‘system’ do not exist for you. Theory or system simply means: philosophic claims.

A collection of true philosophic claims is a true philosophy. Under this category, you put: Objectivism.

A collection of false philosophic statements is a false philosophy. Under this category, you put: Kantianism, Actualism, Hegelianism etc.

And you probably agree with the following: claiming that Aristotle had a theory of quantum physics is an example of rewriting history, or commiting forgery.

Peikoff is protesting against attributing quantum physics to Aristotle.

Kelley is protesting about Peikoff claiming that philosophy must not be perfected. That is Kelley’s misunderstanding.

No argument can, or will, solve a debate where the two parties argue for completely different things. This is what I mentioned a while ago: you are arguing for one thing, to people who mean something completely different.

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3 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

He can copyright the book in which he presents his discovery and he can demand that his authorship of the discovery be acknowledged, that no other man appropriate or plagiarize the credit for it—but he cannot copyright theoretical knowledge.

Rand copyrights the books in which she presents her discoveries. She can demand that her authorship of the discoveries be acknowledged (as Objectivism), that no other man appropriate or plagiarize the credit for it—but she cannot copyright theoretical knowledge.

3 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

A scientific or philosophical discovery, which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously known, cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer because: (a) he did not create it, and (b) if he cares to make his discovery public, claiming it to be true, he cannot demand that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission.

Her acknowledgement is one of discovery, not of creation. Laws of nature, principles of reality, or facts of reality, are not creations.

Her precise form of presentation is available to anyone willing to put forth the effort to find and read it for themselves. 

As more information becomes public domain, it is getting set adrift in an ever increasing sea of data where essential data becomes more difficult to be subjugated to efficacious organization efforts.

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On 3/31/2022 at 12:11 AM, dream_weaver said:

Rand copyrights the books in which she presents her discoveries. She can demand that her authorship of the discoveries be acknowledged (as Objectivism), that no other man appropriate or plagiarize the credit for it—but she cannot copyright theoretical knowledge.

Her acknowledgement is one of discovery, not of creation. Laws of nature, principles of reality, or facts of reality, are not creations.

Precisely.  Thank you.

On 3/30/2022 at 11:24 PM, KyaryPamyu said:

This seems to be your point:

  1. There is a science called philosophy
  2. Objectivism is true
  3. Therefore, Objectivism is philosophy as such, just with a fancy name
  4. Philosophy must be perfected and expanded

Under this model, the concepts of ‘theory’ and ‘system’ do not exist for you. Theory or system simply means: philosophic claims.

A collection of true philosophic claims is a true philosophy. Under this category, you put: Objectivism.

A collection of false philosophic statements is a false philosophy. Under this category, you put: Kantianism, Actualism, Hegelianism etc.

And you probably agree with the following: claiming that Aristotle had a theory of quantum physics is an example of rewriting history, or commiting forgery.

I absolutely believe that philosophy must be expanded and perfected.  100%

I do also play fast and loose with the terms “system” and “theory” (but not “complete system”).  I understand these to be collections of individual claims, but as long as a system is not “complete” I don’t see it as being too distinct from a theory; the borders between the two seem pretty fuzzy.

I basically agree about “a system of true philosophical claims” meaning Objectivism, and false systems including all the others. I don’t consider “Objectivism” as just “philosophy as such” because of all those alternative philosophies.

 

The point about Aristotle having a theory of Quantum Mechanics is interesting.  It’d simplify things for me if we used General Relativity instead of QM (which seems much more Aristotelian) and, to be precise, I wouldn’t say that Aristotle personally invented General Relativity.

I might agree that Aristotelianism implies Relativity, though.  I think I see what you’re driving at, there, and I’ll have to think about it.

On 3/30/2022 at 11:24 PM, KyaryPamyu said:

Peikoff is protesting against attributing quantum physics to Aristotle.

Kelley is protesting about Peikoff claiming that philosophy must not be perfected. That is Kelley’s misunderstanding.

I disagree with that characterization, but let’s just run with it for the sake of argument.

