A brilliant article by philosopher Aaron Smith.
Excerpts:
In an essay on Ayn Rand and Aristotle, Massimo Pigliucci, a prominent voice in the Modern Stoicism movement, bends over backward to assure his readers that unlike critics who mischaracterize Rand, he is going to engage with her ideas seriously. And he is well positioned to live up to that: Pigliucci is a widely published public intellectual, a professor of philosophy at The City College of New York, a scholar with doctorates in genetics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy. But in his engagement with Rand, Pigliucci displays a shocking lack of concern for truth and objectivity.
The indifference to accuracy is evident from the quoted material above, which mashes together a statement from Rand (from the appendix to Atlas Shrugged,“About the Author”) with a statement (after an ellipsis) by a different author, Leonard Peikoff (from his book The Ominous Parallels). Pigliucci then wrongly attributes both quotes to Rand’s “Review of J. H. Randall’s Aristotle,” which he doesn’t seem to have read (or read with any attention).
Here's the full article
