Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  6. Robbins 1974; Barry 1983, 1986; Barnes 1967. Interestingly, Berger (1986) alludes to the similarity between Rand’s epistemology and Lenin’s dialectical materialism. It is perhaps in this spirit that Tuccille (1972, 16) called Objectivism “a kind of New Marxism of the Right.” Robbins argues further that Rand is a philosophic materialist. He believes that her defense of objective reality, sense perception, the open-ended nature of concepts, natural being, and Promethean humanism is virtually “indistinguishable from the general materialist position of the 19th century.” He adds: “Both Engels and Lenin rejected the ‘vulgar materialist’ idea that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile.” In this area, Rand, Lenin, Marx, and Feuerbach are opposed only to “the non-dialectical vulgar materialists.” Although I disagree with some of Robbins’s characterizations, I applaud his ability to see some of the parallels between Rand and the dialectical tradition. See Robbins 1974, 46 n. 100, 48 n. 107, 80 n. 49, 82–83, 85 n. 73, and 87 n. 85.

  7. Rand (March 1967), “An answer to readers: About the ‘horror file,’” in Objectivist 6:237–38.

  8. Rand (17 June 1962), “Introducing Objectivism,” in Voice of Reason, 3.

  9. Peikoff (1980T, Lecture 9) explains that Objectivism does not make any distinction between ontology and metaphysics. He (1970T, Lecture 6) also explains that, in contrast to Comte and other positivists who used the word “metaphysical” as a reproach, Rand refers freely to “metaphysics” as the branch of philosophy dealing with the widest existential abstractions.

  10. Rand (April 1965), “The psycho-epistemology of art,” in Romantic Manifesto, 19.

  11. Rand (9 February 1961), “The Objectivist ethics,” in. Virtue of Selfishness, 14.

  12. Rand (19 June 1958), “From Ayn Rand’s unpublished writings: Philosophic notes,” in Binswanger 5.4.8; “Appendix,” 290.

  13. Rand (19 June 1958), “From Ayn Rand’s unpublished writings: Philosophic notes,” in Binswanger 5.4.7.

  14. Rand 1962T; Peikoff 1972T, Lecture 1.

  15. Peikoff 1972T, Lecture 9; New Intellectual, 28–29.

  16. Rand did not use the term “asymmetric internality.” For a fuller discussion of the differences among asymmetric, causal, and reciprocal relations, especially in Marx’s social ontology, see Gould 1978, 89, 92, and 184 n. 22.

  17. Rand (19 June 1958), “From Ayn Rand’s unpublished writings: Philosophic notes,” in Binswanger 5.4.7–9.

  18. Peikoff 1972T, Lecture 8. On the need to avoid the “dogmatizing” of science, Peikoff 1990–91T, Lecture 1.

  19. Peikoff 1991b, 16–17, 192; 1990–91T, Lecture 10.

  20. Rand’s perspective has some parallels with modern science. As N. Branden (1980) suggests: “Discoveries in physics and biology have exploded old-fashioned materialism and have led inexorably toward what is frequently described as an organismic rather than a mechanical model of the universe” (53).

  21. Objectivist literature is replete with attacks on the epistemological foundations of what Rand characterized as “pseudo-scientific” movements, for example, environmentalism. See New Left.

  22. Peikoff (1974T, Lecture 4) explains that in her first two axioms, Rand merely distinguishes between existence and consciousness, metaphysics and epistemology. She rejects the idealist attempt to blend existence and consciousness into an “indeterminate package-deal” in which the crucial differences between them are ignored. Rand (12–26, March 1973), “The metaphysical versus the man-made,” in Philosophy, 29–30. O’Neill ([1971] 1977, 83) argues that Rand’s distinction between existence and consciousness suggests “at the very least, an operational dualism” in her ontology. I counter that the distinction is one of “asymmetric internality,” which is not dualism as I have defined it.

  23. Introduction, 29. In contemporary philosophical discourse, much work has been devoted to the relationship of consciousness and content by those in the phenomenological tradition, such as Husserl; and to the issue of being vs. nonbeing, as expressed in the works of Heidegger, Quine, Davidson, and Kripke. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Rand was influenced by the thought of any of these figures. Essays by Den Uyl and Rasmussen, and Hollinger in Den Uyl and Rasmussen 1984 discuss Rand’s metaphysics and epistemology as they relate to the contemporary context.