 

Fact and Value was the essay (which Ayn Rand was not alive to comment upon) in which Peikoff declared:

Quote

Every philosophy, by the nature of the subject, is immutable. New implications, applications, integrations can always be discovered; but the essence of the system — its fundamental principles and their consequences in every branch — is laid down once and for all by the philosophy’s author. 

Further setting aside the obscene references to “essentials” and “fundamentals”, he writes slightly earlier in the very same essay:

Quote

NOW TAKE THE CASE  of Ayn Rand, who discovered true ideas on a virtually unprecedented scale. Do any of you who agree with her philosophy respond to it by saying “Yeah, it’s true” — without evaluation, emotion, passion? Not if you are moral. A moral person (assuming he understands philosophy at all) greets the discovery of this kind of truth with admiration, awe, even love; he makes a heartfelt positive moral evaluation. He says: Objectivism is not only true, it is great! Why? Because of the volitional work a mind must have performed to reach for the first time so exalted a level of truth — and because of all the glorious effects such knowledge will have on man’s life, all the possibilities of action it opens up for the future.

…

Now consider the case of Kant, whom I take to be the negative counterpart of Ayn Rand. To anyone capable of understanding Kant’s ideas, the first thing to say about them is: “false.” But implicit in the all-embracing war on reality they represent is a second verdict: “wicked.” The cause of such ideas has to be methodical, lifelong intellectual dishonesty; the effect, when they are injected into the cultural mainstream, has to be mass death. There can be no greater evasion than the open, total rejection of reality undertaken as a lifetime crusade. And only evasion on this kind of scale, evasion as the motor of an entire philosophic system, makes possible and necessary all the atrocities of our age. (For details, see The Ominous Parallels.)

The underline is mine, to underscore the fact that he is attributing the actions of Hitler and Stalin to Immanuel Kant.

 

It would be one thing if he truly was declaring that a “philosophy” consists of the discrete and immutable statements of its author (by which definition, each of us would have our own, personal philosophy).  It’d be a concept of questionable utility but with clear internal consistency.  No; he is simultaneously saying that none of the implications of Ayn Rand’s writings are part of “Objectivism” and that Relativity is not part of Aristotelianism but also that the Nazi Death Camps are part of Kantianism, in the same way and at the same time.

And the latter part of that contradiction is the only one Rand, herself, ever explicitly supported.  We never got a chance to hear her opinion of the former half.

 

And that’s assuming that your characterization is accurate, which I don’t believe.

 

PS:

 

In Truth and Toleration Kelley criticizes much Objectivist discussion of other philosophies (and this part does apply to what Rand, herself, wrote) as treating ideas as the agents which act upon the world, while the people who hold them are devoid of volition.

A Kantian professor may lecture you about all the intricate details of his own (quite evil) philosophy.  Does that automatically lead to your acceptance of it?  If not; if you choose to accept it, in some way, and it then leads you to commit atrocities, then what degree of the blame belongs to that professor?

 

In Fact and Value Peikoff argues it’s basically 100%.  The ideas of Kant, once accepted, could ONLY lead to starvation and massacre.  Kelley and I do not believe that it’s 0% of the blame, but not 100% either.

 

This ties directly back into what I just told @Eiuol about how Peikoff’s moral standard applies to a drunk like myself.

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2 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

It would be one thing if he truly was declaring that a “philosophy” consists of the discrete and immutable statements of its author (by which definition, each of us would have our own, personal philosophy).

Kant’s ideas did open the path to Nazi ideology, but those are two very distinct systems of thought.

Most people keep a distinction between the ideas of a thinker, and ideas influenced by that thinker. A concept of ‘Randianism’ would be closer to the latter, since that’s what Aristotelianism or Kantianism typically refer to: a sphere of influence, rather than one system. Objectivism explicitly refers to one system.

If you have a personal view of what a philosophy is, it’s important to check what your audience means by the term, in order to know how to situate your arguments.

While I agree with O’ism, I also think that ‘isms’ should never exist in science. But unlike physics, philosophy is The Land of the Isms, so there’s no escape from that at the moment.

