Table of Contents: Spring 2000


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Volume 1, No. 2 - Spring 2000

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE ROLE OF TRAGEDY IN AYN RAND'S FICTION, pp. 171-209

KIRSTI MINSAAS examines the role of tragedy in Rand's fiction. Rand tended to dismiss tragedy, finding it incompatible with her doctrine that art should serve as a kind of inspirational fuel. But her own fiction often makes use of tragedy in ways that transcend her theory and that reveal its inadequacy as a basis for interpreting her works. A satisfactory comprehension of the meaning and function of the tragic occurrences in Rand's works, Minsaas argues, requires engagement with such conceptual frameworks as Aristotle's catharsis theory, Nietzsche's attack on pity, the Prometheus myth, and the Stoic idea of heroic calm.

THE UNIVERSALITY AND EMPLOYMENT OF CONCEPTS, pp. 211-44

BRYAN REGISTER explores Rand's theory of concept-formation and concept-employment. Rand proposes a sophisticated nominalist theory of universals, which accounts both for the objectivity of categories of things and for the universality and abstractness of certain mental states. However, Rand's theory is found wanting: through an erroneous and confused treatment of the relation between words and concepts, it fails to account for non-linguistic conceptual activity. A revision of Rand's theory, drawing from Price and from Rand's notion of concepts of method, seeks to fill the gap.

RAND ON ABORTION: A CRITIQUE, pp. 245-61

GREGORY R. JOHNSON and DAVID RASMUSSEN argue that Rand's defense of abortion on demand is inconsistent with her own fundamental metaphysical, epistemological, and moral principles, namely that everything that exists has a determinate identity, that the concept of man refers to all of man's characteristics, not just his essential characteristics, and that there is no gap between what an organism truly is and what it ought to be.

REVIEWS

AYN RAND: A FEMINIST DESPITE HERSELF?, pp. 263-81

LISA M. DOLLING reviews Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra. The anthology attempts to re-read Rand's work in light of important feminist issues and to locate it in the context of debates current in feminist discourse. Dolling argues that the book--which contains nineteen articles by philosophers, psychologists, literary theorists, and numerous others--is an important step toward bringing fresh attention to Rand's thought and toward the canon-transformation called for by contemporary scholars.

EGOISM AND BENEVOLENCE, pp. 283-91

TIBOR R. MACHAN argues that David Kelley's Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence, which makes the case for including the benevolent virtues as a prominent feature of the Objectivist ethics, is too brief but filled with poignant observations and some valuable analysis. Machan discusses altruism, in response to much criticism of Rand's rendition of the position, and defends ethical egoism against widespread misrepresentations.

A VETERAN RECONNOITERS AYN RAND'S PHILOSOPHY, pp. 293-312

ROBERT L. CAMPBELL finds Tibor Machan's book, Ayn Rand, to be a thoroughgoing introduction to every part of Rand's system except the esthetics. Machan's presentation is knowledgeable and sympathetic but entirely non-sectarian; it offers several significant criticisms of Rand's views. Campbell focuses on Machan's discussion of Rand's philosophical axioms, her ethics, and her antipathy to Immanuel Kant. Certain questions that Machan asks prompt Campbell to inquire whether Rand's avoidance of cosmology in metaphysics is an example to be followed in epistemology (where it would imply an avoidance of psychological questions about the nature, evolution, and development of the human mind).

THE ART OF FICTION, pp. 313-31

STEPHEN COX examines The Art of Fiction, a book of newly published selections from Ayn Rand's lectures on fiction-writing that extend and complicate our knowledge of her literary ideas. Her discussion of the fiction-writer's craft provides interesting and sometimes provocative views on general problems of literary form and method.

A GUIDE TO RAND SCHOLARSHIP - I, pp. 333-44

MATTHEW STOLOFF provides a brief review of Mimi Reisel Gladstein's New Ayn Rand Companion, Revised and Expanded Edition, and inaugurates an ongoing reference guide to scholarship on Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

VOL. 1, NO. 2: CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES

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