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23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Calvinist's attempt to bury Objectivism, March 10, 2001
"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. RobbinsJohn 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.
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29 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A mostly excellent job of demolition., December 30, 1999
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.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Putting Rand under cross examination, July 20, 2000
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.
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