Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (71 page)
The Randian project overturns traditional assumptions about the relationship between dialectical method and specific political content. In contemporary intellectual
history
, the
dialectic
has been identified almost exclusively with the Hegelian and Marxian traditions. In 1919, for instance, the philosopher and literary critic
Georg Lukács
actually declared that the dialectic is
Marxism
, and that even if research disproved each and every one of Marx’s individual theses, that would not detract from the veracity of his method. Just as Marx identified
capitalism
with dualism, Lukács identified Marxism with the dialectic. And as we have seen, liberal thinkers such as
Karl Popper
would agree. For Popper, what saves capitalism from tyranny
is its dependence on a “critical dualism” between facts and standards. Whereas Lukács sees the dialectic as the means by which theory becomes “a vehicle of revolution,”
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Popper sees it as the methodological moment of political totalitarianism.
Based on this identification of Marxism with
dialectics
, it may seem odd to view
Objectivism
partially in terms of its dialectical sensibility. Either Lukács’s identification is incorrect, or Ayn Rand was a Marxist. The former is far more likely. Rand affirmed the dialectical connection between critique and revolution, but her revolutionary credo is thoroughly non-Marxist. Marx did not have a monopoly on the dialectic. Aspects of this approach have been employed by many diverse thinkers, including Aristotle, Hegel, Marx, Lossky, and as I have documented, Ayn Rand. Peikoff recognizes correctly that such a relational view is not distinctive to Objectivism, even though it is a hallmark of the
philosophy
.
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By articulating the methodological elements of Objectivism, I have discovered a host of provocative intellectual links that previously went unnoticed. We can now view Objectivism in historical terms—not only as an heir to Aristotelianism, as Rand would have had it, but as a by-product of her Russian past. Objectivism is as much defined by what Rand accepted from the Russian cultural milieu as by what she rejected.
What Rand accepted was the dialectical revolt against formal dualism. This dialectical method was at the heart of the Russian tendency toward
synthesis
. Such a tendency was endemic to Russian culture; it was expressed not only in the articulated statements of her teachers, but in the very intellectual air she breathed.
What Rand rejected was the mystical and statist content of Russian philosophy and culture. On this basis, Rand built a philosophical edifice that was simultaneously integrated and secular, dialectical and capitalist. In Rand’s project, there is reciprocity in the interaction between content and method. Her method of processing the data of the world affected the content of her theories, while the content affected the further development of the method. In its critical, negative aspects, Rand’s Objectivism is a grand revolt against formal dualism in each of the major branches of philosophy and in each of the institutions of modern statism. In its revolutionary, positive aspects, Rand’s Objectivism is a grand projection of the ideal person and the ideal society—the autonomous, integrated individual and the benevolent
human
community. Neither moment can be abstracted from the other. Both constitute the historic essence of Objectivism.
I characterize my approach as “
hermeneutical
” because the investigation of Objectivism should not merely reproduce Rand’s words, but produce further implications that neither Rand, nor her followers, nor her critics, nor I
had foreseen. This proposition goes beyond Rand’s admission that the elaboration of her philosophy was a task that no one individual could finish in a lifetime (Rand [1976] 1992T). It goes beyond the validity of any of Rand’s philosophic formulations or critical commentary. It relates specifically to the task of Rand
scholarship
. In my own research, I have found that there is so much serious scholarly work that still needs to be done. In
literary studies
, an investigation is needed of the relationship between Nietzsche and Rand; the use of symbolism and mythological imagery in the Randian novel; and, Rand’s literary method and its relationship to nineteenth-century Russian literature. In
philosophy
,
social theory
,
and intellectual history,
an exploration of the parallels and distinctions between Objectivism and contemporary philosophies (e.g., phenomenology, pragmatism, existentialism, and so on) with regard to such ontological and epistemological issues as the nature of being, relations, consciousness, thinking, and acting; the convergence of psychology and ethics in Objectivist theory; the links between Aristotelian, Nietzschean, and Objectivist ethics; the intellectual relationship between Rand and other twentieth-century individualists, such as Isabel Paterson and Ludwig von Mises; and, the political and cultural impact of Rand’s thought.
I have suggested here only a few prospects for the future course of Rand scholarship. In each of these potential areas of study, it is my hope that critically minded scholars will have at their disposal all of Rand’s private papers and journals. For now, it is my hope that this book has contributed to a serious dialogue on the profound importance of Ayn Rand’s intellectual legacy.
THE RAND TRANSCRIPT
(1999)
For many years, scholars have sought to understand Ayn
Rand
’s early
education
in an attempt to identify possible influences on her intellectual development. Regrettably, very little information has been available on one important phase of that
education
: her studies at the
University
of Leningrad in the years 1921 to 1924.
Having recovered Rand’s college transcript, I am now in a position to shed greater light on this subject.
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I have investigated the nature and significance of the courses that it lists, and the orientation of the professors who probably taught those courses. This essay provides a brief discussion of the transcript’s contents and concludes with some reflections on one important pattern that I see in Rand’s studies.
The official transcript copy is signed by the Director of the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg,
T. Z. Zernova
(30 October 1998).
