| Saturday, April 24, 2004 | |
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Frenzied Denunciations
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:21 PM What follows is basically a reply to Jim Heaps-Nelson's comment on my post on Objectivism as a closed system. Some of what I say is of sufficiently general interest that I thought it worthy of its own post. You state that you are in agreement with Peikoff's statement that the fundamental principles of a philosophy are set down once and for all by its founder. Let's look at a historical example to look at how erroneous this is: the political philosophy of the Founding Fathers. Are you saying that the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery is not an integral part of the Constitution? Clearly this is absurd. Clearly, it is absurd -- because it's wholly irrelevant to the open/closed system debate. The abolition of slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment did not posthumously change the political philosophies of the individual Founding Fathers who supported the institution. It changed the Constitution and thus the from-then-on governing principles of the nation. The US Constitution might embody certain principles of philosophy, but it is not itself a philosophy. As for Jim's various criticisms of ARI, let me note a few points. I am not a supporter or defender of ARI. I know far too little about the organization to qualify as such, despite my agreement on the closed system issue. Certainly, I have been quite impressed and even delighted with much of what I've seen from ARI and ARI scholars. I've also realized that many of the common criticisms of ARI heard in TOC circles are simply wrong in various respects. My substantial concerns and questions about ARI policies and practices have not vanished into thin air. Rather, they are being addressed in the course of private conversations with knowledgeable ARI supporters whose judgments I respect and trust. In fact, Jim's criticism here seems like a prime example of the way in which TOC supporters often leap to the worst possible interpretation of ARI-connected actions: As Chris Sciabarra has mentioned, ARI has resorted to voice-overs which cover up the voices of Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden in their audiotapes. These kinds of Bolshevik-style blank outs are clearly not the hallmark of an organization devoted to the search for truth. Jim, do you know that the reason for the voice-overs was to rewrite NB and BB out of Objectivist history? Have you asked knowledgeable ARI people about it? Did you even consider whether some other explanation might be possible, e.g. legal reasons related to copyright? Personally, I know basically nothing about this issue -- and that is precisely why I am unwilling to infer dishonesty in the quick and easy way you do. Also, I know that Peikoff's lecture courses (bought recently) include occasional favorable references to David Kelley and George Walsh. If whitewashing is the driving force that you claim it is at ARI, why would they not have edited out those references too? So if you have a comprehensive critique of Truth and Toleration, let's have it. If not, by all means continue the debate and critiques but let's lower the level of frenzied denunciations in this Blog. "Frenzied denunciations"?!? Now that's quite revealing. If you can muster actual arguments against my criticisms of TOC work, you are more than welcome to post them. But I categorically refuse to allow my passion for ideas be used as a weapon against me. My critiques of TOC work have certainly been passionate. That's not surprising, since the issue matters to me in a very deep and personal way. Moreover, I do not regard passion as inimical to objectivity. TOC has been routinely churning out abysmal crap for some time now. Many TOC supporters are unaware of that, as they long ago lost interest due to sheer boredom. Others do not possess the knowledge or skills to see the problems quickly or clearly. And others offer excuses that need to be exposed as inadequate, even absurd. Notably, the downward spiral of my basic judgment of TOC begun in late 2002 has persisted even since the publication of my public statement of disassociation. Further thinking, reading, and discussions have resulted in an ever-increasing awareness of the subjectivism and mind-body dichotomy central to the philosophy which justifies TOC's very existence. As a final note, my long commentary on Truth and Toleration has been delayed by both work for school and a need to think through various issues. I'll be able to resume work on it in June, after the semester and a vacation is over. In the meantime, I'm likely to keep posting more exploratory and preliminary commentary here on NoodleFood. |
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Shanghai Fisking
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:56 PM Gweilo Diaries devastatingly fisks an insanely stupid post from a leftist on the glories of Shanghai. The comments on both posts are also worth reading, if only to see examples of how the failure to think in essentials results in complete blindness to what really matters. As one commenter put this point: "But you are right, who cares about the human rights situation, if the streets are clean and the servants are service-minded." |
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| Friday, April 23, 2004 | |
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Ayn Rand: Bourgeois Individualist ?!?
