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Optional Courses

Optional courses are not included as part of the general conference and must be registered for separately. You may only choose one course per weekly time period.

Attendance is limited for optional courses. Space is made available according to the date your paid registration is received. Once room capacity has been filled for a particular course, registration will close for that course.

A1W1 or A1W2
God Said
Craig Biddle

Ayn Rand distinguished between a disciple of causation and a disciple of “duty.” The first is reality-oriented and goal-directed; he recognizes that the achievement of every end requires specific means, and he pursues his values accordingly. The second is directed not by goals, but by an inexplicable moral “must”; his actions are unrelated to his values; they are intended to fulfill alleged obligations that have nothing to do with his life. This course examines and elaborates that distinction—offering techniques and standing orders for living as a disciple of causation, and suggesting ways to expunge remnants of the duty premise that might still infect one’s soul.

The metaphysical attitude and guiding moral premise of the disciple of causation, wrote Ayn Rand, is summed up in the Spanish proverb: “God said: ‘Take what you want and pay for it.’” We will “chew” the profound Objectivist meaning of this proverb—and how to fully embrace it.

A2W1 or A2W2
Defensor Patriae: The Homeland Defense in History
John Lewis

With the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, America has accepted a permanent, institutionalized state of siege on its own soil. But is this the correct strategy? These lectures will examine four conflicts in history, asking how great nations have defended themselves against ruthless enemies, and drawing lessons for today. The Greeks, the Romans, the Americans during their Civil War and the Europeans prior to World War II, all demonstrated how a timid, defensive strategy can result in years of stalemate. Only a self-righteous offense led by an intelligent, audacious general can end the bloodshed. Only a proper attitude towards warfare, an enemy and one’s cause can enable the clear-headed military action needed to win a defensive war and protect freedom and peace. There is a deep connection between intellectual clarity, moral certainty, intelligent leadership and the offensive strategy needed to defeat a ruthless enemy.

A3W1 or A3W2
Platonism
Greg Salmieri

Ayn Rand characterized history as a duel between two philosophers: Plato and Aristotle. Objectivism is firmly rooted in Aristotelianism, which holds that there is one world, that we can know it by reason rooted in sense-perception and that we can achieve happiness in it by integrating our mind and body. Plato held that the world we inhabit is an unreal and unknowable shadow of a higher existence, that we can achieve true knowledge only by turning away from our senses, and true happiness only by disowning our worldly desires. But despite these differences, Aristotle and all subsequent thinkers owe a tremendous debt to Plato. He was the first to grasp the deep connections between issues as diverse as epistemology, economics and sex and to formulate a philosophical system. In this course we will study this system and its development with an emphasis on its centerpiece: the Theory of Forms.

A4W1 or A4W2
The Revolutionary Origins of the American Constitution
C. Bradley Thompson
 

In 1878 British prime minister William Gladstone referred to the American Constitution as the “most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” This course examines the origins, formation and character of America’s constitutional system. Lectures will focus on why America’s “Greatest Generation” founded a new nation on the basis of reason and philosophy, how they understood and developed principles such as natural rights, republicanism, separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism and judicial review, and how they applied those principles to the construction of their Revolutionary governments. Ultimately, the purpose of these lectures is to identify when, how and why America’s founding statesmen invented and institutionalized the idea of a written constitution as fundamental law. It will be demonstrated that this extraordinary constitutional innovation is America’s most important contribution to Western political thought and practice.

B1W1 or B1W2
Children, Parents and Power Struggles
Susan Crawford

The term “ power struggle” is used to identify an emotional situation that every parent experiences, from the whining and temper tantrums of a toddler to the sulking and angry outbursts of a teenager. The term suggests that it is all a matter of who has the power: you or your child. It becomes a win-lose situation only if the parent is an authoritarian who always wins, or the child knows how to manipulate a parent’s emotional responses so that his demands are always met. This does not have to be the case. There are ways that these distressing events can be avoided or resolved, including teaching a child how to handle emotions, having a parent who enforces standards and giving the parent control while fostering independence in the growing child. This course will discuss these tools of parenting and show how the real power for parents lies in their ability to guide their children toward self-control, which is necessary for self-esteem, maturity and independent thinking.