While I don’t think philosophic principles should be any more personal that math and medicine, I do believe, for the same reason, that people should be more interested in applying universal principles to their own particular case (a sort of mini-philosophy), rather than appending oneself to some denomination. (Making a philosophy popular is another issue. Creating a public movement is one possible strategy). So I share your eagerness to simply look at ‘philosophy as such’.

Returning to the issue of system, I have no qualms with Kelley philosophizing in the Randian spirit, or even coming up with a Kelley-ism. I do however think that altering someone’s work is wrong; no matter how close your philosophy is to someone else, you should philosophise under your own name.

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19 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:

While I agree with O’ism, I also think that ‘isms’ should never exist in science. But unlike physics, philosophy is The Land of the Isms, so there’s no escape from that at the moment.

Actually, having given your analogy to Aristotle some thought, I would consider Relativity to be an Aristotelian idea.

 

I’ve never been quite comfortable drawing a binary distinction between philosophy and every other area of human thought.  Unlike gender, the fundamentality of an idea is a legitimate spectrum; not a binary.

I’ve been trying to leave that issue aside because it tends to bog any discussion of this issue down.  After all, without that clear division “Objectivism” would literally consist of “literally every opinion Ayn Rand ever held on anything”, and those who argue for a closed system object to that characterization in the strongest possible terms - often to the exclusion of the rest of the argument.

The way I think of systems of interrelated ideas (such as philosophies) is a bit fuzzier than that.  There are dividing lines between contradictory ways of thinking, certainly, and there is a spectrum of abstraction (ranging from “existents” to “this computer monitor in front of me”) but it’s nowhere near as cut-and-dry as many Objectivists (above all, Peikoff) would suggest.  I’ve never been able to pin down such clear divisions for myself, nor has anyone else to whom I’ve raised the question thus far.

And in the fuzzier way I conceptualize different systems of thought, Relativity would belong in Aristotelianism (which argued for the importance of logical inference and an adherence to observable reality).  Almost every hard science would also be an outgrowth of Aristotelianism.

 

If you want to see a non-Aristotelian “science” just see Lysenkoism (or any other pseudoscience).

 

19 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:

While I don’t think philosophic principles should be any more personal that math and medicine, I do believe, for the same reason, that people should be more interested in applying universal principles to their own particular case (a sort of mini-philosophy), rather than appending oneself to some denomination. (Making a philosophy popular is another issue. Creating a public movement is one possible strategy). So I share your eagerness to simply look at ‘philosophy as such’.

But such mini-philosophies don’t need to have their own concept.  We just call them “what I personally think” (just as I did in the previous section).  If you can show me precisely where to put a clear dividing line between what is “philosophical” and what is not then my personal worldview tomorrow might be different than what it is, right now.

This is the conception of “philosophy” with obvious internal consistency but questionable utility.  Which, again, could not have been what Rand or Peikoff were using whenever they were discussing Kantianism.

 

And just to be clear, I don’t see a problem with calling the Nazi Death Camps part of Kantianism (just as I don’t see a problem with calling General Relativity an Aristotelian idea).  Both are pretty far removed from what their original authors could have imagined, but there is an undeniable logical progression from A to B to C to D.

What I do have a problem with is saying that E has nothing to do with D or C or B or A in the case of Objectivism.  It’s simply not true.

 

19 hours ago, KyaryPamyu said:

Returning to the issue of system, I have no qualms with Kelley philosophizing in the Randian spirit, or even coming up with a Kelley-ism. I do however think that altering someone’s work is wrong; no matter how close your philosophy is to someone else, you should philosophise under your own name.

And if Kelley’s ideas or mine were as far removed from Objectivism as Objectivism is from its Aristotelian root then I might agree.  However, if I were to read about a new philosophy which shared everything in common with Objectivism except a denial of the Pyramid of Ability and perhaps a few new derivations, I would consider it plagiarism to refer to it as anything other than Objectivism.

 

The decision of where to draw that dividing line should be made on the basis of the ideas, themselves; not the particular brain which discovered them.

