Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  Tatyana Tolstaya (1991) echoes much of Rand’s own view of the constituent elements in the Russian psyche:

  In Russia, in contrast to the West, reason has traditionally been seen as a source of destruction, emotion (the soul) as one of creation. How many scornful pages have great Russian writers dedicated to Western pragmatism, materialism, rationalism! They mocked the English with their machines, the Germans with their order and precision, the French with their logic, and finally the Americans with their love of money. As a result, in Russia we have neither machines, nor order, nor logic, nor money. (6)

  It was perhaps in reaction to this Russian hostility toward reason and individualism that the mature Rand seemed to overemphasize the rational and individuating aspects of human nature.5 But inherent in Rand’s view is an integration of reason and emotion, individual and community. By explicitly rejecting conventional rationalism and atomistic individualism, Rand implicitly affirms important elements in the Russian critique of “Western” dualism.

  This is not to say that the struggle against dualism is an exclusively Russian project. To distinguish between Russian and Western culture does not imply that each is hermetically sealed from the other. The history of Russian philosophy is replete with intermingling between Russian and European, especially German, thought. What has emerged, especially since the time of Peter the Great, is a complex amalgam of multiethnic and Western influences. Many Russian thinkers in fact were schooled in European universities; they absorbed the integrated constructions of such Western philosophers as Aristotle, Leibniz, Spinoza, Hegel, and Marx, among others.6

  THE CHARACTER OF RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY

  One of the most startling characteristics of Russian philosophy has been its nonacademic, noninstitutional orientation (Edie, Scanlan, and Zeldin 1965, ix). Until the end of the nineteenth century, most creative Russian thinkers worked outside the university. Even Vladimir Solovyov, the father of systematic Russian philosophy, withdrew from academia at an early point in his life, because of serious disputes with government authorities (Kline 1967, 258).

  Russian thought has always been human-centered, intimately connected to the literary arts, and immoderately passionate (ibid.). In fact, most of the great Russian thinkers—Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pasternak, Gogol, Blok, Bely, and Solovyov—were literary artists and social critics, whose zeal was partially responsible for their exclusion from academic life.

  Russian philosophy throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was considered suspect by the government. In fact, philosophy as a separate discipline was banned from the Russian university curriculum for considerable periods. And until 1889, only the study of certain Platonic and Aristotelian texts was permitted (ibid.).

  The lack of formal philosophical instruction led to the genesis of informal intellectual groups during the 1830s. Many university students studied German metaphysics and French social theory in such group settings. They rejected the view of philosophy as pure contemplation and saw it as a tool in the struggle for truth, justice, and freedom. The whole notion of philosophy as a strictly theoretical discipline is alien to Russian culture. Marxists would later emphasize the unity of theory and practice, but such a social commitment has always been deeply ingrained in the Russian psyche (Copleston 1986, 1). As Kline (1967) explains: “The Russian intelligentsia subordinated theoretical truth (istina) to practical truth-justice (pravda). Russian thinkers were engaged in the ‘quest for truth-justice’ (iskaniye pravdy)” (258).

  This integration of the theoretical and the practical suggests a dialectical theme in Russian philosophy. In the 1840s, Russian intellectuals were deeply influenced by the Idealism of Schelling, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. In particular, Hegel’s impact on Russian intellectual life was immeasurable. Even Hegel’s dialectical language found a home in Russia. Hegel stressed Aufhebung, a process in which one evolutionary state is transcended and abolished, while being simultaneously absorbed and preserved in the motion of the succeeding state. In Russian, the Hegelian Aufhebung is captured by the term snyatiye, which connotes “sublation,” “cancellation,” the “raising to a higher level,” and “preservation” (Edie, Scanlan, and Zeldin 1965, xii). The Hegelian domination of Russian philosophy set the stage for a Marxist infusion in the 1890s and beyond.

