On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 18:07:31 -0400 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> writes:
>On Lou's marxism list, I read James Farmelant's (or was it someone
>else's?)
>deft explanation and critique of Sciabarra. He might do the same
>here.
>
>Yoshie
>
>
Louis Proyect commenting:
> In the latest Lingua Franca, I should
>add,
>he has a long profile on Ayn Rand giving the old buzzard much too much
>credibility if you ask me.
Much of McLemee's article focuses on Chris Sciabarra's book *Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical*. Sciabarra is a libertarian who did his doctorate under the Marxist scholar, Bertell Ollman. Ollman is noted among other things for his studies of Marxist dialectics in which he applied the American idealist philosopher's analysis of internal relations to the elucidation of dialectics. Sciabarra has in several of his works attempted to apply Ollman's approach to provide reconsiderations of libertarian and classical liberal thinkers like F.A. Hayek, Karl Popper, and Ayn Rand. In the case of the first two thinkers, Sciabarra's approach seems quite plausible since despite their avowed anti-Hegelianism both Hayek and Popper in their mature thought advanced evolutionist conceptions of history and culture. Both Hayek and Popper were not incapable of subtle thought. Their are IMO aspects of their thought that can indeed be understood as being dialectical in character. BTW the Soviet philosopher, Igor Naletov, arrived at an evaluation of Popper's mature thought that is similar to Sciabarra's. (Indeed, Sciabarra was most intrigued when I pointed this out to him a while back, I am even supposed to be given credit for this in a forthcoming book on the dialectics of libertarianism or some such thing). In the case of Rand though, this argument carries IMO much less plausibility, if only for the reason she was such a crude and often dishonest thinker. I dare say that Chris Sciabarra is far more learned and intelligent than Rand ever was and he tends to read back into her a work a subtlety of mind that he himself possesses but in which Rand was lacking.
Much of Sciabarra's book is devoted to tracing the influences of Russia's Silver Age on the genesis of Rand's thought. In particular he points out the influence of Nietzsche on her philosophy, something that she was most loathe to admit since Rand and her Objectivist disciples have always dismissed him as an irrationalist. Of course Rand's Nietzscheanism ought to have been apparent. After all, the hero oh her novel, Howard Roark, was based on the architect Frank Lloyd Wright who was very much a professed Nietzschean. It is true that Barbara Branden in her biography of Rand
noted her youthful infatuation with the writings of Nietzsche and the impact of Nietzsche on the development of her own ethic of egoism and on her romantic individualism. That didn't stop orthodox Objectivists from denying the influence of Nietzsche on Rand but on this point Sciabarra has made a persuasive argument that has given the orthodox Objectivists much trouble. In general Rand was very reluctant to admit to being influenced by other thinkers. She claimed that her thought stemmed from Aristotle and from the free-market economists.
Rand was also arguably quite dishonest in her denials that she was influenced in any significant way by contemporary philosophers. Her book *Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology* includes among other things a sustained argument aimed at demolishing the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. For Rand the analytic/synthetic distinction was at the root of nearly everything that she thought was wrong with modern philosophy. So far, so good but what she didn't say in her book was that Harvard philosopher, W.V. Quine had years before published a demolition of the analytic/synthetic distinction in his famous essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" in his book *From a Logical Point of View*. Perhaps, Rand can be excused or forgiven for this lapse since she was not a professional philosopher but how does one explain the fact that the essay by Leonard Peikoff on the analytic/synthetic distinction which appears in Rand's book makes no mention of Quine either? Peikoff who was Rand's designated intellectual heir (after she had dumped Nathan Branden). Peikoff unlike Rand is a professional philosopher with a doctorate in the subject and he has served as a professor at several universities. What's his excuse?
Jim Farmelant
And I also wrote:
I realize that I omitted the name of the American idealist philosopher in question. His name was Brand Blanshard, who taught for many years at Yale and was basically the last of the American idealists, a neo-Hegelian school that had pretty dominated American academic philosophy towards the end of the last century (British academic philosophy was similarly dominated by idealists at about the same time). Unlike most of the earlier idealists though Blanshard was an avowed atheist, and he was active in various freethought and humanist organizations. He was noted among other things for his defense of the notion of internal relations, an issue that he debated vigorously with the empiricist philosopher, Ernest Nagel.
The notion of an internal relation is closely tied to the notion of necessity. Thus if an individual X has a property, such that by virtue if having that property, X necessarily has a relation R to a certain thing or things, then R can be described as an internal relation of X. Thus if X is a bachelor, then the relation of not being married to anyone else is an internal relation of X. The notion of an internal relation is contrasted with the notion of an external relation. Thus if X has a relation to certain other things but there is no property that X necessarily has this relation, then this relation is said to be an external one. Towards the end of the last century, however, some of the British neo-Hegelians were arguing that all relations are internal. This thesis was closely connected with the coherence theory of truth that was also embraced by the neo-Hegelians.
In the US, Brand Blanshard who was a disciple of Bradley was a leading defender of the thesis that all relations are internal, notably in his 1939 book, *The Nature of Thought*. As such his thesis bore an obvious kinship with Leibniz's view that all truths are analytic as well as to Spinoza's idea that causal relations can be reduced to logical relations. Blanshard's own defense of this thesis focused on the argument that the distinction between logical necessity and causal necessity which most Anglo-American empiricists took for granted was in fact untenable. Since, empiricist philosophers derived most of their understanding of causality from Hume, Blanshard turned much of his firepower against Hume's analysis of causality. Many of the connections between the thesis that all relations are internal and associated conceptions of causality were elucidated in the course of the debate between Blanshard and Nagel.
Concerning Blanshard, I once saw him at a commencement at Boston University back in the 1980s where he delivered the commencement address. He was well into his 90s but he was still writing and publishing in philosophy. For his commencement address, he delivered a learned talk on the life of reason. As I recall, he cited his old friend, John Dewey, as an exemplar of the life of reason. He may have also said something about Bertrand Russell but I am not sure. I also recall, that he lambasted religious fundamentalism and so-called "scientific" creationism. One thing that I am sure about is that his talk sailed over the heads of at least 95% of the audience at BU. I suppose that he believed that university commencement was a proper place for delivering a learned address. He probably also thought that universities were places for learning and scholarship. Imagine that! What cheek!
Jim Farmelant
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