Volume 13, No. 1 – July 2013 (Issue #25)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: CHANGE AND CONTINUITY, pp. 1-2
With this issue, The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies begins a collaboration with the Pennsylvania State University Press, which will manage all aspects of design, production, distribution, and subscription fulfillment. In embarking on this new arrangement, the journal unveils a new look, but retains its commitment to introducing new writers to the ever-expanding world of Rand studies.
RAND, PATERSON, AND THE PROBLEM OF ANARCHISM, pp. 3-25
This essay is concerned with individualist arguments for and against anarchism. It analyzes the views of Ayn Rand, Isabel Paterson, and libertarian anarchists, with special emphasis on the concepts of consent, non-initiation of force, and non-self-sacrifice. The essay concludes with a critical assessment of individualist anarchist and limited-government theories, suggesting that while some are more useful than others, none can be considered complete, conclusive, or fully consistent.
LITTLE PRIME MOVERS: THE FOUNTAINHEAD AND ATLAS SHRUGGED AS YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE, pp. 26-45
This essay accounts for the adolescent popularity of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by arguing that both novels indirectly appropriate the mid-twentieth-century figure of the rebel. By denying their “prime movers” much of a childhood, however, both novels heroize rebels who never suffer the dilemma that defines the adolescent according to Erik H. Erikson: the struggle between identity and role confusion. Following Erikson and Julia Kristeva, this essay reads Rand’s prime movers as figures of a post-Oedipal fantasy of self-reconciliation and career-oriented drivers who invite their reader into the fantasy of a life lived without adolescence’s defining identity crisis.
REVIEWS
AN END TO OVER AND AGAINST, pp. 46-68
Two complementary biographies of Ayn Rand were published in 2009: Goddess of the Market, by Jennifer Burns, and Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne Heller. Burns focuses on Rand’s influence on American political thought, while Heller’s concern is Rand the screenwriter, novelist, and author of her personal mythos. Both books are meticulously researched and well written; neither author espouses Rand’s philosophy or agrees with her politics. Such books establish that Rand’s ideas have become part of American culture and are no longer set over and against it.
DISCUSSION
REPLY TO ROGER E. BISSELL: PERPLEXING LOGIC, pp. 69-72
In his article, “The Logic of Liberty” (Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 12, no. 1), Roger Bissell uses an analytical diagram to show that Ayn Rand was wrong to characterize the differences between liberals and conservatives in terms of the mind-body dichotomy. Bissell claims that the key philosophical difference is not the mind-body dichotomy, but the malevolent universe premise. However, the diagram Bissell uses to discredit Rand’s position exhibits a serious design flaw: it presumes the mind-body split by implying the metaphysical superiority of one over the other. This fundamental flaw in his analysis renders his criticism of Rand invalid.
REJOINDER TO DENNIS C. HARDIN: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED, pp. 73-78
The author reiterates his thesis that the motivation for power lust in liberals, conservatives, and totalitarians cannot be explained by “metaphysical importance” (or even, as per Hardin’s suggestion, “superior metaphysical importance”) of economic or noneconomic activity per se, but only by the metaphysical fear that voluntary action in one or both of these realms evokes in statists of whatever stripe. Rand actually made both of these arguments, but only the latter has psychological explanatory power and plausibility in terms of Rand’s discussion of the benevolent and malevolent universe premises, and thus is to be preferred over the former.
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES
Roger E. Bissell is a professional musician and a writer on philosophy and psychology, specializing in aesthetics, logic and epistemology, and personality type theory. His work has appeared in a number of other publications, including Reason Papers, Objectivity, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vera Lex, and ART Ideas. His mock transcription of a lecture by the fictional composer Richard Halley was published in Edward W. Younkins’s 2007 compilation, Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”: A Philosophical and Literary Companion, and he supervised the transcription of Nathaniel Branden’s lectures for the 2009 publication of The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism. Most recently, he published his first book, How the Martians Discovered Algebra: Explorations in Induction and the Philosophy of Mathematics, available from Amazon Kindle. He also frequently performs on recording sessions and jazz engagements, and his CDs feature his trombone playing, singing, musical arrangements, and original compositions.
Robert L. Campbell is a professor of psychology at Clemson University. His recent publications include “Sources of Self-Esteem: From Theory to Measurement and Back Again” (with Sarah Eisner and Nicole Riggs, New Ideas in Psychology, 2010) and “The Rewriting of Ayn Rand’s Spoken Answers” (The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, 2011).
Stephen Cox is professor of literature and director of the Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego.
Dennis C. Hardin is an Objectivist writer and psychotherapist. From 1987 to 1990, he was the co-leader of a popular Los Angeles discussion group, The Forum For The New Intellectual. In 2002, he created and presented his own self-help seminar, “The Ethics of Personal Achievement.” He is the author of the novel The Living Image.
