Here is Ayn Rand's first non-fiction work--a challenge to the
prevalent philosophical doctrines of our time and the "atmosphere of
guilt, of panic, of despair, of boredom, and of all-pervasive evasion"
that they create.
As incisive and relevant today as it was sixty years ago, this book
presents the essentials of Ayn Rand's philosophy "for those who wish to
acquire an integrated view of existence." In the title essay, she offers
an analysis of Western culture, discusses the causes of its progress,
its decline, its present bankruptcy, and points the road to an
intellectual renaissance.
One of the most controversial figures on the intellectual scene, Ayn
Rand was the proponent of a moral philosophy--and ethic of rational
self-interest--that stands in sharp opposition to the ethics of altruism
and self-sacrifice. The fundamentals of this morality--a philosophy for
living on Earth--are here vibrantly set forth by the spokesman for a new
class, For the New Intellectual.