Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

[_Rosebud]

Here are about 10 minutes of Nibley talking about horses in the Book of Mormon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwi0L-mwn4M

I'd be happy to link to a version without the captions - but if you just listen to the sound alone it's pretty bad. What is he saying?

I don't think he is saying anything very much; he's just standing there talking and being Nibley, which is all his audience expects of him.

Watched this looking for signs of high-functioning autism (Asperger's) as that might have accounted for some of his inability to explain topics in a manner that would be conducive to his audience, his apparent insensitivity towards his children, and would have meant that although he still could have behaved manipulatively, his manipulations couldn't have used sophisticated and strategic predictions of others' responses to his behaviors and the consequent molding of his own behaviors to get desired responses.

Didn't see high-functioning autism, though. Just a brilliant and very creative man with a good long-term memory and what seems to me to be a desire to show it all off. (I've never met a smart show off before! Jenn Kamp.... it's common, clearly... just spend a little time on message boards.) Nibley jumps from fact to fact to fact making connection after connection in a near frenzy. His pace is too quick for his listeners to grasp each fact and how each fact connects and therefore how the facts and connections must justify the conclusions he wants them to believe are accurate.

I am having a hard time understanding what this kind of behavior has to do with the progression of knowledge that should be happening on university campuses and in the academic community. It seems to me to be a different sort of beast. I don't think it falls in the category of solid, but outdated work that was part of a systematic cumulative progression of knowledge over time. Rather, Nibley's work seems to me to be an outgrowth of a place and a time. It happened in a pseudo-academic environment that didn't demand rigorous scientific or academic thought and that was wanting for an intellectual hero to make its community members feel good about themselves, their beliefs and their place in the world.

If there is any accuracy in what I am saying, Nibley's decision to step up to the plate and become this desired academic hero who contributed to the discussion without really following the demands of scientific thought in scholarship, opens him, now, up to criticisms regarding the validity of his work that might taint his past name. Many scholars and scientists falsify data to publish and forward their careers. This misuse of stature and perceived authority to knowingly deceive is not uncommon and in most of the academic world it is disciplined. Tainted work is found, questioned, and disregarded and scholars of the past lose credibility. This is as it should be. Otherwise, the public and the rest of the academic community could be too easily victimized by false claims of "experts."

What's interesting about Nibley to me is not Nibley "the man" or the value or lack of value of his contributions or work, but what the fact that Nibley was able to achieve so much (and even to achieve such an aura of heroism that ex-Mormons -- and even ex-Mormon scholars -- in 2016 will defend him) says about the environment in which he acted. Nibley wasn't able to succeed on his own. He succeeded because he was what his environment wanted. His environment spurred him on and he doesn't seem to have had any qualms about the kinds of contributions he chose to make, for better or for worse.

[_Johannes]

I am having a hard time understanding what this kind of behavior has to do with the progression of knowledge that should be happening on university campuses and in the academic community. It seems to me to be a different sort of beast. I don't think it falls in the category of solid, but outdated work that was part of a systematic cumulative progression of knowledge over time.

I would agree with this.

Where I would agree with Kishkumen is that I don't buy the notion that Nibley couldn't have believed in his own nonsense because he was too smart - but I think you have clarified (Rosebud) that that isn't in fact your position?

What's interesting about Nibley to me is not Nibley "the man" or the value or lack of value of his contributions or work, but what the fact that Nibley was able to achieve so much (and even to achieve such an aura of heroism that ex-Mormons -- and even ex-Mormon scholars -- in 2016 will defend him) says about the environment in which he acted. Nibley wasn't able to succeed on his own. He succeeded because he was what his environment wanted.

Yes, and that's the truly interesting thing about his career trajectory. He became an icon.

[_Markk]

Because, guess what, I don't have to agree with your faith any more than I agree with Nibley's! Of course, I don't really know the details of your faith. But I do know that as an LDS missionary I often encountered Protestants of different stripes who thought Mormonism was bizarre and therefore Satanic or some such. Of course, Protestant history is filled with examples of the same sort of bizarreness, so it is funny to see Protestants going ape over Mormon idiosyncrasies.

I was just as LDS as you are/where...maybe more so culturally and historically 5th and 6th generation all sides. My criticism was of Nibley as a Mormon, not as a Evangelical. He was a hack in the sense it was a means to an end aside from the truth. He purposely deceived us...in saying things like Jesus went through the temple secretly with apostles, GA, and 70's in a talk, and implied that there were garments in a LDS construct is very deceitful.

So again this has noting to do with me being a evangelical...and in a sense a ex-Mormon, but that Nibley was a propagandist and in a very real way a liar in print.

One thing I have noticed, is that now that internet Mopology is more or less instinct...this forum has turned into a homer forum of little objectivity. It too bad.

