Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (26 page)

Rand would certainly have taken issue with Marx’s solipsistic characterization of
egoism
. But she too rejected “creation” questions as vestiges of a cosmological perspective. Rand would have greatly appreciated Marx’s reaffirmation of the primacy of existence through denial. Indeed, Rand argued vociferously against those who attempted to disprove the existence of something for which there was no evidence. As Peikoff explains: “The onus of proof is on him who asserts the positive.”
²⁵
Objectivists rely heavily on this polemical style of argumentation, utilizing variations of the “boomerang” principle.
²⁶
This is apparent in Rand’s critique of the “
stolen
concept fallacy
” and the “reification of the
zero
.”

It was
Aristotle
who first employed the technique of reaffirmation through denial when he asserted that nobody could reject the laws of
logic
without relying on them in the process. Aristotle viewed these laws at the
base of all human activity, reasoning, and language. For Aristotle, such principles were both
ontological
and
logical, grasped intuitively and without need of proof.

Rand’s teacher,
Lossky
([1917] 1928, 8), had used a similar argument in his clash with the atomistic materialists. He claimed that even those who denied the organic structure of the world, implicitly accepted it in their every pronouncement. Since every utterance and action depends on the wholeness and predictability of reality, such
organicism
could not be escaped. Even though the world is composed of many different elements, each of these elements belongs to the same reality. The organic structure of reality is a metaphysical given which makes the world knowable. Knowledge is never constructed out of wholly independent elements. Rather, these elements are part of an all-embracing network of relations that can be analyzed on different levels of generality.

Although Rand would not have seen the organic structure of reality as strictly axiomatic, she did reproduce the form of Lossky’s argument. Just as it is a logical error to use what you are trying to prove, the so-called fallacy of “
begging
the question,” it is equally an error to use what you’re trying to
dis
prove. Rand calls the latter the
fallacy of the stolen
concept
.
²⁷
As Nathaniel Branden explains, all of knowledge has a hierarchical structure. Hence, “When one uses concepts, one must recognize their genetic roots, one must recognize that which they logically depend on and presuppose.” For Branden, as for Rand, one does not have a logical right to use “
a concept while ignoring, contradicting, or denying the validity of the concepts on which it logically and genetically depends.
”
²⁸

Rand argued that most philosophers treated higher-level concepts as first-level abstractions, tearing them from their appropriate place in the hierarchy of knowledge, denying their
epistemological
roots, and ultimately detaching them from reality (Peikoff 1991b, 136). This practice has had far-reaching implications and is one of the symptoms of modern anti-conceptualism.

Rand’s view of hierarchy is purely epistemological. In reality, all facts are simultaneous. Rand explains: “Regardless of what a given man did chronologically, once he has his full conceptual development, a very important test of whether a concept is first-level would be whether, within the context of his own knowledge, he would be able to hold or explain or communicate a certain concept without referring to preceding concepts” (“Appendix,” 214).

Though Rand rejected the vicious
circularity
of the stolen
concept
fallacy, she grasps that circularity per se is not necessarily wrong. Many of her own arguments have an element of what Rasmussen has called “just”
circularity. This grows out of the starkly dialectical character of Rand’s worldview. For instance, Rand saw the
aging
process as integral to
mortality
. Though we may never know what ultimately causes people to age, mortality
implies
aging, just as aging itself indicates mortality. This is circular and tautological. Aging is internal to mortality, which is internal to aging. But in “just” circularity, the reciprocal
relationship
between terms does not invalidate the statement. Indeed, it merely underscores the relational unity these facts have with other facts. Each element of the whole must both support and imply the others. There is a necessary interrelationship of the parts within the totality (Peikoff 1983T, lecture 9).

By contrast, Rand rejects what Rasmussen (1980) has called, “vicious” circularity. In the “vicious” case, there is “reasoning from some principle in order to demonstrate that very principle” (68). For Rand, using an arbitrary assertion to confirm itself or a valid principle to deny itself are instances of vicious circularity.

Adopting the language of internal
relations
, one could say that such circularity is illegitimate because it is based on arbitrary assertions that attempt to circumvent the hierarchically structured totality of knowledge. Those who make such arbitrary assertions are attempting to make themselves
external
to an
epistemological
totality that necessarily involves connections between and among concepts. Those who would deny the truthfulness of an axiomatic concept repudiate principles
internal
to every other concept in their usage. Such axioms are at the base of, and form the context for, all concepts. Those who would deny them by exempting themselves from the totality within which all others think and act, are trying to attain a synoptic perspective on the whole. This is an attack on the metaepistemological principles that make knowledge possible.

In Rand’s view, the “reification of
the zero
” is one of the most notorious attempts to achieve such an internal contradiction. In this fallacy, the speaker regards “‘nothing’ as a
thing
, as a special, different kind of
existent
.” But for Rand,
existence
and nonexistence are not metaphysically equal. Nonexistence can only be defined
in relation to
existence. The concept “nothing” cannot be removed from the context that gives it meaning; it cannot be reified as a separate thing. Apart from its relational usage, “nothing” is a concept without validity (
Introduction
, 60–61). There is no such thing as “pure” negation apart from that which it negates. Those who attempt to prove the existence of a negative, or to deny an axiom, step outside the bounds of logic and ontologic, and are defeated by their own denials.

