Re: Rand's "Radical" legacy? (#49120)
by Chris Matthew Sciabarra on December 18, 2004 at 10:39 PM

Michael,

I think something is being lost ... fundamentally... radically, if you will... from the current discussion. Granted, it's very hard in a series of brief exchanges for me to communicate what I've written about for 20+ years, stretching across a trilogy that fundamentally defends radical methodology wedded to political libertarianism. My trilogy of books is, in many ways, a defense of an indissoluble position---"dialectical libertarianism"---which might also be called "radical libertarianism," because I use "dialectical" as a virtual synonym for "radical." This is also a defense against what I call methodological utopianism, which has a penchant for disconnecting various factors from the conditions and contexts that give them meaning.

What makes something radical is not merely a search for roots; it is a proper identification of those roots by various methods of logical and empirical inquiry, which includes the ability to abstract by vantage point, level of generality, and across time and systems. It is, furthermore, the ability to integrate these various abstractions into a coherent explanation. Such is the mechanics of comprehensiveness, of integration, of "context-keeping." That's what I mean when I speak of dialectics as "the art of context-keeping."

But in order to do this, the investigator has to investigate. The investigator can identify basic metaphysical and epistemological foundations; she can go on and on about the need to take the needs and interests of an audience into account when presenting ideas. She can go on and on about the need to take action in the world. But without investigation, without an inquiry into the actual factors operating in the world, without the ability to clarify the character of their relationships, everything else is moot.

Now, insofar as any human being on the planet thinks, he or she will manifest aspects of what I call "radical" or "dialectical" methodology. But we trivialize that method by thinking that everybody does it successfully. The problem with many so-called "radicals" in social theory is that, at some point in their enterprise, they become decidedly nonradical, decidedly utopian: dropping context, or, worse, misidentifying the facts and the relationships among those facts in trying to understand that context.

As I write in Total Freedom: "It cannot be denied that dialectics has been used by the followers of many false gods. That it has the potential to enrich our understanding of facts and principles, that it can and must be put in the service of such facts and principles, is also undeniable. But the most important question that any project faces is this: Are its conclusions valid? To the extent that we substitute purely methodological concerns for substantive ones, we beg that question. There is, after all, a dialectical relationship of mutual implications between method and content."

You write above: "One can identify the roots of communism and be a radical ~for communism~. Let me put forth these questions before I carry my argument further: Could one be a radical for communism? Could one be a radical for environmentalism? Could one be a radical for country square dancing?"

A Marxist might identify the "roots" of communism (say, the labor theory of value) and be a "radical" (passionate and consistent advocate?) for communism. An environmentalist might identify the roots of environmentalism and be a "radical" (passionate and consistent advocate?) for environmentalism. (I'll leave country square dancing alone for a moment.) But it seems here that you are simply using the word "radical" as a synonym for "passion" or, perhaps, "consistency." This is, I'm afraid, trivializing what it means to be a radical. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman, philosophers, and divines." What matters is not simply that one identifies the root of a position, or that one defend that position with passion and consistency. John Kerry had one good line in the Presidential debates about Bush's consistency and passion: "You could be wrong!"

And the history of social theory is riddled with many "false" radicals for that reason; they may state their premises baldly; they may defend them passionately and with consistency. But if the premises are wrong and the inquiry is flawed, all the coherence and consistency and "context-keeping" in the world is moot. We need to think more dialectically about dialectics and radicalism, and about the indissoluble relationship between form and substance, method and content. Otherwise we trivialize radicalism. Ultimately, as Hayek suggested, it is a privilege to be radical, but to be a genuine radical demands much of us.