Philosophy and Literature

Hunt, Lester H., 1946-
Thus Spake Howard Roark: Nietzschean Ideas in The Fountainhead
Philosophy and Literature - Volume 30, Number 1, April 2006, pp. 79-101

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Lester H. Hunt - Thus Spake Howard Roark: Nietzschean Ideas in The Fountainhead - Philosophy and Literature 30:1 Philosophy and Literature 30.1 (2006) 79-101 Thus Spake Howard Roark: Nietzschean Ideas in The Fountainhead Lester H. Hunt University of Wisconsin-Madison I The position I will be taking here will seem very peculiar to many people. I will be treating a novel as a discussion of the work of a philosopher -- namely, Friedrich Nietzsche. Worse yet, I will be treating it as a discussion that is philosophically penetrating and deserves to be taken seriously. Still worse, the novel is Ayn Rand's early novel The Fountainhead. I think it is safe to say that her reputation, among academics who discuss the works of philosophers, is very low. If the reader will only bear with me, though, I think I can make a case that Rand opens a line of inquiry about Nietzsche's ideas and values that is not only quite interesting in itself but one that ought to be pursued further by others. There has always been ample reason to associate Nietzsche with The Fountainhead. He is after all, the only philosopher who is more or less directly quoted in the book. Beyond that, Rand's novel has many other passages that students of Nietzsche instantly recognize as conscious references to him or deliberate echoes of his style. In addition, she revealed, in an introduction written for the twenty-fifth anniversary edition, that the following quotation from Beyond Good and Evil had...