Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  5. Book synopses, reviews, and ongoing dialogue concerning my work are fully indexed on my Dialectics and Liberty website at http://www.chrismatthewsciabarra.com and my Notablog at http://www.notablog.net.

  6. Rand (January 1963), “Collectivized ethics,” in Rand 1964a, 81. Rand 1964a is hereafter cited as Virtue of Selfishness by page number in both text and notes.

  7. I owe these particular points to Roger E. Bissell.

  8. I would like to extend my gratitude to several individuals who offered commentary on early drafts of this preface and Appendix III that I prepared for inclusion in this second expanded edition of Russian Radical: Roger E. Bissell, Robert L. Campbell, Stephen Cox, Murray I. Franck, Anne C. Heller, and Elizabeth A. Sciabarra. Of course, I take full responsibility for the final published essays. I also remain eternally indebted to so many others who have made this work possible with their remarkable material generosity and spiritual support, but whose names are too numerous to list even in an expanded acknowledgments section.

  INTRODUCTION

  1. Gladstein (1984, 110) lists accessible translations. Among the newest is a Russian translation of several of Rand’s essays and literary excerpts, published in English as The Morality of Individualism (Rand 1992).

  2. Rand capitalized “Objectivism,” perhaps to distinguish it from conventional “objectivism” (which Rand characterized as “intrinsicism”). I continue that policy here.

  3. Library of Congress News, 20 November 1991, 1.

  4. Rand [1926–38] 1984, [1945] 1986, [1966–67] 1990, 1982, 1991, 1995, 1997, and 2005. Also Baker 1987, B. Branden 1986, and N. Branden 1989. Rand [1926–38] 1984 is hereafter cited as Early Ayn Rand by page number in text and notes.

  5. See Binswanger 1980–87, vols. 1–8; Gladstein 1984; and Schwartz 1979–94, vols. 1–8. Binswanger and Schwartz are hereafter cited by volume, issue, and page number in both text and notes. I cite Schwartz for ease of reference. In fact, The Intellectual Activist was edited by Schwartz from 1 October 1979 to 3 September 1991, Linda Rearden from November 1991 to May 1994, Robert W. Stubblefield from July 1994 through 2001, and Robert Tracinski, from 2002 to 2004, when he began an online offshoot, TIA Daily, which became The Tracinski Letter.

  6. The following textbooks, used in introductory philosophy and political theory courses, include selections and/or discussions of Rand’s thought: Rachels 1986; Pojman 1990, 1992, and 1994; Bowie, Michaels, and Solomon 1992; Feinberg 1992; and Hoover 1994. Articles on Rand’s thought have appeared in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, American Philosophical Quarterly, Aristos, Cognition and Brain Theory, Critical Review, Indian Political Science Review, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, Monist, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Personalist, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Reason Papers, Theory and Decision, and The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, of which I am a founding co-editor.

  7. These include the Ayn Rand Institute, founded in 1985, directed by Michael Berliner; the Ayn Rand Society, founded as an affiliate of the Eastern division of the American Philosophical Association in 1989, headed by Allan Gotthelf; and the Institute for Objectivist Studies (now, The Atlas Society), founded in 1990, directed by David Kelley.

  8. The “inner circle” around Rand, playfully called the Collective, included many relatives and friends of Nathaniel Branden (formerly Nathan Blumenthal) and Barbara Branden (formerly Barbara Weidman). Rand and the Brandens shared a Russian Jewish ancestry, as did Nathaniel Branden’s cousins, the Blumenthals, and Barbara Branden’s cousin, Leonard Peikoff. B. Branden 1986, 254; N. Branden 1989, 16, 134.

  9. Rand (May 1968), “To whom it may concern,” in Rand [1966–71] 1982, 453. I cite “Rand [1966–71] 1982” for ease of reference. In fact, The Objectivist was edited by Rand and Branden from January 1966 to April 1968, and Rand from May 1968 to September 1971. Rand [1966–71] 1982 is hereafter cited as Objectivist by page number in both text and notes.

  10. Peikoff (April 1989), “Foreword to the second edition,” in Rand [1966–67] 1990, 127. Rand [1966–67] 1990 is hereafter cited as Introduction by page number in both text and notes.

