Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (12 page)

Both rationalism and empiricism lead to one-sidedness, such that they exaggerate the importance of one
subjective
activity or another. Whereas empiricism emphasizes the subject’s sensory data, and rationalism stresses the subject’s reason,
Kant
’s critical philosophy attempted to resolve the opposition by accentuating “the structure of the cognitive faculty as a whole (sensibility, understanding and reason)” (
Lossky
[1906] 1919, 402). In effect, however, Kant’s resolution is equally one-sided and subjectivist. Kant’s approach attempts to connect phenomenal reality with the cognitive process, but this is achieved “at the expense of subordinating existence to knowledge … by resolving phenomena, or the world of our experience, into processes of knowledge.” Kant put forth an unsubstantiated assertion that the
relations
in the world were constructed by the mind, and not inherent in the structure of reality. Likewise, post-Kantian Idealists reconciled knowledge (i.e., consciousness) and existence in a similarly rationalistic manner by suggesting “that existence is nothing else than an evolution of thought.” Thus in each case, the rationalist, empiricist, and Kantian critical alternatives “institute an impassable gulf between knowledge and existence” (403).

Lossky’s intuitivism (or “intuitionalism”) aimed not to discard the old systems, but to “free them from the old exclusiveness, and so prepare a way for their reconciliation and union” (402). He refused to collapse the polarity of knowledge and existence by adopting a rationalist or empiricist perspective. His intuitivism challenged the basis of the dispute by exposing its fallacious premises, showing that each school is both “partly right and partly wrong.” Lossky rejected any “antitheses between knowledge and existence, the rational and the non-rational, the
a priori
and the
a posteriori,
the universal and the particular, the analytic and the synthetic” (403).

Though Lossky repudiated
dualism
, he argued that the subject and the object are independent of each other, and that in reality, there is no subordination of either to the other. Their existence is
objective
. Their relation is one of coordination. Lossky proposed that the subject and object be reconciled by an “
epistemological
coordination,” such that “although each retains its independence in respect of the other, they yet form an indissoluble unity” (69).

Citing the influence of Leibniz,
Schelling
, Hegel, Solovyov, and S. N. Trubetskoy, Lossky viewed this coordinating process as a “union of opposed principles … an act of fertilisation” (221). In Lossky’s view, knowledge emerged through relational comparison, “
a process of differentiating the real world by means of comparison
” (226). Investigation of reality requires careful
differentiation
, a process in which the individual
abstracts
“a fresh aspect” from reality in order to make the world humanly knowable (231).

Knowledge, then, is neither copy, nor symbol, nor appearance of reality, but “
reality itself
,” a part momentarily abstracted from the whole, but retaining its organic existential validity. Phenomena are neither “mere presentations” nor distorted copies of reality. The relations we perceive are not the artificial constructions of human cognition. They are real. According to Lossky’s intuitivism, “the relation of the phenomenal to the real is … a metaphysical and not an
epistemological
question” (404). Thinking is not metaphysically creative (409). Knowledge “
contains
” reality, it “does not
create
real existence.” For Lossky, the “known object is immanent in the process of cognition” (225).

This “immanent interpenetration” of the subject and the object leads to a “coordination” between them.
²⁹
Epistemological coordination links the object, the act of knowing, and the content of knowledge. Though the act of knowing is “subjective,” in that it is performed by the subject, Lossky argues that the object and the content of knowledge are “objective,” not constructed or distorted by the cognitive faculty.
³⁰
What we perceive is in the object, not a construction of our imagination. “Greenness,” like shape and density, is an aspect of the object, an aspect singled out through our mental analysis. Unlike
Kant
, Lossky ([1906] 1919) attempted to defend epistemological objectivity by insisting that knowledge consists of “elements of the real world. The cognitive activity merely subjects this content to a process of discrimination and comparison; it does not introduce any qualitatively new elements into the content known. It neither creates nor reproduces the real world” (405).