Chris Matthew Sciabarra received his Ph.D., with distinction, in political theory, philosophy, and methodology from New York University. He is the author of the “Dialectics and Liberty Trilogy,” which includes Marx, Hayek, and Utopia (State University of New York Press, 1995), Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995; forthcoming expanded second edition, 2013), and Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). He is also coeditor, with Mimi Reisel Gladstein, of Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), and a founding coeditor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (1999–present). He has written over a dozen encyclopedia entries dealing with Objectivism and libertarianism, given over 50 interviews published in such periodicals as The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Village Voice, and The Economist, and published over 150 essays, which have appeared in publications as diverse as Critical Review, Reason Papers, Liberty, Reason, The New York Daily News, Film Score Monthly, Jazz Times, Just Jazz Guitar, and Billboard.
Will Stockton is associate professor of English at Clemson University. He is the author of Playing Dirty: Sexuality and Waste in Early Modern Comedy (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and the co-editor of Sex before Sex: Figuring the Act in Early Modern England (University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
Volume 13, No. 2 – December 2013 (Issue #26)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROBABILITY, OBJECTIVITY, AND INDUCTION, pp. 81-95
The main purpose of this article is to use Ayn Rand’s analysis of the meaning of objectivity to clarify the much-discussed question of whether probability is “objective” or “subjective.” This results in a classification of probability theories as frequentist, subjective Bayesian, or objective Bayesian. The work of objective Bayesian E. T. Jaynes is emphasized, and is used to provide a formal definition of probability. The relation between probability and induction is covered briefly, with probability theory presented as the basis of inductive inference.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO AYN RAND: ANTHEM AS AN ATHEISTIC THEODICY, pp. 96-106
Ayn Rand’s dystopian work, Anthem, has primarily been read as a critical response to the communist collectivism of the Russia of her youth. However, a close consideration of the religious allusions in the text reveals that Rand was responding to religious collectivism as much as to the communist variety. In fact, Rand’s personal writings reveal that Anthem‘s apotheosis of man is a response to religion’s denial of self, which Rand viewed as the offense of a collectivist society. In Anthem, Rand emphasizes her opposition to religion through the ironic employment of religious themes and images.
EGOISM AND/OR ALTRUISM, pp. 107-22
Ayn Rand’s use of “selfishness” and “altruism” was polarizing and contrary to common usage. With the help of Venn diagrams, this essay compares and even reconciles the divergent meanings of egoism and altruism. It cites Rand’s usage of “traditional egoism,” a term she used in correspondence but in none of her books or periodicals. This term helps to understand Rand’s meaning of egoism. It also comments on earlier essays in this periodical about egoism.
ECONOMICS IN AYN RAND’S ATLAS SHRUGGED, pp. 123-39
This article provides a summary of economic issues found in Atlas Shrugged. It discusses the role of individual initiative, creativity, and productivity in economic progress as illustrated in this novel. It also shows the novel’s depiction of the benefits of trade — and the destruction of exchange relationships and production that results from government intervention in the economy. Rand included a great many valuable insights about money in the novel’s famous “money speech.” In addition, the book analyzes Galt’s Gulch as a free market economy. The novel is, in part, a treatise on economics providing a literary treatment of proper economic principles.
MODERN PHYSICS VERSUS OBJECTIVISM, pp. 140-59
Leonard Peikoff and David Harriman have denounced modern physics as incompatible with Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology. Physics, they say, must return to a Newtonian viewpoint; much of relativity theory must go, along with essentially all of quantum mechanics, string theory, and modern cosmology. In their insistence on justifications in terms of “physical nature,” they cling to a macroscopic worldview that doesn’t work in the high-velocity arena of relativity or the subatomic level of quantum mechanics. It is suggested that the concept of identity be widened to accommodate the probabilistic nature of quantum phenomena.
REVIEWS
BENEATH THE DIM HYPOTHESIS: THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF LEONARD PEIKOFF’S ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION, pp. 160-204
Dismissing criticisms that Leonard Peikoff’s book, The DIM Hypothesis, is unscientific, deterministic, or rationalistic, this essay focuses on problems with the logical framework of Peikoff’s study of Western culture. In particular, Peikoff has conflated two different kinds of rationalists and empiricists and has completely overlooked combinations of the Platonist and so-called “Kantian” modes. As a result, his three pure integration “modes” actually produce not just two “mixtures” but a total of six. Furthermore, without absolving Kant of very serious philosophical errors, the author marshals evidence that the real culprit responsible for the culturally disastrous “Disintegration” mode was one of Kant’s predecessors.
EXAMINING THE FOUNTAINHEAD, pp. 205-9
Robert Mayhew has edited a series of books featuring essays examining the novels of Ayn Rand. This book [Essays on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”] is the third in the series, and it is a highly recommended collection. Among the best essays are those written by Shoshana Milgram, Jeff Britting, Tore Boeckmann, and Mayhew. The book does, however, suffer from a few scholarly lapses.
