Rick Minto has asked -- as many have in recent years -- a troubling question. Why has Leonard Peikoff appeared to abandon the quite reasonable position, advanced in his course "Understanding Objectivism," concerning passing moral judgment on others?
This questions forces us out of the comfortable area of pure intellectual debate, and into the murky area of personalities and motives. That is not typically an expedition which the moderator of this list, nor many of its subscribers, would welcome. And I sympathize.
I have offered an answer however, only because I think there are reasons which make this a special case.
My point in addressing these matters is not to categorize abuses and absurdities, nor to psychologize about the persons involved. My sole point is to try to grapple with the logical implications, _in action_, of the viewpoint put forth by Peikoff in "Fact and Value," and now advanced by his supporters. I personally believe that this issue -- and this issue alone -- may be of legitimate relevance to the intellectual concerns of this list.
Why? Because that mindset, and the behavior to which it leads, have persisted within the Objectivist movement for three decades now; and it is clearly not about to go away. Future generations will spawn new representatives of that mindset. We shall have to continue to confront it -- hopefully, understanding something about it.
So the question arises: How can Leonard Peikoff, a very intelligent man with lifelong commitments to reason, independence and justice, come to conclude that on some issues, at least, facts no longer matter, group-think is to be encouraged and some Objectivist scholars are to be unjustly equated with history's most evil figures? How can a significant number of others, professing similar philosophical commitments, be persuaded that such actions are consistent with their expressed philosophy?
_That_, I think, may be a legitimate province of exploration for members of the list -- even though it is, of course, difficult to address these matters with detachment, or to segregate the issues from the personalities involved, or to avoid psychologizing.
What follows, then, is simply a short chronicle of relevant events in the "tolerance" dispute, incorporating my analysis of _why_ certain premises, left unchecked, can force the logically rigorous -- _especially_ the logically rigorous -- down destructive paths of thought and behavior. That, it seems to this writer, is a province of valid concern for all of us.
Consider, then, what follows a cautionary tale.
I've enjoyed the discussion about David Kelley's Truth and Toleration, and Rick Minto's recent posting prompted me to weigh in. Minto writes:
By Peikoff's own practice and words, since 1989, he appears to have rejected the position he advocated in the UO ["Understanding Objectivism"] course, esp. Lecture 11. Prof. Kelley in T&T, 76, also notes this, as did Eyal Mozes here recently.I would be interested in hearing from any list members who heard the UO tapes if they could have anticipated this change of opinion, or if anyone can offer a plausible explanation for why Peikoff changed his mind.
Yes indeed -- Peikoff has abandoned the position taken in his "Understanding Objectivism" course. As to why, that question moves us from the realm of the logical into the realm of the psychological -- a dubious journey, to say the least. However, in this case, there is a trail of facts available which limits the need for idle speculation. I offer the following to those who'd like a coherent explanation for events which many have found unfathomable and painful. And I hope -- in the spirit of the subject -- that you all find my comments at least "tolerable."
According to a very reliable source, the publication of Branden's Passion apparently brought Peikoff to a value crisis. I choose not to name the source, only because I have not asked that person's permission to be identified. However, the source was in an excellent position to know what was going on at the time, and is of impeccable credibility; thus I regard the person's narrative to be far above the status of mere rumor or speculation.
According to this source, Peikoff was emotionally distraught during that period. The Barbara Branden book -- which he refused to read, but whose contents he had heard about from others -- terribly distressed him. One's response to the book soon became for him a moral litmus test: it apparently carried for him all the old emotional baggage from the stormy NBI days, and provoked him to revert to that state of mind. For one thing, it helped spark the initial tension between himself and Kelley, since the latter had a more tolerant attitude toward the book.
Peikoff explained to my source that he was also being urged by both Peter Schwartz and Harry Binswanger to take a much more hard-line stand on issues of moral judgment. Peikoff explained that there seemed to be "two kinds of Objectivists" -- those who liked his approach in "Understanding Objectivism," and by contrast, "hardliners like Peter and Harry." It was clear that Peikoff at the time felt very torn between the two positions.
It is also clear which side won out. Behavior that had been common during the ugly NBI days -- demands of loyalty and fealty, moral denunciations, evaluating books without reading them, etc. -- suddenly returned to fashion. Traumatized by the appearance of Passion, Peikoff's new-found contextualism, as evidenced in "Understanding Objectivism," now seemed like a kind of moral weakness or compromise, and was abandoned. He reverted to his old habits of the NBI days -- rule by denunciation and excommunication. Just as Greta Garbo's "Comrade Ninotchka" wanted "fewer but better Russians," Peikoff now relished the prospect of fewer but more loyal Objectivists -- and boldly promised further excommunications to approach his ideal.