Lossky’s struggle against Kantian
subjectivism
was not merely an assertion of the objectivity of knowledge but also a defense of the necessity for a metaphysical foundation for philosophy. For Lossky, “Metaphysics is the science about the world as a whole, containing the knowledge
of things as they are
in
themselves.
” Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy had denied that such a metaphysical science was possible. For Kant, the subject could only apprehend “the objects immanent in his consciousness.” These objects are subjective presentations, “they are things, as they
seem
to me, but not things as they are in themselves.” Thus Kant claimed that “a science of things as they are in themselves is impossible” and epistemologically illegitimate. In Lossky’s view (1934c), Kant erroneously equated immanence in the consciousness of the subject with immanence in the subject of consciousness (265).

The specifically human component of the cognitive process then is abstraction and differentiation. The act of knowing does not alter the character of the object. The act of differentiating does not create distinctions; it merely detects “such peculiarities as already exist” (
Lossky
[1917] 1928, 11).
But abstraction presupposes a real, complex whole.
Copleston
(1986) writes: “According to Lossky, the whole is prior to its parts, not constructed out of them. We can designate points in a line, but a line does not consist of juxtaposed points. If it is objected, for example, that a given atom is certainly different from any other atom, Lossky’s reply is that neither can exist apart from the system of atoms” (364).

THE WORLD AS AN ORGANIC WHOLE

Having presented an intuitivist theory of knowledge in 1906, Lossky knew that he would be compelled to write a sequel to his epistemology that would focus on its underlying metaphysic. In
The World as an Organic Whole
, published in 1917, Lossky continued to discuss many of the same themes, sustaining his opposition to the one-dimensionality of contemporary philosophy. He rejected “mechanistic” and
“inorganic”
conceptions as one-sided and partial. He argued vociferously for an
organic
view of the world that complemented his intuitivist epistemology.

Lossky began his metaphysical treatise by explaining that there are two basic, opposing conceptions of the world: the organic and the inorganic. Lossky’s characterization ([1917] 1928) is deeply significant, and it is worth quoting at length:

Those who take the inorganic view conceive of a complex whole with distinguishable parts
A
,
B
,
C
,
D
, as made up of elements
A
,
B
,
C
,
D
, capable of existing on their own account independently both of each other and of the whole in which they are found. The elements are taken to be self-subsistent to such an extent that if
B
,
C
,
D
completely disappeared
A
would go on existing as before. Coming together in space, these elements may form a group and thus give rise to a complex whole. According to this view, the elements are absolute, primordial, and exist unconditionally. The whole is, on the contrary, relative, derivative, and entirely determined by its parts. In other words,
plurality
is regarded as primary and
unity
as secondary and as conditioned by the plurality. (1)

Lossky distinguishes this inorganic, reductive conception of the world, from the organic view:

Those who take the
organic
view understand plurality and wholeness in a diametrically opposite way. It is the whole that exists primarily,
and the elements can exist and come into being only within the system of the whole. The world cannot be explained as the result of adding
A
to
B
, then to
C
, and so on: plurality cannot give rise to wholeness, but is, on the contrary, generated by it. In other words, the whole is prior to its parts; the absolute must be sought in the domain of wholeness or, rather, beyond it, and certainly not among the elements; the elements are in any case derivative and relative, i.e., they can only exist in
relation
to the system of which they are members. (2)

Lossky
argued that the inorganic view was the basis for mechanistic and reductive materialism. It perpetuated a
philosophy
of
external
relations
, while bolstering a vulgar empiricist, atomistic worldview. The organic conception, by contrast, is teleological, integrative, internally relational, and reflective of the nature of reality.
³¹

This formulation is crucial because it exhibits Lossky’s dedication to the doctrine of internal relations, his conviction that in an organic unity, nothing is “constructed out of its elements in an external manner” (Lossky [1917] 1928, 17). Every element in the whole, every atom in the world, every note in a musical composition is an internal “
aspect
of the world discoverable by means of analysis and existing, not independently, but only on the basis of a world-whole, only within a universal system.” The organic view sees
A
and
B
in an internal “relation to each other as one whole, each aspect of which subsists together with the others, on the basis of the whole.” The internal relations between the elements of the whole are
objective
relations of difference and similarity, of quantity and quality, of temporality and spa-tiality, of causality and interaction, of ends and means. The “network of relations is all-embracing and all-pervading” (19).