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:32 PM Adam Reed offers a scathing critique of Roger Donway's latest Navigator article, Fortress Americanism. My particular interest in it should be apparent from the first paragraph, for there Reed writes that Donway's article is an exemplar of my general claim that "(TOC) minimizes the importance of the wide range of insights, applications, principles, methods, arguments, and logical connections found in the full and rich system of philosophy developed by Ayn Rand." In this case, additional phrases like "ignores," "misunderstands," and "contradicts" are also quite apt. Should we welcome this influence [of ideas from abroad on judicial decisions], as we welcome the vitality and fresh perspectives that certain immigrants bring to our economy? Or should we fight against this influence, as we fight against the tribalist and statist ideas that certain immigrants bring to our politics? Augh, so much wrong packed into so few words! The presumption of these two questions is that the national origin of ideas ought to be regarded as somehow relevant to our response to them. But why should that be? Rational people are concerned with the truth or falsehood of the ideas they encounter, not with irrelevancies like being home grown or imported from abroad. They do not adopt one strategy for fighting domestic ideological disasters and other for fighting foreign ones. Yet such is what Donway recommends in the conclusion of the article: Those who believe in America's Enlightenment philosophy should not fight these internationalists with the simple-minded doctrine that Americans must not listen to foreigners. We should not erect an ideological Fortress America that keeps out European ideas simply because they are European. But we do need to man the ramparts of an ideological Fortress Americanism that keeps out ideas alien to the philosophy of liberty on which our country was founded. The twisted ideas about liberty promoted by "internationalists" who look to Europe for guidance are not fundamentally different from those developed and promoted by American intellectuals. All varieties can and ought to be fought on philosophic principle as deeply wrong and dangerous, not superficially hen-pecked as antithetical to our American traditions. I could say more, but let me instead quickly summarize Adam Reed's more philosophic analysis of the article. In essence, Adam argues that Donway's philosophic arguments constitute "an attempt to disinter and resurrect the zombie of an old dichotomy between 'bourgeois individualism' and 'romantic individualism'" which "Rand killed and buried by presenting a new, integrated, coherent vision of individualism in The Fountainhead." Although I don't know much about the intellectual history that Adam cites, my sense is that his philosophic analysis is correct. Ayn Rand was not, as Donway claims, an advocate of "an extremely bourgeois concept of liberty." (Really, the mind boggles at such a claim. In no way could Roark or any of Ayn Rand's other heroes be aptly described as a "bourgeois individualists.") I won't say more by way of summary here, as I think Adam argues his case well. If you are at all interested, you should simply go read the article and the critique. |
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Occasional Integrity = No Integrity
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:26 AM On an NYPD Blue episode a few weeks ago, Sipowicz's career is in serious danger due to conflicts with a dangerous but well-connected detective new to the squad. The new captain, Gibson, fails to stand up for justice when push comes to shove, despite compelling evidence that the cop killed his wife some years back. After the bad cop is exposed to all, Gibson admits to Sipowicz that he ought to have done better. What Sipowicz says in reply very aptly, if colloquially, sums up an very important moral principle: |
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| Thursday, April 22, 2004 | |
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Snow Snow Snow
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:41 PM It's snowing here. Yes, you read that correctly: It's snowing. We are slated to receive between 7 and 11 inches over the next 24 hours! |
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Ayn Rand in Red China
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:14 AM A newspaper in Shanghai reports that a theater group is performing Victor Hugo's Ninty-Three... and the article quotes Ayn Rand more neutrally and accurately than most American papers can manage: "The theme -- which is played in brilliantly unexpected variations in all the key incidents of the story, and which motivates all the characters and events, integrating them into an inevitable progression toward a magnificent climax -- is man's loyalty to values,'' said Ayn Rand, the well known 20th century American writer. Speaking of China, I'm presently reading Steven Mosher's fascinating book on the modern rural Chinese, Broken Earth. His characterizations of the workings of the Chinese bureaucracy, in which personal connections and private interests rule, were quite fascinating. Also noteworthy was his characterization of the better-off communist peasants, i.e. those working within the "responsibility system" introduced in 1979 rather than the genuinely collective farm. Under that system... the land is no longer worked in common, but is cultivated by individual households. Each year the team parcels out its land to member families and, following state guidelines, sets production quota for each tract. But it is the family, not the team, that is responsible for turning over the amount of its produce to state purchasing stations. More importantly, it is the family, not any larger group, that owns all production in excess of this quota, free to consume, sell, or store the fruits of its labor as it sees fit. (p. 42) Given the strong causal connection between work done and food on the table, this system is far more productive than the collective farm, where working at little as