12/9/21

Absolutely did not agree with much of the content, but this is a great assessment of the author's opinions in her own words from an array of selections. Wordy (as is her style) and disagreeable (as is my opinion), but otherwise effective in portraying her point of view. ( )

I rather sympathize (if not really agree with) a LibraryThing reviewer who gave this a half star and complained this was a cut and paste job. That is true of three-quarters of this book, which consists of excerpts from Rand's novels. Thus my relatively low rating. Her novels certainly should be read before For the New Intellectual--and if you're not taken by her novels, I do find it hard to believe you're going to like this book. There is an introductory essay though, "For the New Intellectual" you won't find in those novels, and I found the concept of the place in history of "Attila and the Witch Doctor" interesting. And I did find value in having the more philosophically oriented sections of the novels--the ones she chose as most important--in one slim volume. ( )

The first 25 pages of this completely enthralled me. Rand's no-nonsense style deftly conveys a philosophy that seems both wise and clever. Her summarization of modern history places the center of an hourglass around the founding of America by the first "thinkers who were men of action." Current intellectuals have failed to keep pace with the advancements made by the producers in our modern world of the past 250 years. Humans are distinct from other animals because of our ability to conceptualize and we have a need to do so in order to survive in our world. The short history of the man includes an Attila class and a Witch Doctor class who eventually became obsolete with the advent of the business producer and the intellectual. As man learned to understand nature and science he also learned to use it, leading to rapid economic advancement. The Attila conquered without understanding the "somehow" of production. The Witch Doctor controls the Attila through the fear implied by alleged supernatural knowledge. "The first society in history whose leaders were neither Attials nor Witch Doctors, a society led, dominated, and created by the Producers, was the United States of America. The moral code implicit in its political principles was not the Witch Doctor's code of self-sacrifice. The political principles embodied in the Constitution were not Attila's blank check on brute force, but men's protection against any future Attila's ambition. The Founding Fathers were neither passive, death-worshipping mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters; as a political group, they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history; they were thinkers who were also men of action. They had rejected the soul-body dichotomy, with its two corollaries; the impotence of man's mind and the damnation of this earth; thye had rejected the doctrine of suffering as man's metaphysical fate, tey proclaimed man's right to the pursuit of happiness and were determined to establish on earth the conditions required for man's proper existence, by the 'unaided' pwer of their intellect. A society based on and geared to the conceptual level of man's consciousness, a society dominated by a philosophy of reason, has no places for the rule of fear and guilt. Reason requires freedom, self-confidence, and self-esteem. It requires the right to think and to act on the guidance of one's thinking -- the right to live by one's own independent judgement. Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a fee mind and a free market are corollaries." My only reservation involved Rand's apparent view on religion. ( )

For the New Intellectual is Ayn Rand's is Non-fiction book.. AYN RAND challenged the prevalent philosophical doctrines of our time and the "atmosphere of guilt, of panic, of despair, of boredom, and of all-pervasive evasion" which they created. One of the most controversial figures on the intellectual scene, Ayn Rand was the proponent of a new moral philosophy -- an ethic of rational self-interest -- that stands in sharp opposition to the ethics of altruism and self-sacrifice.

more @ http://toogood2read.blogspot.com/2006/08/for-new-intellectual-by-ayn-rand.html ( )