  11. Rand (June 1968), “A statement of policy,” in Objectivist, 471.

  12. Rand (February 1980), “To the readers of The Objectivist Forum,” in Binswanger 1.1.1.

  13. Rand parodied the process by which certain philosophic books generate whole industries of scholarship. “Within a few years of the book’s publication,” she wrote, “commentators will begin to fill libraries with works analyzing, ‘clarifying’ and interpreting its mysteries.” These interpretations will differ and contradict one another, but “within a generation, the number of commentaries will have grown to such proportions that the original book will be accepted as a subject of philosophical specialization, requiring a lifetime of study—and any refutation of the book’s theory will be ignored or rejected, if unaccompanied by a full discussion of the theories of all the commentators, a task which no one will be able to undertake.” Rand (29 January–26 February 1973), “An untitled letter,” in Rand 1982, 142–43. Rand 1982 is hereafter cited as Philosophy by page number in both text and notes.

  14. Rand (February 1980), “To the readers of The Objectivist Forum,” in Binswanger 1.1.2.

  15. W. W. Bartley, “Knowledge is a product not fully known to its producer,” in Leube and Zlabinger 1984, 27.

  16. Ricoeur (1971), “The model of the text,” in Dallmayr and McCarthy 1977, 316–34.

  17. Machan, 16 March 1994C. “C” will be used throughout to indicate correspondence and personal communication.

  18. The ongoing publication in various media of several of Rand’s private papers, journals, and lectures has not occurred without editing. Although the public availability of these papers should be lauded by scholars, it is equally important that they be made available in unedited form. For a discussion of Library of Congress efforts to place Rand’s personal papers in a central repository, see Reedstrom 1993b, 8.

  19. This institution was called “Petrograd University” until early 1924. Prior to World War I, it was “St. Petersburg University.” It is now, once again, Saint Petersburg University.

  20. To identify all religious thought with “mysticism” would strike some as odd, especially since mysticism is usually equated with specific esoteric or occult practices signifying a direct contemplative union with a deity. George Kline (18 August 1993C) notes, however, that whereas the Russian thinkers, Solovyov, Frank, and Lossky are indeed mystics, Tolstoy, Shestov, Leontyev, and Rozanov are not, “at least not in the same sense.” Rand ignored these differences. She rejected all Russian religious thought as mystical. My use of the terms “mysticism” and “mysticist” reflects Rand’s own, which referred not to esoteric practices or ideas, but to the general method by which such practices or ideas were upheld. Rand saw “mysticism” as “the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as ‘instinct,’ ‘intuition,’ ‘revelation,’ or any form of ‘just knowing.’” Rand (17 February 1960), “Faith and force: The destroyers of the modern world,” in Philosophy, 75.

  21. Shein 1967, 86. Lossky has also been recognized as the “dean of the emigre philosophers,” one of the leading “philosophers in exile” from the prerevolutionary Russian period who emigrated to the West in the early 1920s. Edie, Scanlan, and Zeldin 1965, 141.

  22. The phrase, “revolt against dualism,” was used by Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (1930). Lovejoy sees this revolt as a rejection of dichotomies, particularly ontological (e.g., mind and body), and epistemological, dualities. I use the phrase in a much wider and more formal sense.

  23. Rand in Peikoff 1976T, Lecture 6.

  24. B. Branden 1986, 311. Hospers (1990), in an intellectual memoir of his conversations with Ayn Rand, writes that “in time I realized that she read almost no philosophy at all. And I was amazed how much philosophy she could generate ‘on her own steam,’ without consul
ting any sources” (47).

  25. Ollman (1993, 17) notes that many “dialectical” thinkers make such broad generalizations, and often “miss the trees for the forest” by moving too quickly to the bottom line of an argument and by not giving enough attention to the complex interactions of various factors over time.

  26. Hollinger, “Ayn Rand’s epistemology in historical perspective,” in Den Uyl and Rasmussen 1984, 55. Hollinger notes certain viable similarities between Rand and Dewey, Rorty, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, and other thinkers in the hermeneutic tradition, all of whom can claim to be legitimate heirs of Aristotle’s philosophy.

  27. N. Branden 1989; Kelley 1990, 74.

  28. Peikoff (1983T) criticizes this reification of Rand’s fictional characters, describing it as a “rationalist” fallacy (Lectures 7–9). In Chapter 8, I explore the Randian critique of such “rationalism” as a form of dualism.

