Volume 15, No. 1 – July 2015 (Issue #29)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: ASSESSING THE LEGACY OF NATHANIEL BRANDEN, pp. 1-2
In a forthcoming issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, we will publish a wide-ranging symposium “Assessing the Work and Legacy of Nathaniel Branden.” Branden was made aware of our planned symposium and gave us his blessings, many months prior to his passing on 3 December 2014. We aim to publish a collection of essays that will honor our commitment to fostering scholarly dialogue through a respectful interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, drawn from a variety of interpretive and critical perspectives.
AYN RAND AND RAPE, pp. 3-22
The first sexual encounter between Dominique Francon and Howard Roark in The Fountainhead is known as the “rape” scene. From the time of the novel’s publication, some readers have found a contradiction between Rand’s views on freedom and the violence within the novel. The ambiguity arises from the way in which the scenes leading up to the event are constructed, the sado-masochistic context of the novel, and Rand’s views of gender and romantic relationships. Although Rand repeatedly denied that any rape occurred, this article concludes that a rape did occur and that Rand fully intended it to be so.
BEAUVOIR AND RAND: ASPHYXIATING PEOPLE, HAVING SEX, AND PURSUING A CAREER, pp. 23-41
MIMI REISEL GLADSTEIN AND MARC CHAMPAGNE
In an attempt to start rectifying a lamentable disparity in scholarship, we evince fruitful points of similarity and difference in the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir and Ayn Rand, paying particular attention to their views on long-term projects. Endorsing what might be called an “Ethic of Resolve,” Rand praises those who undertake sustained goal-directed actions such as careers. Beauvoir, however, endorses an “Ethic of Ambiguity” that makes her more skeptical about the prospects of carrying out lifelong projects without deluding oneself. Our study teases apart the strengths and drawbacks of these views.
AYN RAND AND VLADIMIR NABOKOV: THE ISSUE OF LITERARY DIALOGUE, pp. 42-52
Ayn Rand is often put on a par with Vladimir Nabokov, proceeding from the similarity of their creative destinies. The general vicissitudes of life forced the two writers to converge on one theme — the indisputable statement of the supreme value of a human life, by understanding the importance of the individual over the public. The main problem of their poetic worlds is the question of self-identification. As Russian immigrant writers, both occupy the position of “estrangement” in relation to both their own heritage and the environment to which they immigrated.
THE PROHIBITION AGAINST PSYCHOLOGIZING, pp. 53-66
The prohibition against psychologizing has been a source of confusion to many Randians. Psychologizing is the practice of incorrectly or improperly inferring motives in other people instead of rendering moral judgment. Rand thought that it could manifest in two ways: inquisitorial and excuse-making. However, Rand’s concrete examples are preponderantly of the excuse-making type; her bright line between psychology and philosophy is unsuccessfully drawn; and in offering extended, strongly condemnatory analyses of the supposed motives behind psychologizing, she yields to the very temptation she claims to warn against. “Psychologizing” turns out to be an anticoncept.
WHERE THERE’S A WILL, THERE’S A “WHY”: A CRITIQUE OF THE OBJECTIVIST THEORY OF VOLITION, pp. 67-96
The author examines the canonical Objectivist model of free will (aka “volitional consciousness”) and finds it wanting, amounting to a form of Agency-Indeterminism. Employing an Aristotelian Four Cause analysis, he explores the complementary roles of determinism and free will, as well as the conditional nature of necessity and contingency, in understanding how causality operates in the human realm. He proposes an integration of what he calls “value-determinism” and “conditional free will,” arguing that it amounts to a basic axiom of human choice and action, and urges its acceptance in place of the Orthodox Objectivist view of free will.
REVIEWS
LIBERATING CAPITALISM?, pp. 97-103
Jason Brennan’s book Why Not Capitalism? offers a distinctive and engaging defense of the positive moral value of markets and property rights. Directly confronting influential socialist philosopher G. A. Cohen’s argument for the moral superiority of socialism, Brennan shows that a market society embodies distinctive moral excellences that we have good reason to embrace.
