Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  4. Hessen (1978), writing for an Objectivist periodical, praises Tibor Szamuely’s Russian Tradition, which demonstrates that nearly all aspects of Russian culture, including moral and political philosophy, rejected the concept of individual rights, affirming the ideal of self-sacrifice to the collective and/or the state.

  5. Rosenthal (15 November 1993C) suggests that Rand probably reacted against the mystic, occult doctrines that were popular in the late Russian and early Soviet period. Nathaniel Branden (1982T) argues that the Russian mystical context of Rand’s youth often made her “quick on the draw” concerning any theories that hinted of “mysticism,” such as hypnosis, telepathy, ESP, or associated “altered states” of consciousness, which might have a natural, rather than supernatural, basis.

  6. Leibniz in fact, served as an adviser to Czar Peter. Since Russia was both a European and Asian country, it absorbed influences from both West and East. Though Russian religious philosophy owes much to Greek Orthodox and Byzantine traditions, it also mirrors many mystic Eastern and Asian traditions that stress—like their more secular Western, dialectical counterparts—a form of holistic unity and relational identity. Unfortunately, Rand and her Objectivist successors have largely ignored Eastern philosophy. See Walsh 1988T for some interesting analysis.

  7. For this observation, thanks to Walsh (interview, 22 April 1994).

  8. Copleston 1986, 60–61. Echoing this view, see Marcuse [1941] 1960, 40–42.

  9. Despite their common organicism, these thinkers should not be taken as a single unit. See Lossky 1951, 59–78.

  10. Lossky 1951, 62. Lenin ([1903] 1969) appropriates Chernyshevsky’s question in discussing the movement for Russian social change.

  11. In contrast to his later writings, Solovyov’s earlier work is far more critical of Hegel. Kline (1974) argues persuasively that Solovyov owed much of his philosophical and metaphilosophical system to Hegel.

  12. Lossky 1951, 142. Chicherin is one of the very few Russian philosophers to defend property rights. For this observation, thanks to Rosenthal (15 November 1993C).

  13. For what follows, I owe a great intellectual debt to Bernice Rosenthal. See Rosenthal 1975, 1980, 1986, 1990 (with Bohachevsky-Chomiak), 1991a, 1991b, and 1994.

  14. Rosenthal and Bohachevsky-Chomiak 1990, 25. In opposition to the Symbolists, even the Russian futurists embraced aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy. The futurists celebrated the machine age, while emphasizing the Dionysian elements of change and flux. They rejected transcendentalism and dualism. They were among the first artistic groups to support the Revolution, though not all were Bolshevik sympathizers. Rosenthal 1991a.

  15. Rosenthal, “Introduction,” in Rosenthal 1986, 18. Not all Symbolists advocated a libertine sexual ideal.

  16. Kline (18 August 1993C) observes that unlike the Symbolists, Nietzsche envisioned the emergence of the supermen only after thousands of years of cultural change.

  17. Rosenthal, “Introduction,” in Rosenthal 1986, 10; Rosenthal 1994.

  18. Rand (December 1969–January 1970), “Apollo and Dionysus,” in Rand 1975a, 58. She also employs Apollonian-Dionysian imagery in Rand (February 1970), “The left: Old and new,” in Rand 1975a, 82–95. She credits the Old Left with attempting “to maintain an Apollonian mask” of reason in its defense of socialism and describes the New Left as having abandoned all pretense to rational justification. Rand 1975a is hereafter cited as New Left by page number in both text and notes.

  19. Rand calls Blok’s “sense of life” “ghastly,” but Blok himself “a magnificent poet” (in Peikoff 1976T, Lecture 11). A representative of “pre-October” Russian culture, Blok was praised by Trotsky ([1924] 1960) for his poem, “The Twelve.”

  20. Evelyn Bristol, “Blok between Nietzsche and Soloviev,” in Rosenthal 1986, 150; Rosenthal and Bohachevsky-Chomiak 1990, 291.

  21. Rosenthal, “Introduction,” in Rosenthal 1986, 20.

  22. Most conceptions of Sobornost’ stress its anarchistic character.

  23. Rosenthal, “Introduction,” in Rosenthal 1986, 39–40.

  24. Ibid., 35–37.

  25. Mihajlov, “The great catalyzer: Nietzsche and Russian neo-idealism,” in Rosenthal 1986, 132. The full impact of Nietzsche on Russian neo-Idealism has not been studied. Mihajlov’s essay provides an introduction to this topic.

