Philosophical notes

As with the previous item, this page of notes may have been related to Rand’s thinking about Roark’s speech.

Of special interest here (also implied in the previous item) is that dictators are just another kind of second-hander; selfishness is about independence from others, not holding power over them. In this, we see Rand’s continuing separation from any agreement with Nietzsche’s philosophy. At the bottom of this page, we see a formulation (“The second-handers against men who rule nature”) that she polished in Roark’s speech: “The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.” Later, in her biographical interviews, she also noted that “Wynand was a dramatization of the Nietzschean philosophy and of its errors,” whereas Roark (in the final novel) was Rand’s type of hero: a true individual.