1. Carl Barney has funded The Leonard Peikoff Library, a website containing all of Leonard Peikoff’s lectures and courses.
2. Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) philosopher Greg Salmieri is asked how much of Kant Rand read. He says he doesn’t know because we don’t have any books by Kant that she “marked up.” Salmieri says that Rand likely learned a lot about Kant from Peikoff and she may have studied the various arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason with him. Brook asks Salmieri about Rand’s take on Kant and he says it’s correct albeit on a high level.
3. The Ayn Rand Fan Club has a typically insightful discussion of Objectivity in Objectivism. There is an interesting quote from Peikoff who says, in effect, that people couldn’t think rationally before Rand wrote Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
4. For whatever reason, many ARI-associated Objectivists have now decided that the Russia/Ukraine war is of existential importance and the United States must go full-bore into supporting Ukraine. They seem to have combined their dislike of Trump with their dislike of Russia. Putting aside the merits of all this, the ARI has forgotten the semi-isolationism of Rand and Peikoff. (For example, in The Ominous Parallels, heavily edited by Rand, Peikoff praised those who wanted to keep the US out of World War Two and said President Roosevelt manipulated the US into an unjust war with Japan.)
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The Atlantic just published an article about Leonard Peikoff and Kira's conservatorship action.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/ayn-rand-peikoff-inheritance-battle/682219/
Hopefully this article will discredit the belief that Ayn Rand died broke. She went on Medicare to save on healthcare expenses, and the strategy worked well enough to leave something for Leonard Peikoff to inherit. In other contexts people would consider this a shrewd financial move; but In Rand's case it looked hypocritical.
I thought the article was fair. I did find it interesting that Peikoff gave Kira $2 million before he married Davis, so maybe it was the case that Peikoff was cashed strapped after he got the house. That being said, no one forced him to get such an expensive house. The article reports Peikoff saying he's going to leave his estate to a group of O'ist experts. But there is no way Davis can continue to pay the mortage, taxes, etc. after Leonard's death unless most of the royalties from the book are used for that purpose. Something tells me Davis isn't going to "downsize" after Leonard goes on to his reward, although I obviously don't know how Peikoff is structuring things.
-NP
As Greg said when the conservatorship action was first reported, does anyone care what Rand would thought? Sure, we'll never know. She left her estate to Peikoff (and Peikoff was childless at the time). OTOH, would Rand be happy that it looks like the royalties from her books will in all likelihood going for the foreseeable future to someone who probably never hear of Objectivism until a few years ago?
-NP
Apparently it defeats the purpose of Objectivism to live past your 70's or so.
Hypocritical to go on Medicare?
Perhaps not. You are not really free to opt out of these programs.
I use the "free" computer at the library because I have to pay for it in taxes.
You have to pay a quarterly premium now for Medicare. Otherwise the program won't provide you with the health insurance it offers.
You also consent to taxation by choosing to live under a given sovereignty. When you renege on your end of the tax deal, you deadbeat, the sovereign has the right to deploy "men with guns" to enforce the contract. People show that taxation works this way in the real world when they shop for places to live based in part on comparing competing sovereignties' tax deals. That's why wealthy people move from states like New York and California to states like Texas and Florida, because latter don't collect a state income tax.
BTW, the same "men with guns" will also eventually show up at your door if you don't pay your rent, your mortgage or your child support, which are contracts between nonstate parties.
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