| | I look forward to adding this to my library. Having attended the Basic Principles lectures, it will be interesting to relive them.
TK: That it is a spoken rather than a strictly scripted lecture is evident from the occasional run-on sentence and awkward or inappropriate word choice.
True though that may be, these were not ad hoc speeches or professiorial lectures without preparation. I have a story from my experience.
In my school system (Cleveland) we had well-developed "tracking" of students based broadly on "general" or "business" or "college preparatory" outcomes. Within that last, we had three subdivisions in rank order: academically talented; advanced placement; and major work. In other towns what we called "major work" was "The Cleveland Program." Understand that I was classed "academically talented" and by going to summer school to get ahead, I made the advanced placement classes in history, physics, and calculus. No way was I "major work." I lack(ed) the IQ as measured in the third (rarely sixth) grade to enter the program.
So, I was in high school, taking the Basic Principles lectures. We could bring one guest once (or else pay a fee and/or sign them up for the series) and I took this major work girl. As we sat there, listening to Nathaniel Branden, she put her notes into outline form. On the break, I asked her how she knew that would work. She said, "I hope you didn't drag me here for <something or other I don't remember> but the point was that she expected any serious speaker on such a topic to be working from an outline.
The point is, again, that however spontaneous these might look in print, Nathaniel Branden was not preaching to the choir.
TK: It's quite obvious that the section on the arbitrary is just a rework of Branden's chapter which is entitled The Concept of God.
Do you still believe that the universe had a creator, or have you come to accept the facts of reality?
TK: It suffers from a stilted overuse of Objectivist jargon such as "mystics" and "looters."
Those words have meanings. We need to be clear on that and not shy away from them or what they identify.
Muscle-mystic.
Social metaphysics.
Moocher.
Psycho-epistemology.
Bootleg Romanticism.
Words have meaning.
TK: And much of the work overlaps with subsequently published material.
As Nathaniel Branden did not believe in the predictive power of tea leaves and crystal balls, it is entirely possible than he did not know what would be published in the future. It is also highly likely that presentations that would become the later publications were, indeed, developed early on as lecture material, which is, for instance, the very same process as Richard Feynman's famous Lectures on physics.
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