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Without A Prayer - Ayn Rand And The Close Of Her System

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John Robbins is unlikely to receive much respect from Objectivists, since he is a devout Christian -- a sola-scriptura Biblical inerrantist whose critiques of Rand are mounted on a thoroughly Calvinist foundation and offered for clearly evangelical purposes. The loss is theirs; Robbins knows "Objectivism" better than most of Ayn Rand's most devoted followers -- including its all too numerous flaws.

Nor should Objectivists ignore his critiques merely because they are "religious," since it is only in their own minds that "religion" is automatically irrational. Robbins is a follower of the late Gordon H. Clark (familiar to one audience as a highly respected scholar of Hellenistic philosophy, and to another as a party to a well-known theological controversy with Cornelius van Til). Calvinism is no friend of irrationality and, especially as interpreted by Clark, assigns a _very_ high place to reason and logic. As a student of Clark, Robbins develops his critiques with more respect for reason than Rand ever showed in her entire life.

The author of _Answer to Ayn Rand_ (a 1970s work that did not receive a like answer from the Objectivist establishment), Robbins has reworked and expanded his critique for this volume, also adding appendices to deal respectively with Leonard Peikoff and David Kelley. His central contention is quite a straightforward one, and in my view it is essentially correct though I would quibble about some details. It is this: Rand started with her conclusions and worked backwards, very badly, to transfer those conclusions onto a foundation that will not support them. As her libertarian, free-market capitalist, limited-government conclusions in fact depend on a view of man and society that properly and in strict consistency belongs to Christianity (I would say to Western monotheism generally), they are -- for Rand -- "stolen concepts." It is only a matter of time until some of her followers work her premises _forward_ and wind up with very different conclusions indeed. (And probably anyone who has ever participated or lurked in an Objectivist discussion forum knows that the day Robbins fears has already come.)

His demolition job is mostly an able one, with only an occasional misfire. Space will not permit a full discussion of Robbins's contentions here, but in my own view his best chapters are his sustained attacks on Rand's epistemology and theology. With a keen eye for Rand's numerous self-contradictions, Robbins demonstrates repeatedly that Rand did not succeed even in presenting a coherent position, let alone supporting it with evidence or argument.

Especially good are his attacks on Rand's "empiricism" and "materialism," positions she did not officially support although Robbins is correct that she was committed to them anyway. (Or at least would have been, if she had been consistent. Rand was famous for claiming she had overcome false dichotomies when she had merely ignored real ones.) He is also particularly trenchant on the topic of "volitional consciousness" and Rand's allegation that human beings are somehow self-creating. And he clearly recognizes the link between Rand's standards for who is and is not "human" (in violation of even her own stated epistemological principles) and her unconscionable views on abortion. His critiques of Peikoff and Kelley mostly hit their marks as well, though again space will not permit me to detail them here.

In short, despite some blemishes, this volume is the ablest critique of Objectivism currently in print, and I am glad to see it has finally become available through Amazon.

"The desirability of the conclusion is no substitute for argument, and those who allow themselves to be deceived by arguments because they like the conclusions are poor philosophers." - John W. Robbins

John W. Robbins is an intellectual UFO. A Christian, he discovered Ayn Rand while in college and, admiring her "uncompromising vision... of how the world might be and ought to be" and her "portrayals of rational, creative, and intransigeant individuals", he "read all that Rand published". Even today, he agrees with many of her positions, such as "her praise of purpose and productive work, her condemnation of lazinesss, her enthusiasm for private property, her advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism and limited government, her attacks on altruism, her support of egoism and her vigorous defense of logic."

However, Robbins is not an Objectivist, but a follower of evangelical Protestant philosopher Gordon H. Clark, some of whose shorter pieces are included in the appendices. Robbins defines Clark's philosophy as "scripturalism", a doctrine according to which "all our thoughts- there are no exceptions- are to be brought into conformity to Scripture, for all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are contained in Scripture." Among the corollaries of this position are the idea that evolution is "the greatest superstition of the twentieth century", and an extremely negative (Popperian) view of science, according to which "all the laws of science are false, and all have the same probability: zero" because they are "conclusions of logically fallacious arguments".

