Structural flaw in The Fountainhead


Mike11

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The Fountainhead is one of my favorite books and one I often come back to, however something has always bugged me about it thematically. The fundamental conflict between Roark and Toohey was best seen in the Stoddard Temple, its theme being Human potential, its enemy an ascetic delusional old man yet the ending conflict was about ..... public housing decorations?

The theme of the novel was summed up by the Temple perfectly, its enemies summed up the theme perfectly. The apartment building's theme was .... um .... something about welfare? The enemy was Peter Keating's enemies? The great crime was having a building you never admitted to designing being altered? The penalty for the crime was arson? Arson that was found legal? What??

Would the novel had been better if it had been based around the Temple and its fate?

PS - I get the conflict about the apartment building, and why Roark did it, and what Rand was trying to prove.

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In a way, the progression from the Temple to Cortlandt is going from more abstract to more concrete. More ethical to more political.

The Temple demonstrates the clash of the values between the individualist and collectivist. Cortlandt shows these value systems political implications and outlooks.

Admittedly, The Fountainhead is more about the realm of values, it is a more abstract novel, whilst Atlas is more concrete in nature. So we do see a bit of "one blending into another."

Is it really a structural flaw? Im not so sure. I think Rand simply is showing the concrete implications of the characters of Toohey and Roark in the political arena. Certainly, your point is important however.

Its as if Fountainhead comes down to earth as it continues.

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One subtle theme Rand presents over and over in her writing as subtext—without ever becoming too explicit—is that a rational person works within what is available, not within an ideal context. He projects the ideal context based on his own values, and he struggles to create it, but he works within reality as it is presented.

A good example is Rand going to college and completing it in Russia while despising Communism. Her literal alternatives were "do it here" or "don't do it." She decided to do it. If she had the alternatives open in a better context, she would have never "done it there."

This was the either-or alternative Roark was presented with in designing the housing project. As an architect, a housing project was a supreme challenge and got him all pumped up just thinking about it. In the world where he existed, it was not possible to do it commercially on his terms. He was not a real estate developer and didn't care much about that side. He was an architect. What got him hot was the architectural stuff, not the commercial stuff. But he was smart enough to realize that his choice was "do it here" or "don't do it." (Had he tried it 100% his way, he would have bankrupted some poor enthusiastic investor—after the regulatory agencies start interfering. He was unwilling to harm honest people who he had committed to.)

Now recall that one of the main themes running throughout the book was Roark not understanding people and feeling that there was something very important for him to learn. With the housing project he learned it—that he alone has to set the terms for the products of his mind. If he does not, he will be scammed. He will become a sacrificial animal (to use Rand's term).

By blowing up the housing project, he made full claim to the product of his mind. He withdrew it from those who did not pay him.

There is no real contradiction in him doing a housing project because of the different values involved. For the collectivists, this was of supreme value because it served their political agenda. A temple worked, but it was not a supreme value like a housing project was.

For Roark it was of supreme value because, by the nature of it being aimed at struggling low-income people, it stretched his architectural knowledge to the limit. He had to wring dollars and cents out of each pipe and brick. Working only for the rich folks would never allow him to test himself in that manner. He wanted to see just how good he was.

Michael

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You asked about the Stoddard Temple and Courtlandt. You forgot to ask about Peter Keating. Roark helped him at Stanton. Keating gave Ellsworth Toohey inside information about Roark. Keating hired Roark to humiliate and exploit him. Keating testified against Roark at the Stoddard trial. He betrayed Katie and married Dominique, then betrayed Dominique. In the end, he came to Roark to save his career, then betrayed Roark at the Cortlandt trial.

The moral of the story is that creators are generous, almost impersonally and naturally disposed to help others. It's a flaw, without which they seem unreal and inhuman: "Get the hell out of my way!"

:)

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The moral of the story is that creators are generous, almost impersonally and naturally disposed to help others. It's a flaw, without which they seem unreal and inhuman: "Get the hell out of my way!"

Oh, pardon me for not getting the hell out of yours...

Seriously. There is a scene in The Fountainhead where Gus Webb and the bad guys are sitting around grousing about Roark and one says to Webb, that he's just sore because Roark doesn't even notice his existence. And Webb says, "He'd notice it if I bashed his head in with a club." and the other guy replies, "No, he'd just blame himself for not stepping out of the way of the the club."

There is a strong militia element in Objectivism -- the Guns, Gold and God crowd -- who want to destroy Islam and bomb America's enemies and kill Islamo-fascists now that they can no longer kill commies and their mommies. Virginia Postrel wrote about these right wing millennarians in The Future and Its Enemies. This has more to do with personal issues of "psycho-epistemology" than with mere political debates over technicalities.

