Independence, Egoism, and Achievement in The Fountainhead

Independence, Egoism, and Achievement in The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand said that the theme of The Fountainhead is "individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in man's soul." I want to comment on three specific aspects of this theme, as it is embodied in Roark's character and his interactions with the other figures in the novel. Roark is a man of independence, he is an egoist, and he is a creator, a paragon of productive achievement. These three concepts—independence, egoism, and achievement—are the key to understanding the moral sense of The Fountainhead and the ways in which it differs from the conventional ethos.

Rand makes it clear from the outset that independence does not consist in nonconformity. Henry Cameron says to Roark, "I wouldn't care, if you were an exhibitionist who's being different as a stunt, as a lark, just to attract attention to himself. It's a smart racket, to oppose the crowd and amuse it and collect admission to the sideshow." Later on, we meet a number of artists, protégés of Toohey, who are engaged in precisely that kind of racket; the writer who did not use capital letters, the painter who "used no canvas, but did something with bird cages and metronomes," and the like. When Toohey's friends ask him how he can support such rabid individualists, he smiles blandly. He knows that these "iconoclasts" are merely playing off conventions, for the sake of shock value; they are just as dependent on others as the most abject conformist. And most of them, like the writer Lois Cook, have a smirking kind of awareness that they are getting away with something, foisting trash on a credulous public. (I sometimes think that Andy Warhol got his ideas from these passages of The Founta...

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...Greeks, for their part, considered wisdom a virtue, but their conception of wisdom always contained a conventional, conservative element. ..."Wisdom" is not the term one would use to describe a scientific genius, a brilliant artist, an innovator in any field. But these, for Rand, are the highest exemplars of rationality.

By linking independence to reason, Rand severed its association with subjectivism, with the arbitrary impulses of the iconoclast, with the dark realm of Dionysian passion. Conversely, by linking reason with independence, she gave it a romantic quality as a tool of creative freedom, not a constraint.

Works Cited and Consulted

Peikoff, Leonard. The Philosophy of Objectivism, A Brief Summary. Stein and Day, 1982.

Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead. New York: Plume, 1994.

Walker, Jeff. The Ayn Rand Cult. Carus Publishing Company, 1999