In Objectivist terms, he is a pure intrinsicist: he believes that we have access to infallible propositional truths, which are delivered to us directly from the mind of God via Scripture, and that all our knowledge either comes directly from Revelation or from logical deductions from it. A pure rationalist, too, he totally rejects empirical evidence as a possible basis for knowledge, and reduces logic to deduction, denying even the possibility of induction ("Truth cannot be derived from something non-propositional, such as 'observations'. Unless one starts with propositions, one cannot end with propositions.")

Most people - and especially most Objectivists - would be tempted to dismiss him as a wacky fundamentalist, but I personally respect Christians and even admire some Catholics, and I even share some of Robbins' ethics and politics, so I was willing to listen.

Actually, *Ayn Rand and the Close of her System* contains excellent points against Objectivism, some of which I had already arrived at by my own thinking. I particularly liked, for instance, Robbins's argument that what the "primacy of existence" actually means is "the primacy of unconsciousness"; his identification of the bias inherent in the "indestructible robot" example used to justify the concept of life as the root of value (the robot is assumed to be impassible and unchangeable); or the argument that Rand's ethics would "seem to permit, if not require, murderers to fight against their just punishment" and is "completely compatible with a pro-death, pro-suicide point of view" - among many other highly interesting points.

I am not saying that Robbins has refuted Objectivism, only that some of his points corroborated or even refined my own understanding of the problems of the philosophy and raised objections I am currently unable to answer. Of course, not every argument is of a high caliber. Robbins occasionally resorts to ad hominem, sarcasm or straw man arguments. Moreover, even though he does understand many of the points he discusses, he is prey to a certain number of false alternatives, assuming for instance that the non-intrinsicist is necessarily a Kantian subjectivist or that a volitional theory of consciousness must necessarily exclude the possibility of automatic processes at all levels, including the sub-conscious.

In fact, if true, Robbins' critique would be devastating not only for Objectivism, but for modern science (including psychology and psychiatry, which he rejects as "pseudo-science" and "witchdoctory") and the whole empiricist tradition in philosophy. He is particularly virulent against Aristotle, whom, contrary to Rand who saw in him "the first of our Founding Fathers", he calls an "explicit totalitarian" and a "fascist". But Rand's interpretation is vindicated in such Objectivist works as Robert Mayhew's *Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Republic* or F. D. Miller's *Nature, Justice and Rights in Aristotle's Politics*. As for Robbins' attacks on the Objectivist politics, it seems to focus on rather careless statements of the theory, and might not be as effective against the more scholarly derivation of the Objectivist position in Tara Smith's *Moral Rights and Political Freedom*.

Even though Robbins' own point of view is untenable and he is not always a very nice person, I think his book is worthy of close scrutiny and deserves a systematic Objectivist answer.