FREEDOM AND FICTION, pp. 103-7
This review discusses recent work that considers literature and film from a free-market perspective. It focuses on two books: Literature and Liberty: Essays in Libertarian Literary Criticism by Allen P. Mendenhall and Exploring Capitalist Fiction: Business through Literature and Film by Edward W. Younkins. Each provides a different, but useful, approach to the topic.
RUSSIAN RADICAL: TWENTY YEARS LATER, pp. 107-16
The second expanded edition of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, like the trilogy of which it is a part, aims to radically redefine the methodology of established traditions by wedding the dialectical method to libertarianism. On this overall trilogy, many important questions remain with regard to Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s ambitious project. But this does not take away from the fact that the book remains a brilliant and pathbreaking work. Sciabarra inspires us to rethink issues on a fundamental level.
DISCUSSION
SYMPOSIUM: MARSHA FAMILARO ENRIGHT’S ESSAY, “THE PROBLEM WITH SELFISHNESS”, pp. 117-25
The following essays constitute a Symposium in response to Marsha Familaro Enright’s essay “The Problem with Selfishness” [The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 14, no. 1 (July): 38-54]. We are proud to present replies from Arnold Baise and Merlin Jetton. This is followed by a rejoinder from Marsha Familaro Enright. Enright’s original essay has stirred so much discussion that we will be featuring a sequel to this symposium in a forthcoming issue.
REPLY TO MARSHA FAMILARO ENRIGHT: SELFISHNESS AND THE OED, pp. 117-20
In her article “The Problem with Selfishness,” Marsha Familaro Enright compares the definition of “selfish” used by Ayn Rand with the definition given in several dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The OED, however, justifies the definition of any word by referring to its actual use in written English, in the past and the present, making it the definitive English dictionary. In particular, the OED shows that “selfish” has been used with a decidedly negative connotation since the seventeenth century, contrary to Rand’s argument for a morally virtuous meaning.
REPLY TO MARSHA FAMILARO ENRIGHT: CONCEPTUAL CLASSIFICATIONS, pp. 120-23
This is a reply to Marsha Enright’s essay, “The Problem with Selfishness.” My comments pertain mainly to Enright’s conceptual classification, comparing it with mine in “Egoism and/or Altruism.”
REJOINDER TO ARNOLD BAISE AND MERLIN JETTON: DIFFERING CONCEPTUAL CLASSIFICATIONS FOR SELFISHNESS, pp. 123-25
This article acknowledges Arnold Baise’s detailed examination of the origin and use of the word “selfish,” which adds interesting details to the topic. It then turns to the issues raised by Merlin Jetton. While Jetton makes important contributions to the discussion, I think that, ultimately, we are using different classification systems.
CONTRIBUTORS, pp. 126-30
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 United Kingdom 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.
Susan Love Brown is a professor of anthropology at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), Boca Raton, and received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, San Diego. She is a political and psychological anthropologist, specializing in the Caribbean and the United States in the areas of cultural theory, social evolution, gender, ethnicity, individualist anarchism, and the study of intentional communities. She is the former director of the Public Intellectuals Program, the Ph.D. in Comparative Studies, and she is a faculty associate of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at FAU and has taught Gender and Culture for the last 20 years. She has written a number of articles and book chapters about gender and sexuality in Ayn Rand’s novels, and she is the editor of Intentional Community: An Anthropological Perspective (SUNY, 2002). She is currently working on a full-length study of Ayn Rand and gender.
Robert L. Campbell is a professor of psychology at Clemson University. He is the author of “The Rewriting of Ayn Rand’s Spoken Answers”, which appeared in this journal in 2011.
Troy Camplin has a Ph.D. in the humanities and is the lead consultant at Camplin Creative Consulting. He has published several papers in Studies in Emergent Order and book chapters on spontaneous order theory, short stories, and poetry. He is also the author of the book Diaphysics (2009).