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That Objectivism is a “closed system” you should understand merely to mean that “Objectivism is fully copyrighted and those copyrights will be enforced to the fullest extent of the law.”  After the copyrights expire, and the current crew of freeloaders expires, “closed system” will have no referent and be meaningless.

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12 hours ago, Grames said:

After the copyrights expire, and the current crew of freeloaders expires, “closed system” will have no referent and be meaningless.

That, I shall leave to the court of final appeal.

52

The essentials of Objectivism, the elements that make it the philosophy it was and is and will continue to be—leaving aside the beer-singers of philosophy—are in Galt’s Speech. Rand wrote above the speech when she reprinted it in her nonfiction book For the New Intellectual: “This is the philosophy of Objectivism.” One can dispute the correctness of anyone, including Rand, who might take that statement to mean: P - “Everything in GS is an element of the Objectivist philosophy.” One could rightly deny correctness of P because the definition of what is philosophy is not up for capricious definition, and it is rightly said that some elements in GS are not part of philosophy at all. Period. Any claims about history of philosophy or about psychology of dictators, for examples, are not part of philosophy itself. Rand has a philosophy in GS not reliant on such elements in GS.

Galt’s Speech has been open to all and available to all for close critical commentary or defense since it was published. So, Grames, I wouldn’t expect expiration of copyright to affect anything on open/closed controversies.

Within what is indeed philosophy, Rand gets to define what is hers. If she takes the position under some notion of “instinct” that there is no such thing in humans, then however much one might think that position false, or however inessential it is to her philosophy, it is part of her philosophy, right there in Galt’s Speech. It is a traditional philosophical issue, and her position on it has some significant natural fit with what else she says about the animal that is human and about the human setting in reality and about the nature of reality. Similarly, Descartes gets to define his philosophy as including the idea that there is a good God who makes geometry true and makes it possible for us to know it is true. Wrong as we might think that idea, it is part of the philosophy of Descartes.

Innovations on Descartes’s philosophy, such as Malbranche made, do not change what was and is Descartes’s philosophy, even though Malbranche’s philosophy is only a stone’s throw away from that of Descartes. Then too, the setting out and defense of Descartes’s philosophy by Spinoza (prior to setting out his own philosophy) sensibly requires our own judgment as to whether and how far Spinoza is true to Descartes in this setting out and defense. It is sensible to be making such a judgment because we have Descartes’s texts for intelligent independent assessment. Likewise for any setting out and defense of Rand’s philosophy. Rand stated in FNI Preface that her philosophy as set out in her fiction, even as in GS, was in need of additional articulation in non-fiction compositions. These require our own independent judgment as to how consistent with the philosophy set out in GS they are or how strongly entailed by GS they are.

I’d like to add something that probably has not been said before. Cultishness is typically associated with features associated with a more closed-school conception of Objectivist philosophy than with a more open-school conception of same. But I see now from the case of Nietzsche in German culture from 1890 to WWI (1914) that openness (indeed, far, far wider openness than David Kelley would countenance) can readily participate in cultishness concerning Rand. Nietzsche’s philosophy was an enormously (but not entirely) open setup—by him. Everyone could interpret it bizarrely, bending it to their own political or personal agenda. Yet the cult of Nietzsche, portraying him as the most revolutionary and holy thing since Jesus, was (like his cultural splash) to Rand cultishness as storm to moderate gale.

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It was around 1970, in college, that I first encountered the name Libertarian. At the university library, I had passed by display shelves for current issues of scholarly philosophy journals. One of them was an issue of The Personalist whose contents, listed on the cover, included a debate that was being printed concerning the legitimacy of government. The label libertarian came up in there, and among the presenters was one of whom I came away thinking: he’s the bright one. That is, he was the bright among brights. His name was Robert Nozick. A few years later, he issued the classic of American political philosophy Anarchy, State, and Utopia. It was due to his first part therein that I began to take the idea of individualist free-market stateless rule of law seriously. Rand had raised an important objection to that idea, libertarian anarchism, earlier in CUI, although without the name libertarian.