It seems evident today that Peikoff simply could not let himself see Barbara Branden -- his "enemy" of twenty years -- in the framework of the kind of contextualism he was preaching in "Understanding Objectivism." But why?
I think because of what it implied -- not about judging Barbara Branden, but about judging Ayn Rand. For I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that all Barbara was trying to do in Passion was to apply the same contextualism toward judging Rand that Peikoff was advocating in his course as a general moral rule. And that Leonard Peikoff simply could not permit.
Is there any hard evidence for this interpretation of what happened?
Recall that in "Fact and Value," Peikoff declared that "every fact bears on the choice to live... [E]very fact of reality which we discover has, directly or indirectly, an implication for man's self-preservation and thus for his proper course of action." Thus there can be "no dichotomy...between the true and the good." Justice, he continued, "is an aspect of the principle that cognition demands evaluation...applied to human choices and their products." In the same vein, Peter Schwartz began his own commentary on the Barbara Branden controversy by stating, in his second paragraph, that "objectivity consists of nothing but a commitment to the truth..." [Schwartz, Open Letter, August 20, 1986.]
Yet by the end of that remarkable letter, Peter Schwartz had made one startling exception: "Ultimately, what real difference is there if any of the factual allegations made by Barbara Branden ...happen to have actually taken place? Ayn Rand's glorious achievement is her philosophy and her literature. They stand as her testaments, as the only testaments her life requires... Her books are what she should be judged by."
Suddenly, some facts -- if sufficiently unpleasant, and about Ayn Rand -- were to be ignored or suppressed. Instead, only "essential" facts were to be acknowledged and weighed. And just what facts about Ayn Rand were deemed morally relevant? Only her ideas and her books -- not her actions.
Does this represent Peikoff's view? As one who published repeatedly in The Intellectual Activist, I can confirm that every word Schwartz printed was first read and cleared by Peikoff. I have no doubt that Schwartz's statement fully represents Peikoff's own view, and had Peikoff's prior knowledge and approval (we do know that he never repudiated it).
Yet would Ayn Rand have agreed with them? Consider: "...I was shocked to discover that he [Nathaniel Branden] was consistently failing to apply to his own personal life and conduct...the fundamental philosophical principles of Objectivism...that he did not practice what he preached, that he demanded of his students a standard of conduct he failed to demand of himself. Such an attitude is not morally permissible in any writer or lecturer; it is worse in a lecturer on philosophy and psychology; it is still worse in a lecturer on morality, who has to exemplify in his own conduct the moral principles he advocates. It is intolerable in a lecturer on Objectivist morality: Objectivism does not permit any variant of the mind-body dichotomy, any split between theory and practice, between one's convictions and one's actions." (Ayn Rand, "To Whom It May Concern," The Objectivist, May 1968.)
Whatever view Schwartz and Peikoff were advocating on the issue of how to pass moral judgment, it certainly did not represent that of Rand herself. But why their sharp departure from her on this issue?
Because here, the logical choice for Peikoff was: Either judge everyone, including Ayn Rand, by all the available facts, or -- in order to spare himself painful acknowledgement of any weaknesses in his heroine -- abandon the method of contextual judgment presented in "Understanding Objectivism."
In short, his alternative was: objectivity or idolatry.
We know which way he chose.
Now came the tricky task of reversing course. So dramatic a shift required an equally ambitious philosophical rationale. The goal? To define the facts "essential" to passing moral judgments so narrowly that (a) Ayn Rand would be exonerated of any possible errors or moral breaches, while (b) a strong, uncompromisingly moralistic posture could be maintained. The solution?
Focusing moral judgments on expressed ideas, rather than actions.
Clearly, there are few who could demonstrate fault in (let alone match) Ayn Rand as she appeared on paper. Limiting all moral judgments to one's "paper persona," then, elevates Rand's moral stature, while simultaneously shrinking the stature of others. Thus, she can be exonerated -- because the only "essentials" about her are, quoting Schwartz, "her philosophy and her literature... Her books are what she should be judged by."
This also implies that the only facts of moral significance about anyone else are their verbalized or written ideas. The new "essentials" in moral judgment-passing are not actions, but thinking; and one may draw moral and character inferences about a person's "mental processes" simply from the truth or falsehood of the person's conclusions!
Hence, Peikoff's "Fact and Value" -- a summary effort to shrink the realm of honest "errors of knowledge" to negligibility, to inflate the realm of "immorality" to include errors of knowledge...and thus to transform virtually every incorrect philosophical statement (save, perhaps, for the babblings of children or idiots) into a moral failing.