ONTOLOGY
AND LOGIC

Having articulated the two basic axioms, Rand distinguishes a third, which is a corollary of existence and internal to all elements of reality and knowledge. It is the principle of
identity
, “A is A,” a variation on
Aristotle
’s law of
noncontradiction
.
²⁹

In the
Metaphysics
, Aristotle argues that permanent negation is not possible. There is an ultimate principle at the base of reason which is both
ontological
and
epistemological
. It is not a hypothesis, but a principle that is “true of being
qua
being.” It is a principle that is “the most certain of all.… It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect.… it is impossible for any one to believe the same thing to be and not to be.”
³⁰

Like Aristotle, Rand believes that
logic
is inseparable from reality and knowledge. She states: “If logic has nothing to do with reality, it means that the Law of Identity is inapplicable to reality” (
Philosophy
, 17). But, as Peikoff (1985) explains: “The Law of Contradiction … is a necessary and ontological truth which
can
be learned empirically” (185). Aristotle believed that people learned this principle by intuitive induction (198).
³¹
Peikoff (1985) maintains that, for Aristotle, “the Law of Contradiction has … a twofold epistemological character: it is at once an experiential-inductive principle and an intuitive first principle. This characteristic Aristotelian union of the ‘empirical’ and the ‘rational’ is, in one or another form, fundamental to the whole subsequent Aristotelian tradition” (196).

Peikoff, undoubtedly, sees Rand as having inherited significant elements of this Aristotelian tradition. And although it is true that the ontological conception is explicit in Aristotle’s text, it is also true that both Russian
Marxist
-
Leninism
and Russian neo-Idealism adhered to this view. Lenin himself had proposed an “objectivist” ontology and realist
epistemology
which echoed the Aristotelian themes.
³²
And
Lossky
, who introduced Rand to the study of Aristotle, was also an advocate of the ontological conception. He wrote: “Logical principles are merely that part of metaphysical principles which has significance both for the structure of being and for the structure of truth” (Lossky [1917] 1928, 183). Thus the laws of logic are at the base of both ontology and epistemology (Lossky [1906] 1919, 409). Rejecting the Eleatic monists and the Heracliteans, Lossky (1951) argues that stasis and change are not a violation of the law of identity, for “both movement and rest belong to the body in different respects” (288). Thus, “The laws of identity and of contradiction, if properly understood, are absolutely inviolable” (290).

Rand’s
Objectivism
embraces a similar view.
Logic
is certainly a law of thought, insofar as it is “the art of
non-contradictory identification
.” But logic is true in thought only because
contradictions
cannot exist in reality. Rand writes:

“An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own
identity
; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.” (
Atlas Shrugged
, 1016–17)

Moreover, the law of identity is not a static tautology. Identity includes change and transformation. A
is
A, but dynamism and process are inherent in A’s development.
³³
In Binswanger’s view, “the law of identity does not attempt to freeze reality. Change exists; it is a fact of reality. When a thing is changing, that is what it is doing, that is its identity for that period. What is still is still. What is in process is in process. A is A.”
³⁴

Yet to state that “A is A” is not sufficient. Rand has not reified “
existence
” as something separate from the things that exist. She links her discussion of identity to
specific
existents: “To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes.… A thing is itself” (
Atlas Shrugged
, 1016).

Rand’s characteristic formulation is that “Existence is Identity” (ibid.). Rand does
not
state that Existence
has
identity (Peikoff 1991b, 6); rather, existence and identity are simultaneous and indivisible. The only “difference” between existence and identity is in their conceptual context and purpose (Peikoff 1990–91T, lecture 1). For Rand,

The distinction between these two is really an issue of perspective. “Existence” is the wider concept, because even at an infant’s stage of sensory chaos, he can grasp that something exists. When he gets the concept “identity,” it is a further step—a clearer, more specific perspective on the concept “existence.” He grasps that if it exists, it is
something.
Therefore, the referents of the concept “identity” are specific concretes or specific existents. And, you see, even though it is the same concept, the whole disaster of philosophy is that philosophers try to separate the two. (“Appendix,” 240–41)

Thus
existence
and
identity
are one fact described from two different vantage points. Existence means that something
exists
; identity means that
something
exists (Peikoff 1991b, 7). Rand rejects the view that existence and identity are
aspects
of real existents. Rather, existence and identity “
are
the existents.”

Similarly, Rand argues that if existence is identity, “
Consciousness
is Identification” (
Atlas Shrugged
, 1016). Since consciousness exists, it too, has a specific identity. It is not simply an attribute of a certain state of awareness within living organisms. It
is
the state of awareness. Consciousness is inherent in a person’s grasp of existence.

Those who see consciousness as an epiphenomenon of material factors would criticize Rand for her belief that it is an irreducible primary. But Rand preserves the integrity of the whole by asserting that even if consciousness can be explained by a constellation of specific material factors, it is still not reducible to any of its constituent elements.
³⁵
As
Robert Efron
argues, scientists cannot assert that consciousness is reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry, when these laws are still not yet known in their entirety. Like all cosmologists, “the mechanists insist upon
omniscience
.” They also commit the
fallacy of the stolen
concept
by smuggling the facts of consciousness into their analysis, since they must use
volition
in the process of denying its efficacy.
³⁶

Rand’s affirmation of the identity of existence and consciousness implies that entities which exist are limited, finite, and knowable. The Greeks believed that such limitation was inherently good. In Greek thought, the unlimited was both indefinable and unknowable. By contrast, the
Christian
metaphysic moved away from the realism of the Aristotelian tradition and elevated the infinite above the finite. Peikoff argues that this sparked a mystical rebellion against identity which culminated in the
irrationality
of modern philosophy. Objectivism attempts to recapture the profound realism of the Aristotelian worldview.
³⁷