  26. Rand believed that Dostoyevsky was unequaled “in the psychological depth of his images of human evil.” Rand (May–June 1969), “What is romanticism?” in Romantic Manifesto, 114. She greatly appreciated his technique, and listed him among her favorite fiction writers. Rand [1958] 1986T, Lecture 12, and (April 1977), “Favorite writers,” in Rand 1991. Rand 1991 is hereafter cited as Column by page number in both text and notes.

  27. Not all neo-Idealists sought to overcome the Kantian distinction. Some are traditional neo-Kantians. Berdyaev (1951), for instance, sees an impenetrable split between physical nature and spirit. For Berdyaev, human beings are dual entities who live in both phenomenal and noumenal worlds. Berdyaev liked Nietzsche, but had no great sympathy for Hegelianism. For a time, he tried to synthesize Marxism and Kantianism and admitted to a “tendency to dualism” (127).

  28. Frank wrote Marx’s Theory of Value and Its Significance, which was influenced by the early Austrian economists like Boehm-Bawerk. Rosenthal 1991b, 60. This early Austrian school was a precursor to the Mises-Hayek Austrian tradition of the twentieth century.

  29. Mihajlo Mihajlov, “The great catalyzer: Nietzsche and Russian neo-Idealism,” in Rosenthal 1986, 133–34.

  30. Kline (1967) sees three groups of Russian Marxists: Nietzschean, orthodox (including the Marxist-Leninists), and neo-Kantian. I do not survey the many Russian Marxist derivatives.

  31. Copleston 1988. On the inherent problems of trying to integrate Slavophile and Marxist perspectives, see Peikoff (July 1992), “Some notes about tomorrow, part one,” in Schwartz 6.4.4. Peikoff argues that Russian Marxism tried to offer “the essence of the Slavophile mentality under the veneer of being western, worldly, scientific.” According to Peikoff, the Marxist concept of “class” is too abstract for the Slavophile mentality, which appeals to tribal notions of race and nationality. With the collapse of the Marxist paradigm, nationalism has erupted with a vengeance within the former Soviet Union. John Ridpath (1987T) provides another Objectivist analysis of the messianic roots of Bolshevism. In a comparable vein, Pipes (1994), a non-Objectivist, has argued that Soviet totalitarianism was a distinctive outgrowth of both Marxism and the Russian “patrimonial heritage.”

  32. The integration of Russian Marxism and Kantianism was very short-lived.

  33. Nicolaus (1972), “Foreword,” in Marx [1857–58] 1973, 7; Kamenka 1967, xlvi-1. Marx [1857–58] 1973 is hereafter cited as Grundrisse by page number in text and notes.

  34. Copleston 1986, 300–12. Rosenthal (15 November 1993C) suggests that the shaping of Marxist ideology during this period was as much the product of Lenin’s polemics as it was of his political power.

  35. Lenin (1908), Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, in Selsam and Martel 1963, 140–41.

  36. Nietzsche ([1883–85] 1905) decries the “immaculate perception of all things” (132).

  37. Much of Lenin’s approach falls outside the tradition of Russian philosophy. Yet despite the materialist and spiritualist distinctions between Leninist and Russian traditions, both approaches retain a formal opposition to dualism.

  38. Merrill (1991) argues: “Zamiatin lived in Petrograd during the 1920s, at the same time as Rand; prominent in literary circles, he was a leading anti-Bolshevik intellectual. Rand must surely have been familiar with his work” (168 n. 6). It is not entirely clear that Rand was familiar with We. The book may have been written as early as 1920. It may have circulated unofficially in Petrograd, Moscow, and Berlin. An official reading of the book was given in 1924, at a Russian Writer’s League meeting. Except for early English translations, and abridged Russian versions circulated in 1927 by a Prague-based liberal
émigré periodical, Zamiatin’s work was not published in its original language or form until the 1950s, by the Chekhov Publishing House in New York. It was published in the Soviet Union around 1988. Guerney 1960, 164–65; Rosenthal, 15 November 1993C. Zamiatin’s We appears in Guerney’s Anthology of Russian Literature in the Soviet Period: From Gorki to Pasternak (1960). This “unexpurgated” and “complete” version was published by Bennett Cerf and Donald S. Klopfer of Random House, three years after they published Atlas Shrugged. Berberova (1992, 128–29, 141–43, 292–94, 589–90) offers some interesting reflections on Zamiatin’s life.

  39. Zamiatin (1919–20), in Guerney 1960, 177.

  CHAPTER 2. LOSSKY, THE TEACHER

  1. Kline 1985, 265–66; Zenkovsky 1953, 657.

  2. A privatdocent is a private teacher or unsalaried lecturer who is paid directly by his students. This practice was especially prevalent in German universities, and is sometimes spelled “privatdozent” to reflect its origins. Hayek (1992, 23–24) discusses the life of the privatdocent in “The Economics of the 1920s as seen from Vienna.”