I remained in the not-anarchist sector of libertarianism, with Nozick, Hospers, Machan, and Rand. I had been dissuaded from democratic socialism to Rand’s ideal of government when I read her novels in 1967. After absorbing ASU on top of Atlas Shrugged, I got myself some knowledge of economics by working my way through Man, Economy, and State by Murray Rothbard. I had joined the Libertarian Party in 1972 and continued to do volunteer work therein for the next dozen years. Rand dismissed us as simply trying to draw attention to ourselves. But in truth I was using the Party as a channel to telling the public I encountered in getting ballot-access signatures that there was this idea and ideal called libertarianism and handing them a brochure on what that was. In those days, very few had ever heard of such a thing. It was during my libertarian activism and study that I began in the early 1980’s to write.* I left off libertarian activism and study in 1984 and turned to study of the non-political areas of philosophy, which had been my focus in formal course work in college.

In the 1980’s Peter Schwartz was the editor and publisher of The Intellectual Activist, to which Leonard Peikoff was a contributing editor.

In 1986 Mr. Schwartz penned therein the essay “Libertarianism: A Perversion of Liberty” which was reprinted two years later in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought. As I recall, Robert Nozick, the principal libertarian philosopher, and Nozick’s thought in the area is never mentioned in that representation of libertarianism by Mr. Schwartz. In 1988 it was Schwartz who started the public debate between the ARI/Peikoff set and David Kelley that would come to be the debate over open and closed Objectivism.

Schwartz’s opening volley was: On Sanctioning the Sanctioners

"Ayn Rand’s principle of not sanctioning evil has an aspect that some TIA readers apparently do not see. It is clear why one should not, for example, sell goods to totalitarian states or provide shelter to escaping criminals or work as a PLO fund-raiser. Assisting one’s philosophical enemies—i.e., those who hold values fundamentally antithetical to one’s own—is ultimately harmful to one’s own interests. And the corollary of this principle is: neither should one sanction the sanctioners of one’s philosophical enemies . . . they deserve to be ostracized for it.

“. . . Examples of philosophical enmity . . . of particular interest to TIA—and to those readers who have asked me why, in their words, “honest differences of opinion” cause me to dissociate from certain individuals who “still agree with your basic philosophy.” The first example is that of Libertarianism. Libertarians are patently not allies in the ideological battle for capitalism, regardless of how many free-market positions they may claim to endorse. Nor are those who support them (i.e., those who contribute to the Libertarian Party or lend their names to Libertarian magazines or promote Libertarian bookstores or serve as after-dinner speakers at Libertarian functions [David Kelley]). They are all in fact furthering ideas and values fundamentally inimical to those of Objectivism. Consequently, TIA’s editorial masthead, as well as Second Renaissance Book’s catalogue of authors, categorically excludes anyone who openly preaches Libertarianism—or who supports the preachers. It is dishonest and self-defeating to treat such people as partners in the cause of reason, egoism and capitalism. They are not.”

To which Kelley responded in published-elsewhere writing. Peikoff rejoined. And so forth.

The weight of the “me” in that Schwartz characterization and ostracism was his affiliation with Peikoff, who subsequently opened his rejoinder to Kelley by endorsing what Schwartz had written.

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On 4/9/2022 at 11:23 AM, Boydstun said:

Cultishness is typically associated with features associated with a more closed-school conception of Objectivist philosophy than with a more open-school conception of same.

Some selected elements form Galt’s Speech.

[M]an’s reason is his moral faculty.

A rational process is a moral process.

Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality[.]

The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed.

 

Interestingly enough cult is utilized in Galt’s Speech as well. 

 

The more I’ve examined the speech the more it appears to be an advocation of morality in distinction to what drove her to ask “why” of existence and let nothing stand in the way of what is surely perplexing to many who have yet to put their proverbial finger on it, the “inverted morality” that has gelled over the millennia while advances in other areas of thought provided the magnificence that has risen. 

 

The term cult is better applied to where efforts to understand are not being applied, than to delineating what are the essentials that warrant applying the effort(s) required for understanding.