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The transcript reports that Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, born in 1905, entered the university on 2 October 1921 and graduated from the Social Pedagogical Division of the Faculty (or College) of the Social Sciences of Leningrad State University. This three-year course of the
obshchestvenno-pedagogicheskoe otdelenie
(Department of Social Pedagogy) was part of the new social science curriculum at the university, which had united the existing schools of
history
, philology, and law. The integration of the historical and
philosophical
disciplines sought to prepare students for careers as social science educators.
The transcript confirms all of those facts that I had previously uncovered in the official Rosenbaum dossier, dated 6 August 1992, as part of my research for
Ayn Rand
:
The Russian Radical
(1995a). It also provides an additional piece of information: that Rosenbaum received her Certificate of Graduation (Diploma No. 1552) on 13 October 1924. Most importantly, it tells us that during her period of study, Rosenbaum passed—or “received credit for” or “fulfilled the requirements of”—twenty-six courses. These are important qualifications, for no grades are
recorded
therein. Rand’s claim to Barbara Branden (1986, 54) that she had “graduated from the university
with the highest honors” remains unconfirmed. In fact, during this period, Rand may have done well on her exams, but academic performance was assessed simply as pass or fail, with a “retake” option for those students who received failing grades (
Konecny
1994, 201).
As I indicate in my
Liberty
article (Sciabarra 1999b) detailing the relentless search for the Rosenbaum transcript, it was the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) that first discovered the document. When I had been in negotiations with the ARI to secure a copy of the transcript—a negotiation that eventually failed—its officials had noted that the signatures on the transcript were illegible. That fact was confirmed by the university archivists, who were unable to decipher any of the signatures on the document. However, the ARI officials had insisted that they could not detect the signature of Nicholas Onufrievich
Lossky
. Its presence, they believed, would have confirmed, once and for all, that he was, indeed, one of Rand’s teachers—a question raised by my own work in
Russian Radical
.
At the time, neither I nor the ARI officials were aware that the signatures next to each listed course were not necessarily or ordinarily those of the teacher. In most, if not all, cases, the signatures were of the rector, or the vice-rector, or the dean of the
social
sciences, or the department chair. (During the period in question, the school moved to unite the social sciences and the humanities.
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Prior to 1922, the rector was
V. M. Shimkevich
, while the dean of the social sciences was
N. S. Derzhavin
. There were many other officials who would have acted as official signatories on the document.) Given this fact, even
legible
signatures, analyzed by handwriting experts, would not necessarily yield more information on the specific teacher of each course.
Nevertheless, a more detailed examination of the university archives might reveal additional information both about the courses offered and the professors who taught them. That investigation awaits the attention of future scholars. At this stage of our inquiry, we can identify the following twenty-six courses, listed chronologically, and taken by Rand between the Fall of 1921 and the Spring of 1924:
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1. General Theory of the State and the State Structure in the RSFSR (
Russian Soviet
Federated Socialist Republic) and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)
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This course was a fairly straightforward rendering of the Bolshevik politics of the Soviet Union, presented in proletarian class-conscious, Marxist-Leninist terms. Konecny (1994) informs us that during this period “obligatory courses on topics such as political economy, the history of the Russian Communist Party, and the Soviet Constitution” were introduced into the university (111). These party courses did not become
compulsory until 1925. While there were few bona fide communist professors in 1921, the courses were still highly recommended for all students (117).
2. History of the Development of Social Forms
This examined the development of human social relations from the perspective of both Marxist and non-Marxist political thinkers. It included a study of social formations—and their effects on the lives of individuals—as they emerged over time. Heavily infused with notions of historical materialism and evolutionary development, the course was probably taught by the Marxist
K. M. Takhtarev
.
3.
Psychology
Courses in psychology were actually courses in
philosophical
psychology, offered by the Department of Philosophy.
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Such coursework focused on the philosophy of mind, and on the nature of introspection, self-observation, and volition.
7
The most likely teacher of this course was the celebrated neo-Kantian
Ivan Ivanovich Lapshin
.
8
Like Lossky, Lapshin stressed the importance of mutual immanence in his rejection of solipsism and its “‘false metaphysical dualism between things in themselves and the knowing subject’” (quoted in Zenkovsky 1953, vol. 2, 689). Lapshin had taught this course several times between 1897–98 and 1917–18.
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But as a critic of dialectical materialism, he was eventually exiled in 1922, along with many other intellectuals, including Lossky.
4.
Logic
This Department of Philosophy course featured all the traditional discussions of the Aristotelian syllogism, deduction, and inductive inference, as well as an examination of typical logical fallacies. From 1889, it was usually taught by the chair of the department,
Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedensky
, also a Russian Idealist philosopher and psychologist, and one of the most important representatives of the neo-Kantian movement in Russia. Vvedensky had served as the president of the St. Petersburg Philosophical Society in 1899. He taught the reality and efficacy of free will, and argued that “the function of logic is to verify what is known and not to reveal the unknown” (
GSE
1974, vol. 4, 647). Despite his deep disagreements with the Marxists, he remained an active participant in the debates over materialism in the early 1920s, until his death in 1925. He had been a mentor to Lapshin, Askoldov, and Lossky, and was an exceptionally gifted lecturer who attracted thousands of students during his tenure at the university.
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