[_Johannes]

Watched this looking for signs of high-functioning autism (Asperger's) as that might have accounted for some of his inability to explain topics in a manner that would be conducive to his audience, his apparent insensitivity towards his children, and would have meant that although he still could have behaved manipulatively, his manipulations couldn't have used sophisticated and strategic predictions of others' responses to his behaviors and the consequent molding of his own behaviors to get desired responses.

Didn't see high-functioning autism, though.

I gather you're a mental health professional, Rosebud, and I appreciate what you've said above. Uninformed people are often too ready to reach for Asperger's as a lazy armchair diagnosis for people who seem a bit strange or out of the ordinary.

But I've watched footage of Nibley too, and (as a mostly untrained layperson) I see a man who is psychologically unusual, in several ways. I know it's difficult enough to diagnose someone who's right in front on you, let alone a deceased person over the internet, but do you have any sense that there were any other pathologies there, having ruled out the autistic spectrum?

[_Johannes]

My criticism was of Nibley as a Mormon, not as a Evangelical. He was a hack in the sense it was a means to an end aside from the truth. He purposely deceived us...in saying things like Jesus went through the temple secretly with apostles, GA, and 70's in a talk, and implied that there were garments in a LDS construct is very deceitful.

I'm a nevermo, and I'm unconvinced of this. I've met too many highly intelligent people who are convinced of strange theories (religious and secular) to buy the notion that Nibley must have known that his theories were untrue.

To put it another way, every church has its Nibleys - intellectuals who sincerely commit themselves to ruthlessly conclusion-driven work. (Ditto secular ideologies, Marxism being one obvious example.)

[_Symmachus]

Hi Rosebud,

I don't think Compton's criticisms are substantially different from what Kishkumen and I have already been saying about his work. If you think that constitutes "faking footnotes," then I suppose that means he fakes footnotes. That to me is not the equivalent of faking footnotes, which I would think is more along the lines of plagiarism or outright fabrication. As I said, Nibley is a sloppy scholar.

I also don't care about "Nibley the man" (whatever the hell that means). Of course he was complex; but so is that person who makes your lattes. I think that is sort of a given about everybody and not worth mentioning. When someone like Compton says it, it's code for "I want to love this person as much as I used to, but I know too much now to maintain that previous level of admiration." Consequently, I see no reason to psychologize the issue or invoke murky and value-laden terms like "genius" or to attribute motives to a person I've never even met. Nor do I see much use in clinically diagnosing someone who has been dead for more than ten years. I'll just talk instead about his footnotes and his scholarship, which is something I can observe firsthand.

Kudos then to Johannes for reinjecting into this discussion something we can actually talk about. It is certainly important that Nibley was citing outdated scholarship even in the 1950s, and come to think of it I remember him citing a lot of really old scholarship. Either it had a profound influence on his thinking or he just didn't really keep up with intellectual currents, for whatever reason. The guy was writing about myth etc. in the 1950s through 1970s but I wonder how often, for example, he cites Levi-Strauss or the post-structuralists who responded to him and were also writing when Nibley was. They made quite a splash in American academia from the late 1960s through the 1990s, and their critique of structuralism and "scientism" I think would have been very useful for someone like Nibley. Certainly later apologists made (and continue to make use of) post modern critiques when it serves their purposes, which Gadianton rips to shreds, much to my delight (speaking of which: where are you Gad!??!). But not Nibley. He seems to mention Karl Popper over and over and over.

And I don't think I'm defending him qua Nibley the iconic Mormon scholar. I have no sentimental attachments to Nibley, have no disillusionment like Compton, didn't discover his work until I was already a closet unbeliever and so was never illusioned in the first place, and couldn't care less about his reputation. His legacy among the Nibleyophiles at BYU I have criticized elsewhere in this forum. I just think that there is nothing that complex about his scholarship, I see no pattern of devious manipulation via footnotes. His work still obviously commands influence among believers and anxiety among unbelievers, and I think the most effective critiques of that work will get lost in discussions about his footnotes. He wrote mostly in a non-scholarly venue and was sloppy: those two facts explain everything without appeals to personal complexity, unsubstantial allegations of deception, and subjective appeals to something as meaningless and vague as "genius."

[_Symmachus]

Nibley's treatment of history reminds me of those amateur Freemasonic scholars who saw the Craft wherever they looked. In their view Freemasonry was ancient and spread throughout the world in a glorious diffusion of symbol and truth. So, if something among the Native American tribes or Afghanistan looked vaguely familiar, the antiquity and ubiquity of Freemasonry were the answer. All a Mason needed to see was the similarity in order to draw the obvious conclusion. At the same conference I alluded to above someone commented about her father the Freemason interpreting Egyptian iconography as obvious Freemasonic symbolism. I could sympathize.

