Other people have already said this in part, but just to clarify:
Since the purpose of Objectivism is to be a practical philosophy for living, Ayn Rand’s validation of capitalism is that it is the only practical means for man to survive in a social context. Property rights are the only means by which individuals can pursue their values without coercing, or being coerced by others. She rejects the utilitarian justification for capitalism because there is no such thing as the “collective good” - there are only the values held by individual human beings. Individual values cannot be aggregated or measured - Ayn Rand’s agreement on this point is why advocated Mises’ economic views.
Regarding the definition of an artist, I think there is wide misconception about what art is. According to Rand, art is a selective recreation of reality according to the artist’s metaphysical value judgments. The design of a building is a combination of practical considerations and a projection of values. Think about the new Mises.org website design, which just went live. There are many practical features to make the website easier to use, but there is also an artistic element, which communicates various values to the users.
As a web developer, I hold theories and principles about web design. While I design web sites to meet client’s requirements, I only work for clients who share my design philosophy, or who respect my judgment. Is this inconsistent with capitalism? No - my success as developer is because I rely on sound design principles, not despite it. Developers who take shortcuts and work solely based on the highest compensation end hating their job and producing failed projects. Ultimately, they fail in their career as well. The message that there is no contradiction between being practical and being principled is one of the core themes of The Fountainhead.
I agree, you do not make the mistake of confusing an economic principle with an issue of professional integrity. If you were designing a website for me and I gave you all kinds of unreasonable demands about the site, perhaps even demanded that you violate many of the principles for designing good websites, but because I was your customer, would you not tell me what was wrong with my view, why I should not want what I want because it violates certain principles of good web design? Further, if I insisted on my demands and you knew that your name would be associated with the atrocious website, what would you do? Would you say that it is your economic duty to satisfy your customers or would you refuse to associate yourself with it and send the client elsewhere? It is clear that you would do the latter and that is what Roark would do as an architect with an equally irrational client.
In addition, Rand wrote this book during a time when the overwhelming opinion was that architects were servants of the people and that they should merely copy the works of the past. What she was trying to say is that creativity is an individual matter and not a collective one. She was not offering a principle of economics so the criticism that her views on creativity are a contradiction of her economic principles is without foundation. It can be said that there is an economic element at work here because bad work demanded by an irrational client is a reflection on the architect and could harm his business, but I don’t think the economic issue is as important as the issue of integrity and rationality. The economic issue is not a primary consideration though the economic damage of a bad creative decision can also be the result of working without integrity.
That is utterly false. The 1930’s-1940’s were a time of immense creativity in architecture. Nothing like the Empire State Building or Miami Beach had ever been seen before.
I’m not a specialist in architecture but I’ve read enough to know that the 30s and 40s were dominated by New Deal intellectuals. Ayn Rand did extensive research during the 30s for her book and her journals show a vast amount of research on the builing philosophies that guided that era. This research is where she got the ideas espoused by Ellsworth Touhey in the novel. My statement stands. Certainly, the Empire State building and skyscrapers were wonderful improvements but they were largely commercial buildings and were the exception, reflecting a more dynamic attitude that ran counter to the age in which they were built. They started an era but they were not an expression of the prevailing views that architecture should reflect the common man and his common experiences. I would hazard a guess that there were more Greek style buildings put up during the era than there were skyscrapers or even “modern” style buildings.
Your reference to “Greek style” architecture shows that you know absolutely nothing of the topic. Even the classical style (derived from the Italian renaissance, not Greece) was being reformed at the time by the like of now-verboten architects such as Albert Speer. The Pentagon and the Federal Reserve are built in this style.
The last example of Greek-style architecture used in the English world is the early 19th century, after which Beaux-Arts took over in America and Gothic in Britain.
Word of advice: do not take any of your history or philosophy from Ayn Rand. She just wrote stories, nothing more.
You’ll excuse me if I take Roderick Long’s or Chris Sciabarra’s views on Rand over anyone else’s. If she’s philosopher enough for them, she is for me too.
I’m not Rand’s biggest fan, but that advice sounds a bit snobbish to me. Some of the best philosophy out there is in the mouths of common laborers. For that matter, university philosophy departments wouldn’t give the time of day to the man from Galilee. With the exception of that last, I don’t “take my philosophy” from anyone; I decide what to accept. But I wouldn’t be patronizing about it.
This brings up another interesting debate: architects vs. engineers.
I remember a civil engineer laughing over an architect’s depiction of an enormous banner stretched taut between two high columns. The design was modified after the engineers pointed out that the load imposed would require the columns to be three feet thick of high density reinforced concrete. He called architects “cartoonists.”
Granted, I wouldn’t want to live in a house designed solely by engineers; someone has to provide the aesthetic vision after all. But architects can be a little thin on the practical side of things. And I agree with the above; much modern architecture is atrocious. I know one architect who quit the industry after “deconstructionism” became all the rage.
