Hi, I wanted to share some insight I had about the reading assignments for yesterday’s lecture.
I’ve read “The Goal of my Writing” and noticed that Ayn Rand thinks that fiction is about having values realized in a written form. I then wondered how tragedies fit into this view, if everyone dies at the end, it doesn’t seem to me like values are achieved. Then I read the fiction portion of the assigned reading, and it all connected for me.
Tragedy authors are like Andrei in We The Living or Steven Mallory in The Fountainhead – they think values are realized in battle, that values are to be fought in the name of. Ayn Rand’s view is presented by Kira, that life is to be lived, that is, that values are to be lived, (Rand thinks life is the root of values and the primary value) and that is why her literary heroes live an ideal, as opposed to dying for an ideal.
This issue, of the basic approach towards values, is a metaphysical issue, as opposed to what specific values you hold, which is an ethical issue. This is one of the metaphysical value judgments Rand mentions in The Psycho-Epistemology of Art, one of the issues that stand at the core of art.
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