As an ideal character, Roark was an individualist in metaphysical terms first, as he had to be. He said to Wynand, "Of course I need clients. I'm not building mausoleums." But his "need" for other people was like Francisco's statement talking with Dagny in the valley about a hypothetical operation, "All I'd need would be some..." The need is not the focus. Roark does not need enemies to be an architect.

Many Objectivists need evil people around them in order to be virtuous.

They abrogate the responsibility to mind their own business.

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The Temple demonstrates the clash of the values between the individualist and collectivist.

Actually, it goes a bit deeper than that - right into the most unpleasant aspects of Rand's (admittedly confused) ethics. You need to consider the symbolism Rand employs in designing the Stoddard Temple's fate, and the options she had available. Do you think the aesthetic choice she made was only about individualism vs collectivism?

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The Temple demonstrates the clash of the values between the individualist and collectivist.

Actually, it goes a bit deeper than that - right into the most unpleasant aspects of Rand's (admittedly confused) ethics. You need to consider the symbolism Rand employs in designing the Stoddard Temple's fate, and the options she had available. Do you think the aesthetic choice she made was only about individualism vs collectivism?

I don't think anyone can deny Rand's Nietzschean Nazilike cold blooded opinion of genetic greatness that pervades her way of thinking but on the other hand I think she used the enshrinement of mediocrity as a theme in the book.

Good point though.

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The Temple demonstrates the clash of the values between the individualist and collectivist.

Actually, it goes a bit deeper than that - right into the most unpleasant aspects of Rand's (admittedly confused) ethics. You need to consider the symbolism Rand employs in designing the Stoddard Temple's fate, and the options she had available. Do you think the aesthetic choice she made was only about individualism vs collectivism?

I don't think anyone can deny Rand's Nietzschean Nazilike cold blooded opinion of genetic greatness that pervades her way of thinking but on the other hand I think she used the enshrinement of mediocrity as a theme in the book.

Good point though.

Rand rejected racism in all its forms, explicitly. See for instance her essay "Racism" from The Virtue of Selfishness.

Any Nietzschean strands in Rand's writing appear to have disappeared by the time of the publication of The Fountainhead. We The Living certainly (in early version) had some.

Bill

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Any Nietzschean strands in Rand's writing appear to have disappeared by the time of the publication of The Fountainhead.

No, this is incorrect. Recall that the Nietzschean "revaluation of all values" is not necessarily about racial superiority - that's Vulgar Nietzsche (although his sister seems to be responsible for much of this emphasis after his death). What we're talking about here is his strenuous rejection of Christian moral values such as compassion for the weak, and a ethical duty to help them. The replacement for this compassion was instead contempt for the weak - and for those philosophically corrupted enough to feel this compassion. We see this Nietzschean attitude ringing through quite clearly in this important symbolic passage from "The Fountainhead" linked to above.

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Any Nietzschean strands in Rand's writing appear to have disappeared by the time of the publication of The Fountainhead.

No, this is incorrect. Recall that the Nietzschean "revaluation of all values" is not necessarily about racial superiority - that's Vulgar Nietzsche (although his sister seems to be responsible for much of this emphasis after his death). What we're talking about here is his strenuous rejection of Christian moral values such as compassion for the weak, and a ethical duty to help them. The replacement for this compassion was instead contempt for the weak - and for those philosophically corrupted enough to feel this compassion. We see this Nietzschean attitude ringing through quite clearly in this important symbolic passage from "The Fountainhead" linked to above.

I don't see it. I do see "strenuous rejection of Christian moral values" including "ethical duty to help them." That is not the same as the entire package you outline above.

Bill

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WSe never see any crises in the mind of Howard Roark. No crises, Ever. Peter Keating however is described as being someone who could not be first handed, and never could be.

That is what I meant be genetic, that is also what Rand did in her Journals.

Notice the physical flaws described in her heroes and the good looks of her villains.

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I don't see it. I do see "strenuous rejection of Christian moral values" including "ethical duty to help them." That is not the same as the entire package you outline above.

You mean you don't see Rand's contempt for both the handicapped children - and their caregiver, and for the people that fund the institution - in the passage cited? How would you describe her attitude to them then?

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I don't see it. I do see "strenuous rejection of Christian moral values" including "ethical duty to help them." That is not the same as the entire package you outline above.

You mean you don't see Rand's contempt for both the handicapped children - and their caregiver, and for the people that fund the institution - in the passage cited? How would you describe her attitude to them then?

I do not see contempt for the handicapped children. Let's start there. Can you cite the specific paragraph in which you see Rand express such contempt, and what in her wording causes you to infer contempt on the part of Rand?