I think it is a known fact that the Renaissance was heavily influenced by Greek Art. Your statement about Ayn Rand earns you a complete lack of credibility on the subject. And I would be honored if I could know as much as she knew on a host of subjects. As for her writing nothing more than stories: “The Anti-Industrial Revolution”, “An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology”, The Romantic Manifesto", The Art of Non-Fiction", “The Art of Fiction”, “The Objectivist (Magazine)”, “The Ayn Rand Letter”, are just a few of the “non-stories” that she wrote. Perhaps you did not know that.
The renaissance was in Italy. The renaissance architects, Palladio, Alberti, Brunelleschi were inspired by Rome. They never set foot in Greece, which was a Muslim state at the time.
Regardless of that fact, the influence of early 20th century American classicists was Beaux-Arts, which was French, not Greek,
The Fountainhead is just a story! It has no relation to any reality whatsoever. Break out of it.
Architectural education in the past 50 years has been focused on making architects champions of idiosyncrasy, on the model manifestoed by Ms. Rand in the Fountainhead. Reading a few columns by the NYTimes architectural critic Nicolai Ourroussof is enough to understand just how deeply disconnected with the material world architecture has become.
These people live The Fountainhead. No wonder everything built since then is garbage.
“Classical antiquity was a major influence on all branches of the art of the Italian Renaissance, as there was a revival of interest in the Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. The Italians at the times were haunted by their splendid past. They admired the classical art and they were also firmly convinced that art had its own rules which had been discovered and applied in Ancient Greece and Rome and subsequently forgotten. These rules, after an interval of about 1000 years, were rediscovered and applied by the artists of the Renaissance. The ruins of Rome architecture allowed Quattrocento architects such as Brunelleschi and Alberti learnt how to use Roman arches and Greek orders to decorate and extend the simple Italian architecture of the time, with its basic flatwall structure. Renaissance artists who studied the ancient statues aimed at achieving a similar rendition of physical reality by using rediscovered techniques.”
There are many other works on the Renaissance that discuss the influence of Greek Art on the Romans and the Italians. It was Greek Art that the Romans expropriated when they developed their principles of Art and Architecture. Rome was the inheritor of Greek Culture. That is well known. In fact, the Medici’s had acquired Greek and Roman statues which were appreciated by Michaelangelo. This is also well known.
The Fountainhead is a literary work of art that has had a profound influence on many people including myself. Many works of fiction have profound cultural influences. Some people think that the Bible has elements of fiction but it is nonetheless influential. It is not just a story. Just a story is “The Little Train that Could.” The Fountainhead is literature. Perhaps you don’t like that fact, but I can only say, deal with it. It is true.
I agreed with stranger on this one long before I ever heard of Rand: in too many novels, socialism works. The tremendous danger of fiction lies precisely in the fact that they represent a constructed world, based on whatever premises the author likes.
This comes to mind strongly when Dagny Taggert orders the trainmen to ignore the red signal and proceed “cautiously.” It would have been a superb meta-commentary on the use of novels to advance philosophy if the Cannonball were destroyed in a head-on collision several hours later because they refused to wait on the siding.
…which, BTW, is a microcosm of my main problem with Rand. It’s lovely that she advocates reason and free markets. But one can advocate those things without reflexively assuming that one knows everything. In this case, railroad operations. (Yes, Taggert owned the train, so she was presumably not so ignorant. But Rand didn’t own a train, and it shows: the reasoning she imputes to Taggert is faulty. That Rand thought it was self-evidently solid speaks more to her ignorance of railroading than to the virtues of rationality. In the real world, it’s a good way to get killed.)
“Architectural education in the past 50 years has been focused on making architects champions of idiosyncrasy, on the model manifestoed by Ms. Rand in the Fountainhead. Reading a few columns by the NYTimes architectural critic Nicolai Ourroussof is enough to understand just how deeply disconnected with the material world architecture has become.”
Idiosyncrasy had nothing to do with the architecture of Roark in the Fountainhead. His philosophy was “form follows function” where the logic of the function and the materials was used to identify the best form. It has nothing to do with mindless idiosyncrasy. Once again, you imply that Rand’s philosophy is one of mindless emotionalism. Mindless emotionalism is the philosophy of Hume and Kant, not Rand.
The critique is wrong. The purpose of proceeding to the next signal is because individual signals are often wrong or faulty. If it is not faulty, then the liklihood is that any other train on that track is also stopped so there is no danger. If you go to the next signal and find that it is working properly then logic would dictate that the previous signal was faulty and it is ok to proceed. This is standard troubleshooting. Once again, those people who want to find all kinds of contradictions in Rand’s novels bite the dust.
You’re clearly biased and not willing to engage in any serious effort to understand.
Skousen’s critique of Rand on economics is totally off base. Roark recognizes that if he’s going to make a living as an architect it will only be if he can find customers who like his work and the way he works. He’s just not willing to compromise his artistic integrity, as he sees it, in order to build buildings. There is nothing here that is inconsistent with Mises’s observation regarding consumer sovereignty in the marketplace.