DISCUSSION
REPLY TO STEPHEN COX: ANARCHISM AND THE PROBLEMS OF RAND AND PATERSON, pp. 210-23
In his essay “Rand, Paterson, and the Problem of Anarchism,” which appeared in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (July 2013), Stephen Cox argues that the principles of consent and non-initiation of force on which anarchists rely are too strong, and would require undue violation of the principle of non-sacrifice unless modified. But properly interpreted, these principles do not generate the conflicts that Cox describes, and such modifications as are defensible still do not rule out anarchism; hence Cox’s case against anarchism fails.
REJOINDER TO RODERICK T. LONG: ANARCHISM AND ITS OWN PROBLEMS, pp. 224-45
This response to Roderick T. Long’s defense of anarchism attempts to show that the ethical and the practical arguments for anarchism do not converge; that anarchism satisfies neither Ayn Rand’s demand for objective justice nor Isabel Paterson’s demand for structured checks on the abuse of power; that the chief economic argument for the practicality of anarchism, the argument from competition, is contrary to basic economic principles; and that crucial anarchist claims defy ordinary and defensible notions of justice, usefulness, and reasonableness. Also attempted is an identification of the legitimately coercive economic function of government.
CONTRIBUTORS, pp. 246-48
INDEX, 249-50
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES
Arnold Baise has worked as a research chemist and as a computer programmer. He has a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Wales in the U.K. and an M.S. in computer science from Marist College.
Roger E. Bissell is a professional musician and a writer on philosophy and psychology, specializing in aesthetics, logic and epistemology, and personality type theory. His work has appeared in a number of other publications, including Reason Papers, Objectivity, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vera Lex, and ART Ideas. His mock transcription of a lecture by the fictional composer Richard Halley was published in Edward W. Younkins’s 2007 compilation, Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”: A Philosophical and Literary Companion, and he supervised the transcription of Nathaniel Branden’s lectures for the 2009 publication of The Vision of Ayn Rand: The Basic Principles of Objectivism. Most recently, he published his first book, How the Martians Discovered Algebra: Explorations in Induction and the Philosophy of Mathematics, available from Amazon Kindle. He also frequently performs on recording sessions and jazz engagements, and his CDs feature his trombone playing, singing, musical arrangements, and original compositions.
Stephen Cox is a professor of literature and director of the Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego.
Warren C. Gibson holds a Ph.D. in engineering and an M.A. in economics. He was cofounder of a Silicon Valley engineering firm and is presently a lecturer in economics at San Jose State University and a high school math and physics teacher. He has authored numerous articles for The Freeman magazine.
Merlin Jetton is an independent scholar. He graduated from the University of Illinois as a math major. He escaped academia in order to apply and expand his math skills in the real world of business. He is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a chartered financial analyst. He retired after a twenty-eight-year career as an actuary and financial engineer, having specialized in asset-liability management the last fifteen years or so. He has been interested in Objectivism for decades. He was a member of the Chicago School of Objectivism, also known as the New Intellectual Forum. He was a presenter there several times and is the author of several articles in the journal Objectivity and two earlier ones in this periodical. He now lives in Ohio.
Roderick T. Long is a professor, Department of Philosophy, 6080 Haley Center, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama 36849, A.B. Harvard 1985, Ph.D. Cornell 1992. He is the author of Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand (The Objectivist Center, 2000) and Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action: Praxeological Investigations (Routledge, 2014), as well as coeditor (with Tibor R. Machan) of Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country? (Ashgate, 2008). He runs an anarchist think tank, the Molinari Institute; edits The Industrial Radical; blogs at Austro-Athenian Empire; and is active in the Center for a Stateless Society and the Alliance of the Libertarian Left. He is also a coeditor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies.
Fred Seddon currently holds adjunct professorships at Pennsylvania State University and Duquesne University. He was president of the West Virginia Philosophical Society from 1988 to 2010, and is an associate member of the Center for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is an international scholar and the author of over 150 books, articles, book reviews, and speeches, including such works as Ayn Rand, Objectivists and the History of Philosophy, An Introduction to the Philosophical Works of F. S. C. Northrop, and Aristotle and Lukasiewicz on the Principle of Contradiction.
Michael G. Simental is an independent scholar. He earned an M.A. with distinction from National University and is currently English department chair at Cesar E. Chavez High School where he teaches AP English Literature. He has presented his work at the North American James Joyce Conference and the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference, and he has been invited to present at the 2014 International Hemingway Conference. He lives in California’s central valley.
Edward W. Younkins, Professor, Department of Business, Wheeling Jesuit University, 316 Washington Avenue, Wheeling, West Virginia, 26003, is the author of numerous articles in accounting and business journals. In addition, his many free-market-oriented articles and reviews have appeared in a variety of publications. He is the author of Capitalism and Commerce: Conceptual Foundations of Free Enterprise (Lexington Books, 2002) and Champions of a Free Society: Ideas of Capitalism’s Philosophers and Economists (Lexington Books, 2008). He is the editor of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”: A Philosophical and Literary Companion (Ashgate, 2007). His newest two books are Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society: Toward a Synthesis of Aristotelianism, Austrian Economics, and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism (University Press of America, 2011) and Exploring Capitalist Fiction: Business through Literature and Film (Lexington Books, 2014).
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