  3. Peikoff (September 1964), “Books,” in Rand and Branden 1962–65, 3:36, 40. Rand and Branden 1962–65 is hereafter cited as Objectivist Newsletter by volume and page number.

  4. The translator, Natalie Duddington, called the English version of Obosnovanie intuitivizma, The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge. According to Kline (18 August 1993C), The Foundations of Intuitivism is the more accurate translation of the Russian title.

  5. Lossky translated the first Russian edition of The Critique of Pure Reason (St. Petersburg, 1907) and the second (1915). His translation of Kant’s 1770 dissertation appeared in two editions (1902 and 1910), of Paulsen’s Immanuel Kant: His Life and Doctrine in 1899 and 1905. In 1975, Rand wrote a critique of Paulsen’s 1898 book as a “symptom” of a Kantian “malignancy” which “had spread through Western culture at the dawn of the twentieth century.” Rand (October 1975), “From the horse’s mouth,” in Philosophy, 93–99.

  6. St. Vladimir’s was named for Prince Vladimir of Kiev (956–1015), who in 988 embraced the Eastern Orthodoxy of Byzantium and became the first Christian grand prince of Russia.

  7. Rosenthal and Bohachevsky-Chomiak 1990, x. Voprosy filosofii is the leading journal of philosophy. Voprosy literatury is the leading journal of literature.

  8. Lossky’s Vospominaniia (Memoirs) was published posthumously in 1968, and reissued in 1991, in nos. 10, 11, and 12 of Voprosy filosofii.

  9. Lossky 1951, 361. In this book, Lossky discusses his own philosophy in the third person.

  10. Edie, Scanlan, and Zeldin 1965, 141. The intellectual link between Leibniz and Lossky is most direct. Leibniz influenced Radishchev and Gustav Teichmuller, who was a German philosophy professor in the Russian University at Yurev (Dorpat) in Estonia. Teichmuller taught E. A. Boborov and I. F. Oze, both of whom influenced Aleksei A. Kozlov, a professor at Kiev. Lossky knew Kozlov well; Lossky’s own view of substantival agents is similar to Kozlov’s.

  11. Mihajlov, “The great catalyzer: Nietzsche and Russian neo-Idealism,” in Rosenthal 1988, 131.

  12. Lossky, “Absolute perfect beauty,” in Shein 1973, 274. Lossky’s personalism is similar to the approach of James Ward, who rejected materialism and dualism. Though Ward was a spiritualistic monist, like Lossky he accepted the existence of interactive, non-windowless monads. Copleston 1966, 249. Lossky (1952, 382) refers to Ward as an “eminent thinker” in the personalist tradition.

  13. Lossky [1917] 1928, 185–90. I cite Natalie Duddington’s English translation of Lossky’s original text. Duddington states that Lossky made some peripheral additions and modifications in the English edition.

  14. Lossky [1917] 1928, 182–83. Lossky addresses the issue of “beauty” in such essays as “Absolute perfect beauty,” “The essence of perfect beauty,” and “The essence of imperfect beauty,” excerpts of which are found in Shein 1973, 272–98.

  15. Lossky 1955, 138. For an Objectivist critique of the causal theory, see Kelley 1986, 121–42.

  16. On the intrinsicist-subjectivist dichotomy, see Peikoff 1991b, 142–51, 241–48.

  17. Rand 1969–71, 141. Rand 1969–71 is hereafter cited as “Appendix” by page number in both text and notes.

  18. A detailed analysis of the similarities between the Losskyian and Randian interpretations of Aristotle is beyond the scope of this book. In any event, it would require much more textual evidence than is currently available. Neither author wrote extensively on Aristotle, and the Lossky lectures that Rand may have attended in 1922 are unavailable.

  19. Although it is true that standard interpretations of Aristotle’s theory emphasize the notion of “metaphysical essences,” not all scholars agree with this view. Though Rand saw a clear distinction between the Objectivist and Aristotelian theories of concept-formation, Allan Gotthelf (1988T, Lecture 2) has noted a much closer affinity. He maintains that Aristotle endorsed elements of “measurement-omission” and contextualism in his theory of definitions, key aspects of Rand’s Objectivist epistemology.

  20. Objectivism also endorses an ontological view of logic. In addition, Rand praised Aristotle’s philosophy as “biocentric.” She stated: “Aristotle was the first man who integrated the facts of identity and change, thus solving that ancient dichotomy.” Rand (May 1963), “Review of Randall’s Aristotle,” in Voice of Reason, 7.

