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Leonard Sylvan Peikoff (; born October 15, 1933) is a Canadian American Philosophy. He is an Objectivist and was a close associate of Ayn Rand, who designated him heir to her estate. Peikoff is a former professor of philosophy and host of a nationally syndicated Talk radio. He co-founded the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in 1985 and is the author of several books on philosophy.
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. 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 was among NBI's first lecturers, teaching a course on the history of philosophy. By the early 1960s, NBI had representatives in multiple cities who replayed taped versions of the lectures to local audiences.
Discussions with Peikoff and Allan Gotthelf in the 1960s motivated Rand to complete an extended monograph on concept-formation, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Rand included Peikoff's essay critiquing the analytic–synthetic dichotomy when it was published in book form in 1979. Peikoff was also an active participant in Rand's 1969–71 workshops on the monograph, as well as subsequent, smaller philosophy workshops at Rand's apartment. Peikoff later used the transcripts of these workshops to create an expanded edition of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, which he co-edited with Harry Binswanger.
Following the dissolution of NBI in 1968, Peikoff continued to give private lecture courses on a variety of topics to large Objectivist audiences, and recordings of these have been sold for many years. His lecture courses include: The History of Philosophy (in two "volumes" of lectures), An Introduction to Logic, The Art of Thinking, Induction in Physics and Philosophy, Moral Virtue, A Philosophy of Education, Understanding Objectivism, The Principles of Objective Communication, and Eight Great Plays. Rand endorsed his 1976 lecture series on Objectivism as the best exposition of her philosophy, the only one she knew to be accurate.
Peikoff's first book, The Ominous Parallels, was both an Objectivist explanation of the rise of the Nazi Germany and The Holocaust, and a warning that America was being led down the road to totalitarianism because of far-reaching philosophical and cultural parallels between the Weimar Republic and the present-day United States. In her introduction, Rand said it was the first book by an Objectivist philosopher other than herself.
In 1985, Peikoff founded the Ayn Rand Institute. Peikoff revised his 1976 lecture course on Rand's ideas into book form as , published in 1991, the first comprehensive presentation of Objectivism. In the mid-1990s, Peikoff taught courses at the Ayn Rand Institute's Objectivist Graduate Center (which was renamed the Objectivist Academic Center in 2000), along with Harry Binswanger and Peter Schwartz.
From 1995 through 1999, Peikoff hosted a nationally syndicated talk radio show focusing on philosophy and culture. (2025). 9780739131954, Lexington Books. ISBN 9780739131954 From February 2006 to June 2007, Peikoff posted an online Q&A featuring questions that had been e-mailed to him. This was replaced with a podcast that debuted on October 22, 2007, and continued until October 31, 2016.
Peikoff's lectures or books have been used extensively in the works of Allan Gotthelf, Harry Binswanger, Andrew Bernstein, and Tara Smith, writers who are associated with the Ayn Rand Institute, and also in works such as David Kelley's The Evidence of the Senses, George H. Smith's , and the treatise, What Art Is: the Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand by Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kahmi, despite these authors' other differences with him.see, e.g., Gotthelf, Allan, On Ayn Rand, Wadsworth Philosophers Series, 2000, pp. 3, 100; Smith, Tara, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: the Virtuous Egoist, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 148–191; Binswanger, Harry, The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts, ARI, 1990, pp. 234, 237; Bernstein, Andrew, The Capitalist Manifesto, University Press of America, 2005, pp. 172, 183, 188; Kelley, David, The Evidence of the Senses, Louisiana State University Press, 1986, pp. vii, 120 (on p. vii, Kelley credits Peikoff with helping to "shape" his "understanding of many issues ... at the deepest level"); Smith, George H., Atheism: the Case Against God, Prometheus, 1989, pp.125–162, 336–337, n17, n18, n31 (first pub. Nash, 1974; in note 31, p. 337, e.g., Smith indicates that his own "approach to certainty" is that presented by Peikoff in a series of lectures); Torres, Louis, and Kamhi, Michelle Marder, What Art Is: the Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand, Open Court, 2000, pp. 30, 32, 41, 51, 298–299, 305, 332n81, 333n5, 333n86.