This brilliantly written book is as frustrating as it is insightful. Robbins' critique of Rand is nothing short of withering. Rand is made to look like a philosophical imbecile clealry out of her depth. Unfortunately, in making Rand look so bad, Robbins is not being entirely fair. His critique is, in many important respects, deeply flawed. He is, to begin with, an extreme rationalist who rejects both fact and empiricism. (Robbins says there are no facts, but only propositions, theories: but is this a fact, or just a theory?) Everything to him is a question of logic, which in practice means: a question of words. Rand is subjected by Robbins to endless verbal scrutiny. He goes after her like a prosecuting attorney subjecting a hostile witness to cross-examination. Wherever Rand misstates her position, he seizes on the misstatement with triumph, as if he were actually accomplishing something beyond showing that Rand was not a very accurate writer. Robbins does, it is only fair to add, have many cogent things to say against Rand's theories of human nature, concept-formation, and individual rights, but a great deal of the rest of her system, including her theories of history and aesthetics, escapes critical scrutiny. He is even guilty of two gross misinterpretations. He accuses Rand (inaccurately of course) of empiricism and materialism, both of which Robbins, coming from the viewpoint of Calvinistic Christianity, regards as reprehensible. Now while Rand might have given lip service to certain empirical doctrines, she was no empiricist. The method she actually uses in defending her philosophical ideas is largely rationalistic, like Robbins own (though, admittedly, Robbins is a lot better at it than she is). The charge that Rand is a materialist is even more off target. How can someone who believed in the "efficacy of consciousness" and "free will" (let alone the notion that history is "determined" by ideas!) be regarded as a materialist? While it is true that Rand's belief in the so-called "primacy of existence" (i.e., her metaphysical realism) logically entails materialism, Rand refused to accept this logical inference, since it contradicted her theories of human nature and history. Now Robbins has no business trying to force a logical inference upon Rand that she herself rejected. She may be guilty of contradiction, but she is certainly not guilty of materialism.

Ayn Rand ruined my life. I wish I could have read this book 15 years ago. It presents in a very cogent way the pitfalls of absolutistism and so-called "objectivism" for readers of many backgrounds. It's very clearly laid out, and easy to follow. It is a good book.

In 1974, John Robbins came out with Answer to Ayn Rand, a work that criticized Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy from a Calvinist perspective based on the philosophy of Gordon Clark. Clark was a rationalist who denied that there could be any proofs for God's existence. His philosophy was also excessively anti-empiricist.

Robbins updated and expanded that work in 1997 under the new name ,Without a Prayer. This book is certainly worth reading, but -- while it was one of the better discussions of Objectivism at the time -- it has been superseded by other works.

I must first object to the macabre cover. On the front of the work is Rand's tombstone and the back, that of her husband Frank O'Connor. What's the point?

In any event, the substance of this work isn't quite that bad. There are a couple of excellent chapters -- those dealing with her theory of concept formation and also the religious nature of Objectivism. Robbins has an eye for showing the contradictions and false assumptions of Objectivism, but at times he gives the least charitable interpretation of something Rand said to then contrast it with something else she said, in order to make Rand look silly or muddleheaded. Of course, Rand was these things at times, but not even she deserves to be unnecessarily held up to ridicule.

Some of the work is mediocre and at times borders on the scurrilous. For example, Robbins tells us that "Their [Christians] continued existence under Objectivist government has already been the subject of debate in Objectivist circles . . . ." [p. 210.] Of course, there is no citation to such a "debate." A society based on Objectivism certainly wouldn't be hospitable to the senile, the retarded, and anyone who doesn't agree with Rand. But to imply that Objectivists advocate the murder of Christians is to out-Rand Rand at her worst. While Mr. Robbins rightly protests that Leonard Peikoff wrongly equates the rise of Nazism with Christianity, he no has qualms of stooping to Peikoff's level (or worse) when he attacks Objectivism.

Robbins even gets silly when describing David Kelley as a "radio receiver channeling omnipresent energy." [p. 37 n. 25.] Rand said some foolish things in her day, but I don't recall reading anything so silly as that.

This book is to be commended on one ground, however. Mr. Robbins has no doubt introduced a great many people to the thought of Gordon Clark, one of the most influential apologists in recent history.

Whiny complaints notwithstanding, this is a Christian book par excellence. Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal, Jesus skewered the Pharisees, and Robbins slays the dragon of Randianism.

Robbins follows his mentor, Dr. Gordon Clark, into an extreme rationalism. But his critique of empiricism is so valid that one can hardly blame him.

We live in an irrational age. Anti-christians claim to be both empirical (getting truth only from the sences) and rational (holding logical propositions). Materialism and reason, however, are not compatable. One cannot smell an idea or tase a syllogism. Truth, by definition, is non-empirical.

