(Where you used the word "sway", you might consider instead "dissuade".)
I’d like to comment a bit on a philosophic idea to which you have drawn attention in this essay.
There is a Fair constitution in the First Man notion, but a Foul constitution as well, and the packaging of the two together is a false contrivance and can set young independent, creative readers on a disastrous dedication of labors.
The Fair is the individual who is at home in nature and who learns to do things with it and in maturity creates alone with independent mind. With this goes a considerable love of solitude (which is why I don’t have a cell phone).
The Foul is the mythic first-bringer lie of how all the greatness in human achievement is brought about. Rand was in her fiction and in her other expressions of her philosophy continually proceeding with personifications of how every marvel of humans came about. I should call this the Prometheus Complex. How did humans get the control and uses of fire? Not in truth from some higher human-like being who taught them those skills. And contrary that myth also, humans did not get their powers of reason from a Prometheus (to whom Zeus had delegated the job of bringing humans about on the earth). And reason also did not come from some extraordinary specimen in evolutionary history having a heroic moment of insight, as Rand once conjectured in an essay. Even in portraying the functions of art, Rand would not allow that communication and sharing were among fundamentals; only mind-satisfactions of the creator could be allowed as fundamental. Obviously, Rand’s continual protest against presence and necessity of others for individual achievement to occur is a set-up for bolstering her ethical theory of egoism.
In Rand’s conception of essential human nature, “We” is an afterthought. In The Fountainhead, all human suffering is expressly lain on actions of wrong-headed people, especially other wrong-headed people. Nature and natural limits to one’s own abilities are never seen as the non-social fundamental sources of suffering that they are.
The opening scene is in solitude. That is Fair. The final scene, much as I love it, is Foul if one takes no notice of the social setting that goes into accomplishing such a project and the social past that was necessary to come to such achievement.
Stephen, I think I see what you mean by "fair" and "foul." Ayn Rand was so much of an individualist that she seemed to neglect the social side of existence to some extent. This problem is less in Atlas Shrugged because it is more of a "social" novel and we see how people interact or at least trade more.
Rand also seemed to be too much of an individualist when it came epistemology. She wrote as if children figured out concepts entirely on their own, instead of being modeled and taught them. In addition, her ethics and ideas of love seem too self-centered to me. I believe that a healthy person extends the "I field" to become a "we field."
Insightful and observant, as always! Rand's novels really are the pinnacle of integration. Your point at the end about environmentalism is one that I too picked up on while I was writing The Tao of Roark. At the time I called it environmentalism as aestheticism: https://stpeter.im/journal/1227.html
From my friend Stephen Boydstun:
This is excellent, Kurt.
(Where you used the word "sway", you might consider instead "dissuade".)
I’d like to comment a bit on a philosophic idea to which you have drawn attention in this essay.
There is a Fair constitution in the First Man notion, but a Foul constitution as well, and the packaging of the two together is a false contrivance and can set young independent, creative readers on a disastrous dedication of labors.
The Fair is the individual who is at home in nature and who learns to do things with it and in maturity creates alone with independent mind. With this goes a considerable love of solitude (which is why I don’t have a cell phone).
The Foul is the mythic first-bringer lie of how all the greatness in human achievement is brought about. Rand was in her fiction and in her other expressions of her philosophy continually proceeding with personifications of how every marvel of humans came about. I should call this the Prometheus Complex. How did humans get the control and uses of fire? Not in truth from some higher human-like being who taught them those skills. And contrary that myth also, humans did not get their powers of reason from a Prometheus (to whom Zeus had delegated the job of bringing humans about on the earth). And reason also did not come from some extraordinary specimen in evolutionary history having a heroic moment of insight, as Rand once conjectured in an essay. Even in portraying the functions of art, Rand would not allow that communication and sharing were among fundamentals; only mind-satisfactions of the creator could be allowed as fundamental. Obviously, Rand’s continual protest against presence and necessity of others for individual achievement to occur is a set-up for bolstering her ethical theory of egoism.
In Rand’s conception of essential human nature, “We” is an afterthought. In The Fountainhead, all human suffering is expressly lain on actions of wrong-headed people, especially other wrong-headed people. Nature and natural limits to one’s own abilities are never seen as the non-social fundamental sources of suffering that they are.
The opening scene is in solitude. That is Fair. The final scene, much as I love it, is Foul if one takes no notice of the social setting that goes into accomplishing such a project and the social past that was necessary to come to such achievement.
Stephen, I think I see what you mean by "fair" and "foul." Ayn Rand was so much of an individualist that she seemed to neglect the social side of existence to some extent. This problem is less in Atlas Shrugged because it is more of a "social" novel and we see how people interact or at least trade more.
Rand also seemed to be too much of an individualist when it came epistemology. She wrote as if children figured out concepts entirely on their own, instead of being modeled and taught them. In addition, her ethics and ideas of love seem too self-centered to me. I believe that a healthy person extends the "I field" to become a "we field."
Insightful and observant, as always! Rand's novels really are the pinnacle of integration. Your point at the end about environmentalism is one that I too picked up on while I was writing The Tao of Roark. At the time I called it environmentalism as aestheticism: https://stpeter.im/journal/1227.html