Transmitting Ideas from the Ivory Tower

In a previous post, I cited a quote by Ayn Rand from For the New Intellectual which seemed to suggest that history is determined by philosophers because they transmit ideas in a "top-down" approach. The full quote is:

The professional intellectual is the field agent of the army whose commander-in-chief is the philosopher. The intellectual carries the application of philosophical principles to every field of human endeavor. He sets a society's course by transmitting ideas from the "ivory tower" of the philosopher to the university professor—to the writer—to the artist—to the newspaperman—to the politician—to the movie maker—to the night-club singer—to the man in the street. The intellectual's specific professions are in the field of the sciences that study man, the so-called "humanities," but for that very reason his influence extends to all other professions. Those who deal with the sciences studying nature have to rely on the intellectual for philosophical guidance and information: for moral values, for social theories, for political premises, for psychological tenets and, above all, for the principles of epistemology, that crucial branch of philosophy which studies man's means of knowledge and makes all other sciences possible. (p. 26)

In that previous post, I mentioned that I thought Rand only intended this quote to pertain to the modern era since she also identifies businessmen along with philosophers as "twin-motors of progress." I want to expand on this interpretation because recently I reread Tracinski's article Anthemgate where he comments on the quote above.

In my original presentation of my ["What Went Right?"] series, I chose not to spend a lot of time demonstrating the pervasiveness of this ["top-down"] approach, largely because I wanted to focus attention on my own positive theory, rather than on my criticisms of other Objectivists. It turns out this attempt was somewhat naïve; I did not realize that in the authority-centered system of the Objectivist movement, the most important issue would not be the evidence I provided for my own theory, but rather my deviation from the accepted philosophical authorities.

In the current context, therefore, it seems appropriate to return to this issue and take it head-on. Reluctantly, I have concluded that the error does go back to Ayn Rand, particularly this analogy from her essay "For the New Intellectual": [here he gives the quote above]

I agree with much of what Tracinski wrote in "What Went Right." I agree that Objectivists have had a "doom mentality" for the last fifty years and that much of it springs from the quote from Ayn Rand above. However, I believe Ayn Rand is being taken out of context.

To understand the context of the "ivory tower" quote, let's look at the overall structure of For the New Intellectual:

1. Introduction: America at present (1960) is intellectually bankrupt and this is not good! (p. 10-12, Signet paperback edition)
2. Attila and the Witch Doctor: The professional intellectual and businessman are modern professions, only since the industrial revolution.  Most of history has been ruled by the man of faith and the man of force, designated Attila and the Witch Doctor. (p. 12-20)
3. The Producer: A producer is any man who works and knows what he is doing. She contrasts the producer with Attila and the Witch Doctor and points out that these three archetypes are the only three fundamental modes for man to live on earth. (p. 20-22)
4. History Review: Rand discusses the role of ideas in various times and societies--Ancient Greece, Greco-Roman, Dark Ages, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, and the founding of the United States. She shows that for each society, the degree of success correlates with the degree to which the producers were free from Attila and the Witch Doctor. (p. 22-25)
5. The Businessman and the Intellectual: Capitalism, the system on which the U.S. was formed, created two new types of man: the businessman and the intellectual. (She later clarifies that it was the professional intellectual that was created by capitalism.) It is in this section that the quote at the top appears. Here she states clearly that under capitalism, in the ideal society, "two key figures act as the twin-motors of progress, the integrators of the entire system, the transmission belts that carry the achievements of the best minds to every level of society: the intellectual and the businessman." (p. 25-28)
6. Professional Philosophers: In the history of capitalism, the businessmen have done a spectacular job of advancing mankind.  However, the professional philosophers have taken us in the opposite direction.  This section reviews the major progression of ideas from the philosophers, from Descartes, to Hume, to Kant. She discusses Kant at length, including his influence on Hegel. She finishes with later major philosophers, Comte, Spenser, Nietzsche, and Marx, and how they became destroyers of capitalism when their profession should have been defending it. (p. 28-38)
7. The Invention of Socialism: The professional philosophers did not get from the businessmen what they had previously gotten from Attila (material support and respect) so they set out to destroy him. They did this by inventing Socialism which made the businessman immoral. (p. 38-44)
8. The Surrender of the Businessmen: Businessmen became anti-intellectual when it came to philosophy and accepted the role of Attila. Our culture has come full circle and now the twin-motors of progress invented by capitalism have taken on the roles of the Witch Doctor and Attila. (p. 44-50)
9. The New Intellectuals: What we need now are new intellectuals who come from both camps: businessmen interested in philosophy and thinkers interested in how to live in the real world. The whole article is a call for new intellectuals to defend capitalism on moral grounds. (p. 50-57)

