For my Introduction to Philosophy course, the final question on the final exam was:
In your judgment, what is the most dangerous book we read this semester? Present the book’s most important themes and explain why you think it is dangerous.
We read five major authors in the course: Plato’s Apology and Crito, Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, Descartes’ Meditations, C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, and Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents.
The fifteen students in the course responded this way:
None chose Socrates as the most dangerous.
One student voted Descartes’ Meditations as most dangerous, on the grounds that his radical doubt could be too unsettling to an unprepared mind, especially for those raised in conventional religious families.
Four students voted for Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents as the most dangerous book. Three cited his insulting dismissal of religion and one focused on his gloomy assessment of the human condition and his recommendation that we not aim for happiness in life but rather lower our sights.
Lewis’s Mere Christianity got four votes as most dangerous book. Three of the four students objected to Lewis’s relentlessly negative view of human nature, and the fourth added that he/she felt like Lewis was too bossily trying to impose his religious views on the rest of us.
Finally, Rand’s The Fountainhead was voted most dangerous by six students, for three different reasons. Three argued that the bad characters were presented so realistically that it would be too easy for readers to take the book the wrong way, i.e., as commending Keating’s or Wynand’s or Toohey’s paths as being the way of the world and so one might as well go along with it. Two argued that Rand’s insistence on independence, taken consistently, conflicts with religion. And one made a very brief argument that I didn’t understand and so don’t know how to state coherently here.
So I hereby declare The Fountainhead to be the Most Dangerous Book in Introduction to Philosophy, Rockford College, Fall Semester 2009.
Except that Descartes isn’t a skeptic, he uses the radical doubt as a device. And two of those who picked The Fountainhead have mistaken a feature for a bug. They all missed the real winner, The Apology: critique of the complacent and superficial approach to ideas, critique of democratic institutions as tending towards mob rule, critique of rhetoric. That’s my 2 cents, FWIW.
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I definitely am surprised by this! The Fountainhead probably would have been last on my list because I see it as being much more of a positive novel portraying Rand’s Objectivism. In my opinion, Rand doesn’t seem to be bordering much on an anti-religion mindset, but instead she is just trying to hint through the novel’s characters that you need to be your own person. I can see how the characters of Keating, Toohey, etc. can be misunderstood and taken the wrong way, but I think Rand instead seems to be not very dangerous at all through their use. She is presenting the antagonists in a way where they can be mistakenly accepted as “good” characters rather easily because she wants to demonstrate the true essence of being a “second-hander.” It is all a part of her ploy to show that it really is simple to conform and not exist within your own mind. Rand also shows in the end of The Fountainhead that through Roark’s success you can overcome that pressure to be a conformist. Therefore, it isn’t like she left it out completely that she feels going the way of is not the way to go. Had she done that, I feel it could be considered much more dangerous. Just my thoughts.
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This was very fascinating. I am just in the second half of writing my Master dissertation on The Fountainhead. It is truly a very dangerous book (if you disagree with her world-view) in that it is probably one of the most easily understandable, and riveting books on philosophy ever written. It takes one in to a world view and gets you hooked; especially if you are a young person. But whether it is dangerous to want to be an art deco individualist, I don’t know.
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I wonder what your students would think of Schopenhauer´s “The world as will and representation”… In my opinion, Schopenhauer´s ideas were the hidden inspirations to Freud´s discussion on society as a generating source of suffering…
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