The World's Greatest, yet Unknown Philosopher

I first took a course live with Leonard Peacock in New York City, and that was understanding objectivism, which has since been turned into a book. But the first time I really met him and personally interacted with him was when he, at the first of the Thomas Jefferson School conferences at the University of California, San Diego. And because I come from San Diego, he asked for someone to help him do some shopping when he first attended the conference.

So I was, of course, suggested, and I drove him to the store where he picked up the necessities he'd need for the next week in the conference, and so I pushed help. He did some of the shopping cart pushing, but I did some of it. And we just had a wonderful time in the store talking about various items. And I learned more about him as a human being from that little interaction. Such a joyful guy. Well, first thing, he knew exactly what he wanted in the store.

And if you'd asked him, he could give you reasons, exact thought out reasons why he needed this, this product. So he had it all in his head. And so it was amazing that way. But most of the talk, 90% of our chat, was just light hearted humor. He has such a wonderful sense of humor. We were just joking. He's childlike, innocent, playful. That's a side that people who are familiar with his lectures and books don't get to see. But I got to see there for the first time, for the very first time.

So I attended more of his lectures. And astonishingly, in the late 1980s, I got an invitation to attend the seminars he was giving before the publication of his magnificent treatise, objectivism of philosophy of Iran. Before it was published, he invited a group of us to read each chapter, and we'd go up on Saturday nights to his house, and we'd have a discussion and give him feedback, chapter by chapter, on his treatise on objectivism before it was published.

And then we continued meeting at his house on some Saturday nights because we just loved the group that we had there. And we continued discussing things like poetry and great plays and scientific induction and a whole host of other. And so I had a wonderful opportunity to get to know Leonard Peacock. I'd arrive at his home early on those Saturday nights before anyone else probably did, because I think I had the longest drive to get there.

So while he was finishing up, getting ready for the seminar that, in effect, he was doing in his living room, I'd play with his daughter, Kira, who was just then two, three, four years old, play with her while he was getting ready. And the art in Leonard Peacock's home is just magnificent. His own art, as well as the art he inherited from Rand. I just cannot describe all the magnificent wonders of my relationship with Dr. Leonard Peak off. He has been my mentor, the best teacher.

I mean, I've had some excellent teachers in my life, but he is by far the best teacher I've ever had. But he really took an interest in me and became my mentor. And he's my hero, too. There's no other way I can put it. The way he lectures. There are some people who can lecture about the normative, the should aspects, the advice aspects of philosophy in a very authoritative, authoritarian almost way. He does not. He brings you into it.

He'll show how he was mistaken and how he was groping for the answer. He'll make himself the foil. He was the rationalist. He made a mistake Aynrand had to correct. He had to learn something, and he's always presenting it that way. So he's always just so accessible and so intellectually honest, because he reveals to you his own intellectual process, even if it was a bit of a struggle. Mistakes he made along the way.

Just one of the most human, wonderful human beings, much less teachers I've ever experience of knowing.

And we had a nice conversation, but already there, he could see, and we will highlight the positive things, but he could highlight and look on the ominous parallels, what's going on in America and around the world. And I thought Scott Holleran did in his newsletter, very great piece there, both a positive, but also what's going on and there, maybe you want to mention, deem the book there.

And that has led directly to some very negative in the 20th century. It led directly to totalitarianism, the ideas of German philosophers like Cotton Hegel. Pekoff argues in his first book, the Ominous parallels led directly to the Nazism and Bolshevik communism that we saw breaking out in the 20th century.

And there he compares the Nazi ideas and how they came to power with the ideas that they were being taught from German philosophers, and shows how Nazism in particular was the direct result of the dominant German philosophic ideas that have been being spread for more than 100 years earlier. But those same ideas have infected American universities, and the same cultural trends can be seen throughout the west today in consequence of that.

And so, unfortunately, we are headed in a rather negative direction. You can see it in our art, the direction even in theoretical science. You can see it, but you can see it in our culture widely, and especially in politics. I don't have to tell you there's a bit of a moral crisis in the world today when all you have to do is read the headlines and Dr. Peacock's climactic book.