  THE SLAVOPHILES

  The movement toward dialectical transcendence of opposites is manifested especially in the 1840s in Khomyakov’s critique of Western religion. Alexey Khomyakov embraced the Slavophile devotion to Orthodox Christianity and personal mystical experience. He viewed Russian Orthodoxy, with its Byzantine roots, as the reconciliation of Catholicism and Protestantism. N. O. Lossky, Rand’s teacher and author of the indispensable History of Russian Philosophy, explains that for Khomyakov, “the rationalism of Catholicism which established unity without freedom gave rise, as a reaction against it, to another form of rationalism—Protestantism which realizes freedom without unity” (1951, 37). Khomyakov saw the necessity for a communal, conciliar unity that transcended the Catholic emphasis on the individual judgment of the pope and the Protestant emphasis on the individual judgment of the believer.7 Russian Orthodoxy bound the Church and the state much more closely than was the case in the West. It was the original organic union, in Khomyakov’s view, a freedom-in-unity and a unity-in-freedom.

  The whole theme of transcending opposites is both a Kantian and Hegelian inheritance. Lossky (1951) explains: “Many Russian philosophers in dealing with the essential problems of world interpretation like to have recourse to antinomies; i.e., like to express the truth by means of two mutually contradictory judgements, and then seek ways of reconciling the contradiction” (190). This Hegelian streak in Russian philosophy made a deep impact on both Slavophiles and Westenizers, and even on those thinkers who turned to materialism and positivism (134).

  Ivan Kireevsky followed in this dialectical tradition. He was among the first of the Slavophiles to trace the “intimate internal relations in the world” (Lossky 1951, 21). Kireevsky rejected Western dualism and its inherent fragmentation of spirit, science, state, society, and family. He strove “for wholeness of the internal and external mode of life” (24).

  But in celebrating the holistic worldview of Eastern Orthodoxy and Russian culture, Kireevsky did not reject the Western Hegelian and Aristotelian traditions. Surprisingly, whereas some critics have derided Hegelian dialectics as a violation of the Aristotelian law of contradiction, Kireevsky argued that the genuine Aristotelian spirit “reappeared with Hegel.” Kireevsky saw Aristotle’s basic views as identical with Hegel’s. Hegel’s system was “as Aristotle himself would have constructed, if he had been born in our time.” Especially in his celebration of reason as the “sole arbiter of truth,” and in his emphasis on the relational and logical connections between concepts, Hegel had, in Kireevsky’s view, carried on the Aristotelian project.8

  Following the Hegelian model, Kireevsky departed from the one-sidedness of the Slavophile tradition. The typical Slavophile appealed to the Russian national character and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, arguing that Russian culture must avoid the influence of the Western secular enlightenment. The Westernizers, by contrast, advocated that Russia assimilate European science and commit itself to secular reason. Kireevsky aimed for integral knowledge, a wholeness in the human spirit, a synthesis of the two worldviews and a transcendence of the gap between reason and faith. Isolated from each other, the Slavophile and the Westernizer presented incomplete perspectives. For Kireevsky, unity was of prime importance.

  Such unity was also expressed in Kireevsky’s elaboration of Khomyakov’s concept of sobornost’, a doctrine accepted in varying forms by most Russian philosophers. Lossky (1951) explained that sobornost’ involved “the combination of freedom and unity of many persons on the basis of their common love for the same absolute values” (41). In Kireevsky’s view, “The wholeness of society, combined with the personal independence and the individual diversity of the citizens, is possible only on the condition of
a free subordination of separate persons to absolute values and in their free creativeness founded on love of the whole, love of the Church, love of their nation and State, and so on” (Lossky 1951, 26).

  The struggle against dualism and fragmentation is manifested in the ontological and ethical theories of other Russian philosophers in the nineteenth century, such as Nicholas N. Strakhov, Nicholas G. Chernyshevsky, and Nicholas F. Fedorov.9 Like Kireevsky, the Slavophile Strakhov viewed the world as a “harmonious organic whole.” His book, The World as a Whole conceptualizes the parts as constituents of the totality, even as the totality constitutes the parts. The parts submit to one another; they “serve each other, informing one whole” with “man” at the center (Lossky 1951, 72).

