Ayn Rand: Dialectical Objectivist (1995)


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Ayn Rand: Dialectical Objectivist

by Roger E. Bissell

October 23, 1995

What Chris Sciabarra says about Rand's historical context and method really "rings true" for me. We must have similar psycho- epistemologies. (Gotta make a "macro" for that word. Jeez.) Anyway, I heartily recommend Chris' book, Ayn Rand: the Russian Radical. He's a hell of a scholar and thinker and writer.

Just for the record (I have an ax to grind, and this is the lead-in): I do not believe or maintain that Rand was a Hegelian school dialectic thinker. She would never have told anyone to embrace both sides of a true alternative (i.e., a real contradiction). But she did urge us (and showed us how) to spot false alternatives (i.e., merely apparent contradictions) and to seize what is true in each side of the alternative, while rejecting the illegitimate, forced choice.

People can rail all they like about the supposed unwisdom of using a term that, having originated with Plato and Aristotle, was later supposedly discredited (for rational--as opposed to Rationalist--folk like us) by Hegel. But it had a legitimate, honorable origin. And what about "capitalism" or "selfishness"? Why aren't we supposed to disapprove of these terms, too? After all, haven't they, too, been discredited for us, due to the fact that most of society applies them primarily incorrectly (i.e., to evil people)?

Of course, Rand and her "ilk" (among which I count myself) are perfectly happy using the "C" word and the "S" word. If you are, too, I don't understand why people object to the "D" word. Is it possibly because some of Rand's "ilk" (myself not included) use it as a convenient smear word, rather than as a perfectly legitimate term for referring to her drive to (Aristotle's words) "raise searching difficulties on both sides of a subject"?

I must confess one thing: I would not be nearly so enthusiastic over Sciabarra's use of the term "dialectic" in describing Rand's method, if I were not already aware of Mortimer Adler's very successful, very non-Hegelian use of it. Adler, editor of the Great Books and one of the arch-Aristotelians of the 20th century, is probably the outstanding modern proponent of dialectic. His two-volume book, The Idea of Freedom (pub. about 1960) is a model of dialectic discussion of five major, related notions of freedom recurring throughout human history. The clarity and insight resulting from his method is stunning. If you haven't experienced it already, treat yourself. Even though Adler takes a non-partisan approach--and is far from being an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism--hen you see the five options laid out there, it's crystal clear which one is correct. (If you're right-minded, of course :lol: .)

[by the way, Adler has also written a very dialectical article on "Dialectic," which appears in Volume 2 (The Syntopicon) of the Great Books. He points out that the dialectic began with Plato/Socrates, and he proceeds to elaborate on the versions used by Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel. I strongly recommend this article. (You should be able to find a set of the Great Books in any large library or used book store.) I'm assuming, of course, that we are all really interested in truth and that some of us are not just engaged in a knee-jerk exercise against words Rand disapproved of. :P ]

Despite their vast differences on many essential points, Aristotle and Hegel both stood firmly against partial or one-sided perspectives (which is what the dialectic is all about, in both its legitimate and illegitimate forms). So did Rand's teacher, Nicholas O. Lossky. And so did Rand. We can't blot out historical fact, just by denying it over and over. It's true. We need to learn to live with it.

But, no, Rand was not a Hegelian school dialectic thinker. Nor a Marxist. I guess you could say Marx was a dialectical materialist, Hegel was a dialectical idealist--and Rand, seeing the false alternative, was a dialectical Objectivist! :D

Additional comments: Sciabarra's (and Adler's) resurrection of the term "dialectic" is not the only work-in-progress of rescuing honorable terms from the "enemy." The "L" word ("liberalism") also is in the process of being salvaged by some of our compadres. See for instance: Liberty for the 21st Century. Contemporary Libertarian Thought, ed. by Tibor R. Machan and Douglas B. Rasmussen, pub. Rowman and Littlefield. Especially see the essays "Community versus Liberty" by Rasmussen, "'Rights' as Metanormative Principles" by Rasmussen and Douglas DenUyl, and "Liberalism and Libertarianism: Narrowing the Gap" by Daniel Shapiro. Rasmussen and Den Uyl are also working on a piece called "Liberalism Defended: the Challenge of Postmodernity." They repeatedly and clearly refer to their position as "Classical Natural Rights Liberalism" (or "Libertarianism"). Also see their book Liberty and Nature: an Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order, (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1991).

For those of you not already familiar with Tibor and the Dougs, these guys are best described as enthusiastic, well-read, articulate neo-Aristotelians --and an unofficial part of the non-Peikoffian Objectivist faction. Neo-Objectivists, perhaps? More importantly, will their ploy/strategy succeed in salvaging "liberalism"? Since 20th century, statist liberalism is all but dead, I think there's a very good chance they will be able to co-opt it for libertarianism or negative-individual-rights-ism or whatever. Stay tuned!

Wilhelm Windelband, reviewed favorably by Rand back in the 60s, wrote: "Hence the processes of deducing, proving, and explaining, in which the ultimate task of science consists, must be preceded by the searching out of the starting points for deduction, of the ultimate grounds of proof, and of the highest principles of explanation. The activity of thought involved in this last process Aristotle calls 'dialectic,' and has laid down its principles in the Topics." (A History of Philosophy, Vol. I, orig. German 1891, transl. & pub. Macmillan 1901, p. 137)

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