Rethinking Rand's Roots
In his review of my book Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (" Reaching for Roots," February), James G. Lennox has deeply misunderstood my views. My lengthier response can be found on the World Wide Web.
Regarding the historical evidence for a Rand-Lossky relationship, Lennox argues that I upgrade the "possibilities into established facts." I remain self-consciously speculative, however, while giving Rand the benefit of the doubt. She claimed to have studied with Lossky. Though I disclose evidence that heightens our skepticism, I argue that Rand's recollections seem consistent with the historical record. To conclude otherwise would imply that Rand was a liar.
My historical thesis does not hinge on this specific relationship, however. Dialectical method was endemic to Russian philosophic culture, to Rand's college texts, and to the teachings of virtually every Petrograd professor. It was present in the intellectual air that Rand breathed.
Lennox incorrectly attributes a Hegelian historicist conception of dialectics to me. Moreover, he equates dialectics with anti-dualism, ignoring its essential characteristics: organic unity, abstraction, integration, and internal relations in systemic and historical analysis. In employing such an approach, Rand was courageous enough to recognize what was right in the false alternatives she opposed, even as she overturned what was wrong. And whenever she emphasizes the primacy of existence or the efficacy of reason, she always shows a keen awareness of the internal connections between consciousness and existence, mind and body, reason and emotion.
It is not my claim that Rand simply misunderstood dialectics. Rather, she equated dialectics with historical materialism, a notorious tool of Soviet propaganda. Dialectics as a method, however, was an uncontroversial critical technique employed by most Russian thinkers. The father of such dialectical inquiry was Aristotle, and as I argue, Rand remains true, in essence, to her Aristotelian roots, both methodologically and substantively.
Given his misreading of my thesis, it is no wonder that Lennox fails to see any evidence in Rand's letters of this dialectical approach. A careful reader of the letters will find explicit references to "organic wholes," as well as countless examples of her ability to trace critically the internal relationships between seemingly disparate factors, such as politics, sex, and art.
Finally, I am dismayed that Lennox has virtually ignored Part Three of my book, and its original reading of Rand's social analysis as a radical, tri-level critique of contemporary statism.
Leonard Peikoff, among other commentators, has emphasized the organic structure of Objectivism. I have extended such insights to the whole of Rand's project, encompassing literary, philosophic, and sociotheoretical dimensions. In Rand's comprehension of the reciprocal interactions between key principles, such that each supports and nourishes the other, and in her view of reason, self-esteem, and freedom as preconditions and effects of one another, there are highly dialectical methods at work. Those who refuse to recognize this dialectical structure of mutual implication and organic unity in Rand's thought ultimately diminish her revolutionary message.
Chris Matthew Sciabarra
Department of Politics
New York University
New York, NY
The extraordinary achievement of Chris Sciabarra's book Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical is not that he has proven conclusively that her thinking was significantly influenced by Russian intellectuals during her formative years. His hypothesis on that score may or may not be correct. His achievement is that he has brought Ayn Rand into the history of philosophy.
Nathaniel Branden
Beverly Hills, CA
James G. Lennox replies: My review of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical concentrated on what I took to be the book's principal claim--that an important key to understanding Ayn Rand's philosophical development and Objectivism is to be found in the positive influence of the philosophical currents flowing through Russia during her early years. There is no other reason to take the many comparisons of Rand's thought with philosophers in the European "dialectical" tradition seriously unless this case is made. Further, if such comparisons invariably depend on rewording Rand's ideas in a language foreign to her own, they can't stand on their own as indirect evidence of such an influence. A 2,000-word review cannot give detailed consideration to everything in a 500-page book.
Sciabarra takes exception to my claim that he "upgrades possibilities into established conclusions"--but I cite a number of examples, among many more I collected, of this. It is not enough to admit that the book is speculative, which by itself is an admission of failure. I cite passages where something was initially claimed to be a possibility, or "not impossible," and which is later in the book assumed by the argument to be a fact. If there is no hard evidence for such claims, then they should not be converted to unqualified categorical assertions upon which the rest of the book depends.
Noting that Ayn Rand's recollections were not consistent with the (rest of) the historical record does not mean she was a liar. There are a number of other possibilities--for example, it is possible she was simply mistaken, perhaps in an innocuous way. My claim was that the evidence he adds to what we already knew on balance doesn't support her recollection--that is all I said. If a fair reading of Sciabarra's evidence leaves people uncertain about the relationship between Lossky and Rand, it is not they who need to provide a better explanation. As Dr. Sciabarra knows, Ayn Rand was fond of citing a maxim about "the onus of proof...." It is Sciabarra who is asserting the positive, not his reviewers.
Dr. Sciabarra now says that his historical thesis doesn't hinge on this specific relationship. Yet far and away the greatest energy is expended by Sciabarra in making this particular connection, rather than, for example, doing a careful study of the textbooks that would have been used by Rand. More hinges on this than he thinks, because if this connection is a mere speculation, then the central thesis of his book is undermined.
In my review I accepted without question Sciabarra's claims about what was "in the intellectual air" in Petrograd in the early 1920s. Ayn Rand tells us she was deeply repelled by most of it. The question is, Can it be established, with a reasonable degree of plausibility, that Ayn Rand absorbed a peculiar form of dialectical philosophy from the air, and made it her own? It is not enough to say "it was in the air, she must have."
Contrary to what Sciabarra says in the letter, I was careful not to present a narrower view of dialectic than he does--thus I quoted his words fairly heavily. But the "historicist conception" of dialectic which he now disowns is consistently drawn upon in his book, both in characterizing Rand's methodology, and in buttressing claims of fundamental similarity between Rand, Hegel, and Marx.
It is claimed that I ignore what is most essential to dialectics. But concepts such as "organic unity" and "integration" are not necessarily tied to a dialectical way of thinking. Dialectic views these as means of transcending dualities and apparent oppositions, etc. That is the differentiating feature of dialectic, and it was on this, among Sciabarra's characterizations, that I focused.
On Ayn Rand's dualism, I can only say that in the sense that those in the 19th-20th-century dialectical tradition take consciousness and existence to be non-dualistic--i.e., in the sense that reality is a "construct" of consciousness constituted by reason, and so on--Ayn Rand is a dualist. She is adamant on many occasions that existence in no way depends on consciousness.
As for Aristotle, he is not the father of dialectic as found in the tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Plato is the person who claimed that dialectic was the route to transcendent truth--Aristotle seriously demoted dialectic from this role, in favor of logic. "Dialectics" as the term evolved from German Romantic philosophy, the form found in Russia in Ayn Rand's youth, has little to do with Aristotle's Topics--but that takes a long argument to establish. At any rate, Ayn Rand discusses her debt to Aristotle often, and never mentions that it was his theory of dialectic that influenced her.
Sciabarra closes his letter by saying that "those who refuse to recognize this dialectical structure of mutual implication and organic unity in Rand's thought do great damage to her revolutionary message." This is a question-begging remark, one of a number in his response: to "refuse to recognize" or "fail to see" something presupposes it is there to be recognized or seen. The central thrust of my review is that Sciabarra has not given his readers reason to believe his central claims. Furthermore, it lessens, rather than increases, the revolutionary message of Ayn Rand, to assimilate her to the dialectical philosophical tradition--she is far more revolutionary than that.
It is an indirect message of my review that Ayn Rand's place in the history of philosophy has been distorted by Dr. Sciabarra's book. Thus I emphatically disagree with Dr. Branden's assertion.