possible is the norm. Mosher continues: County officials, mimicking their Beijing superiors, rather disingenuously denied to me that this means the abandonment of collectivism, pointing out that the land is still owned by the state rather than the households that till it. In fact, the responsibility system is neither collective agriculture nor rural private enterprise, but a return to a form of tenant farming. Thirty years after dispossessing China's landlords, the state has itself become an absentee superlandlord, with the emasculated collective serving as its local representative, each year contracting out its land to hundreds of millions of tenant farmers in return for a share of their crops. Along somewhat similar lines, albeit far worse, is Robert Conquest's observations about the status of the Soviet peasants in the 1930s in his excellent book Harvest of Sorrow. To prevent Ukrainians peasants from escaping the famine, the Soviet government introduced an "internal passport" in 1932. It established that "a peasant could not leave a collective farm without a contract from his future employers, ratified by the collective farm authorities" (170). This amounted to a rather significant restriction upon the peasant, who was "long accustomed to work in the cities, or to migrate annually... to different areas of work" (170). Then he observes: The introduction of internal passports, with the tying of the peasant to the land, was thus a major break with the old practice, and implied a serfdom more constrained by law than that of the pre-Emancipation peasant. The slaves of the Soviet Union were thus substantially worse off than the slaves of the Tsarist times. Ah, but remember, such slavery was the genuine freedom that only Communism can offer! It would be funny if so many millions hadn't died. More generally, Conquest's stories of peasants who understood that collectivization meant starvation and death are utterly heartbreaking. Peasants slaughtered their beasts and burned down their houses rather than turn them over to the Soviet government. The beasts thus-slaughtered were far better off than those turned over to the collective farms, for there they starved and died just like the peasants. Although my readings on communism are depressing, they do certainly contain a wealth of inductive data for a philosopher to chew on! |
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| Wednesday, April 21, 2004 | |
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Questions and Comments on the Closed System
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:56 PM Over on Objectivism Online, a rather active and largely speculative discussion was progressing about my views on the open system versus closed system debate. Unfortunately, the cause of all the speculation was a person who chose -- without my knowledge or consent -- to publish loaded summaries and then select quotes from my brief private e-mail correspondence with him. The whole situation was rather infuriating, although I am grateful to those in the discussion who urged caution. As I figured that some people would continue wrongly speculating on my views unless I actually sketched them, I posted a long comment on the thread this morning. To be clear, I'm not advocating any version of the open system here. Instead, my modest proposal is merely that "Objectivism" might also derivatively refer to the full system of philosophy rigorously and consistently developed from the principles and methods established by Ayn Rand. Some people might ask "Who decides what is included and what is not?" Let me answer simply by quote Peikoff: "In regard to the consistency of any such derivative work, each man must reach his own verdict, by weighing all the relevant evidence." Ultimately, the final arbiter is, of course, reality. To forestall confusion, perhaps the broader notion of Objectivism ought to be designated "extended Objectivism" or some such. Perhaps instead we ought to say that such later developments are "Objectivist" but not part of "Objectivism." However, I tend to think that the same term could be used reasonably clearly for these two related meanings based upon the context. In any case, unit economy seems to demand a single word to designate the philosophy developed by Ayn Rand plus the valid and consistent "new implications, applications, integrations" of that philosophy. (That's quite a mouthful!) So long as we adequately differentiate between Ayn Rand's philosophic work and the developments of later thinkers by retaining the root meaning of "Objectivism," this modest proposal seems reasonably consistent with Ayn Rand's comments about the use of the term "Objectivism" in the first issue of The Objectivist Forum. One final puzzlement: Adherents of the closed system generally claim as justification that Objectivism is a proper noun, not a concept. (Peikoff doesn't say that in "Fact and Value," so I'm unsure of the origin of this idea. Does anyone know?) I've always been rather puzzled by this view. If Objectivism is a proper noun, to what single particular does it refer? None of the candidates I've considered make much sense to me. One option is that the particular could be the philosophic ideas which once existed in Ayn Rand's mind. If so, Objectivism doesn't exist any more -- and no one but Ayn Rand could have been an Objectivist. So surely that's wrong. Another option is that the particular is the sum of the philosophic ideas which Ayn Rand gave physical form. However, those ideas do not exist in some Platonic realm; their physical forms do not possess intrinsic meaning. Individual minds are required to grasp the meaning of the ideas in those physical forms. Yet then we seem to have multiple instances, which excludes a proper name. Such multiple instances also serve as the basis on which to form a concept. Thus I must admit to some bafflement at the proper noun view. I hope that sufficiently explains my present views. I'm eager to hear the best contrary arguments that thoughtful and knowledgeable Objectivists can marshal! |
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