For the Christian, true truth is an attribute of God, an infinite, incorporeal Spirit. If knowledge came only through eyes and ears, God would be ignorant. Conversely, a pig should grasp ideas. Materialism is absurd, and Robbins answers the fools according to their folly. The humanistic egoism of Ayn Rand is, at base, untenable atheism - a dogma closely related to the Communism she so much claimed to reject.

This book is comprehensive, logical, and fitting for our day. The same could be said for most of the books by Drs. Robbins and Gordon H. Clark. One need not embrace their absolute rationalism to profit from their work.

Very likely, few people have noticed, but Objectivism is dead. Robbins killed it. As would any responsible philosopher, Robbins began with epistemology. When epistemology fails, the entire system fails, and Robbins demonstrated the complete failure of Objectivist epistemology. Robbins really needn't have written anything past that, but he did--largely because objectivism is not a systematic whole that coheres logically together among its parts. He also demonstrated the failure of the parts. If there remains any confusion about what Objectivism teaches or what the logical and responsible response should be, this book will clear it up.

This books claims to engage Rand "where she wished to be engaged--at the level of philosophical argument." As a Christian who is also an admirer of Ayn Rand, I found Mr. Robbins' arguments to be grossly inadequate. I actually found this very disappointing, since I profoundly disagree with Rand on several issues and was hoping to fid a book that would provide ammunition for engaging Objectivists in a reasoned debate. I will have to keep looking.
In the foreword, Mr. Robbins wastes no time in calling Rand's philosophy "deadly poison," then he attempts to "prove" his point using out-of-context quotes and word twisting. Let's look at one glaring example from the second chapter:
Mr. Robbins quotes Rand as saying that "reason" is "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses." He then claims that she equivocated on the meaning of "reason" when she said that "reason is the only objective means of communication and understanding among men." This claim is absolutely ridiculous. The former quote is the definition of reason; the latter is a description of one of its many uses--there is no equivocation here.
Mr. Robbins makes the claim that "Christianity and Objectivism have no presuppositions or propositions in common. They have no common ground." Thank goodness that is not the case; for if it were, then Christianity would have no foundation. Is not the most basic presupposition of Objectivism that existence exists?
By inference one might conclude that Mr. Robbins does not believe in existence. But as president of the Trinity Foundation, he believes that one God exists in three Persons. If he really believes that Christianity and Objectivism have no common ground, then he is guilty of the fallacy of the stolen concept, for the concept of existence is necessary in order to believe that God exists.
That error in itself may be a simple oversight. Unfortunately, it is only the tip of the iceberg. In the final chapter of this book, Mr. Robbins introduces us to the philosophy of Gordon H. Clark, which he calls Scripturalism. Unfortunately, Scripturalism's epistemology is only workable if you first accept Objectivism's entire epistemology as a presupposition! Mr. Robbins makes the incredible claim that the Bible is the source of all knowledge. How are we to read and understand the Bible in the first place if we cannot engage in the very process of concept formation that is central to Objectivist epistemology?
While Mr. Robbins rightly pointed out some serious errors in the conclusions Rand came to, he failed in his chief aim, which was to destroy the foundation of Objectivism. I hope that anyone, and especially any Objectivists, who are unfortunate enough to read this book will also take a look at the works of Norman Geisler before drawing any conclusions about true Christianity.

The author makes a systematic, thorough and ingenious attack on Rand from a Protestant point of view. In so doing, he makes explicit many objections to Rand and Aristotelianism that are usually implicit and unstated.As a sidelight he attacks the culture of the Roman World, and attributes every advance, not to its rediscovery in the Rennaissance, but to the durability of a Just, procedurally sane Christianity that would have been invisible to those massacred by the German Inquisition. The author knows which side he is on and quotes his much neglected mentor at loving length, bringing to attention an unfairly underestimated religious apologist. This is how the religious react to Rand--I should in fairness say the organized christianism of much ism, little Christ. They see Rand as much ism, and little object.