most intelligent

Generally, New School students are pretty unconventional. Particularly if they are graduate students, and most particularly is they are studying Philosophy. Our friends and colleagues from Harvard, Brown, and Princeton do not often bring up Derrida in otherwise non-philosophical conversations. When they say ‘logic’ they usually mean that of the first-order and not that associated with the Absolute Idea. And not all of them are convinced that on a properly pragmatic reading, Wittgenstein and Hegel are saying roughly the same thing. Yet if many of us are a bit unusual, some of us are most uncommon.

I have in mind one Ronald K. Hoeflin, the founder of several high-IQ societies with names like 'The One-in-a-Thousand Society' and 'The Prometheus Society'. In running these organizations, Hoeflin has edited various journals for the high-IQ community (yes, apparently there is such a thing). He also created the Mega and Titan intelligence tests, for which he developed special methods to measure super-high IQs (usually tests become unreliable above a certain high mark). In a Village Voice article, Rachel Aviv reports that his IQ is around 190. So one might say that Hoeflin is the "most intelligent" graduate of the department. That article also reports that Hoeflin has quite a sense of humor – and a solid command of Freud.

At the New School, Hoeflin studied with J. N. Mohanty, Anthony Quinton, Reuben Abel, and Albert Hofstadter – some of whom are interesting enough characters as to deserve their own (potential and future) blog entries. He completed his M.A. in 1979 and Ph.D. 1987. According to Wikipedia, Hoeflin won the American Philosophical Association's Rockefeller Prize in 1988 for his article, "Theories of Truth: A Comprehensive Synthesis”, which argues for “the interrelated nature of seven leading theories of truth.”

Wikipedia also tells us that growing up in St Louis, Hoeflin memorized pi to 200 places. What is a man of such varied talents doing today? Rumor has it that he is completing the last part of a three-volume work: "The Encyclopedia of Categories: A Theory of Categories and Unifying Paradigm for Philosophy" and living in a rent-controlled studio in Hell’s Kitchen. Could this man be our very own Chas Peirce? I haven’t gotten my hands on the book yet, but it sounds promising…