Joe,
To avoid a lot of friction, I will try to keep my comments to facts, your own words and Barbara’s own words. I am specifically addressing your Post 74 and I will address the ideas in the order you presented them.
You started by expressing confusion about why some people on this thread considered Barbara’s article brilliant. I would like to point out that those who found this article brilliant are not just on this thread. There were many deeply knowledgeable Objectivists who attended the lecture who also found it brilliant. If you did not, that is your right. If you are truly puzzled, I believe it would be a good idea to ask some of the knowledgeable Objectivists – at least the ones you respect. I am sure several of them could clear up your puzzlement much better than I could.
You wrote that “the first two sections were about evil ideas or the immediacy of consequences.” This is where you skipped over a very important part of Barbara’s article. The first part actually gives the theme and expands on it. To quote Barbara, she stated right near the beginning.
“And that is what I want to discuss today: the immensely presumptuous moralizing, the wildly unjust condemnations, and the towering anger and outrage exhibited by so many Objectivists. I want to explain, as best I can identify it, why this happens—that is, what are the mistaken philosophical ideas that lead to it, and what appears to be the psychology of many of its practitioners.” Please note that she is not talking about all moral condemnation and rage, just the wildly unjust ones that she has seen by “so many Objectivists.” Note that this does not mean “all Objectivists” either. This will be important to remember as I go through the ideas.
The first two sections (more precisely, the second and third sections) were not about “evil ideas or the immediacy of consequences” as isolated topics. They were about two of the causes for the prominent moralizing by “so many Objectivists” that was her theme. She also did not stipulate that all unjust moralizers exhibited the same degree of each cause, or even that all unjust moralizers were moralizers because of the same causes. She merely gave an overview of the main reasons in general as she has observed them over a lifetime.
You mentioned the part about evil ideas, but did not discuss it. From the tenor of what you wrote, you did not consider this part important. Yet this is a strong philosophical component in exaggerated inflamed moralizing. (Remember, Barbara said she was going to discuss the philosophical reasons first, then the psychological reasons – so this is the philosophical part).
The subject of whether ideas are evil is actually at the base of the Kelley-Peikoff schism. (Kelley did some magnificent writing about it, too.)
Barbara’s point is that people are judged to be evil by the raging moralizers because the ideas these people believe are judged to be evil. But as Kelley correctly observes, an idea can only be correct or incorrect. Evil is attributed only to actions, i.e., consequences or intentions (both being actions, one physical and the other mental). Barbara also correctly mentions that only people can be moral agents, while ideas and emotions cannot be moral agents.
One of the main reasons that excessive moralizers use the philosophical component of accepting the notion that there are “evil ideas” is that this creates a short-cut to moralizing – it creates oversimplification. After noticing that “evil ideas” usually means “mistaken ideas” that contradict ours, she says:
It makes moral judgment so very easy, does it not? All we require in order to know that someone is worthless is to know that he holds convictions contrary to our own.
And if we hold such a view, we necessarily will morally denigrate and verbally abuse those who do not agree with us. We will be indignant at our opponents’ presumption in asking that we even consider or attempt to disprove their evil ideas. Instead, to the cheers of those who agree with us, we will ringingly denounce their dishonesty, their irrationality, their evasion, so that the world will recognize them for what they are.
And what superior and virtuous beings we are! And how incredibly smug and self-congratulatory! We cavalierly dispense with most of the human race for not agreeing with our philosophy.
In reality, a person is much more than his professed beliefs. He has a personal history and he has normal manners of acting and interacting with others. He has a temperament. He has many elements that constitute knowledge of him as a person in addition to his professed ideas. Yet the “evil idea” approach allows a flaming moralizer to blank out this additional knowledge and condemn the person as evil to the moralizer’s heart’s content.
So I disagree with you about the importance of this section. I find it to be a critical component in understanding the causes of the chronic overkill in moralizing.
The third section (your second section) is not exactly “immediacy of consequences” (the title was “Consequences as self-evident” to be precise). Barbara specifically mentioned a direct envisioning of the results of an idea – as if on a perceptual level – that prompted immediate anger. In this case, she was not talking only about moralizing rage. She was talking about a psychological trigger that causes anger based on a philosophical manner of integrating an idea.
She gave an example from her own life with respect to the draft. In her mind’s eye, she saw the vivid image of “a field strewn with the butchered bodies of dead and dying young soldiers, soldiers who were scarcely more than boys, who had been sent to bleed and die for purposes that were not their own.” In the case of Ayn Rand, she mentioned a letter to Nathaniel Branden not too long after Rand met him. Rand asked if the image of Hank Rearden came to mind when Nathaniel heard the term “selfish exploitation” and this caused him to blow up. In both cases, Barbara mentioned the visual image as a trigger for anger.
Then she mentioned that this, “at least in one respect,” was why Ayn Rand displayed a “quickness to pass negative moral judgments.” Let me emphasize for clarity, Barbara advanced this as one of the reasons, not as the only reason for Rand’s snap moral condemnations.
You wrote:
The point for both sections seems to be just because it's obvious to us, doesn't mean it's obvious to someone else.
This is not precise, since it was not covered in the second section (your first section) dealing with evil ideas. In the following section, this was mentioned, but it was not the point. If you need a point for both sections, that would be oversimplification. Barbara was very clear that the doctrine of “evil ideas” leads to oversimplification in judging a person to be evil. And she was also clear that envisioning the consequences of an idea with a perceptual image leads to an oversimplification that blurs the understanding of the conceptual meaning of that idea. In both cases, oversimplification results in anger. If practiced consistently, the result is angry moralizing.