  24. Marx [1844] 1964, 145. Marx [1844] 1964 is hereafter cited as Manuscripts by page number in text and notes. A number of scholars have argued that Marx was not primarily a materialist, but a naturalist and/or an essentialist in the Aristotelian tradition. See Meikle 1985 and Bhikhu Parekh (1975), “Marx’s Theory of Man,” in Machan 1987, 40–61. Parekh believes that Marx’s project integrated radical humanism and naturalism. Marx saw people as a dialectical unity of natural and human being and took a vitalist, Aristo-telian view of nature in which each natural being strives toward the actualization of its potential. Furthermore, each being is involved in a network of complex interrelationships. Parekh adds that for Marx, “A non-objective being, a being that is totally self-sufficient, is a non-natural being, and therefore a non-being, a fantasy” (43). Other parallels between Marx and Aristotle are explored in McCarthy 1990 and 1992.

  25. Peikoff 1991b, 167; Rand 1979aT.

  26. As Phillips (1934–35, 2:36–37) explains, in all axiomatic concepts there is a “boomerang” attribute such that “even though we cast it away from us, it returns to us again.” The “boomerang” argument is characteristically used by many Aristotelians and Thomists in their defense of the law of noncontradiction.

  27. On the links between “begging the question” and the “stolen concept”, see Peikoff 1974T, Lectures 1 and 13.

  28. N. Branden (January 1963), “The stolen concept,” in Objectivist Newsletter 2:2–4.

  29. Aristotle defined the law of noncontradiction (also called the law of contradiction), as well as the law of excluded middle (that everything is either A or not-A at a given time or in a certain respect). In Atlas Shrugged, vii-viii, Rand employs the various forms of these laws of logic in the titles of three successive parts: “Non-Contradiction,” “Either-Or,” and “A is A.” Peikoff (1972T, Lecture 4) tells us that the law of identity (“A is A”) was formally enunciated in the twelfth century, by Antonias Andreas, but it is implicit in Aristotle’s law of contradiction.

  30. Aristotle, Metaphysics 4.3.1005bl8–21, in Aristotle 1941, 736.

  31. Peikoff states that unlike Aristotle, Aquinas saw the law as a first principle of being. Locke believed it was an inductive principle.

  32. See Chapters 1 and 3 herein. Peikoff (1974T, Lecture 1) agrees that Marxists do not detach logic from reality. Though Peikoff recognizes that Marxists retain the ontological view, he argues that this is undermined by their belief in reality-as-contradiction. As I indicated in the introduction to this book (and elsewhere), dialectical “contradiction” is more properly described as relational, rather than logical. I return to this issue in Chapter 11. Also see Sciabarra 1988a, 1990a, and 1995b.

  33. N. Branden 1967T, Lecture 3. Marcuse ([1941] 1960, 40, 42) argues that this dynamic reading of the law of identity was central to the Hegelian ontology. Both Aristotle and Hegel were system builders, unifiers of previous trends. Hegel had rediscovered “the extremely dynamic character of the Aristotelian metaphysic, which treats all being as process and movement.” According to Marcuse, this dynamic had been lost in the formalistic Aristotelian tradition, which viewed the law of identity as a static tautology. Hegel had grasped the process orientation of Aristotle’s ontology. Hegel, like Aristotle, regarded “being-as-such” as a “process or movement through which every particular being molds itself into what it really is.” Unlike Aristotle, however, Hegel historicized the temporal dimension.

  34. Binswanger (December 1981), “Q&A department,” in Binswanger 2.6.14. Binswanger explains that certain concepts, such as motion and location, are purely relational. Peikoff (1976T, Lecture 2) also accepts the Aristotelian explanation of time and space as relational; time exists in the universe
, and the universe is eternal. Space applies to definite points within a relational context; it does not apply to the universe as a whole.

  35. Peikoff 1990–91T, Lecture 2. Binswanger also recognizes that consciousness may be an emergent property of physical matter, but we do not know this for sure. And in any event, this does not alter the fact that it is an irreducible primary. Binswanger [1987] 1991T, Lecture 2; Peikoff 1972T, Lecture 2.

  36. Efron 1966, 499; 1967. Efron 1967 was reprinted in The Objectivist in four parts, from February through May 1968.

  37. Peikoff 1990–91T, Lecture 9. Peikoff indicates that the three axioms were grasped explicitly at different periods in history: “existence” by Parmenides, “identity” by Aristotle, and “consciousness” by Augustine. Displaying a Hegelian flair, Rand remarks: “The human race developed the three axioms in the right order.… You know it’s been said many times that the human race follows in a general way the stages of development of an individual” (“Appendix,” 262–63).

