Ayn R@nd*. One word, is all that is needed to blow away the rest of the arguments. Never has the world seen a more convincing writer when it comes to explaining the objective philosophy of life.
The Fountainhead is one of her earlier creations. Her philosophy, which relies on pure logic - the Either-Or principle propounded by Aristotle, forms the basis of this path-breaking book. Her characters have an absoluteness within them, the same kind of absoluteness which she preaches in her philosophy. Be it Howard Roark or Gail Wynand - each of them carry the same attribute - a huge mountain/reserve of self-confidence which many readers often mistake for the ego. Strangely, she knows that too and propagates the feeding and breeding of the very same ego!!
The Storyline...
The story revolves round a young man whose ambition is to be an architect.She follows his ups and downs in life and the society’s presumptions about him. Most of her characters are what one would describe in the modern day world as anti-social. But she prefers to describe them as ’’above the society’’. Not in the legal sense but a sense of her own.
Ayn R@nd was a self-confessed ardent admirer of Aristotle. She did however have some differences of opinion with some of his theories; but then, it was his concept of two-state logic - absolute logic that impressed her and made her overlook everything else.
The Fountainhead is her personal tribute to such kind of aman as she has described in the book - a man who lives his life by a set of his own principles, a man whose life is dedicated to the pursuit of his own happiness and nothing else, a man who place nothing above himself, a man who respects nothing but competence and maintains that competence and nothing else shall deserve a reward, that too commensurate of the competence - nothing more and nothing less. She dedicates the book saying that: ’’The very fact that this book got printed, proves that there exist such kind of men and so long as they are there, I don’t have to worry!’’
Ergo cognito sum...
Having said all that, it is essential to note that her Philosophy of Objectivism has found many disciples and a great many years after her death, people have started realising the true worth and the true meanings of her writings. It’s a shame that such great works had remained almost unnoticed till now. But like they say: ’’Better late than Never!’’
- I have used R@nd since the string ’’R a n d’’ is not allowed by the auto spell-checker.