In my view, the Dem hypothesis is actually an entire theory of historiography and how to understand how ideas shape history through the course of time and without getting into technical details about it. It does not have a very, let me put it this way, hopeful look, at least given the current context about the future. But it also tells us that we got to get off our tails and change the culture and the world in which we live.

But as a historian myself, I think that both of those books are two of them that you can see. Anyone familiar with my own work can see how dramatically and overwhelmingly the work of Dr. Pekoff on history and historiography has influenced my own thought.

His brother Michael, in Los Angeles, became a successful physician as well. So he came from a family of medical doctors and his mother was a band leader, a musical band leader who toured North America. Anyway, he himself was going to be a medical student and spent a couple of years studying premed because he came from a medical family. But he had a chance to meet Einran at the age of 17 in Los Angeles, when Einran was still living in the Hollywood area in Los Angeles.

And he says the initial conversation changed his life.

And in short order, at least in a couple of years, he would move to New York, where Ein Rand had moved, change his major to philosophy, and he would study at New York University, which has one of the finest philosophy programs in the world, if not not just in America, where he spent the next many years getting his PhD in philosophy, where his dissertation advisor was the prominent and famous Sidney Hook, sort of the leader of the Pragmatist School of Philosophy in America at the time.

So he got a PhD in philosophy and taught philosophy at universities, and later on in Life did have a radio show that was nationally syndicated addressing the popular issues of the day and followed up by a podcast. And some of the best material from that is found in a book.

Someone edited some of his best answers into a book called Keeping It Real and the Ein Rand Center UK Robert Nacer and I do a weekly podcast taking selected questions and answers from that book and applying them to more recent issues and discussing them at length. More further, I highly recommend that book, but see the range from academic philosophy all the way to the popular issues of the day. And being a radio talk show host. Few thinkers have that kind of scope.

But he has a power, like Ayn Rand did in explaining the power of philosophy, the power of ideas, in showing how ideas really are the main thing that govern human history.

And he answered, he answered that the only thing he would do would be to critique more, do a more religious critique, as well as what he, in addition to what he wrote about the.

A disintegration really is not a sustainable state, a D state, if you will, of ideas, and tends to be replaced by an M state, a misintegration, a religious. And these tend to be religious systems of thought. But they can be. But I consider Marxism, for example, a kind of religious system.

So you've got a false choice here, either this false mystical based system of thought like religion, or Marxism versus nihilism on the other side, when of course the correct answer is proper rational integration, reality and reason married appropriately. And therefore he regards the endurance of religion in America, for example, as a disturbing cultural trend. At the end of the day, they sort of have an advantage.

Whatever the moment of political wins of the moment, they sort of have a long term advantage in America. Unless we, the rational, the I, the better integrated, can provide an integrated system of rational, this worldly thought, the future belongs to M, you see?

And so perhaps the more dangerous element are those Western voices that are mouthing ceasefire and mouthing moral relativism because they're the ones sapping the moral clarity from what should be a strong Israeli and American response, supported, I should hope, by the other civilized nations of the world.

Truly an amazing tribute and a factual demonstration of the moral foundations and however, the problems, the weaknesses in that, the lack of a good moral foundation as well. And then he discusses how America is under the influence of the same German philosophy, is moving in the same direction that Weimarck Germany was. So it's the ominous parallels, you see.

But yes, an edited version of it selected out just the bits on the rise of Hitler, as opposed to the ominous parallels in America, if you will. But you're right, it's an amazing tribute to what makes America so wonderful.

We had to edit hours of interview down to 1 hour. And that was one of the most brutal experiences. But we wanted to show people his home, his art. We end it with him playing piano. We want to give you a sense of the human being that we came to know and love as Leonard Peacock. Leonard Peacock actually came to our wedding party at my mother's house in 1997. And yeah, we want to get ideas in action, at least in some form out there again. And I wish I could.

I'm so sorry that I have to kind of shut up about things because.

I didn't tell Leonard, who I already knew pretty well at that point because he had said publicly he knew these people, and so he knew that their credibility, he said, I'm not even going to read their books. I know how they have it out against Ein Rand. But I didn't know Ayn Rand. I couldn't help but read the books. I had to read them for myself. And so I didn't tell him, though, about it when I published my critique of Barbara Brandon's book on the Internet.

