[Lecture Ten] Advanced Seminars on Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 1 hour, 31 minutes
Course summary: In this course, Dr. Peikoff presented material from his then-new book, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. The manuscript had its earliest roots in Peikoff’s comprehensive 1976 lecture course on Objectivism. As he worked on the material for publication, he discovered new connections and implications of major ideas in the philosophy as well as new insights on its integrated, hierarchical structure. Peikoff used these seminars to discuss what he learned in the process and to demonstrate how it would allow students of Objectivism to gain a new understanding of the philosophy. Read more »
In this lecture: This lecture discusses the essential elements of human nature. Dr. Peikoff in particular contrasts his understanding as he presents it in his book compared to the original presentation in his lectures in the 1970s. He addresses goal-directedness, conditionality, and why reason is the basic means of survival for humans.
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 36:05 | Would a true reductionist believe that death makes no difference? |
| 37:41 | When you use the term “living organism,” are you using that to differentiate between non-living organisms? |
| 38:34 | Could the sun be considered an example of self-sustaining action in the way that living organisms are? |
| 42:59 | What is the relationship between a consistency in the actions of living organisms and the concept of goal-directed? |
| 46:25 | Why is the fact that “life begets life” not included in the definition of life? |
| 1:01:47 | Is there a way to write a book on Objectivism that is through-and-through inductive and stresses the observational basis in reality? |
| 1:04:36 | Did you choose the “A as B” formulation of your chapter subsection to shed an Objectivist perspective on commonly used concepts? |
| 1:15:02 | Aren’t there in fact some facts in epistemology that are not a question of simply describing what you should do? |
| 1:24:50 | You said that the faculty of volition is the same as the faculty of reason. Is there any other aspect of this faculty that you can bring forth so that we can tie it all together? |
| 1:28:16 | How can you demand integration and still advocate the correspondence theory of truth? Because, if you advocate the correspondence theory of truth, that means each statement is true because it corresponds to reality, so you should reduce each statement back to reality. When you bring in integration, aren’t you committed to another theory of truth, namely Hegel’s coherence theory of truth? |