Objectivist Lectures


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The solution, in due course of time, to the demand-curve conundrum, and the limitations of the Objectivist oral culture, lies in two words:

Kira Peikoff.

Leonard's daughter, when the inevitable time of probate comes, is unlikely to particularly care about who buys, or "honors," or hews to what her father believed. Or her father's mentor, whom she never met. She'll sell the tapes and license the rights to Rand's work strictly as a business proposition. If sales are likely to double with a 40 percent cut in prices, she'll do it. She's not tending a doctrinal flame or wanting to keep the material within the realm of the already-converted.

Even her father faced movie-production facts and sold, outright, no strings, the film rights to Atlas. More material, with time, finds its way onto Websites. The venal motives for opening the Rand archives to fuel Valliant's book have, nonetheless, set a precedent. The control-culture is cracking apart already, even if the clueless, such as Mrs. Hsieh, are behind the curve.

If you doubt that such business realism will arise someday soon on a far broader scale, I have three other words for you:

Lisa Marie Presley.

My friend Rob Morse predicted thirty years ago, when I heard Peikoff's taped Objectivist overview along with him, that the oral culture and the iron-fist control would not end until Rand and everyone who ever knew her personally had died. I was dubious, but every year has given more evidence that he was right.

Wish I knew how to link this lol.

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Can anyone here tell me the year(s) in which Peikoff's lectures History of Philosophy were first given? I heard them in the early '70's, as I recall. I'm trying to get their date of origin for a paper I'm writing for OL.

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Thank you, Peter and Brant (#53 and #54, below). You have given the information I was after. I had come across some points of metaphysics and logic in the book of Branden's The Basic Principles of Objectivism that I had myself first heard in those Peikoff lectures in the early '70's. I seen now that those ideas were being promulgated simultaneously in the appropriate spots of different lectures representing the Objectivist philosophy in the pre-split era. These particular ideas will be shown within the present little paper, which should be finished and posted in a few days. It is titled "Meaningless Tautology" and will be a sequel to "Between False, Invalid, and Meaningless" in the Philosophy of Logic thread.

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Thank you, Dennis (#57). I had not thought to look in the Newsletters.

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I was on the NBI mailing list, and they were advertising his history of philosophy lectures then. I attended one ca. 1966. They probably go back to the early 60s, though the ones you heard in the 70s were at least under different sponsorship.

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I was on the NBI mailing list, and they were advertising his history of philosophy lectures then. I attended one ca. 1966. They probably go back to the early 60s, though the ones you heard in the 70s were at least under different sponsorship.

If Peikoff gave those lectures it was after a year or two at the University of Denver where he probably gave them to his students there (1964-1965-1966[?]. Go ask Tibor Michan who, I believe, tried to contact Peikoff at the U of D after he got on Rand's shit list and Peikoff wouldn't meet with him. Such are my rather muddy recollections from various readings over the years--decades, actually.

--Brant

my bro-in-law started teaching anthro at the same school in 1964--he got tenure and drank himself to death (1978)

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The May, 1962 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter contains the following announcement under the heading of "Objectivist Calendar:"

Nathaniel Branden Institute will offer a 10 lecture course on the “History of Ancient Philosophy,” to be given by Leonard Peikoff, starting May 24. Tracing the philosophic ideas and movements from ancient Greece to the Renaissance, Mr. [sic] Peikoff’s course is the first of a three-part series on the history of Western philosophy; his courses on “Modern Philosophy” and “Contemporary Philosophy” will be offered at a later date. Full details concerning the present course will be sent shortly to residents in the Greater New York area and in Philadelphia.

It appears that the course starting May 24, 1962 was the first time these lectures were offered.

Incidentally, several of these lectures were later transcribed by Linda Reardan and sold as booklets through George Reisman's Jefferson School. Lecture #5 was the last lecture they published. The project was terminated following the schism between Reisman and ARI in 1993.

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