1 Like
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On 4/9/2022 at 11:23 AM, Boydstun said:

Galt’s Speech has been open to all and available to all for close critical commentary or defense since it was published. So, Grames, I wouldn’t expect expiration of copyright to affect anything on open/closed controversies.

Steven, I don’t disagree it is that I have the considered opinion that the controversy is essentially fake.  The open/closed “controversy” only exists because of the real and imagined financial incentives of the people taking the “closed” side.  It is rather quite ordinary to be skeptical of and to scrutinize any self-described Objectivists, the same as self-described Aristotelians, Platonists, Nietzscheans, Catholics, Buddhists, or what have you.  This is the valid portion of the controversy.  Absent those financially interested parties there would be no larger “controversy”.  Kelley earned some money speaking about Objectivism and didn’t kick any back to the copyright holders, so he was kicked out of the club.  Everything written justifying the ostracization of Kelley is just rationalization.

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Grames, it has seemed to me that the only real competition for money by people or organizations making money off of Rand philosophy is in terms of competition for significant donors, where there are such, but not fees. Kelley’s pulling rank against an in-place fairly hierarchical group might have put red under the collar on some personal levels—and if so, there could well have been some fakery and pretzeling going on in all this—but scooting him out from under the group would seem to draw financial contributions away from projects of the evicting group. Philosophy personnel at ARI or at Kelley’s later group, it seems to me, have interests in staying in their work on Rand and its promulgation of some greater weight than making money. But then, I got skills besides philosophy from which one could make good money (with which to buy whatever top philosophy books I want hot off the press!), so it may make me too optimistic about the greater money people could make if they weren’t spending their time trying to make money off of Rand philosophy. Another source of income to philosophers who spent time in these organizations would be that it helps them build an audience for any Objectivist-related books they might write and get published. I don’t know how much money there is in that, but even if money in it is not so very much, an audience of minds ready to contact with one’s own is mighty fine.

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On 4/10/2022 at 8:30 AM, Boydstun said:

In 1986 Mr. Schwartz penned therein the essay “Libertarianism: A Perversion of Liberty” which was reprinted two years later in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought.

Is there a link to this?

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Apparently it’s not available online. The cheapest edition is a $5.95 booklet.

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Hi Doug,

I don’t know of any place of that essay online. Its exact title I now see is “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty.” I have this essay in hardcopy in the book The Voice of Reason (1990), edited by Leonard Peikoff. The original, longer version of the essay appeared in the periodical The Intellectual Activist in 1985. I don’t have that longer version. What was chosen for its condensation for inclusion in the 1990 book, which would be widely read, is a fantastical distortion of the Libertarianism of which I was abreast and part of from the early ’70’s to mid ’80’s. Mr. Schwartz exhibited clips of views of various libertarians in a variety of Libertarian rags, most of which I never heard of, to make his case that libertarians are without philosophy, and are against having philosophy, and for that matter are against liberty. That last point was preposterous on its face, and I doubt he convinced anyone not idiot of it. The only libertarian book he noted was Murray Rothbard’s book For a New Liberty. He insinuated that Rothbard was the sole important libertarian thinker of the present scene. He silenced-over the other widely read book on that level which was written by philosopher John Hospers, the book titled Libertarianism. He silenced-over any of the libertarian philosophy books written to that point: Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia / Machan’s Human Rights and Human Liberties / Rothbard’s (amateur philosopher, but read) The Ethics of Liberty. Then too, of course, this libertarian (at the time) reader of Schwartz’s smear knew perfectly well he had plenty of philosophy head-to-toe integrated with his standard libertarian proposition that the paramount political value should be individual liberty, individual rights.

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Can we draw a distinction between upper-case Libertarianism, which has to do with the Libertarian party, and lower-case libertarianism, which may be more general?

Before I joined this forum I thought of libertarianism as a somewhat general term for advocacy of strictly limited government, with the political part of Objectivism as a subcategory.  I gather it is not always used this way.  In particular, I gather some people would define libertarianism in a way that excludes Objectivism.  How widespread is this practice?  How much consistency is there in the way that libertarianism is defined to exclude Objectivism?