  29. On Rand’s attitudes toward facial hair as symptomatic of “a spiritual defect,” see B. Branden 1986, 208. Though one might dismiss Rand’s dislike of facial hair as a matter of personal taste, it is interesting to note that the wearing of the beard had deep significance in Russian cultural history. Modeled after the icons of the saints, the wearing of the beard was a traditional practice of Orthodox religious ritual. When Peter the Great ushered in an era of Westernization, he introduced laws against such Orthodox beards. In 1705 Peter imposed taxes and license fees on those who chose to remain unshaven. The cultural battle between the “beards” and the “non-beards” was a battle between the Orthodox-Slavophiles and the Westernizers. Willis 1977, 686; Wallace 1967, 156, 161. Rand’s preference for a clean-shaven appearance may have reflected her general esteem for the Westernizers.

  30. Rand (1 January 1973), “To dream the noncommercial dream,” in Rand (1989), 259. Rand 1989 is hereafter cited as Voice of Reason by page number in both text and notes.

  31. Rand 1961, 33. In The Fountainhead (Rand [1943] 1993), there are instances in which Rand ridicules dialectical materialism; see pages 292, 554, and 638. Rand [1943] 1993 is hereafter cited as Fountainhead by page number in text and notes; Rand 1961, similarly, as New Intellectual.

  32. Popper ([1940] 1963) criticizes dialectics.

  33. See, for instance, Novack [1969] 1971, 17. Novack unnecessarily polarizes two very compatible philosophical positions. The source for such polarization is Hegel himself, who at times viewed dialectics as both incorporating and transcending the Aristotelian laws of logic. There are passages in Hegel’s writings—see The Science of Logic, particularly bk. 2, sec. 1, chap. 2C—in which, for example, motion is described as an “existing contradiction.” Hegel [1812–16] 1929. Engels also employed such terminology in Dialectics of Nature ([1882] 1940). Thanks to Walsh (19 April 1994C) for this observation. Given such terminological confusion, it is understandable how Rand would have rejected “dialectics” as a repudiation of formal logic. The many usages of “dialectics” are discussed in Thorslev 1971.

  34. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.2.1355b26–27, in Aristotle 1941, 1329. In this context, “dialectics” also suggests a type of metaphysical reasoning from first principles. Thanks to Rasmussen in Kelley 1993T for this observation. For a defense of Aristotle as the most significant ancient theoretician of dialectical method, see Sciabarra 2000, chapter 1.

  35. For this point, thanks to Gotthelf (29 April 1994C).

  36. Nevertheless, Irwin (1988) argues that Aristotle uses a form of dialectics in negative demonstration, in which one proceeds from premises that one’s opponent cannot reject (174–78). This “strong dialectic” is an aspect of Aristotle’s defense of “first principles” or ultimate truths. Thanks to Rasmussen (19 April 1994C) for bringing this to my attention. Rand’s ontology also makes use of negative demonstration.

  37. Engels [1878] 1947, 29, 29n; Marx [1867] 1967, 59, 408. Marx [1867] 1967 and [1894] 1967 are hereafter cited as Capital by volume and page number in text and notes.

  38. Lenin (1914–16), “On Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” in Selsam and Martel 1963, 361.

  39. Thanks to Walsh (19 April 1994C) and to Gotthelf (29 April 1994C), who notes too that some of this technique can be found in Aristotle, though less systematically.

  40. In the history of philosophy, it was not Hegel who enunciated the triadic formulation. One can find hints of this terminology in Kant’s discussion of the antinomies, but it is used most extensively by Fichte [1794] 1970, in The Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre).

  41. This is most true of “reductionist” monists. Ontologically, dualists posit two basic and different “stuffs” in existence, for example, the “mental” and the “physical.” The “reductionist” monists express the basic “stuff” in terms of a single attribute, that is, as either “mental” or “physical.” By contrast, “neutral monists” argue that there is one basic “stuff” in existence of which the “mental” and the “physical” are attributes. There are many variations on these positions. For clarifying these issues, thanks to Rasmussen (interview, 15 March 1994). A critique of “neutral monism” is provided in Lossky 1952. Interviews, unless otherwise cited, were conducted by the author on the date indicated.

