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      Lossky argued further that “not a single knowable element” of the totality “exists on its own account, apart from a necessary relation to other elements.” Every object of knowledge has distinguishable aspects, but none of these can be grasped in isolation from the total context. Metaphysical plurality does not discount the importance of causal connections and internal relations (11–12).

      Thus the elements of the whole may be separated in one respect, but “in another respect they have the same basis and belong to the same whole. Their very separateness necessarily demands that in some other respect they should be united and interdependent” (13). Those who subscribe to the inorganic, mechanistic, and atomistic perspective conceive of atoms as independent of one another. Yet the atoms themselves belong to one universe in which they interact. The “single whole space” of the universe constitutes “the one all-embracing basis” that is common to all of its constituent elements. Hence the position and movement of an atom is relative within the broader context of the whole.

      Lossky argued that not even the atomist can deny the essentially organic structure of the world. For even in the atomist’s denial is the retention of wholeness with every judgment made. Every philosophical theory presumes the idea of a whole that constitutes and is constituted by its elements. Thus the idea of an organic “whole lies at the root of every judgement we make concerning any object whatsoever” (8). If we deny such an organic, relational structure to reality, we forfeit the conditions that make the world knowable.

      Lossky’s organicism and intemalism proliferate throughout his works, even in his less than fully developed aesthetics. Though Lossky lacked a formalized philosophy of art, he viewed each work of art as a totality, “the successive parts of which exist in consequence and for the sake of one another as well as of the whole: the parts of such a whole are not only a means but also an end for one another” (159–60). In this regard, Lossky appropriated a notable Aristotelian theme. In De Poetica, Aristotle wrote:

      The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole.³⁷

      Lossky ([1917] 1928) expresses this same organicist sentiment with regard to musical composition: A piece of music is a complex whole in which its constituent elements form an organic unity. Each part is in harmony with the other, and all parts exist for the whole (48).

      And yet, despite the ultimate necessity of holding an organic view on all ontological, epistemological, and aesthetic issues, Lossky is compelled to explain the prevalence of inorganic and atomistic conceptions. If organicism and internalism are true of reality and of knowledge, then why do fragmented perspectives endure?

      Lossky argued that since knowledge requires comparison, differentiation, and analysis, it can disintegrate into atomistic elements. Like all entities on earth, humans are beings of finite capabilities. At any given moment, they focus on “some one part of the world” and abstract this part from the whole in a particular respect. Since knowledge expands with the addition of information, they can conclude falsely “that knowledge consists in constructing in our minds a complex whole out of independent elements.” This is the Kantian error which fails to discriminate “our acts of knowing from that which is known.” Such a mistake must inevitably “ascribe the characteristic of fragmentariness to the objects of knowledge and to the whole knowable world” (15).

      Lossky believed, however, that the analysis that is performed by the mind yields a partial and incomplete picture of the whole. Lossky was unable to attain a fully integrative and organic view without the infusion of mystical elements. As a religious philosopher, Lossky hypothesized that an Absolute “being whose powers of attention and discrimination were infinite would be capable of contemplating everything at the same time, both as connected with and as distinguished from everything” (16). Such an omniscient being would be incapable of error, but He would be able to see the organic whole “in its differentiated aspect at once, without being broken up in time” (ibid.).

      In his analysis of the persistence of fragmentation, Lossky seems oblivious to institutional or historical explanations. Marx maintained, for instance, that it was the capitalist mode of production that made such fragmentation possible, and inevitable. And it was Lossky’s student, Ayn Rand, who proposed that social fragmentation was a constituent element of a broader systemic irrationality: statism.

      The thought of N. O. Lossky was a fusion of complementary organicist and internalist tendencies in Russian and Western philosophy. Lossky’s ideal-realism exhibited a Russian proclivity to synthesize opposites and resolve antagonisms. He rejected the dualistic obsession with dichotomies of rationalism or empiricism, idealism or materialism, knowledge or existence. These alternatives were, for him, partial and incomplete. Like other thinkers in Russian philosophy, however, Lossky achieved the ultimate integration through a mystical Absolute. His system of hierarchical personalism embraced a vision of the world as an organic whole, a unity of sobornost’ achieved in God’s Kingdom of Harmony.

      Ayn Rand’s philosophical project embodies this same struggle against dualities, the same powerful propensity toward synthesis. But although she appears to have inadvertently accepted her teacher’s formal dialectical insights, she adamantly opposed his mysticism.

3

       EDUCATING ALISSA

      In 1945, Rand wrote:

      When I am questioned about myself, I am tempted to say, paraphrasing Roark [the protagonist of The Fountainhead]: “Don’t ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think.” It is the content of a person’s brain, not the accidental details of his life, that determines his character. My own character is in the pages of The Fountainhead. For anyone who wishes to know me, that is essential. The specific events of my private life are of no importance whatever. I have never had any private life in the usual sense of the word. My writing is my life.¹

      In this passage, Rand suggests that she is “tempted” to adopt an “essence-accident” distinction in the definition of her own life. The essential Rand is the thinking Rand. What she has written and what she thinks are what she considers most fundamental to answering the question, “Who is Ayn Rand?” The events and life experiences that shaped her thought are “accidental details” and “of no importance whatever” in grasping the significance of her character.

      Although I perforce distinguish the philosophy from the philosopher, I believe that Rand’s self-portrait here verges on the reification of her intellect as a disembodied abstraction. One cannot focus exclusively on the philosopher’s character or, more important, on the philosopher’s body of work as if either were generated and developed in a vacuum. Rand herself often paid close attention to context and history in the analysis of philosophical and cultural trends. And yet she paints an oddly flat portrait of her own being. By concentrating on her ideas to the exclusion of her developmental psychology, social interactions, and experiences, she achieves a one-sidedness that is in stark contrast to the richness and complexity of her own mode of analysis.

      What Rand wished to emphasize was that ideas mattered. She never would have completely discounted the influence of social relationships on a person’s thinking. Nor was she apt to create a dichotomy between a person’s thought and emotions. But at times, she did exhibit a problematic tendency to view ideas as the sole means for understanding human behavior or for judging an individual’s moral worth. In her novels, characters often serve as embodiments of ideas; they are one-sided expressions of specific philosophic principles. In her theory of history, this tendency to emphasize the importance of ideas could translate into a crude form of philosophical determinism.

      But within the present

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