| |
Thanks for the information about Wright.
From the cited article:*
In Republic Plato developed an analogy between city and soul. In Fountainhead Rand develops an analogy between building and soul.
. . .
Ellsworth Toohey (elsewhere, elseworth) is a collector of the souls of others. He suggests sacrilegiously his corrupt form of “wealth” is premised on Jesus’ dictum: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” (ET IX 318; Mt. 16:26).
Before there was the New Testament, there was the Republic. Plato has Socrates set out early on that the soul has certain functions such as ruling and deliberating (353d). That which enables a thing to perform its function(s) well is called virtue. The virtue of the soul is justice (353e).
Socrates contends that justice is something good both because of itself and because of what comes from it. An investigation ensues of what is the power of justice in the soul, leaving aside the external rewards that may come from it (358b). “The investigation we’re undertaking is not an easy one but requires keen eyesight. Therefore, . . . we should adopt the method of investigation that we’d use if, lacking keen eyesight, we were told to read small letters from a distance and then noticed that the same letters existed elsewhere in a larger size and on a larger surface” (368d). Justice is found in a single man and in a city (a city-state). Seeing what is justice in the city is to facilitate grasping more of what justice is in the individual soul.
The concept Plato is forging with his city-soul analogy is justice (proper ruling). The concept Rand is forging with her building-soul analogy is integrity. One broad thesis of The Fountainhead is that there is a type of egoistic individualism that is good and just; altruistic collectivism is evil and unjust. The argument focuses not so much on what is just as on what is good. Such are independence, reliance on reason (one’s own), honesty, creative achievement, love of one’s work, and courage (HR II 559–60, XVIII 739–40). A concept of justice will make human life and happiness impossible if the concept ignores the uniqueness of individuals and the unity and self-sufficiency required by the preceding virtues (HR II 559–60, XVIII 740). Integrity is the overarching virtue pronouncing this unity and self-sufficiency (PK XIII 166, HR VIII 625-28, XVIII 742).
To sell her new egoistic conception of integrity, Rand does the see-saw dynamic back and forth between building and soul to import what people will buy from the one into the other and vice-versa. This was Plato’s technique as well between the structure of various kinds of city and the structure of corresponding kinds of souls.
Additional heritage of Plato(-Socrates) that Rand writes into The Fountainhead:
Wynand to Dominique – “One doesn’t love God [the Good] and sacrilege impartially. Except when one doesn’t know sacrilege has been committed. Because one doesn’t know God [the Good]” (476). In this novel, Rand plays with the arguments of Aristotle with Plato over how, if at all, one can know the good, yet choose against it. (The topic began with Andrei in We the Living and continues to Rand’s final approach in Atlas Shrugged; this is a study waiting to be done.) Dominique to Toohey: “If you can see what you’re talking about, you can’t be what you are” (281).
So far as I have noticed, Rand held to Plato’s concept of courage throughout her works. Early to late, courage amounts to continuing to see the good.
The idea that the pursuit of power in the manner of Wynand leads to his bondage is from Republic.
I do not know the relative weights of material from Wright and Plato that are present in Fountainhead. I’m persuaded the latter is substantial, in either case. As to the relative weights of material in this novel from Plato and Nietzsche, the greater weight goes to Nietzsche (A, B, C, D, E).
By the way, I am 23 years older than Rand was when she finished writing The Fountainhead. I still recall quite a bit from my undergraduate philosophy courses four decades ago. Without some special reason to conclude otherwise, I expect Rand remembered as well as I when it comes to philosophical views.
|
|
