Scibarra Essay Research Paper Ayn Rand in

Scibarra Essay, Research Paper

Ayn Rand in Three Acts:Chris Sciabarra’s _Ayn Rand: the Russian Radical_—–1. Introduction—–Admirers of the philosophy of Ayn Rand have spent well over thirty yearstrying to introduce her viewpoint to mainstream academia. But up tillnow, most of the effort has been concentrated upon Anglo-Americanphilosophy departments in the “analytic” tradition. What is uniqueabout Chris Sciabarra’s work is that he make a surprising attempt toexplicate Rand’s thought to thinkers within the very different traditionof “Continental” philosophy. Now this is not to say that Sciabarra isaiming this work at a primarily European audience; but rather he seemsto be aiming it at fields like political theory, political science, andliterary criticism which orbit primarily around the geographicallydistant sages of Continental philosophy, rather than the indigenousanalytic tradition. —–Initially, this seems like a hopeless quest: while Rand herself lookedupon contemporary Anglo-American philosophy with scorn, I suspect thatmuch of the Continental tradition would have positively revulsed her. But upon reading Sciabarra’s presentation, it seems that her aim ofpresenting a unified philosophic system, culminating in a “radicalcritique” of all existing societies, has many striking structuralsimilarities to the Continental tradition that Rand so despised. At thevery least, Rand’s grandiose aim should find sympathy within theContinental tradition, whereas the more “single-issue” orientedanalytics would probably be very dubious from the outset. —–Sciabarra does a remarkably good job of translating Rand’s viewpointsinto a form more easily understood by those familiar with Continentalphilosophy. In the process, of course, he exposes himself to two risks. The first risk is alienating readers who liked Rand already; they don’twant to see her views re-cast in new language, however accurate thetranslation. Properly, I think, Sciabarra ignores this risk. The otherdanger, however, is that something will be lost or added in thetranslation; in particular, since Sciabarra is trying to appeal to anaudience familiar with the Continental tradition, there will always be atemptation to put a misleading spin on Rand’s thought. Overall, I thinkthat Sciabarra manages to avoid succumbing to this temptation in anyserious way; but there are a few places where he might have done better. —–The work is divided into three sections. The first is an historicaltreatment of the evolution of Rand’s thought; the second is an eloquentbut unsurprising explanation of her views; the final section is a quiteastounding and innovative effort to place Rand squarely within the”radical” tradition. Sciabarra describes his approach as “historical,”but this really draws our focus away from the most interesting part ofthe book, which is Sciabarra’s effort to draw together a host ofseemingly disparate strands in Rand’s thought and show how they amountto a tightly woven critique of all historical human societies. —–2. Sciabarra as Intellectual Historian—–The first, historical section is quite engaging, but in the finalanalysis, Sciabarra simply didn’t have a lot of material to work with. He puts great emphasis on Rand’s only-named philosophy instructor, N.O. Lossky. Unfortunately, as Sciabarra concedes, we can’t even be totallysure that Rand studied under Lossky. And while he does produce a fewparallel quotations from Lossky and Rand, it just seems likecircumstantial evidence. —–The clearest connection, Sciabarra thinks, lies in the fact that bothLossky and Rand were supremely “dialectical” thinkers. Now while Randdid not use this phrase to describe her thought, Sciabarra makes a goodcase that it applies to her as it did to Lossky. The basic feature ofdialectical thinking, as Sciabarra uses the term, is to consider thepossibility that current philosophic debates are based upon a series offalse alternatives; thus, a correct position must stake out a newposition which incorporates the valuable elements of existing viewswhile identifying their shared error. Aristotle frequently used thistechnique: laying out a list of prevailing positions, and trying todevelop a correct position after appreciating the strengths andweaknesses of preceding views. —–Now this is certainly a fair description of Rand’s perspective; but whatare so many routes to a “dialectical approach” that it seems rather oddbothers me is that the “dialectical” genus is incredibly broad. Thereto think that Lossky was the primary inspiration for this aspect ofRand’s thought. In fact, it would be hard to name any thinkers who are_not_ dialectical in the sense that Sciabarra discusses. Basically,only those thinkers who try to deduce their entire view fromself-evident axioms — like Descartes in the _Meditations_ orWittgenstein in the _Tractatus_ — would fail to qualify for membership. While Rand probably relies on dialectical exposition more than someother modern thinkers, it seems that Sciabarra over-emphasizes thedialectical side of Rand’s writing to the detriment of her manystraightforward statement of and arguments for her controversial views. —–When I ordered Sciabarra’s book, I was expecting a much stronger effortto tie Rand to Russia’s long history of philosophical novelists. Hedoes discuss this connection somewhat, but I was hoping for a much morethorough comparison between Rand and e.g. Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. There certainly seems to be something both distinctively Russian