B2W1 or B2W2
The Wright Brothers: The First Heroes of Manned Flight
Ted Gray and Edwin A. Locke

The invention of manned flight was one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind, a triumph of the rational mind. This course describes the history of the Wrights’ achievement, including the failed (and usually fatal) attempts of previous flight pioneers; the false conclusions and incorrect technical calculations of those earlier pioneers; the many, highly technical discoveries the Wright brothers had to make; their many experiments with gliders (some of which were nearly fatal); their first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina; and their subsequent achievements.

Dr. Locke presents the nontechnical, historical material and, in a form that is easily understandable to the layman, Ted Gray, an engineer, explains some of the technical principles of flight that the Wright brothers had to discover.

B3W1 or B3W2
An Intellectual History of American Education
Elan Journo

American schools today have forsaken the goal of cultivating the student’s mind. Instead of being prepared for life as independent thinkers, students face a barrage of “politically correct” dogmas. They are urged to be emotionalist herd-followers, to hate Western Civilization, to revere the “environment.” Many graduates are illiterate, inarticulate and unable to perform simple arithmetic.

The perversion of schools into factories of ignorance did not happen overnight, nor did it happen in an intellectual vacuum. On the contrary, the decline of education is an eloquent illustration of how philosophy shapes the culture. This course surveys the intellectual history of American education and discusses the ideas and influence of major theorists such as John Dewey. The aim is to explain the philosophic underpinnings of those ideas and to map the paths along which they have traveled on the way to the mainstream of today’s classrooms.

B4W1 or B4W2
Bringing Out the Heroic in Yourself
Ellen Kenner

We’ve all faced that split second when we must decide whether to speak up and defend our values . . . or let the moment pass. On a wider scope, there is also our long-range desire to fight for a healthier, more rational world. But if we let such moments or opportunities slip by, it takes a psychological toll on us. This course will cover common psychological barriers to action, offer motivational tips on picking your personal “battles” and avoiding errors, and suggest ways of practicing these new skills.

Ayn Rand said that “anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.” This course will help you to assertively and effectively defend your values with family members, classmates, coworkers, friends or in some public forum. We will also explore the personal benefits to you, for example, increased confidence, enhanced benevolent universe premises, and a wider integration of your knowledge—both in content and method. Finally, this course will help you increase your self-respect and solidify a sense of earned pride.

B5W1 or B5W2
Ayn Rand's Aesthetics in Historical Perspective
Barry Wood

While most Objectivists are well aware of Ayn Rand’s towering contributions to the major fields of philosophy—metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics—fewer perhaps are aware that her ideas have powerful significance for the field of aesthetics as well. The purpose of this course is to explain why this is so. Dr. Wood will introduce the basic questions of aesthetics and show how they have been answered at different times in the history of Western philosophy. Special attention will be given to how these answers have reflected the philosophers’ fundamental premises about the nature of the universe and how our minds grasp it. In particular, Dr. Wood will illuminate Ayn Rand’s point that Kant’s philosophy is the root of modern “art.” The course will conclude with an examination of the Objectivist aesthetics and why they represent a revolutionary development.

C1W1 or C1W2
Discovering Film Music
David Berry

Most of us love movies but we are rarely aware of the music in them. This course is a basic introduction to film music. Since their inception in the 1890s, films have been accompanied by music. It affects the pace, reflects emotions, brings to mind unseen characters or unspoken thoughts, supports action, creates atmosphere, provides unity and sometimes becomes a part of the story.

The relationships between the musicians, filmmakers and studios will be explored. Issues and techniques involving the planning and realization of the musical score are covered, including these topics: spotting, temp tracks, orchestration, recording and synchronization, and the differences between concert hall and film music.

Each lecture will include many examples and end with a question period. Scores for movies featuring Ayn Rand’s work will be given special attention, including an analysis of Max Steiner’s music for The Fountainhead. The course is designed for both musicians and nonmusicians.

