darrenMar 3, 2012 04:41 AM
Part II:
In the 19th-century, some novels made use of the scholarly apparatus of footnotes: a passage in the text would have a reference such as an asterisk or a dagger, perhaps after the mention of some exotic location, which reference would signal to the reader that he should scan the explanatory note at the foot of the page for more information. This information, in rhetorical terminology, is known as "Non-Diagetic"; i.e., information that (supposedly) lies outside the fictional world of the novel itself. There was no guarantee, of course, that this footnote was objectively true. The point of having a footnote was that it resembled the truth (being a mode of communication borrowed from non-fiction scholarship) for the purpose of sustaining and further highlighting the "inner truth" — the REVEALED TRUTH — of the writer qua storyteller. The purpose of the footnote was to legitimize, in a sense, the fictional part of the novel, adding to its overall plausibility for a reader. It's important to understand that since the "tension" between the footnoting and the storytelling was stylistic — the writer wasn't merely trying to give the reader an interesting bit of information about a location mentioned in the story; he was trying to REINFORCE the plausibility of the story by means of a device normally associated with non-fiction scholarship — there's no guarantee (not even the necessity!) that the information in the footnote be objectively true; i.e., the footnote might just as easily be yet more "revealed truth" from the novelist; i.e., the scholarly-looking footnote itself might just be more fiction!
Using the analogy of a stage play, a footnote in a novel is similar to an actor's "aside" to the audience, in which he momentarily walks through that proverbial "fourth wall" and speaks directly to the audience in order to impart some information to them, or comment to them about the goings-on in the play; that would be an example of non-diagetic dialogue (i.e., dialogue that the audience can hear, but which the other characters on stage at the moment are supposed to be unaware of). It's quite apparent to the audience, however, that even the "aside" has been scripted by the playwright, and that it is still really a part of the invented world of the play. No one in the audience would seriously consider an actor's "aside" to be the same sort of communication about the goings-on in the play as, for example, a serious review of the play by a critic that might appear in the newspapers the day after the performance.
So while I consider the twin pedestals of metaphysics and epistemology in Objectivism to be in serious error, they are so only when considered as attempts at serious scholarship. They become something quite different if we think of them as extended footnotes to readers of her novels; "asides" made to them by the various characters of Galt, Rearden, Taggart, Roark, et al., for the purpose of strengthening the plausibility of the story, and, ultimately, maintaining that all-important suspension of the reader's disbelief. The philosophy of Objectivism (especially its metaphysics and epistemology) — like Atlas Shrugged itself — is ultimately meant as entertainment, not scholarship.
