The Fountainhead

[Lateralus]

Outside of a couple strange, unusually high, years back in college, I've never been big into philosophy. And I've never studied any of Ayn Rand's stuff. I was talking to my youngest brother (a 17 year old INTP) about economics while watching football, today, and we diverged into philosophy, when I started explaining how I tend to look at all human decision making from an economic perspective. He told me that it reminded him quite a bit Ayn Rand and that I should read The Fountainhead.

So my questions are:

Is my brother full of shit?

Is this a book worth buying and reading?

Keep in mind, if it's super dry, like reading Kant, I'm gonna want to throw it out the window.

 

[pure_mercury]

Outside of a couple strange, unusually high, years back in college, I've never been big into philosophy. And I've never studied any of Ayn Rand's stuff. I was talking to my youngest brother (a 17 year old INTP) about economics while watching football, today, and we diverged into philosophy, when I started explaining how I tend to look at all human decision making from an economic perspective. He told me that it reminded him quite a bit Ayn Rand and that I should read The Fountainhead.

So my questions are:

Is my brother full of shit?

Is this a book worth buying and reading?

Keep in mind, if it's super dry, like reading Kant, I'm gonna want to throw it out the window.

It's probably Rand's best novel, and I think you would enjoy it, although I don't think you are/would be an Objectivist. Rand was a "radical for capitalism," as she put it, though. The book is all about striving to be the best example of humanity one can be (at least, the best according to Rand's standards).

 

[frenchkiss]

According to Ayn Rand, satisfaction of ego and selfishness = the ideal.

Individualism. Objectivism.

I think its totally gross. But maybe interesting to think about, speculatively.

I can't remember if I read The Fountainhead specifically, but I did read a couple of her novels as a teenager and I don't remember them being dry or boring at all.

 

[GZA]

I read like half of it and I thought it was bullshit

But really I didn't like it because using a novel to explain a philosophy is completely stupid on a very fundamental level; fiction is not the same as real life. The whole time I was reading it I thought that Roark was just sort of an asshole, rather than a brilliant revolutionary. He turned down perfectly good oportunities because it didn't fit his exact model of reality, even though they would have helped him. Nothing in that book, philosophically, I think, would have any bearing in reality. I just consider it fiction, really.

But it's possible I didn't get far enough into it to get to the part where maybe he actually does something reasonable and stops being a stubborn ass.

The philosophy is too extreme to work, too, regardless of the book and the philosophies presentation.

 

[Venom]

its all bullshit.

she literally is quoted in an interview as saying that people who put friends and family above their work are being bad people.If you dont believe me it was in an interview she did with playboy and i found the article on the internet ( i swear i was searching for ayn rand and NOT playboy! haha...dont worry she didnt do any photos haha)

 

[ajblaise]

Ayn Rand is one of those people whose work might seem cool from a distance, but the closer you get, the more turned off you will usually get.

 

[pure_mercury]

Ayn Rand is one of those people whose work might seem cool from a distance, but the closer you get, the more turned off you will usually get.

I share much of her politics, but Objectivism is so rigid that I just don't feel it. It doesn't speak to me. She was also a horrible person to be around, by almost all non-Objectivist fanboy accounts.

 

[ajblaise]

I share much of her politics, but Objectivism is so rigid that I just don't feel it. It doesn't speak to me. She was also a horrible person to be around, by almost all non-Objectivist fanboy accounts.

I can get into Objectivism, it makes sense when connected to vague concepts like "reality" and "knowledge" but when it tries to explain how society and politics should be, I just see her arguments as weak and so easily debatable.