He said the purpose of the introduction was to bring out why the novel's theme is universal and not just a condemnation of Soviet Russia in particular. He does so, first by naming the two causes of totalitarianism - faith and self-sacrifice - and then by giving historical examples of the manifestations of those errors and of their counterparts - reason and love of values. He first does so chronologically, skimming history from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth century, then he examines how "different" totalitarian states are fundamentally the same. He tells the amazing story of the Italian film version of the novel, which is an eloquent example of his thesis. Finally, he brings us to what we care about the most - the present - citing numerous examples of calls to faith and sacrifice in our own culture, and concludes with:
This book is not about your long-gone grandparents, but about your still-growing children.
He accomplishes all of this in 2 pages.
I admire Leonard Peikoff tremendously. Aside from the incalculable benefits I have gained directly from his books and lectures, his intellectual growth is inspirational to me. Dr. Peikoff admits that he was a rationalist as a young man, and he worked for decades to change his method of thinking. Now he seems to be a paragon of the inductive method. I can't wait to read his forthcoming book, The DIM Hypothesis. I attended his lectures on the subject two years ago in Telluride, and it is clear that this is a man committed to facts. He is steeped in facts. His podcasts show a man who has a detailed, deep and integrated knowledge of history. What a transformation! I tend towards rationalism myself so Dr. Peikoff is an intellectual mentor to me, at least from afar.
The issue of being fact-oriented is something I work on every day. I know I'm getting better when I take the position that one should follow the news. Thanks, Dr. Peikoff!
Thank you for writing your tribute to Dr. Leonard Peikoff. He is the world's greatest living philosopher. Directly and indirectly he has contributed widely to the spread and application of Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason, Objectivism. A further role has been in teaching. His long lecture series, Objective Communication, shows the thought, care, and practice he has invested in teaching, both through lecturing and through writing.
ReplyDeleteNext to Ayn Rand, he has made the greatest contribution to my life.
Amy, I think that you were right to say what you said in that NF comment about the news. If a person isn't familiar with the concretes at the basic level required in that Pew survey, then his understanding of the workings of the world is so impoverished that he couldn't possibly induce general conclusions about political trends. His general claims could only be floating abstractions, based on pretty thoroughly confused or faulty notions about the state of the world.
ReplyDeleteFor example, if someone thought that unemployment was 15%, that would indicate a major error in his understanding of the current economic situation. Consequently, his conclusions about the economy -- including the effects of the bailouts on it -- would not have any genuine basis in fact. They could only be deduced from some abstract theory, without reference to facts. They would be worthless.
Any moderately alert person should be able to get, say, 10 of the 12 questions. Anyone else shouldn't be voting, nor expressing firm opinions on the state of politics in America today. If someone wishes to go that route, I suppose that I don't care.
(Hmm... I think I'll post that -- or something similar -- to the NoodleFood comments.)
BTW, what's up with the look of your blog? It's like your CSS file is missing or not found or something.
Yikes. I don't see any problems with the web site. I'm hoping it was a temporary problem. Anybody else see a problem? Diana, still there?
ReplyDeleteI don't see any problems. I don't see any defects and I think the way it looks is appealing. I love the clean, elegant simplicity. But I might be swayed by prior choices.
ReplyDeleteI did a hard reload and now it looks fine. It must have been some problem with my browser; it must have missed the CSS file or something. Sorry for the false alarm!
ReplyDeleteWhew!
ReplyDeleteIf a political principle--about, for example, the role of the profit motive or of the rule of law in an economy--has been induced correctly from the facts, is it really necessary for a person to have detailed knowledge of the current unemployment rate (or any other statistic) in order to make their stance on the issue objective?
ReplyDeleteLeaving aside the issue of what the current unemployment rate actually is (especially relative to prior historical periods where the statistics were more honest), I would argue that a person in a coma for the past 10 years could "wake up" and detail exactly why the current trend is wrong, and what the effects of certain decisions are likely to be.
These conclusions would have a basis in fact--as, if properly induced, they would have behind them knowledge of what happened in different economies and nations throughout all of history. They would not be worthless.
That said, contextual knowledge is important in predicting the specifics of how (or the timing of when) a principle is likely to play out.
For example, what other nations are doing or not doing is especially important in this case (given that huge benefits accrue to the country that most upholds contracts and that has rule of law).
Knowing that, is important in gauging both the how and the when above as, if there's nowhere to run to, there's (um) nowhere to run. A collapse of the currency, and a brain drain, would have occurred long ago if there was another established place like America.
Still, one need not know any particular fact that is given to us by government agencies today before coming to an objective conclusion about the value of current (and long-running) policies.
If specific facts about the economy are needed to judge the utility of a policy, in this case especially everyone has to keep quiet. Because the banks are still highly levered, and everybody is still making guesses about the underlying value of the assets that they see on their balance sheets--then using that to make guesses about what they think about the value of the assets that they don't see (because they're off the balance sheet).