That is the point of those sections.
The idea that what is obvious to one is not obvious to another was mentioned almost in passing, as a further idea to her point. Barbara only devoted one paragraph to it, at the end of the section dealing with self-evident consequences:
It is true that many of our convictions may begin to seem almost self-evident to us. But we must recognize that this is not so, that we have learned the truth of them as a result of many complex and extended processes of observation and thought—which means that they are not self-evident to our opponents. Our opponents rarely disagree with us out of sheer perversity, willfully denying the evidence of their senses. We ought to treat them accordingly, to remember that we did not always know what is so clear to us today, and, very importantly, to remember the steps by which we came to know it.
You then wrote:
I don't think those examples are representative of any significant number of people. For the case of the “evil ideas” doctrine, my own experience is completely at odds with yours because I see it all around me and in a large number of Objectivists, at least online. As one easy example, look at how religious people are consistently baited on Objectivist Internet forums and treated with harsh derision, regardless of whether they make a rational point about any other matter. There are other examples that are easily seen, but I don’t need to list them all. The idea is clear.
For the case of envisioning the consequences of an idea, I agree with you. I do not know many people who do that consistently – who immediately see perceptual images as the result of ideas in themselves, especially new ideas. Only very penetrating intellects seem to do that as a habit. Ayn Rand did. Barbara did. Nathaniel Branden did. Those are Barbara’s examples.
The impression I get from the flaming moralizers is that when they envision something, they see either a passage of Rand’s impassioned words or some kind of image of “trouncing an evil enemy.” They seem to want to relive the glory of Rand’s achievements in a ballsy manner. This is secondary to what Barbara mentioned, but it is true from my own observations. Of course, in this paragraph I am discussing my impressions of some very inflamed Objectivist people I have interacted with. Your own experience might have been different.
On evasion, you give a pretty good example of how exasperating it gets to discuss an idea with someone who doesn’t care. You ask if that is a justification for moral outrage, insinuating that this is evasion in all cases. But I would say that in some cases yes, in other cases no. The magic word, context, comes to mind in making that call. For example, a person might be open to an idea that challenges long-held beliefs, but he is not open at the particular moment you are talking to him because he is busy with something else. There are many contexts that could apply.
Still, I feel your pain from having experienced it myself. Yes, I do feel anger when I get brushed off. We all do. Whether I will call that person evil in an inflamed manner or not will depend on a lot of other information about both him and the situation.
But this is beside the point. It bears repeating that Barbara was not talking against anger per se. She was talking against unjust inflamed moralizing. So when you mention her correct observation that one cannot know the contents of the mind of another, and then ask:
But is she really arguing about very difficult and slight cases of evasion? Is this where moral outrage comes from?
you make the mistake I mentioned in my earlier post. She is not discussing where moral outrage in general comes from. She is discussing where unjust, i.e., not fully integrated, moral outrage comes from. She even used the term “irrational moralizing” at the start of this section on evasion. Once again, the concept of oversimplification is evident. It is easy to dismiss a person by saying he is evading. Her point is that much information is needed to make that call with certainty and the angry moralizers do not consider all the information needed. They oversimplify.
Thus your following conclusion does not accurately deal with her text. You treat her argument as if she were talking about all moral condemnation. She wasn’t.
She's almost entirely ruled out moral outrage with an almost-skepticism. We can still judge the likes of Hitler, but pretty much all of our day to day judgments have to be thrown out because psychology hasn't progressed as a science enough.
But don’t take my word for it. Here are Barbara’s words on proper moral condemnation:
Of course there are thoroughly dishonest people in this world. Of course there are people who deserve the strongest possible moral condemnation. Of course there are people who push away guilt feelings and continue to act destructively and irrationally. Of course there are people who act without thinking, who mouth ideas they do not take the trouble to understand, who refuse to examine their own motives and purposes. Of course there are people who would rather die than think—and often do.
This partial paragraph occurs at the end of the section on evasion. For as much as I try to force my thinking, I just don’t see how this can be construed to apply only to “the likes of Hitler.”
In your examination of the section of the psychological causes of Objectivist rage, you already have switched gears and brand her arguments as if she were talking about rage in general by Objectivists. Here are your own words:
The last section on psychological causes of rage was also lacking. and
Those are convenient ways to slander moral outrage… Barbara defined her terms at the very beginning of the article, the part you skipped. She was discussing “Objectivist Rage.” Here are her words from the start.
But what I call “Objectivist Rage” has a peculiar twist to it, unlikely to be found anywhere else except, paradoxically, in religion. It is almost always morally tinged. Those who question our ideas and those who oppose them, we are told, are not merely unintelligent, ignorant, uninformed; they are evil, they are moral monsters to be cast out and forever damned.
And that is what I want to discuss today: the immensely presumptuous moralizing, the wildly unjust condemnations, and the towering anger and outrage exhibited by so many Objectivists. I want to explain, as best I can identify it, why this happens—that is, what are the mistaken philosophical ideas that lead to it, and what appears to be the psychology of many of its practitioners.
Barbara was discussing the psychological reasons for that. She was not discussing the psychological reasons for moral condemnation in general. Since your discussion of this section is based on a mistaken notion of her meaning, I see no point to debating the details, neither the charge of slander. But, when you ask:
Did I skip over the really important part? As I stated earlier, I have to answer, “Yes you did.” You skipped over the beginning, where she defined what she was talking about. I respectfully suggest a closer reading of her article.
I could go on to your following posts with this same thoroughness, but this is getting way too long.
Michael
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