Peikoff's 1983 lecture course Understanding Objectivism was edited into a book of the same title by Michael Berliner, editor of the Letters of Ayn Rand, and Peikoff's theory of logical induction, first presented in the lecture courses Induction in Physics and Philosophy and Objectivism Through Induction, has been developed further by David Harriman in his book, The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics. In his 2012 book The DIM Hypothesis, Peikoff defines the three approaches to cognitive integration—disintegration, integration, and misintegration—and applies the hypothesis to physics, philosophy, education, politics, and other fields.
His articles have appeared in publications as diverse as Barron's and The New Scholasticism, and his television appearances have ranged from Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect and Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor to C-SPAN panel discussions. He also appears in , the Academy Awards-nominated documentary by Michael Paxton.
The closed vs. open issue came to the fore when David Kelley, a philosopher then affiliated with Peikoff and ARI, published his essay "A Question of Sanction", arguing for greater open-mindedness in working with other groups. Kelley sees Objectivism as an "open system" that can evolve beyond Rand's own writings and beliefs. Peikoff presented his objections to Kelley in an article called "Fact and Value," arguing that Kelley's case itself contradicted Rand's understanding of the relationship between cognition and evaluation, facts, and moral values. Peikoff concluded that Kelley was not a genuine Objectivist and urged anyone agreeing with Kelley to leave the Objectivist movement. Ultimately, Kelley responded by founding the Institute for Objectivist Studies in 1990, which later changed its name to The Objectivist Center and finally The Atlas Society.
He also continues Rand's opposition to libertarianism, remaining sharply opposed to any description of Objectivist political philosophy as "libertarian" and to any collaboration with most libertarian groups. He has been critical of American foreign policy, considering both Neoconservatism and Libertarianism views self-sacrificial. He objects to the terms "isolationist" or "interventionist" to describe his foreign policy views, stating that the only "intervention" the United States should enact is war and "only and when it is in self-defense."
In 2004, Peikoff endorsed John Kerry (despite thinking of Kerry as a "disgustingly bad" candidate) against George W. Bush (whom he called "apocalyptically bad"), on the basis of Bush's religiosity and his refusal to crush Islamic regimes, especially Iran, along with his "doomed" economic policies. In advance of the 2006 elections, Peikoff recommended voting only for Democrats, to forestall what he saw is a rise in influence of the Christian right, adding:
Of the 2008 United States presidential election, Peikoff said, "I wouldn't dream of voting", saying that the Republicans should be "wiped out" or "severely punished" for their association with the religious right. Furthermore, he characterized Barack Obama as "Anti-Americanism" and a "lying phoney" with troubling connections to both Islam and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He labelled Obama's running mate Joe Biden an "enjoyably hilarious windbag", and their Republican opponents John McCain and Sarah Palin as a "tired moron" and an "opportunist", respectively.
In a 2010 podcast, Peikoff explained why he supports immigration restrictions in the current context of the welfare state, and why he does not see this as a contradiction to Objectivism's general rejection of immigration restrictions. In another 2010 podcast, Peikoff explained that he does not support the building of a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, arguing that Private property are always contextual and that preventing the construction is a wartime necessity. Similarly, he supported the France ban on the burqa.
In September 2012, Peikoff endorsed Mitt Romney for the Presidency, citing President Obama's alleged nihilism, taxation, economic and energy policies, Obamacare and his use of . However, Peikoff was not enthusiastic in his endorsement of Romney, calling him an "appeasing, directionless" candidate with "no political convictions" who would be useful for buying time. For the same reason, he endorsed the Republican Congressional nominees. Afterwards, he called Obama's re-election a "catastrophe", "the worst political event ever to occur in the history of this continent" and "worse than the Civil War".
In the 2020 and 2024 elections, Peikoff supported Donald Trump.
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