  Rejecting the mysticism and altruism of the Slavophiles, Chernyshevsky embraced a materialist, atheistic, and democratic socialist world view that greatly influenced Lenin. He valued the Hegelian dialectical method and proposed an organic union of spiritual and material dimensions (Shein 1973, 223). His ethics is a form of psychological egoism, where each person always acts selfishly. In his novel What is to be done? Chernyshevsky’s main character, Lopuhov, states: “I am not a man to make sacrifices. And indeed there are no such things. One acts in the way that one finds most pleasant.”10 But for Chernyshevsky, each person’s happiness and self-interest coincides with the common good, and hence, there is no conflict between the individual and society. His ethical ideal approaches a secularized sobornost’.

  Fedorov utilized the Hegelian category of “relatedness” in his conception of mankind as a constituted whole. He criticized Western positivism for its “separation of theoretical and practical reason” (Edie, Scanlan, and Zeldin 1965, 30). Like Chernyshevsky, however, Fedorov attempted to eliminate the distinction between egoism and altruism. Whereas egoists live only for themselves, and altruists only for others, Fedorov argued that this was a false dichotomy. He envisioned a moral world in which each individual lived with and for others.

  THE IMPACT OF VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV

  Vladimir Solovyov was the first and most original of Russia’s systematic philosophers. Like Leibniz, he exhibited a genius for absorbing and synthesizing the contributions of many varied thinkers and traditions (Zenkovsky 1953, 484–85). From Hegel, Solovyov learned to use a formal dialectical method. He was also influenced by the mystic Slavophiles, as well as by Fichte, Kant, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Spinoza. Having received his doctorate from St. Petersburg University, Solovyov proceeded to develop an organic synthesis of religion, philosophy, and science. His impact was widespread; he influenced nearly every Russian thinker who succeeded him, including Trubetskoy, Frank, Bulgakov, Berdyaev, and Lossky. Each of these thinkers elaborated on Solovyov’s doctrine of intellectual intuition.

  In 1874, Solovyov wrote The Crisis of Western Philosophy. He criticized positivism and the empiricist-rationalist dichotomy. Empiricists, according to Solovyov, have embraced a form of sensualism that reduces everything to simple and subjective sense-experience. In the end, empiricism dissolves into subjectivism. So, too, positivism excludes metaphysics and “cuts itself off from reality.” Rationalism, by contrast, identifies being with pure thought (Copleston 1986, 220). Thus each tradition fails to grasp the integrated nature of real being. Frederick Copleston argues that, in Solovyov’s view, “we cannot understand reality without sense-experience, and we cannot understand it without ideas or concepts and the rational discernment of relations. What is needed is a synthesis of complementary truths, of distinct principles” (213).

  Lossky (1951) grasped that this Solovyovian synthesis was at root, profoundly Hegelian:

  The final results of empiricism and of rationalism are somewhat similar: empiricism leaves us with nothing but appearances, without an object of which they are appearances and without a subject to whom they appear; rationalism ends with pure thought; i.e., [quoting Solovyov:] “thought without a thinker and without anything to think of.” Neither in experience nor in thought does man transcend his subjective relation to the object and become aware of the object as an existent, that is, as something which is more than his sensation or his thought. Neither experience nor thought can, then, lead to truth, since truth means that which is—i.e., existence. [Quoting Solovyov:] “But only the whole exists. Truth, then, is the whole [emphasis added]. And if truth be the whole, then that which is not the whole—i.e., every particular thing, being or event taken separately from the whole—is not truth, because in its separateness it does not even exist: it exists with all and in all. Truth then is all in its unity or as one.” (96)

  Solovyov’s synthesis of experience and reason, empiricism and rationalism, echoes Hegel’s dictum, “The True is the whole” as expressed in The Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel [1807] 1977, 11). For Solovyov, as for Hegel, no particular thing can be grasped if it is cut off from the totality, which gives it meaning. And yet Solovyov rejected Hegel’s metaphysics for its one-sided rationalism.11 Solovyov argued that by dichotomizing experience and reason, practice and theory, Western philosophy embraces alternatives that are equally one-sided and partial. Both experience and reason are essential to the comprehension of objective reality. Experience provides the sensory data for knowledge, as reason apprehends relations. But in uniting experience and reason, Solovyov embraced a third means of knowledge, exemplified in faith and mystical intuition.

