For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

RAND, Ayn.

Item Number: 3628

New York: Random House, 1961.

First edition of this work in which Rand gives an overview of her philosophy. Octavo, original black cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author in the year of publication on the half-title page, “To Deems- Affectionately Ayn 4/7/61.” The recipient, Deems Taylor was an American composer and music critic and a close personal friend of Ayn Rand. The author Nat Benchley, referred to him as “the dean of American music.” He was also a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of writers, actors and critics that met almost daily from at Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel. Other friendships included composers George Gershwin and Jerome Kern and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket.Jacket design Janet Halverson. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. An exceptional association copy.

"Rand’s 1961 book For The New Intellectual outlines her philosophical system of Objectivism by means of excerpts from We The Living, Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged She then opens the book with an essay on the cultural bankruptcy that has undermined the capitalistic system of the United States. The essay is directed at ‘the New Intellectuals’ needed to restore and defend a capitalist economy in the face of that cultural bankruptcy. Rand is very clear that neither pragmatic nor economic argument is what must be used. Instead, it is arguments for ‘a new morality of rational self-interest’ that will provide the foundation for a new capitalist culture" (Bostaph, Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 11:1,20).