Looking at the overall organization of the article we can see that the quote on "transmitting ideas from the 'ivory tower'" comes after a review of history (part 4) and the recognition that capitalism created two new archetypes: the professional intellectual and the businessman (beginning of part 5). The quote in question describes how the professional intellectual acts--or, perhaps, should act--in a capitalist, free society. This is evident by the very next passage after the quote (still part of the same paragraph):

The intellectual is the eyes, ears and voice of a free society: it is his job to observe the events of the world, to evaluate their meaning and to inform the men in all other fields. A free society has to be an informed society. In the stagnation of feudalism, with castes and guilds of serfs repeating the same motions generation after generation, the services of traveling minstrels chanting the same old legends were sufficient. But in the racing torrent of progress which is capitalism, where the free choices of individual men determine their own lives and the course of the economy, where opportunities are unlimited, where discoveries are constant, where the achievements of every profession affect all the others, men need knowledge wider than their particular specialties, they need those who can point the way to a better mousetrap--or the better cyclotron, or the better symphony, or the better view of existence. [p. 26-27, italics are mine]

Tracinski writes in Anthemgate: "I should note that while the top-down premise does appear in Ayn Rand's theory of history, it is not consistent throughout, and it is very clear that she held an opposite view implicitly." Ayn Rand did not consistently use explicit terms to make clear the difference between intellectuals before the industrial revolution and professional intellectuals after that time, but she does state early on that there is a difference:

Historically, the professional intellectual is a very recent phenomenon: he dates only from the industrial revolution. There are no professional intellectuals in the primitive, savage societies, there are only witch doctors. There were no professional intellectuals in the Middle Ages, there were only monks in monasteries. In the post-Renaissance era, prior to the birth of capitalism, the men of the intellect--the philosophers, the teachers, the writers, the early scientists--were men without a profession, that is: without a socially recognized position, without a market, without a means of earning a livelihood. (p. 12-13)

Ayn Rand was very careful with what she wrote and the words she used. Note that in the "ivory tower" quote at the top, the first three words are "The professional intellectual..." This is further evidence that the rest of the paragraph describing a top-down approach refers only to history since the industrial revolution, even though she uses the shortened "intellectual" after the first sentence.

I agree with Tracinski that "the top-down premise, once it had gained a toe-hold in Objectivism, had a profound effect on the Objectivist movement." But I disagree that "the error does go back to Ayn Rand." The only time she promotes the top-down approach to history is when discussing modern societies under capitalism where professional intellectuals exist. She then goes on to show how this top-down process worked after the industrial revolution; for example, the ideas of Kant and Marx led to the Russian Revolution and the advent of communism in practice (part 6).

As for the idea that Rand thought the world could only be saved by Objectivist philosophy professors at Harvard and Yale in a top-down approach (as Peikoff seems to believe), the whole article is a call for new intellectuals who can come from any profession:

Who are to be the New Intellectuals? Any man or woman who is willing to think. (p. 50)

Those who could become the New Intellectuals are America's hidden assets: their number is probably greater than anyone can estimate; they exist in every profession, even among the present intellectuals. (p. 50)

The New Intellectual will be a reunion of the twins who should never have been separated: the intellectual and the businessman. He can come from among the best--that is: the most rational--men who may still exist in both camps. In place of an involuntary Witch Doctor and a reluctant Attila, the reunion will produce two new types: the practical thinker and the philosophical businessman. (p. 51-52)

I would like to point out that, 50 years later, we now have excellent examples of these two new types: Robert Tracinski is a practical thinker, and John Allison is a philosophical businessman.

Hopefully this post does not come off as a desperate attempt to maintain the infallibility of Ayn Rand--my previous post was written to guard against that perception. Rather, I believe For the New Intellectual is a valuable guide to understand the role of ideas in history, but it requires careful study to fully understand what Rand was saying.

(In general, I hate posts that quote Ayn Rand extensively. I'd rather read original viewpoints from the person writing. Quoting Rand also gives the appearance of blind acceptance of everything she wrote rather than independent thinking. So, to counter-balance this post, my next post will be my own thoughts on how technology is helping spread the right ideas and making the university philosophers obsolete.)