C2W1 or C2W2
The History of America (part 3): Expanding and Securing the Union, 1836-1877
Eric Daniels

This course tells the story of how the United States expanded both geographically and economically in the middle of the nineteenth century, becoming the leading nation in the Western Hemisphere. During the years after the War of 1812, enterprising Americans spread freedom and representative government across the continent. This expansion and development, however, helped to highlight not only partisan differences over economic policy, but also fundamental differences between the North and the South. How did Americans acquire new territory? What political changes came about during the so-called Age of Jackson? What caused the Civil War and why was it fought? In these five lectures, the third part of an ongoing series, Dr. Daniels will explain the major events of American history from the mid-1830s to the end of Reconstruction. The focus will be on the major ideas and events that shaped American life in this period.

C3W1 or C3W2
Existentialism
Robert Garmong

If a non-Objectivist layman is interested in philosophy of any kind, chances are it is Existentialism. Whereas other philosophical theories, both current and historical, are typically esoteric and abstruse, Existentialists discuss issues that clearly matter to daily life—issues like volition, the nature of the emotions, and autonomy. Many Existentialist positions seem similar to Objectivist ideas, such as the importance of volition and moral responsibility. And yet Existentialism has also been characterized as a doom-and-gloom philosophy, the worship of death.

This course will examine the roots of its appeal—and of its destructiveness. By carefully analyzing key Existentialist concepts, we will see how Existentialism hijacks the best within its student and hitches it to a life-destroying end.

C4W1 or C4W2
The Foundations of the Renaissance
Andrew Lewis

The Renaissance was one of the greatest periods of Western Civilization. It was, in one sense, however, an accident. None of the Christian Scholastics who tried to integrate Aristotelian philosophy into the Church planned for the secular achievements that would follow. How then did it happen? Why did Aristotle’s influence endure in Christian Europe, but not among the Muslims? What events and intellectual developments led to the triumph of reason over faith, and what lessons can we learn for bringing about a second—and complete—Renaissance? This course (heavily expanded and revised from a course given in 1998) traces the political and intellectual history that ended the Dark Ages and ignited the Renaissance.

C5W1 or C5W2
Why Markets Don’t Fail
Brian Simpson

This course—based on a forthcoming book titled Markets Don’t Fail!—addresses some of the popular arguments made by economists and other intellectuals against the free market. For each topic, Dr. Simpson describes what the claim against capitalism is, then shows why the claim is invalid and finally shows why capitalism actually succeeds with respect to the issue involved. A significant portion of the course involves exposing the invalid premises underlying the claims of market failure and providing a proper basis upon which to judge capitalism. Some of the topics pertaining to alleged market failure include: monopoly, antitrust laws, predatory pricing and “externalities.” This course will help improve one’s understanding of capitalism and provide one with greater intellectual ammunition with which to defend capitalism.

D1W1 or D1W2
“Robber Barons” as Productive Geniuses
Andrew Bernstein

This course starts by describing the creative achievements of many of late-nineteenth-century America’s greatest business heroes. Included are Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and others, but the focus is on the extraordinary but now largely forgotten Edward H. Harriman, “the Little Giant,” who rebuilt much of America’s railways.

But the course’s emphasis is on moral evaluation. What were the specific accusations that anticapitalist intellectuals brought against these men? Are the accusations generally based on factual errors or on evaluations by means of corrupt moral theories—or both? How does Objectivism enable the industrialists’ supporters to finally refute those charges? What are the major moral errors committed by the critics? By answering these questions, the course provides a fuller appreciation of the extraordinary achievements of productive giants, as well as the intellectual ammunition to disprove the leftists’ scurrilous charges

D2W1 or D2W2
The Crisis of Principles in Greek Mathematics
Pat Corvini

At the close of the Golden Age of Greece, mathematics faced a double challenge: the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes, whose ratio could not be expressed in numbers, and the paradoxes of Zeno, purporting to prove that motion is impossible. Both problems challenged the fundamental concepts of mathematics. The Greek response to this “crisis of principles” owed much to the work of one man: Eudoxus of Cnidus. His new theory of proportions and method of “exhaustion” allowed a burst of progress, culminating in the work of Archimedes.