  Like Kant, Solovyov attempted to reconcile science and religion. He sought to unite the true, the good, the beautiful, the philosophical, and the theological. Recognizing that no philosopher could escape from examining his own premises, Solovyov attempted to achieve a synoptic grasp of reality. Lossky (1951) explained that Solovyov gave clear expression to the “characteristic features of Russian philosophical thought—the search for an exhaustive knowledge of reality as a whole and the concreteness of metaphysical conceptions” (95).

  Following in the footsteps of his Slavophile ancestors, Solovyov saw religion as providing this synoptic “total unity.” Each branch of philosophy echoes this unity. In metaphysics, the world is conceived as an organic whole. In ethics, Solovyov attacked both moral subjectivism and social realism. The subjectivist stresses the realization of individual good, and the social realist views the individual’s moral will as subordinate to society’s institutions. Solovyov integrated the essential moral will of the individual with the necessity of social life. As morality is both public and private, politics bridges the gap between individual and social good. In the perfect, ideal society, a Slavophile messianism will achieve a free theocracy that unites all people.

  That such a system might deteriorate into totalitarianism was one of the chief objections raised by the Russian Hegelian philosopher, B. N. Chicherin.12 But Chicherin accepted Solovyov’s universalist aim to transcend both rationalism and empiricism. Deeply influenced by Hegel, Chicherin argued that dialectical logic is ontological; the laws of reason are then identical with the laws of being. Like Solovyov, Chicherin was highly critical of the dichotomy of reason and experience. He advocated their integrated unity.

  THE SILVER AGE

  In the post-Solovyovian period, Russian philosophy entered a Silver Age. But the Silver Age was much more than a philosophical renaissance. It was an era of cultural flourishing that had begun in the final decade of the nineteenth century and had culminated by 1924, in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Silver Age was the historical context of Rand’s formative years. It was marked by a burst of creativity in the literary arts, coupled with a renewed interest in religion, mysticism, and the occult. Artists and philosophers reacted strongly against positivism and materialism, examining the nature of freedom, art, beauty, truth, and the dignity of the individual. They precipitated a revolution of the spirit, heralding the radical changes that were to consume Russian society.

  THE INFLUENCE OF NIETZSCHE IN RUSSIA

  The Russian Symbolists constituted one of the most important cultural movements of the age.13 Writers such as Dmitri Merezhkovsky, Andrey
Bely, Aleksandr Blok, and Viacheslav Ivanov attempted to transcend the polarity in Russian culture between Westernizers and Slavophiles. Paradoxically, they embraced the Christian messianism of the Slavophiles and Solovyovian mysticism, while simultaneously absorbing the Dionysian aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy. They challenged both materialism and asceticism, positivism and rationalism, Marxists and czarist authoritarians. As nihilists, emotionalists, and subjectivists they were hostile toward reason and science. They rejected urbanization and industrialization, and envisioned a new anarchic culture of freedom, love, and sobornost’.14

  Central to the Symbolist movement was the absorption of key Nietzschean themes. The Symbolists answered Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity by cultivating a new religious morality of cultural creativity, Promethean individuality, and sexual pleasure.15 Symbolist artists aimed to embody the characteristics of Nietzschean supermen and to achieve a transformation of values by integrating Christian mysticism and Dionysian revelry.16

  Like Nietzsche, the Symbolists rejected dualistic interpretations of the world. In Nietzsche’s view, as in Hegel’s, one cannot isolate the elements of opposition, which are often “insidiously related, tied to, and involved” with one another ([1886] 1966, 10). For Nietzsche, as for Hegel, historical evolution develops through such opposition. But Nietzsche refused to embrace monistic idealism. Monism merely emphasizes one aspect of a dualist distinction at the expense of the other. Nietzsche aimed to transcend the very language of duality.