Marc Champagne is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies of the University of Helsinki. His main research interests are in philosophy of mind, philosophy of signs (semiotics), epistemology, phenomenology / existentialism, and American philosophy (especially classical pragmatism, Rand, and the Pittsburgh School). He has two doctorates, one in philosophy from York University in Toronto and another in semiotics from the University of Quebec in Montreal. Formerly a researcher with the Peirce-Wittgenstein Research Group and the Canada Research Chair in the Theory of Knowledge, he is currently part of a project called Diagrammatic Mind (led by A.V. Pietarinen), which investigates how cognitive processes employ similarity-based signs. His articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals like Philosophical Papers,
Metaphilosophy, Sign Systems Studies, Philosophy and Technology, Reason Papers, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, The American Journal of Semiotics, Versus, Analysis and Metaphysics, Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, Philosophical Psychology, Semiotica, Semiotic Inquiry, and Philosophy of the Social Sciences. He was recently asked to compose an annotated bibliography on “Semiotics” for Oxford University Press’s online Bibliographies in Philosophy series (edited by Duncan Pritchard). At the 2015 Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference, there will be a symposium on his forthcoming book, Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs.
Gary Chartier is professor of law and business ethics and associate dean of the Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University. He is the author of six books, including Anarchy and Legal Order: Law and Politics for a Stateless Society (Cambridge, 2013), Radicalizing Rawls (Palgrave, 2014) and Public Institution, Public Law: An Essay on Love, Marriage, and the State (Cambridge, forthcoming), the coeditor (with Charles W. Johnson) of Markets Not Capitalism (Minor Compositions-Autonomedia, 2011). His byline has appeared nearly forty times in journals including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Theory, and Law and Philosophy. He holds a J.D. from UCLA (2001, Order of the Coif) and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (1991).
Marsha Familaro Enright, B.A. biology, Northwestern University, M.A. psychology, the New School for Social Research, is an education entrepreneur, writer, and psychotherapist. Her major project is the implementation of a new and innovative higher education program through the Reason, Individualism, Freedom Institute, of which she is president, curriculum developer, and chief implementer via the Great Connections Seminar in Chicago and Buenos Aires. She has written for The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, The New Individualist, Montessori Leadership, Free Voices, The Savvy Street. Her articles are available at The Fountainhead Institute. She is the editor of Ayn Rand Explained: From Tyranny to Tea Party (Open Court, 2013). Among her many other educational and social projects and organizations: the New Intellectual Forum (founded by her in 1987), Council Oak Montessori School, ages 3 to 15 (founded by her in 1990), and Camp Indecon (Curriculum Developer and Lead Instructor from 1999-2007). Her interests are wide-ranging but always take a biopsychological bent.
Mimi Reisel Gladstein, a professor of English and theatre arts, University of Texas at El Paso, where she has chaired the English and Philosophy Departments twice, was the first director of Women’s Studies, associate dean of Liberal Arts, and chair of Theatre, Dance, and Film. She has written three books on Ayn Rand and coedited one, Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand. A coedited volume on the Chicano artist and writer José Antonio Burciaga won an American Book Award, a Southwest Book Award, and a Latino Book Award. Her work in Steinbeck studies has been recognized with the Burkhart Award for Research and the Pruis Award for teaching. In 2011, she was inducted into the El Paso Commission for Women Hall of Fame and the El Paso County Historical Society Hall of Honor.
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 28-year career as an actuary and financial engineer, having specialized in asset-liability management the last 15 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 three earlier ones in this periodical. He now lives in Ohio.
Anna Kostenko, Zaporozhye, Ukraine, is an associate professor in the Theory and Practice of Translation Department of Zaporozhye National Technical University. Her research interests lie in the areas of contemporary foreign literature, namely in postcolonial literature and postcolonial translation, problems of bilingualism, biculturalism, and multiculturalism.
Wendy McElroy is the author of XXX: A Woman’s Right to Pornography (St. Martin’s Press, 1995), Sexual Correctness: The Gender-Feminist Attack on Women (McFarland, 1996), and The Art of Being Free (Laissez Faire Books, 2012) and the editor of such anthologies as Freedom, Feminism, and the State (Cato Institute, 1982) and Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the Twenty-First Century (Ivan R. Dee, 2002). Her articles have appeared in publications as diverse as National Review and Marie Claire. A frequent lecturer, she identifies with the individualist anarchist and individualist feminist traditions.