The doctrine of internal relations involves vast issues of ontology and epistemology and could be the subject of a book in itself. In order to grasp the full depth of Lossky’s thought, it is necessary to examine, however briefly, some of the major questions concerning the internalist-externalist debate. These issues are significant for two reasons:

First, internalism permeates all of Russian thought and Lossky’s thought in particular. It is, in fact, central to the theme of synthesis in Russian philosophy. But the debate is not distinctively Russian. The internalist-externalist debate is as old as the speculative metaphysics of
Parmenides
. Ironically, during the Russian
Silver Age
, in the period from 1890 to 1920, Western, post-Hegelian, Idealist philosophers, such as Bradley, Royce, and Bosanquet, were raising some of the very same internalist issues as their Russian counterparts. The internalist-externalist dispute has continued
throughout the twentieth century in the writings of such distinguished philosophers as A. J. Ayer, Brand
Blanshard
, Thomas Nagel,
Richard Rorty
, Bertrand Russell, and thinkers in the Marxist tradition. No discussion of the flavor of Russian thought, or of Lossky’s thought, would be complete without a grasp of these important issues.

Second, the internalist-externalist debate is crucial to our understanding of Rand’s philosophy. In
Part 2
, I argue that
Objectivism
exhibits an
organic
, internalist orientation, even as it seeks to transcend the very dichotomy of the internal versus the external. Rand was a rare philosophic phenomenon: she was an epistemological realist who recognized the relational character of existence and knowledge. The radical thrust of Rand’s cultural criticism lies ultimately in its ability to trace the
internal
relationships
between and among the various constituents and institutions in social reality. Although Rand diverges considerably from the strict organicity of the Hegelian Idealists, there is an element of internalism and organic unity which pervades the very fabric of Objectivism.

In exploring the full significance of Lossky’s internalism, it would be valuable to discuss complementary developments in the thought of other philosophers. Lossky’s perspective itself is an outgrowth of his own appropriation of Leibnizian, Spinozistic, and Hegelian insights. One modern expositor of the internalist orientation who shares many of Lossky’s philosophical premises, is Brand Blanshard. As an Absolute Idealist, Blanshard, like Lossky, rejects the distinctions between necessary and contingent and between analytic and synthetic. Significantly, Blanshard’s work has been acclaimed in Objectivist publications and lectures.
³²

To begin, it is important to ask what exactly is meant by “internal” as opposed to “external”
relations
. According to Blanshard ([1962] 1964): “A given term is internally related to another if in the absence of the relation it could not be what it is. A term is externally related to another if the relation could equally be present or absent while the term was precisely the same” (475).

Richard Rorty (1967) dramatizes this distinction between internal and external relations by describing two extreme positions. The internalist orientation is associated with
idealism
and
monism
. It sees all the properties of a thing as “essential to its being what it is (and, a fortiori, that all its relations are internal to it).” This theory views every property of every element as profoundly significant such that the alienation or deprivation of a single aspect would mean, “in a nontrivial sense,” that the element was no longer what it once was (125).

If I say: “I am a young American male of Greek and Sicilian descent,” each one of the terms I have used to describe myself is “internal” to who
I am. “Young” indicates that I still consider myself youthful while being thirtysomething. “American” designates not only my citizenship, but indicates that I have grown up in a society that is freer and more democratic than most. “Male”
identifies
my gender, while “Greek” and “Sicilian” suggest family traditions that were crucial to my upbringing. Indeed, they might even conjure up an image of a swarthy, “Mediterranean” complexion. In any event, the internalist would say no element of this self-description can be altered without changing the
essential
quality of who and what I am today. If I were older, my description might be different. When I was younger, I
know
that some of my attitudes were markedly different than they are today. If I were female, or a Russian citizen, or of African descent, my experiences, not to mention my physical appearance, would be correspondingly different. That is not to say that I might not hold some of the same values that I hold today. But the simple fact is that none of the attributes I have noted in the above description, namely, “young,” “American,” “male,” “Greek,” and “Sicilian,” can be separated from the person that is me. And if it were possible to alter any of these characteristics, then I would be a different person!