  38. Peikoff (1983T, Lectures 7 and 9) criticizes those “rationalistic” Objectivists who try to reduce the three axioms to only one: A is A.

  39. Peikoff 1983T, Lecture 7; Adorno [1966] 1983; Kolakowski 1984.

  40. Peikoff (1991b, 12; 1990–91T, Lecture 1) emphasizes that a concept such as “entity” is axiomatic, but not basic. Since entity is a category of being, we do not know, on the basis of philosophy, whether it is universal. Primary entities (such as “dog,” “cat,” etc.) may be the form in which we perceive puffs of metaenergy. Philosophers should not try to answer questions that are properly scientific. “Existence” is a basic axiom because it is universal. Rand did not fully explore the nonbasic axioms. Peikoff 1987T, Lecture 2. They are “undeveloped waters” in Objectivist philosophy. On the simultaneous character of axioms, see Peikoff 1983T, Lecture 5.

  41. On the Marxist rejection of such “vulgar” materialist reductionism, see Meikle 1985, 154–63.

  42. Peikoff (1972T, Lecture 2) criticizes this very spiritualist-idealist tendency to counteract reductionist materialism by the reverse method of applying psycho-epistemological concepts to electrons.

  43. Atlas Shrugged, 1037. Peikoff (1990–91T, Lecture 1) believes that Objectivism offers a view of causality in the Aristoletian tradition. Gould (1978, 72–78) argues that Marx’s view of causality is just as Aristotelian.

  44. Rand (12–26 March 1973), “The metaphysical versus the man-made,” in Philosophy, 30.

  45. N. Branden (May 1962), “Intellectual ammunition department,” in Objectivist Newsletter 1:19.

  46. Peikoff 1991b, 6–7; 1972T, Lecture 5; 1976T, Lecture 8.

  47. “Appendix,” 148–49; Binswanger [1987] 1991T, Lecture 2.

  48. This discussion is based on an exchange which appears in “Appendix,” 282–88. In Chapter 6 I discuss the Objectivist epistemological perspective on the internalist-externalist debate.

  49. “Appendix,” 284. Peikoff (May-September 1967, in Introduction, 108–9) provides a similar critique of the dichotomy between necessary and contingent facts. Facts merely are. To use the term “necessity” is superfluous. Some man-made facts did not have to be, but once they are, they too are necessary. Objectivism stresses not a dichotomy between necessity and contingency, but between the metaphysical and the man-made.

  50. “Appendix,” 266. Den Uyl and Rasmussen (“Ayn Rand’s Realism,” in Den Uyl and Rasmussen 1984, 7) argue persuasively that even though Rand would not accept a distinction between form and matter, she does accept one between substance and accident. This is a distinction between primary existents and those things that exist in a relationship to them. Presumably, this would mean that an entity is a primary existent, and that its attributes (accidents) inhere in the entity. This would make the attributes dependent on the existence of the entity.

  51. Peikoff (May–September 1967), “The analytic-synthetic dichotomy,” in Introduction, 105.

  52. In Rand (8 March 1947), “From Ayn Rand’s unpublished writings: Notes for Atlas Shrugged,” in Binswanger 5.2.3, she explains that our grasp of “entity” is almost simultaneous with our grasp of “acting entity,” even though we must grasp the former before the latter. What is clear is that we abstract the concept of “action” by observing entities that act.

  53. Rand (“Appendix,” 265) uses this example of the table and its legs. Blanshard ([1962] 1964, 475) uses this example, though it involves more substantive issues. Blanshard asks if the “essence” of the table can be present whether or not a book was sitting on its top. If the table is internally related to the book, and to everything else in the universe, we risk dissolving its nature into its relations. This issue of the table’s “essence” relates more to the theory of definitions, which I discuss in Chapter 6.

  54. Peikoff 1982T, Lecture 7. But this does not imply strict organicity. See Chapter 6.

  55. Rand (12–26 March 1973), “The metaphysical versus the man-made,” in Philosophy, 30.

  56. Ibid., 33.

  57. Sciabarra 1988a, 1988c, and 1995b. Did Rand give any credence to Hayek’s concept of the unintended consequences of human action? Can the contributions of Rand and Hayek be reconciled to achieve a more comprehensive grasp of the constructivist fallacy? I address these issues in Chapter 8.

  58. Rand (12–26 March 1973), “The metaphysical versus the man-made,” in Philosophy, 29.

  59. Walsh 1992; Reedstrom 1993a, 1–4; Walsh, 14 October 1993C. Among other Objectivist interpreters of Kant is Peikoff; see Peikoff 1982 and 1970T, Lectures 2 and 3.

