Reaching for Roots

James G. Lennox from the February 1996 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

In Part Two, however, such influences are taken for granted: "Though Rand rejected much of the content of Lossky's philosophy, her own system retained an exhaustive and dialectical form that reflected her roots," writes Sciabarra. And, later, "[A]s I have demonstrated, Rand's philosophy...was a historical product of her revolt against formal dualism."

Demonstrated is a strong word--and entirely inappropriate here. No evidence that Rand was familiar with Lossky's philosophy has been provided, and only weak, conflicting evidence that she studied ancient philosophy with him. Sciabarra thoroughly discusses the philosophy of Russia's "Silver Age," but provides no direct evidence that it influenced Ayn Rand.

One form of indirect evidence for such an influence would be a close similarity between Rand's philosophical method and that of the intellectuals who could have been her teachers. Though indirect, such evidence can be convincing, provided there is systematic, unadorned, and detailed similarity. A central task of Parts Two and Three of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical is to establish that on topics ranging from the theory of concepts to ethics and aesthetics, just such a close similarity exists.

Ayn Rand's philosophical method is among the most innovative aspects of her thought. Sciabarra characterizes her method as "dialectical," and explains early on what he means. On his understanding, a dialectical method "focuses on relational `contradictions' or paradoxes revealed in the dynamism of history," yet "refuses to recognize them as mutually exclusive or exhaustive."

The dialectician's aim is to "transcend" such oppositions through "synthesis"--to see those apparent opposites as parts or aspects of a wider whole. Where does one find such a philosophical method in Ayn Rand? "[I]n her rejection of such `false alternatives' as materialism and idealism, intrincisism and subjectivism, rationalism and empiricism."

It is true, and an important insight, that Ayn Rand had a keen eye for the shared premise underlying "false alternatives." Behind modern philosophy's alternatives of rationalism and empiricism, for example, she recognized a shared assumption: Abstract knowledge is neither based on, nor applicable to, the perceptible world we live in. Thus, for Objectivism, the fundamental philosophical issue is determining how abstract knowledge is validly derived from perception.

But this is precisely not asserting "that each of the opposing schools of philosophy is half right and half wrong." Rather, this method concludes that both alternatives are fundamentally wrong, because they rest on the same fundamental error. Nor is Ayn Rand's method systematically aimed at "overcoming dualisms." Indeed, Objectivism rests on a number of them: consciousness and existence; reason and force; individualism and collectivism.

Yet the language of Kantian/Hegelian "dialectic," a language Ayn Rand explicitly attacked, is repeatedly used by Sciabarra to characterize her method. In this presentation of her thought, she "transcends opposites," "developing antinomies," "recognizes interpenetration of opposites," "works toward a new synthesis," "traces internal relations." All of this is used as evidence that she is "true to her dialectical roots." Such characterizations are reinforced by constant claims of alleged similarities to Hegel, Marx, Marxist historians, Weber, even Trotsky.

The effect of those comparisons is clear. Absent the requisite direct evidence for a philosophical connection to "her Russian roots," Sciabarra intertwines such claims of kinship with dialectical redescriptions of Rand's ideas, thus giving the appearance of indirect evidence for such a connection. In dealing with the obvious objection that she explicitly rejected this philosophical approach, Sciabarra claims that she simply misunderstood it. But this undercuts his central historical thesis. Had she have so thoroughly absorbed a "dialectical sensibility" from her teachers, how could she so completely misunderstand it? When Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical is insightful and illuminating about Objectivism, as it sometimes is, it is in spite of this misguided historiography, rather than because of it.

Chapter 10, the concluding chapter of Part Two, explores Ayn Rand's social philosophy, including her attitude toward libertarianism. This chapter is a thicket of inappropriate comparisons to Hegel and Marx, comparisons that depend on misdescribing her views and ignoring the meaning of theirs. Comparisons to those who are closer to home, such as Hayek, are no less misleading. Sciabarra insists, despite her well-known antipathy to the label, that Rand is a libertarian who "incorporates significant anarchistic elements that cannot be ignored." In trying to figure out what Sciabarra took to be those "significant anarchistic elements," all I came up with were Rand's views that compulsory taxation and the draft are immoral violations of individual rights. But there is nothing "anarchistic" in those ideas; they follow directly from a conception of the state as the defender of objectively defined individual rights.

Part Three carries the same themes into an exploration of Ayn Rand's philosophical activism. "Just as Marx's dialectical method was `in its essence critical and revolutionary,' Rand's dialectical sensibility led her toward a comparable, radical resolution." Once again, next to a candid admission that there is "no available evidence" of any such influence, there is insistence that her "assessment of the nature of power" would be akin to that of Hegel and Marx because of "her dialectical approach."

A thoughtful discussion of Rand's views on the preconditions of a benevolent culture is marred by unconvincing attempts to reveal her "dialectical sensibility" that obscure her thought rather than illuminate it: "Even as she revolted against the Russian sobornost in its mystical and Marxist incarnations, she sustained a belief in a conflict-free society of individuals united by their common love for the same values. Rand achieved a dialectical Aufhebung--a sublation of dualities that simultaneously abolished and absorbed, transcended and preserved elements of the Russian communitarian vision."

The recently published Letters of Ayn Rand contains a number of letters, especially those to Isabel Paterson and John Hospers, in which Rand discusses philosophical method and the history of modern philosophy. The picture that emerges from them is of a young novelist caught up in the battle for liberty and individualism in an America quickly succumbing to the collectivism from which she had fled, beginning to explore the philosophical foundations of this battleground. (Sciabarra reviewed Letters in the November 1995 issue of REASON.) They show no hint of the sorts of influences that Sciabarra conjectures were crucial to her philosophical development.

Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical asks an important question. But until better historical evidence is provided, the claim that Russian dialectics is the key to Rand's philosophical odyssey remains an unpromising conjecture.

Comments

nfl jerseys|11.16.10 @ 10:21PM|#

xrthx

log in or register to reply

قبلة الوداع|8.16.11 @ 10:55PM|#

ThaNk U

log in or register to reply