Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  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 co
njure 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!

  According to Rorty, the externalist orientation “holds that none of a thing’s properties are essential to it (and thus, a fortiori, that no relations are internal to it). This view is put forward by those who make a firm distinction between the thing itself and a description of it.” The externalists argue that although certain properties of the thing enable us to describe it, the absence of these properties does not mean that the thing is no longer the same. Such a proposition is “trivial” or “misleading,” according to the externalists. For in one sense, the alteration of one single aspect of a thing makes it different from what it once was. But in another sense, the modification of a single element would merely change our description of the thing. The externalists argue that “there are an infinity of equally correct descriptions, and nothing in the thing itself determines which of these is the description.” The externalists assert that the specification of “essential properties” is thus a nominal exercise and completely arbitrary (Rorty 1967, 125). Thus, to say that “I am a young, American male of Greek and Sicilian descent” is merely to describe what I am. I could have provided an equivalently correct description by saying that I was a man in my thirties, with several birthmarks on my face, working at an American college, and living in Brooklyn, New York. Or I could have said that I was 5′7½″, 145 pounds, with a size 8½ shoe. The point is that I can provide endless self-descriptions and not one of them is truer than any other. To say that one attribute is more “essential” than any other attribute is to place an arbitrarily privileged distinction on one to the exclusion of others.

  But common sense tells us that some things are more important than others. If I were to remove one tiny birthmark from my face, this would have less of an effect on my essential “personhood” than, say, a sex-change operation. What is the something in “maleness” that is more significant to my self than “birthmark-ness”? Would a new “female” appearance alter any of the fundamental “me”? Externalism does not deny that there is this thing called me, but it rejects the claim that there is anything about “me” that we can consider more essential than any other thing. Hence, it views the designation of essence as a purely linguistic, nominal, and arbitrary exercise.

  Curiously, both the internalist and the externalist deny Aristotle’s distinction between essence and accident. The externalists claim that the characterization of a thing’s “essence” is a purely conventional practice, and the internalists also argue that the distinction between “essential” and “nonessential” is arbitrary. They believe that every thing has an intrinsic nature, which is organic and integrated. Though the internalists accept that essence-accident distinctions are inevitable in a world of imperfect knowledge, they seem to imply that such division is ontologically illegitimate, for every aspect is as important as every other.33 By extension, the internalists also seem to imply that there can be a world of perfect knowledge.

  This helps us to focus on one of the fundamental problems inherent in the most extreme form of internalism: a problem of individuation arising from excessive integration. In Hegel and Blanshard, as in Lossky, there is a tendency toward strict organicity.34 Every part of the totality must be considered when assessing the significance of any other part. Expanding the discussion beyond the mere consideration of an object’s relational properties, Blanshard argues, for instance, that every object has a certain shape, and that this shape is the result of two factors: the object’s nature and its interaction with other objects.35 Blanshard ([1962] 1964) writes that a thing’s “ultimate elements are engaged in manifold interactions, by way of attraction and repulsion, with things around it, and these almost certainly determine its shape down to the last detail. This particular shape, like this degree of malleability, is not externally related to its other characters; they are bound up with these causally and therefore … necessarily” (481).

  Although Blanshard recognizes that different entities have parts that are “more obviously interdependent” than others, still he claims that no element is external to the totality. A thing is what it is by virtue of “lines of demarcation—causal, logical, or both—running out into an illimitable universe” (485). Thus, the thing is affected in varying degrees by its relations, “no matter how external they may seem.” Since “everything is related in some way to everything else, no knowledge will reveal completely the nature of any term until it has exhausted that term’s relations to everything else” (Blanshard 1940, 2:452). This would suggest that everything must be known before anything can be analyzed.

  To transcend this problem, both Hegel and Lossky hypothesized an Absolute standpoint, whereby the Truth lies in a Metaphysical Whole as grasped by an omniscient consciousness. In such a whole, all relations are internal and simultaneous. The main problem for such an internalist orientation is individuation: trying to abstract and define the nature of an individual entity such that it is not dissolved in the relationships that it embodies. It is this dilemma of individuation that prompted Lossky to assert the ontological priority of concrete particulars within the whole. He calls his system concrete ideal-realism and sees both Hegel and Aristotle as his philosophic forebears. He argues that relations are not disembodied; just as no object is external to its relations, relations have no existence except between objects. Lossky ([1917] 1928) explains: “Relations are not independent; they cannot exist on their own account, apart from the elements they relate” (37). And yet if each thing is constituted by a cluster of relations, and the relations themselves can be extended to include the organic whole itself, we are still faced with an unresolved individuation problem.

  Externalists such as Thomas Nagel and A. J. Ayer reject internalist o rganicism because they correctly perceive that it fails to resolve this issue of individuation. Nagel argues further that any search for the real “nature” or “essence” of a thing is incoherent. As Rorty (1967) explained it, Blanshard’s “essence” of X depends on a metaphysical “X-as-known-by-an-ideal-knower,” that is, a Being who can grasp all of the relational interactions between and among all of the constituent properties of the totality (129). The externalists reject organic internalism because such a system ultimately depends on omniscience as a standard of certainty.

  Issues of individuation and omniscience are not inherent in externalism. The externalist orientation claims to oppose the internalism of the Idealists with a hard-boiled philosophic realism. Things are what they are and cannot be defined in terms of their relations to anything else. A thing has an identity and its nature cannot “be constituted by the nature of the system to which it belongs” (Copleston 1966, 405). But the externalist argues that there is a sharp dichotomy between what an entity really is, something which cannot be known completely, and our linguistic descriptions of what an entity is, something which is entirely arbitrary. The externalist perpetuates the Kantian distinction between a noumenal and phenomenal world, necessity and contingency, analysis and synthesis. The externalist’s “realism” dissolves into a crude, dualistic, and atomistic perspective on reality. Its fundamental problem is a lack of integration, owing to excessive differentiation. Every thing is self-subsistent and logically independent of every other thing.36 Relations
and systems are arbitrary constructs of the mind.

  It is for this reason that Lossky rejected externalism as a vestige of Kantian dualism. Kant argued that relations are added to the data of our senses by the constructive activity of the mind. The subject creates or constructs the object and its relations. But according to Lossky ([1917] 1928), the mind contemplates relations that exist in the world. The relations we conceive “presuppose relations that obtain within organic being” (24). They are “objective elements which can be perceived” (33). They exist “in the very nature of the object” (34).

  As an organic internalist, Lossky denied both dualism and atomism. Like Blanshard and other internalists, Lossky saw an intimate connection between the necessary and the contingent, the analytic and the synthetic, the causal and the logical. Human knowledge cannot be bifurcated because reality is an integral whole.

  Within this organic totality, the elements can enter into opposition and conflict with one another, but they are still interconnected and interrelated by virtue of their presence within a systemic context. Organicism recognizes the interaction of elements as more than “the mere sum of two actions of which the first follows the second as a response.” The nature of interaction lies in the fact that it involves the “simultaneous determination” of two or more elements, such that “there is no meaning in drawing a distinction between the agent and the patient” (5–6). Lossky recognized metaphysical plurality in the world, but refused to view the world’s many elements as independent of the whole. Each of the mechanical elements of the system is conditioned by the totality itself (6–7).

  Lossky argued further that “not a single knowable element” of the totality “exists on its own account, apart from a necessary relation to other elements.” Every object of knowledge has distinguishable aspects, but none of these can be grasped in isolation from the total context. Metaphysical plurality does not discount the importance of causal connections and internal relations (11–12).