  60. Kant [1781/1787] 1933, A491/B519. A refers to the first (1781) German edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, whereas B refers to the second (1787) German edition.

  61. Schopenhauer, Kritik der Kantischen Philosophic, in Dryer 1966, 499 n. 1. In Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Rand quotes not Schopenhauer, but the nineteenth-century Kantian Henry Mansel. Rand argued that Mansel provides a more explicit statement of the attack on consciousness than Kant himself (80–81).

  62. Lossky 1934c, 265–66. For Lossky ([1906] 1919, 112), though Kant is an improvement over his rationalist-empiricist predecessors, he failed to provide any validation for his subjectivism. “Search through the Critique of Pure Reason as diligently as you may, you will nowhere find a proof of this important position, but merely assertions to the effect that it must be true.”

  CHAPTER 6. KNOWING

  1. Peikoff 1990–91T, Lecture 5. Despite Rand’s contention that her epistemology was based upon induction, some have characterized her theory as rationalistic. Barry (1987, 112), for instance, argues that Rand’s epistemology is “a series of rationalist assertions” deduced from authoritarian first principles. I dispute such a characterization.

  2. Binswanger (December 1982), “Ayn Rand’s philosophic achievement, part four,” in Binswanger 3.6.11.

  3. Rand (19 June 1958), “From Ayn Rand’s unpublished writings: Philosophic notes,” in Binswanger 5.4.8.

  4. Rasmussen 1984, 330 n. 25; Adorno [1966] 1983; Caputo 1988; Johnson 1990.

  5. Peikoff (1972T, Lecture 9) suggests that Rand characterized most classical “objective” or “realist” approaches as intrinsicist, rather than as “objectivist.”

  6. Rand (17 February 1960), “Faith and force: The destroyers of the modern world,” in Philosophy, 75.

  7. Introduction, 80; Peikoff 1983T, Lecture 6.

  8. Lossky [1906] 1919, 413. Interestingly, this very same desire was manifested by Rand and other Objectivists. For instance, in The Evidence of the Senses, Kelley (1986, 255) aims to provide the foundations for “an epistemology with a knowing subject.”

  9. On this conflation of the mode of cognition and the contents of consciousness, see Rasmussen 1983b, 85, and 1984, 332, and Den Uyl and Rasmussen 1984, 13.

  10. Lossky (1923), in Shein 1973, 25.

  11. Lossky (1913–14), “Intuitivism,” in Edie, Scanlan, and Zeldin 1965, 321–22, 338.

  12. On these philosophical distinctions, see P
eikoff (May–September 1967), “The analytic-synthetic dichotomy,” in Introduction. Lossky too attacks the analytic-synthetic division. See Edie, Scanlan, and Zeldin 1965, 318.

  13. Introduction, 79. Peikoff (1982, 56; 1976T, Lecture 6) provides a comparable analysis of the “dogmatist” versus the “pragmatist.” In eschewing the duality of dogmatism and skepticism, Objectivist analysis is similar to the Nietzschean metacritique, which, as Habermas ([1968] 1971, 290) explains, unmasks “the modern form of skepticism … as a veiled dogmatism.”

  14. “Appendix,” 251–53; N. Branden [1969] 1979, 6, and 1983b, 29; Binswanger 1990, 193, and (August 1986), “The goal-directedness of living action,” in Binswanger 7.4.10.

  15. Peikoff 1987bT, questions, period 1; (1990–91T), Lecture 3.

  16. Rand is not the only modern thinker to grow out of Aristotelian realism. On the relationship of hermeneutics to the Aristotelian tradition, see Caputo 1988, 5. Copleston ([1963] 1985, 334) also argues that many modern Thomists and Marxists share an ontological and epistemological realism, even though the latter dismiss the former as idealists.

  17. Something that is “unconscious” is not conscious. All forms of conscious awareness involve action.

  18. Rand (9 February 1961), “The Objectivist ethics,” in Virtue of Selfishness, 19.

  19. Kelley 1986, 88–90. Kelley acknowledges that Rand had the greatest impact on his thinking about perception. Though Rand did not write much on this subject, her views on perceptual form are expressed briefly in “Appendix,” 279–82; N. Branden 1967T, Lecture 2; Peikoff 1970T, Lecture 11; 1972T, Lectures 5 and 12; 1987bT, questions, period 1; and 1991b, chap. 2; and Binswanger 1989T, Lecture 2.