But a friend of his and I got a call from Leonard Peak off one day and said, jim, why didn't you tell me you did this? And I said, well, I didn't think you'd even be know. You said you weren't even going to read the books. He said, no, I love it. Do you think you could use Ein Rand's unpublished journal notes on her break with Nathaniel Brandon? And I said, well, I'd sure love to take a look at them. And he kicked the door completely open for me.

He let me look at all of a Rand's unpublished material, her notes, her journals, her letters, all the little love letters between her and her husband, Frank, all the photographs and memorabilia that he could. He just let me have access to everything. But it gave me special permission to reprint her notes on Nathaniel Brandon for free, mind you, for free. He gave me that. And so my book was an expanded, then critique of their books, and it includes.

It's the only place you can find some words of Ayn Rand from her private journals. Now, it's not objectivism proper, but what powerful psychological and psycho epistemological insights she gives as she's dissecting Nathaniel Brandon and coming to understand him. But it cast so much light, and it proved. Leonard had told me, you'll see that you were right, and you won't know how right you are until you see Ein Rand's notes.

I saw Rand's notes, and, boy, did it vindicate my position in many regards. And it went further. It gave me information that I didn't even dream existed that would further vindicate my position. I came back to Leonard with that, and he said, oh, my God. I didn't even realize that was there. And so he helped me get out my first book, the Passion of Ran's critics. You see, I owe. I cannot describe to you the eternal debt that I owe to Dr. Leonard Peacock in so many ways.

My teacher, my mentor, and the man who gave me access to Ayn Rand's notes made possible ideas in action made possible my first book. And when he publicly endorsed my first book and ideas in action, I could not tell you how proudest moments of my life, practically.

Hopefully one day when there's not all that clutter in the way, because Ein Rand's own ideas are closely tied to reality and you can use your own reason to validate them. It should be a more straightforward, a simpler process, and hopefully it'll be easier in the future. People like you are actually kind of heroic in the fact that you are in that group of people who, when you read Aynrand, have those cobwebs cleared.

That shows, in my view, a degree of independence and honesty and integrity on your rationality, on your part, that is noteworthy and virtuous. But let's hope that that can influence a whole culture so that one day it'll be a whole lot easier for young people to access better ideas and philosophy.

And I highly recommend, if I can just write here, recommend his wonderful essay, a speech he gave after Ayn Rand's death. My 30 years with Ayn Rand. It is one of the most amazing biographical essays you will ever read. It'll give you such insight into his amazing relationship with Einran. When he started writing his first book, though, these bad mental methods he'd picked up at university were influencing how he presented the material.

And he'd know, like a proud puppy, you'd send Aynrand the latest chapter, and she'd look at it, why did you even write this? A lot of red marks, and he would be completely hitting the solar plexus. But then he had the honesty to pick up and say, okay, where am I going wrong? And it took years for him working with Ayn Rand, editing his writing, editing his courses. He came out with a bunch of important courses in the 1970s, yes, on philosophy, as he's writing this book.

So he's not just writing this book, but in the course of writing this book, Ein Rand sort of straightens him out methodologically. And then that's really the upshot of that, is his course in the book, Understanding Objectivism, where he talks about this very subject, psycho epistemology, and how Ayn Rand, in effect, corrected his method of going about thinking and communicating. So all of this material is just amazing.

And his relationship with Einrand was such that he actually got a firsthand guided tour through Einran's own method of thinking. And so he came to understand her thought better than I think any other writer of our times has understood Ein Rand, because he had this incredible opportunity to work with Ayn Rand. And so when his first book did come out, the ominous parallels, she declared it to be the first book by an objectivist philosopher other than herself.

He loves Viennese operetta. So his last talk then he kind of said it would be his last public talk was on Viennese operetta. My wife and I were able to go up there and see it and meet and talk with Leonard again in person, and he was sharp as attack man. His mental faculties are still there, but I suspect that'll be his last public presentation. But what a wonderful sense of life thing it was just to hear Leonard talking about the music he loves.