PUBLISHED REVIEWS

JOHN RIDPATH, THE INTELLECTUAL ACTIVIST 10, no. 1 (JANUARY 1996)

"THE ACADEMIC DECONSTRUCTION OF AYN RAND"

Ridpath sees Russian Radical as a "truly grotesque example" of how contemporary academics, using current academic methods, have attempted to impress their peers with analyses of Ayn Rand. He sees "postmodern" and "deconstructionist" themes "on open display" in Sciabarra's book, "a book that is preposterous in its thesis, destructive in its purpose, and tortuously numbing in its content." Ridpath views Sciabarra as "a neo-Hegelian" trying to force Rand into that mold in his exposition. He argues that Sciabarra's thesis is "undeserving of serious attention," that it "offers us nothing of significance" about Rand, and that it is symptomatic of contemporary academia and "the worthless products flowing from it."  In an endnote to the article, Ridpath states that promoters of the book make a false claim in stating that it benefited from cooperation with Leonard Peikoff. Peikoff's correspondence with the author, claims Ridpath, "consisted of a short, polite, dismissive letter."

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