However, the Eudoxian approach also fostered dichotomies between logical rigor and mathematical practicality, and between arithmetic and geometry, that persisted beyond the time of Newton. In this course we examine the nature and philosophic roots of the crisis and of the competing methods developed in response, and the relationship of these to our developing concept of number. As we will see, the crisis and its resolution amply illustrate the importance of philosophy in mathematics.

D3W1 or D3W2
The Style of Alfred Hitchcock: Films for the Focused Mind
Shoshana Milgram

We will examine six classic films—The Thirty-Nine Steps, Young and Innocent, Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief—directed by Alfred Hitchcock, whom Ayn Rand described as an artist of stature, and as a Romanticist. His films, said Hitchcock, were not “slices of life,” but “slices of cake”—because “drama is life with the dull spots removed.”

Hitchcock took seriously the artistic task described by Ayn Rand in “Art and Cognition”— that of conditioning our consciousness. “The filmmaker’s responsibility,” he said, “is to cultivate audiences capable of noticing and appreciating subtleties.” His signature device—elegant dramatic suspense—shows respect for the spectator’s mind by “letting the audience into the secret.” His style rewards purposeful attentiveness. By analyzing esthetic integration in his work, we can sharpen our viewing skills. (Revision of a course offered in 1997)

D4W1 (week 1 only)
The Role of Reason in Ethics
Amy Peikoff

In this course we will examine, chronologically, a range of ethical theories in the Western tradition: Platonism, Aristotelianism, Kantianism, Pragmatism and Objectivism. With respect to each, we will ask: What does this theory say about the nature of reason and its role in the good life? The presentation of each theory will start by analyzing selected passages from primary texts; this will lead us to each school’s essentialized answer to our question. In order to gain an integrated, grounded understanding, we will also compare and contrast the various approaches, including their application to real moral problems as they arise in daily life. The result will be a deeper understanding of the history of ethics, and of the unique value of Ayn Rand’s approach.
Note: The second week engagement was cancelled because Mrs. Peikoff has secured a position as a teacher in University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, starting late this summer. She will be teaching two courses each semester, on theories of human nature and philosophy of law.

D5W2 (week 2 only)
The Moral Guide to Business: Egoism
Jaana Woiceshyn

This course will show (1) why egoism is the only moral code suited to guide business, and (2) how egoism can be applied to guide business decision-making and to defend business on moral grounds. We will also see (3) why capitalism is the only social system that makes virtue possible and how business people should fight for such a system. The main emphasis is on the second topic: applying egoism to business decision-making.

We will examine how the central egoist principles (self-interest, man’s life as the standard of value, no initiation of physical force, rationality, justice and the trader principle, honesty, independence, integrity, productiveness, pride) can guide and defend business decisions. The participants will get some hands-on practice in applying these principles to concrete, challenging business examples (e.g., assessing and interacting with employees and business partners, dealing with the government, insider trading, charity).

SW2 (week 2 only)
Sculpture Workshop
Stuart M. Feldman

Over a two-day course, the artist will demonstrate the creation of a bust in clay from his imagination. In the process he will explain the knowledge that needs to be retained, from the wide experience of studying and sculpting many heads, in order to create a sculpture without a living model in front of him.

The sculpture will begin with a simple abstract representation of the head, and then proceed with the development of the basic structure of the skull and gesture (pose). The final day will deal with features and expression.

Along the way the artist will discuss the use of a “working theme” as the guiding element for the selective process that takes place.

Attendees may ask questions or make comments throughout the process.

DW1 or DW2
Swing Dancing
Marilyn George and Ted Gray

Swing is the only 100 percent American social (partner) dance. It was developed in Harlem in the 1920s from the Foxtrot and Charleston to fit the new swing music. Its original name was Lindy Hop, in honor of Charles Lindberg.

Triple-Time Swing, which became popular in the ’50s, will be taught. This version of swing dancing has all the elements of the other variations and once mastered will allow the student to pick his favorite variation to focus on. The lessons use moderate-tempo music for the purpose of learning.

Lessons assume no prior knowledge of dance. The goal will be to introduce students to the dance, with the hope that they will pursue it on their own. The reward in teaching these courses over the years has been the students who have adopted social dancing as an optional value in their lives.

All students should wear leather-soled shoes. You can’t dance properly in rubber-soled shoes—sticky.

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