Chris Matthew Sciabarra
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Chris Matthew Sciabarra (born February 17, 1960) is an American political theorist based in
Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
,
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
. He is the author of three scholarly books—''Marx, Hayek, and Utopia''; '' Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical''; and ''Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism''—as well as several shorter works. He is also the co-editor, with
Mimi Reisel Gladstein Mimi Reisel Gladstein (born 1936) is a professor of English and Theatre Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her specialties include authors such as Ayn Rand and John Steinbeck, as well as women's studies, theatre arts and 18th-century ...
, of ''Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand'' and co-editor with Roger E. Bissell and Edward W. Younkins of ''The Dialectics of Liberty: Exploring the Context of Human Freedom''. His work has focused on topics including
Objectivism Objectivism is a philosophical system developed by Russian Americans, Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand. She described it as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with prod ...
,
libertarianism Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's en ...
(particularly the work of
Friedrich Hayek Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Haye ...
and
Murray Rothbard Murray Newton Rothbard (; March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, political theorist, and activist. Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian m ...
), and
dialectics Dialectic ( grc-gre, διαλεκτική, ''dialektikḗ''; related to dialogue; german: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to ...
.


Life

Sciabarra was a visiting scholar at
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...
from 1989 to 2009, where he earned his BA in history (with honors) in 1982; his MA in Politics in 1983; and his PhD in Political Philosophy, Theory, and Methodology in 1988, under the supervision of
Bertell Ollman Bertell Ollman (born April 30, 1935, in Milwaukee) is a professor of politics at New York University. He teaches both dialectical methodology and socialist theory. He is the author of several academic works relating to Marxist theory. Ollman att ...
. In 1999 he became the co-founder and co-editor of the biannual ''
Journal of Ayn Rand Studies ''The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies'' (JARS) is an academic journal devoted to the study of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Established in 1999, its founding co-editors were R. W. Bradford, Stephen D. Cox, and Chris Matthew Sciabarra. At ...
'', which has been published by
Penn State University Press The Penn State University Press, also known as The Pennsylvania State University Press, was established in 1956 and is a non-profit publisher of scholarly books and journals. It is the independent publishing branch of the Pennsylvania State Uni ...
since 2013, and belongs to Liberty and Power, a group weblog at the
History News Network History News Network (HNN) at George Washington University is a platform for historians writing about current events. History History News Network (HNN) is a non-profit corporation registered in Washington DC. HNN was founded by Richard Shenkman ...
. He is the author of a trilogy of books on dialectics and libertarianism. The second of these, published in 1995, is '' Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical'', which explores
Ayn Rand Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum;, . Most sources transliterate her given name as either ''Alisa'' or ''Alissa''. , 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (), was a Russian-born American writer and p ...
's college influences and intellectual roots—particularly the role of Rand's philosophy teacher, philosopher Nicholas Onufrievich Lossky—and argued that Rand's
philosophical method In its most common sense, philosophical methodology is the field of inquiry studying the methods used to do philosophy. But the term can also refer to the methods themselves. It may be understood in a wide sense as the general study of principles ...
was
dialectical Dialectic ( grc-gre, διαλεκτική, ''dialektikḗ''; related to dialogue; german: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing ...
in nature. In 2013, Pennsylvania State University Press published a second expanded edition of '' Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical'', which includes a new preface, three new appendices (Appendices I and II are "The Rand Transcript" and "The Rand Transcript, Revisited," first published in ''
The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies ''The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies'' (JARS) is an academic journal devoted to the study of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Established in 1999, its founding co-editors were R. W. Bradford, Stephen D. Cox, and Chris Matthew Sciabarra. A ...
'', and Appendix III constitutes a response to Shoshana Milgram, a recent critic of Sciabarra's historical work. The expanded second edition also includes an expanded section in Chapter XII, "The Predatory State," entitled "The Welfare-Warfare State," which explores Rand's radical critique of US foreign policy). For a comparison of the two editions see the links on his Notablog Sciabarra is
openly gay Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...
. He is of Sicilian and
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
ancestry.


Reviews of ''Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical''

David M. Brown writes: "Much to my surprise the author of ''Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical,'' a comprehensive new study of Rand's thought and its genesis in Russian culture, has persuaded me that something called 'dialectics' is integral to Ayn Rand's philosophic approach and crucial to its success. ''Russian Radical'' is a different kind of look at Ayn Rand, a full-fledged 'hermeneutic' on the contours, development, and interpretation of her thought." According to Lester H. Hunt: "It is indicative of the interest of this book that I have so far engaged in an argument with it instead of saying how good I think it is on the whole. Among other things, it is an excellent synthesis of the Objectivist literature, both the works of Rand and those of her immediate successors. Sciabarra's mastery of enormous amounts of material is almost literally incredible. He also manages to break entirely new ground on several different issues." While James G. Lennox thoroughly rejects the author's historical conclusions, and he recommends against construing Rand's method of challenging dichotomies or "false alternatives" as "dialectical," he also writes, " s author has an encyclopedic familiarity with the writings of Ayn Rand and with virtually everyone who has advocated, commented on, or written critically about Objectivism. .. He is the first of her commentators to explore the intellectual milieu of Rand's early, formative years, providing a deeper appreciation for her occasional scathing remarks about Russian culture as she had experienced it. All of this material is discussed, and exhaustively referenced, in the interests of providing a comprehensive analysis of Objectivism, not merely as a philosophical system, but as a philosophical and cultural movement." Virtually the same review ran as "Reaching for Roots" in the February 1996 issue of ''Reason.''
John Ridpath John B. Ridpath (; 19 May 1936 – 23 March 2021) was a Canadian intellectual historian. He was an Objectivist and an associate professor of economics and intellectual history at York University in Toronto. He also taught courses at Duke U ...
, a director of the
Ayn Rand Institute The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center for the Advancement of Objectivism, commonly known as the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit think tank in Santa Ana, California, that promotes Objectivism, the philosophy developed by Ayn Rand ...
, has argued that ''The Russian Radical'' is postmodern and
deconstructionist The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences ...
in its overall orientation, that it is a "worthless product" of contemporary academia, and that on the whole it was "preposterous in its thesis, destructive in its purpose, and tortuously numbing in its content."


Bibliography


Dialectics and Liberty trilogy

* * *


Edited works

* With
Mimi Reisel Gladstein Mimi Reisel Gladstein (born 1936) is a professor of English and Theatre Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her specialties include authors such as Ayn Rand and John Steinbeck, as well as women's studies, theatre arts and 18th-century ...
. * With Roger E. Bissell and Edward W. Younkins.


Monographs

* * * *


Dissertation

* ''Toward a Radical Critique of Utopianism'' (1988)


References


External links


Dialectics & Liberty Home Page

Notablog Online Journal

The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sciabarra, Chris Matthew 1960 births Living people 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American libertarians American male bloggers American bloggers American people of Greek descent American people of Italian descent American political writers Gay feminists American gay writers Individualist feminists Libertarian theorists Male feminists Neo-Objectivists New York University alumni Objectivism scholars Writers from Brooklyn