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; 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.
Volume 15, No. 2 – December 2015 (Issue #30)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
RECONCILING ECONOMICS AND ETHICS IN BUSINESS ETHICS EDUCATION: THE CASE OF OBJECTIVISM, pp. 131-56
ERIC B. DENT AND JOHN A. PARNELL
Today, capitalism is in question, as the 2013 Academy of Management conference theme claimed. Many view business skeptically because they see capitalism as incompatible with ethics. The same problem pervades the business ethics education classroom. Business ethics can be taught in a way that demonstrates that economics and ethics are compatible and are integrated most directly in the function of management. This essay provides an overview of Ayn Rand’s philosophy as an alternative to current conventions but largely consistent with approaches such as virtue ethics and conscious capitalism. The essay concludes with challenges to teaching Objectivism in business schools.
BUSINESS IN AYN RAND’S ATLAS SHRUGGED, pp. 157-84
Atlas Shrugged is a novel about business and the people who create businesses. This article describes Ayn Rand’s treatment of business and entrepreneurs in the novel. It begins with an explanation of how Atlas Shrugged demonstrates that wealth and profit are creations of the human mind. The next section compares the worldviews of the novel’s business heroes and villains. This is followed by an in-depth analysis of the novel’s main business protagonists: Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden. The next part provides summaries of other business characters. The last section examines how the novel is used in college-level business courses.
WHAT’S IN YOUR FILE FOLDER? PART 2: EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, AND “THE OBJECTIVE”, pp. 185-279
The author discusses how Rand’s largely underdeveloped concept of the “dual-aspect objective”, first introduced in the 1960s, is vital for understanding how knowledge is grounded in reality. He defines it, then applies it to perception and introspection, and to concepts, propositions, and syllogisms. The author also defines content of awareness, carefully distinguishing it from both object and form of awareness, and applies those distinctions throughout. In addition, he discusses how truth is both dual-aspect and contextual, and he extends his discussion in Part 1 of Rand’s “unit-perspective,” showing how units, too, have a dual-aspect, even on the level of syllogisms.
DISCUSSION
REPLY TO FRED SEDDON: WHAT DOES AYN RAND HAVE TO DO WITH WHO SAYS THAT’S ART? pp. 280-86
This commentary is in response to Fred Seddon’s review of Who Says That’s Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (December 2014). In addition to answering objections raised in the review about such matters as whether “abstract art” and photography should qualify as “fine art”, it aims to show in what respects the book was influenced by Rand’s thought.
REJOINDER TO MICHELLE MARDER KAMHI: FAMILY FEUD, pp. 287-89
The author responds to Michelle Marder Kamhi’s reply to his review of her book, Who Says That’s Art? He takes her to task on a few issues, but largely sees this as a mere skirmish between two colleagues who agree on many fundamentals.
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.
Eric B. Dent is professor of leadership, Fayetteville State University. He is committed to an interdisciplinary research agenda that has resulted in publications in behavioral science, complexity theory, systems science, education, consulting, history, communications, spirituality, organization development, and philosophy journals. He has won numerous awards and is a consultant to Fortune 500, government, and nonprofit organizations as well as an invited speaker to national audiences. He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from Emory University and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. in organizational behavior from George Washington University.
Michelle Marder Kamhi is an independent scholar and critic, and coedits Aristos, an online review of the arts. She coauthored What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand and is the author of Who Says That’s Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts. Articles by her have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Art Education, and Arts Education Policy Review, among other publications, and an essay by her is included in the volume After the Avant-Gardes (Open Court, 2016). Her blog about art is For Piero’s Sake, on her website.
John A. Parnell is the Belk Chair Management at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He is the author of over two hundred basic and applied research articles, published presentations, and cases in strategic management, ethics, crisis management, and related areas, as well as two current textbooks,Strategic Management: Theory and Practice and Crisis Management: Leading in the New Strategy Landscape. He is the 2011 recipient of the Spirit of Inquiry award from the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy for his course titled “Ethics and Capitalism.” He has lectured in a number of countries, including China, Mexico, Peru, and Egypt.
Fred Seddon 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.
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).
The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 