Bill

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We never see any crises in the mind of Howard Roark. No crises, Ever. Peter Keating however is described as being someone who could not be first handed, and never could be.

Yes, Roark is an odd fellow. He seems to have few typical human personality characteristics. Yet Rand referred to Roark as the only truly human character in the book.

That is what I meant be genetic, that is also what Rand did in her Journals. Notice the physical flaws described in her heroes and the good looks of her villains.

This is a key point you touch on here Mike. Unravelling it leads in several directions. For example, it helps at least improve Peikoff's mystical non-explanation in OPAR of why some individuals make the critical choice to use their minds rationally (Peikoff:"There is no such 'why'"). We can of course see why Peikoff might fudge the issue so - for the genetic explanation for rationality does indeed tilt the philosophy towards eugenics. Despite Rand's explicit disavowal of racism, we do see this rather crude eugenic flavour coming through in her work as you've noted - rational people are good looking, irrationalists ugly, irrational American Indians deserved what they got, handicapped children are contemptible etc. It's yet another of those tangled threads in her thought.

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I do not see contempt for the handicapped children. Let's start there. Can you cite the specific paragraph in which you see Rand express such contempt, and what in her wording causes you to infer contempt on the part of Rand?

Where isn't it you mean!

Firstly there is little hint that these children are anything more than ugly freaks in their description.They march and stare vacantly, "the stare of death before which no world existed."

Obviously their carer Catherine Halsey is a target of contempt: her voice is "dry and arbitrary", her eyes are so awful that people ask her not to remove her glasses, her hopes for the "reclamation" as humans of her charges mocked in quotes.

Then there is the deliberate contrast of the retarded children's - once again mockingly quotemarked - "Creative Hour" with Rand's beloved cityscape representing the creativity of proper humans in the background.

Then there is the coup de grace of the "least promising one of the lot", the genderless Jackie, spreading its (for Jackie is literally an it) 5 legged blue spotted dog across the green overpainted ledge that symbolises Roark's creative control of the forces of nature (it was "modelling" to "control the recession of light"). The obvious symbolism is that such a work by such a thing is a desecration of Roark's achievement; that the occupation of the Temple of The Human Spirit by such creatures is a symbolic desecration of the human spirit.

Edited by Daniel Barnes
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I don't see it. I do see "strenuous rejection of Christian moral values" including "ethical duty to help them." That is not the same as the entire package you outline above.

You mean you don't see Rand's contempt for both the handicapped children - and their caregiver, and for the people that fund the institution - in the passage cited? How would you describe her attitude to them then?

I've always liked Rand's statement on this (which includes a nice Barbara Branden quote):

======

Objectivists will often hear a question such as: "What will be done about the poor or the handicapped in a free society?"

The altruist-collectivist premise, implicit in that question, is that men are "their brothers' keepers" and that the misfortune of some is a mortgage on others. The questioner is ignoring or evading the basic premises of Objectivist ethics and is attempting to switch the discussion onto his own collectivist base. Observe that he does not ask: "Should anything be done?" but: "What will be done?"—as if the collectivist premise had been tacitly accepted and all that remains is a discussion of the means to implement it.

Once, when Barbara Branden was asked by a student: "What will happen to the poor in an Objectivist society?"—she answered: "If you want to help them, you will not be stopped."

=======

I think that says a lot about Rand's attitude. She did not see any special obligation which all have to take care of the handicapped.

Bill

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We never see any crises in the mind of Howard Roark. No crises, Ever. Peter Keating however is described as being someone who could not be first handed, and never could be.

Yes, Roark is an odd fellow. He seems to have few typical human personality characteristics. Yet Rand referred to Roark as the only truly human character in the book.

That is what I meant be genetic, that is also what Rand did in her Journals. Notice the physical flaws described in her heroes and the good looks of her villains.

This is a key point you touch on here Mike. Unravelling it leads in several directions. For example, it helps at least improve Peikoff's mystical non-explanation in OPAR of why some individuals make the critical choice to use their minds rationally (Peikoff:"There is no such 'why'"). We can of course see why Peikoff might fudge the issue so - for the genetic explanation for rationality does indeed tilt the philosophy towards eugenics. Despite Rand's explicit disavowal of racism, we do see this rather crude eugenic flavour coming through in her work as you've noted - rational people are good looking, irrationalists ugly, irrational American Indians deserved what they got, handicapped children are contemptible etc. It's yet another of those tangled threads in her thought.

This was about one of my favorite books. Sigh.