  21. Lossky [1906] 1919, 405. In his Logika (1923) and his Logical and Psychological Aspects of Affirmative and Negative Judgments (1912), Lossky considers the “subjective” and the “objective” aspects of knowledge. Psychology studies the “subjective” component of knowledge, whereas logic deals with the structure of the object itself. Hence, it is “objective.” Thus, “a system of logic is the ideal form of the object which is expressed in the functional dependence of its different aspects on each other and other aspects.” Excerpts from the above works are found in Shein 1973, 160.

  22. Aristotle, Metaphysics, in Aristotle 1941, 681–926; Copleston [1946] 1985, 304.

  23. Aristotle, De Anima (On the soul) 2.2.414a16–28, in Aristotle 1941, 558–59.

  24. Gotthelf (1976), “Aristotle’s conception of final causality,” in Gotthelf and Lennox 1987, 230.

  25. Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium (On the parts of animals) 1.5.645a31–37 and 2.1.646a27–29, in Aristotle 1941, 657, 659. Aristotle emphasized the ontological priority of particulars, of things. Even though he recognized a system of relationships between things, he does not see “relation,” per se, as an ontological category unto itself. The whole debate of internalism and externalism, discussed later, would have been foreign to Aristotle’s worldview. Aristotle argued too that certain parts are prior to the whole, whereas others are posterior to the whole. Certain parts “cannot even exist if severed from the whole.” Thus, “attributes do not exist apart from their substances.” Aristotle, Metaphysics 7.10.1035b23–24 and 13.2.1077b5, in Aristotle 1941, 799, 891. “Relation” as an ontological category is central to the Hegelian tradition, wherein each thing is a cluster of relations and thus internal to every other thing in the universe. Marx integrated Aristotelian and Hegelian conceptions in his own distinctive approach. See Ollman 1976 and Gould 1978. I discuss Rand’s perspective on relations in Chapters 5 and 6.

  26. During the Renaissance, many philosophers linked Aristotle to religious scholasticism. In his introduction to Aristotle 1941, McKeon argues that Leibniz and Hegel are exceptions; unlike other post-Renaissance philosophers, they incorporate significant Aristotelian themes in their work (xii).

  27. Lossky 1934a, 151. Lossky ([1917] 1928, 78) qualifies Spinoza as another thinker “with a general leaning towards Intuitionism.” Lossky is not alone in his appreciation of the Aristotelian element in Hegelian philosophy. Gadamer ([1971] 1976) argues that although Hegel was deeply influenced by Cartesian subjectivism and the Kantian “transcendental dialectic,” he appreciated the ancients’ method of “bringing out the consequences of opposed hypothese
s” (5). Hegel saw Aristotle as “the proper teacher for us all since he is a master at bringing the most various determinations together under one concept. He gathers up all aspects of an idea, as unrelated as he might first find them, while neither leaving determinations out nor seizing first upon one and then upon another; rather, he takes them all together as one” (8).

  28. Lossky 1951, 347. Even in Soviet philosophy, there was a gradual abandonment of the assumption that the Hegelian dialectic transcended the “static” and “bourgeois” logic of Aristotle. Kline (1967, 266) reminds us that Soviet philosophers Zinoviev and Kolman reinterpreted Engels’s apparent endorsement of objective contradictions, and argued that Marx, Lenin, and Engels did not violate the Aristotelian law of non-contradiction.

  29. Edie, Scanlan, and Zeldin 1965, 317; Lossky (1913–14), “Intuitivism,” in Edie, Scanlan, and Zeldin 1965, 321–42.

  30. Zenkovsky (1953, 669–71) believed that Lossky’s attempted reconciliation is “triumphant immanentism, rather than an overcoming of… cognitive dualism.”

  31. Despite his opposition to the Soviets, Lossky’s approach to atomism and organicism parallels the Marxist critique. This is to be expected considering their common Aristotelian and Hegelian roots. In tracing the links between Marx, Hegel, and Aristotle, Scott Meikle (1985) contrasts atomistic “reductive materialism” and organic “essentialism,” in a way that is reminiscent of Lossky’s critique: Reductive materialism believes in an ontology of simples, of basic building-blocks lacking complexity, and further believes everything else is reducible to them. Essentialism, on the other hand, admits into its ontology … “organic wholes” or “entities,” and does not consider them reducible but rather irreducible.… The relation between the whole entity and its parts is not the same as that between the constituent simples of an aggregate like a pile of sand. The complexity of an entity is irreducible, and it is what exists. (154)