The President of Taggart Transcontinental, a leader of the Looters, and the book's most important antagonist. Taggart is an expert influence peddler who is incapable of making decisions on his own. He relies on his sister Dagny Taggart to actually run the railroad, but nonetheless opposes her in almost every endeavor. In a sense, he is the antithesis of Dagny. As the novel progresses, the moral philosophy of the Looters is revealed: it is a code ...
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The President of Taggart Transcontinental, a leader of the Looters, and the book's most important antagonist. Taggart is an expert influence peddler who is incapable of making decisions on his own. He relies on his sister Dagny Taggart to actually run the railroad, but nonetheless opposes her in almost every endeavor. In a sense, he is the antithesis of Dagny.
As the novel progresses, the moral philosophy of the Looters is revealed: it is a code of nihilism. The goal of this code is to not exist, to become a zero. Taggart struggles to remain unaware that this is his goal. He maintains his pretence that he wants to live, and becomes horrified whenever his mind starts to grasp the truth about himself. This contradiction leads to the recurring absurdity of his life: the desire to destroy those on whom his life depends, and the horror that he will succeed at this. In the final chapters of the novel, he suffers a complete mental breakdown upon realizing that he can no longer deceive himself in this respect.
In the introduction to the 35th anniversary edition, (1991), Leonard Peikoff introduced excerpts from Rand's journals concerning the book. Among other things, it is disclosed that as originally conceived James Taggart was religious, regularly going to a priest to confess his sins and ask for absolution. There is no hint of this in the final version as published. Presumably, however, this "asking for absoultion" was connected with the above-mentioned hiding of Taggart's real goal from himself.
This also implies that the Taggart Family was originally conceived as being of Roman Catholic background, of which also there is little trace left in the published version. It fits well with the Taggarts' long-standing friendship with the Latin American D'Anconia Family. However, "Nathaniel", the name of the Taggart Dynasty's 19th Century founder, is an Old Testament name of the kind more common among Protestants than among Catholics.
James Taggart appears in sections 111, 114, 131, 132, 143, 144, 152 and 161, and is mentioned in sections 146 and 148.