  42. Dialectical method transcends neither logical “contradictions” nor “contraries.” This distinction was proposed by Aristotle in the seventh chapter of De Interpretatione (On Interpretation), in Aristotle 1941, 43–45. Thorslev (1971) explains: “Contradictory propositions cannot both be true, and they cannot both be false: they are exclusive, and between them they exhaust the field of discourse. Contraries, on the other hand, cannot both be true, but they may both be false; they are exclusive but not exhaustive” (50). Typically, the dialectical thinker sees opposing perspectives as neither “contradictory” nor “contrary” per se, but rather as “partial” or “one-sided,” combining elements of truth and elements of falsity. By examining opposition within a wider context, the dialectical thinker often views the two alternatives as neither exclusive nor exhaustive, since they both share a common premise and restrict the field of possible alternatives by reifying their limitations.

  43. This raises an interesting question concerning the ontology that underlies the dialectical approach, something which I do not address in this book. It can be said that dialectics recognizes the reality of “relation”—not as substance—but as a category that cannot be reduced to any other. Rasmussen (19 April 1994C) suggests that Rand’s understanding of the “objective” is, in fact, based on her refusal to collapse what is relational into its terms, what she calls “intrinsic” and “subjective.” If Rand recognized the reality of “relation,” this would suggest that she was not as fully “Aristotelian” as she maintained. I do not believe that Rand had an identifiable ontological doctrine of “relation.” However, there are significant elements of relationalism in every branch of Objectivism.

  44. Thorslev 1971, 50. Thorslev criticizes the “Both-And-Syndrome” as one of the “dangers of dialectic thinking.” In some instances, however, Thorslev confuses dialectics with formal dualistic and monistic alternatives.

  45. Rand (March 1966), “Art and sense of life,” in Rand 1975b, 40. For this observation, thanks to Kamhi (interview, 23 May 1994). Rand 1975b is hereafter cited as Romantic Manifesto by page number in both text and notes.

  46. Thanks to Kelley in Kelley (1993T) for this observation. Thorslev (1971) suggests that insofar as dialectics attempts to define “polar opposites,” it is a method that “is at least as old as philosophy—indeed, Claude Lévi-Strauss has suggested that it is basically characteristic of all human thinking whatever, and that it is this which we moderns have in common with the savage” (45–46). See also Lévi-Strauss 1966. As I have defined it, dialectics is not merely an attempt to define “polar opposites,” but to transcend them in a nondualistic, nonmonistic manner, based on an awareness of their organic unity.

  47. I have personally encountered this view among Rand enthusiasts in several Objectivist forums.

  48. Thanks to Gotthelf (15
February 1993C) for reiterating this observation.

  49. This is not my opinion; Rand did not merely synthesize previously developed philosophic doctrines. It is my conviction that she developed not only an original synthesis, but an original, nondualistic defense of egoism and capitalism.

  50. Rand (July 1966), “Introduction to Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” in Rand 1967, vii. Rand 1967 is hereafter cited as Unknown Ideal by page number in both text and notes.

  51. In Sciabarra 1988a, 1995b, and 2000, I argue that Hayek exhibits a similar dialectical sensibility.

  52. Nietzsche’s dictum on “muddy waters” appears in his Thus Spake Zarathustra ([1954] 1970, 240). A similar statement appears in sec. 173 of The Gay Science ([1887] 1974). Thanks to both Kline (8 September 1993C) and Enright (22 December 1993C) for their assistance in locating these references.

  CHAPTER 1. SYNTHESIS IN RUSSIAN CULTURE

  1. The name appearing on Rand’s dossier at Leningrad University is Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum (Leningrad University Archives, 06.08.92). Rand’s middle name, or “patronymic,” suggests that her father’s name was Zinovy. This is confirmed by Binswanger 1994T, who lists Rand’s father’s name as Zinovy Zakharovich, and her mother’s name as Anna Borisovna. In Barbara Branden’s biography (1986), however, the father’s name is listed as “Fronz,” which is not typically Russian. “Zinovy,” though not very common, is fully Russian. Perhaps “Fronz” was Rand’s nickname for her father. Thanks to Kline (20 October 1992C) and B. Lossky (17 September 1992C) for clarifying these issues.

  2. Rand (June 1969), “Introduction,” in Romantic Manifesto, vi.

  3. Sobornost’ can also be translated as “communality,” and Sobornyi, the adjectival form, as “communal.” But Sobornost’ is better translated as “conciliarity,” and Sobornyi, as “conciliar.” Kline (26 February 1994C) notes that the word “communal” is more secular than the original Russian meaning, which suggests church councils (sobory). Kline’s translation gives these terms a more appropriately religious flavor.