By the early 1960s, NBI had representatives in multiple cities who replayed taped versions of the lectures to local audiences. Peikoff was among NBI's first lecturers, teaching a course on the history of philosophy. In 1958, Branden founded the Nathaniel Branden Lectures, later renamed the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), to promote Objectivism through lectures and educational seminars around the United States. Peikoff, along with Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Barbara Branden, and a number of other close associates, who jokingly called themselves " The Collective", met frequently with Rand to discuss philosophy and politics, as well as to read and discuss Rand's then-forthcoming novel, Atlas Shrugged, in her Manhattan apartment. While studying at NYU, he frequently discussed philosophy privately with Rand in depth across a range of issues. When Rand moved to New York City in 1951, Peikoff decided to study philosophy at New York University. He reports that this meeting with Rand made him aware of the profound importance of philosophy. Peikoff first met Ayn Rand through his cousin Barbara Branden (then Barbara Weidman) in California when he was 17. Early involvement in Objectivism Objectivist movement He taught philosophy for many years at various colleges. His doctoral dissertation adviser was the noted American pragmatist philosopher Sidney Hook, and his dissertation dealt with the metaphysical status of the law of noncontradiction. He attended the University of Manitoba from 1950 to 1953 as a pre-med student, but following his early discussions with Rand, he transferred to New York University to study philosophy, where he received his BA, MA, and PhD degrees in philosophy in 1954, 1957, and 1964, respectively. Leonard Peikoff was born on October 15, 1933, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to Samuel Peikoff, MD, a surgeon, and his wife Bessie, a band leader. And how much was executed with state complicity?īut beyond that possibility, Peikoff maintains that the deepest roots of German Nazism lay “not in existential crises, but in ideas-not in Germany's military defeat in World War I or the economic disasters of the Weimar Republic that followed-but in the philosophy that dominated pre-Nazi Germany.” Peikoff further contends that German Nazism “was the inevitable climax of a centuries-long philosophic development, preaching three fundamental ideas: the worship of unreason, the demand for self-sacrifice and the elevation of society or the state above the individual. In the last two decades other warning signs have appeared-worship of the warrior belief in the primacy of The State-both attitudes deeply entrenched by terrorism or the threat of terrorism from without and within. students brainwashed into the feeling that their minds are helpless and they must adapt to ‘society,’ that there is no absolute truth and that morality is whatever society says it is a pervasive atmosphere of decadence, moral bankruptcy, and nihilist art.” creates students who can't read or write. To that point, Peikoff cites a number of dangerous trends: political parties devoid of principles or direction, each demanding still more controls an anti-intellectual educational system that. Most Americans are haughtily unaware or diffident about the reality that what happened in Nazi Germany is happening here. That direction toward which we are moving is fascism-the same poisoned ethos that drove Germany beyond the brink. Leonard Peikoff published “The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America,” which sounded a warning that the United States was moving “as Germany moved, in the same direction, for the same philosophical reason.” No Advisories - program content screened and verified. Program Information The Ominous ParallelsĪttribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd)