BrentRolfe Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 Which characters in AR's books do you consider to be Objectivists? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manavmehta Posted June 11, 2004 Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 In Anthem: The man who gets burnt at the stake The Narrator (who later christians himself Ulleyseus) The woman who the narrator falls in love with In We The Living: Kira Argunova The man who Kira loves (forgot his name) - the revolutionary The ex-red army soldier who falls in love with Kira is an objectivist, but he does not realize it till the end, and spends all his life doing things contrary to his values. This is why he commits suicide in the end. Vasili Ivanovich (Kira's father) In The Fountainhead (I think this one is obvious): Howard Roark Henry Cameron Dominique Francon The guy who edits a sleazy newspaper and marries Dominique - he holds the objectivist code of values but believes that whoever follows them can never survive in this world, so he spends his entire life fighting objectivists (like Roark) In Atlas Shrugged (most obvious of all): John Galt Dagny Taggart Hank Rearden Franscisco D'Anconia Ragnar Dagneskold Hugh Askton Richard Halley Dan Conway Ellis Wyatt The Driver who refuses to drive the broken train into the tunnel The man at the cigarette stand Did I miss anyone out? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tryptonique Posted June 11, 2004 Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 In Anthem: The man who gets burnt at the stake The Narrator (who later christians himself Ulleyseus) The woman who the narrator falls in love with In We The Living: Kira Argunova The man who Kira loves (forgot his name) - the revolutionary The ex-red army soldier who falls in love with Kira is an objectivist, but he does not realize it till the end, and spends all his life doing things contrary to his values. This is why he commits suicide in the end. Vasili Ivanovich (Kira's father) In The Fountainhead (I think this one is obvious): Howard Roark Henry Cameron Dominique Francon The guy who edits a sleazy newspaper and marries Dominique - he holds the objectivist code of values but believes that whoever follows them can never survive in this world, so he spends his entire life fighting objectivists (like Roark) In Atlas Shrugged (most obvious of all): John Galt Dagny Taggart Hank Rearden Franscisco D'Anconia Ragnar Dagneskold Hugh Askton Richard Halley Dan Conway Ellis Wyatt The Driver who refuses to drive the broken train into the tunnel The man at the cigarette stand Did I miss anyone out? In WTL: Leo Kovalensky is the man Kira loves. Sasha is also an Objectivist. The commie that loves Kira is Andrei Taganov. In The Fountainhead: You are forgetting Steven Mallory, Austen Heller, the hotel man for the Aquitania, Mike Donnigan, the boy on the bike, and I would argue that the brilliant kid who decides to inhabit the house that Roark builds when the rest of his family forsakes it is also an Objectivist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinorityOfOne Posted June 11, 2004 Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 There's a difference between people with good character traits and people who are Objectivists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spearmint Posted June 11, 2004 Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 I thought Rand made a point of Objectivism being a complete integrated framework. I don't recall characters like Henry Cameron or Ellis Wyatt making speeches about how they thought that concepts were formed, nor about the metaphysical nature of man, or the purpose of art You can't just say "hey that person is productive, ergo he is an Objectivist!", especially when such a fuss is made about Objectivism being a closed and fully interconnected system. I'd say that Roark was the only Objectivists in the Fountainhead, and that Galt, Akston, Francisco and Rearden were the only ones in Atlas Shrugged (would Rearden actually be an Objectivst? He seems more like a "student of Objectivism" to borrow a phrase that others like to use). I'm not even sure that there were any Objectivists in Anthem; had Rand even worked out her epistemology at the time she wrote it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielshrugged Posted June 11, 2004 Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 Objectivism wasn't even fully worked out until Ayn Rand wrote Atlas. Could there be Objectivist characters before there's even an Objectivist philosophy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrentRolfe Posted June 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 danielshrugged, I didn't know that and it's interesting to me as I have never considered Roark to be an Objectivist. I am re-reading The Fountainhead and so far have not changed my opinion. Brent Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AwakeAndFree Posted June 11, 2004 Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 You cannot be an Objectivist without explicitly accepting the philosophy of Ayn Rand. None of her characters are Objectivists. Objectivism as a system does not exist in the worlds she created. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stephen_speicher Posted June 11, 2004 Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 You cannot be an Objectivist without explicitly accepting the philosophy of Ayn Rand. None of her characters are Objectivists. Objectivism as a system does not exist in the worlds she created. John Galt embodies the essence of Objectivism, from beginning to end. To the degree that other characters act in accord with Objectivist principles -- afterall, the actions of the characters in Atlas Shrugged dramatized her philosophy -- one can say they are Objectivists, in action. But Galt explicated the Objectivist philosophy, quite explicitly, in his speech, thereby presenting to the world in Atlas Shrugged, and to the reader alike, the philosophy of Objectivism. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manavmehta Posted June 13, 2004 Report Share Posted June 13, 2004 Interesting points... But I'm curious... Where do you think Howard Roark failed as an objectivist? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dagny Posted June 16, 2004 Report Share Posted June 16, 2004 i always considered Howard Roark to be an objectivist. also, in a 1995 online lecture by Leonard Peikoff (which you can view at www.aynrand.org) he clearly uses Roark as an example that an objectivist never comprimises his values. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stephen_speicher Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 Interesting points... But I'm curious... Where do you think Howard Roark failed as an objectivist? I was answering within the context that erandror provided: "Objectivism as a system does not exist in the worlds she created." I was pointing out that "Objectivism as a system" did exist in one of the "world's she created," in the form of the explicit philosophy presented by Galt in his speech. Therefore, by the criterion that erandror set up --"You cannot be an Objectivist without explicitly accepting the philosophy of Ayn Rand." -- John Galt was an Objectivist. Regarding Howard Roark: Roark never failed at anything, much less at being an Objectivist. But, not in the sense that erandror defined. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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