Okay, good points. There are legit holes about the causation of the fundamental choice of "focusing the mind" but I always thought it had more to do with a God of the Gaps dodge of determinism than this issue, though I see the relationship you draw.

The ironic thing is that in the story of the handicapped children I find the ultimate vindication of what I see as the ideals of her art, though she seems to disagree. I don't have the book on hand but, quoted from the blog -

She was elated on the day when Jackie, the least promising one of the lot, achieved a completed work of imagination. Jackie picked up fistfuls of colored felt scraps and a pot of glue, and carried them to a corner of the room. There was, in the corner, a slanting ledge projecting from the wall - plastered over and painted green - left from Roark's modeling of the Temple interior that had once controlled the recession of the light at sunset. Catherine walked over to Jackie and saw, spread out on the ledge, the recognizable shape of a dog, brown, with blue spots and five legs. Jackie wore an expression of pride. "Now you see, you see?" Catherine said to her colleages. "Isn't it wonderful and moving! There's no telling how far the child will go with the proper encouragement. Think of what happens to their little souls if they are frustrated in their creative instincts! It's so important not to deny them a change for self-expression. Did you see Jackie's face?"

Even though she is put there by Toohey through the destruction of the temple, even though mentally she is the lowest of the low we have the creative nature of the will. Even in such a decrepid vessel there is the power of human growth, the opposition between the Temple and its replacement is artificial.

Maybe. I dunno.

Edited by Mike11
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I think that says a lot about Rand's attitude. She did not see any special obligation which all have to take care of the handicapped.

Hi Alfonso,

Just before you said

"I do not see contempt for the handicapped children. Let's start there."

And then asked me:

"Can you cite the specific paragraph in which you see Rand express such contempt.."

I then cited the specific paras and wording you asked for.

You've responded with Rand's comment about "no special obligation", but haven't addressed the contempt issue.

Now I've pointed it out, do you see the attitude I am referring to?

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This was about one of my favorite books. Sigh.

Great books can, unfortunately, have great failings. What's important is our honesty in assessing them.

The ironic thing is that in the story of the handicapped children I find the ultimate vindication of what I see as the ideals of her art, though she seems to disagree. I don't have the book on hand but, quoted from the blog -

Good for you Mike. I agree with your interpretation, even if I don't think Rand would have.

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I think that says a lot about Rand's attitude. She did not see any special obligation which all have to take care of the handicapped.

Hi Alfonso,

Just before you said

"I do not see contempt for the handicapped children. Let's start there."

And then asked me:

"Can you cite the specific paragraph in which you see Rand express such contempt.."

I then cited the specific paras and wording you asked for.

You've responded with Rand's comment about "no special obligation", but haven't addressed the contempt issue.

Now I've pointed it out, do you see the attitude I am referring to?

I haven't address the supposed contempt issue because I had not seen your response when I wrote the comment about "no special obligation."

I still do not see the contempt which you are imputing. I see a deliberate contrast presented by Rand: What does one wish to glorify, to celebrate? One answer, Roark's, seems to be human potential and achievement. The contrasted one - suffering. What does one consider as something to be aspired to? To be celebrated?

Bill

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I still do not see the contempt which you are imputing. I see a deliberate contrast presented by Rand: What does one wish to glorify, to celebrate? One answer, Roark's, seems to be human potential and achievement. The contrasted one - suffering. What does one consider as something to be aspired to? To be celebrated?

Bill

Stares of Death. Toohey put them there. The nurse?

I disagree and Daniel to some extent does as well, with the context Rand so clearly attempted to paint around the genderless freak with the stare of death in the house of Hell built by Satan but the fact that you don't see it... or wait, you do....

1) Please show me the suffering in the Verses pertaining to Jackie's drawing of the dog.

2) If it is not to be celebrated than what is the appropriate emotional response?

3) Why do you feel Rand had her one dimensional moral monster build the care center?

The reason why we cry "Contempt" is likely the reason you will answer the way you will.

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I see a deliberate contrast presented by Rand: What does one wish to glorify, to celebrate? One answer, Roark's, seems to be human potential and achievement.

Do you think that Jackie's work did not represent human potential and achievement?

It's pretty clear from this passage that Rand doesn't. The contrast is deliberate.

I think Mike's right. I think Rand should have approached it like he says.

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I see a deliberate contrast presented by Rand: What does one wish to glorify, to celebrate? One answer, Roark's, seems to be human potential and achievement.

Do you think that Jackie's work did not represent human potential and achievement?

It's pretty clear from this passage that Rand doesn't. The contrast is deliberate.

I think Mike's right. I think Rand should have approached it like he says.

I would be a lot friendlier to Rand if she meant it that way.

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