A perfect analogy. I would add too the only ideological opponents to Freemasonry that remain: conspiracy theorists. If a conspiracy theorist wrote twenty books about how masons are dominating world government in league with the illuminati, I wouldn't really think the truth of that view would be determined by the accuracy of footnotes, nor would falsehood by their inaccuracy.

Footnotes a cosmetic distraction in Nibley's case; the problem is the fundamental view of scholarship—and the world.

[_Johannes]

The guy was writing about myth etc. in the 1950s through 1970s but I wonder how often, for example, he cites Levi-Strauss or the post-structuralists who responded to him and were also writing when Nibley was. They made quite a splash in American academia from the late 1960s through the 1990s, and their critique of structuralism and "scientism" I think would have been very useful for someone like Nibley. Certainly later apologists made (and continue to make use of) post modern critiques when it serves their purposes, which Gadianton rips to shreds, much to my delight (speaking of which: where are you Gad!??!). But not Nibley. He seems to mention Karl Popper over and over and over.

Great point. If present-day Mopologists' appeals to postmodern subjectivism are more than merely opportunistic, it's strange that they find no echo in the work of their icon.

In fact, I'd be interested to know when the Mopologist interest in postmodernism started. I struggle to imagine DCP and Prof. Hanblin defending Paul de Man, for example. An interesting topic for another thread, perhaps?

[_Kishkumen]

I was just as LDS as you are/where...maybe more so culturally and historically 5th and 6th generation all sides. My criticism was of Nibley as a Mormon, not as a Evangelical.

You're the one who got upset over me referring to "your faith." You don't have anything to prove with regard to that or your LDS background. I really don't care.

He was a hack in the sense it was a means to an end aside from the truth.

I guess that depends on what you define as the truth, and whether you feel Nibley was obliged to agree with you because it's so obvious to everyone.

He purposely deceived us...in saying things like Jesus went through the temple secretly with apostles, GA, and 70's in a talk, and implied that there were garments in a LDS construct is very deceitful.

You're in fantasyland, Markk. You have no idea what his motives were. The guy believed in what he was doing. He actually believed that Jesus did those things. Yes, he was unable to demonstrate it through regular academic methods, but I don't think he was trying to do so. He proceeded from a position of faith in the LDS Church and assumed his readers wanted to be enriched in the way he felt enriched by his education.

The simple truth here is that no one knows what Jesus was doing and everyone is more or less making up the Jesus that best suits their own views. Nibley is no more or less culpable than any other religionist or historian who contructs an idiosyncratic Jesus. Anyone who attempts to describe Jesus will, in the end, make up his or her own version.

So again this has noting to do with me being a evangelical...and in a sense a ex-Mormon, but that Nibley was a propagandist and in a very real way a liar in print.

One thing I have noticed, is that now that internet Mopology is more or less instinct...this forum has turned into a homer forum of little objectivity. It too bad.

Boohoo. I have long seen the tendency of many ex-Mormons to see the worst in the people they used to look to for wisdom, guidance, and learning as LDS people. You seem to think bias and wishful thinking are uniquely Mormon diseases. I say you need Nibley to be a liar so you feel morally justified rejecting Mormonism. He can't just be wrong. He has to be maliciously wrong. Otherwise you don't get to pat yourself on the back or believe that you finally found the correct answers.

[_Rosebud]

Where I would agree with Kishkumen is that I don't buy the notion that Nibley couldn't have believed in his own nonsense because he was too smart - but I think you have clarified (Rosebud) that that isn't in fact your position?

Yes. My position is twofold:

1. Since Nibley was highly educated, I believe it is less likely that he believed in his own nonsense than that he didn't. I think it is more likely that he didn't believe and that he was behaving patronizingly towards his audience and justifying his false claims with thoughts like, "But they want to believe," or "I am doing what the brethren want," etc. I also believe that it is possible that he wasn't especially cognizant of his incentives behind his own falsifications because he was acting to achieve positive reinforcement from his environment and humans often act to achieve positive reinforcement without much thought or self-awareness of what they are doing. The latter wouldn't preclude awareness that he was falsifying, however. It would still be knowing deceit and deserving of discipline.

And, importantly:

2. I don't think it's possible for me or Kish or anyone else here or anywhere to really know what Nibley believed or didn't believe about the veracity of Mormonism. It's a guessing game. My interpretation is based on my life experiences etc. and Kish's interpretation is based on Kish's life experineces, etc. Both of us are interpreting and neither of us (and no one else) really knows. It's silly, in my mind, for anyone to claim in surety that they know what Nibley really thought or believed.

_______

As far as whether or not Nibley's belief or disbelief in Mormonism should have in any way affected his personal responsibility to behave according to certain academic standards in regards to the rigors of academic research that a man of his stature would have understood and was responsible to understood regardless of actual understanding is, I suppose, another question and is maybe, even, a more interesting question.