A(ristotle) is A(lbert Jay Nock)
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Ayn Rand acknowledged Aristotle as the only thinker to whom she owed a “philosophical debt.” But Rand’s Aristotle was, in at least one instance, really Albert Jay Nock’s Aristotle, as this footnote in Jennifer Burns’s Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right reveals:
Her late use of Aristotle was often inaccurate. According to Rand, Aristotle believed that ‘history represents things as they are, while fiction represents them as they might be and ought to be.’ However, as two scholars sympathetic to Rand conclude, this attribution ‘misquotes Aristotle and misrepresents his intent.’ … It appears that Rand drew this concept not from Aristotle, but from Albert Jay Nock. In Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943), 191, Nock writes, ‘History, Aristotle says, represents things only as they are, while fiction represents them as they might be and ought to be.’ In her copy of the book, Rand marked this apssage with six vertical lines.
For more on Rand and Goddess of the Market, see Justin Raimondo’s review here.
Filed under: Books
It’s interesting how often Nock focused in on the subject of “is and ought”. I’m thinking in particular of the part in “Memoirs” when he says that John Jay was the best political mind of his time because he said that politics ought to be arranged in a manner consistent with the way people are and not with the way they ought to be. I’ve always found the argument convincing and have thought that it should be picked up and expanded upon by all anti-utopians and anti-progressives.
The Ominous Parallels (written by Rand’s legal heir Leonard Peikoff) is a must-read for those who see Aristotelian philosophy as the anecdote to utopianism. It’s about the philosophical similarities between contemporary America and the Weimar Republic/pre-Nazi Germany. Simply fascinating. I’ve written about it at the Young Americans for Liberty blog here: http://www.yaliberty.org/tags/the-ominous-parallels
The Tory Anarchist is delightful, keep it up!