[Lecture Ten] Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 35 minutes
Course summary: Presented as two complementary twelve-lecture courses—Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume and Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present—The History of Philosophy covers the whole of western philosophy from its discovery in Ancient Greece to the twentieth century, including Objectivism. Dr. Peikoff argues that philosophy is the means by which we can understand any human culture and, more broadly, the history and changing course of a civilization. Read more »
In this lecture: In this lecture, Dr. Peikoff explores the existentialist school of philosophy. Since Kant, philosophers had assumed that reality and reason were severed and prior schools chose reason and retreated from the world. Peikoff explores the thought of Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre in their embrace of existence and shunning of reason. He explains how these thinkers rejected reason and embraced existence but argued it must be known and navigated by a non-rational means. Further, he shows how, like Nietzsche, they embrace voluntarism and consider freedom to be unsettling but requiring action that is whim-driven. He concludes with a comparison to the rise of popularity of Zen Buddhism.
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download below a PDF study guide for the entire course.
| How does existentialism depart from previous post-Kantian schools of thought? |
| Describe the relationship between the theory of universals and the origins of existentialism. |
| What gives rise to the “existential emotions”? |
| How does voluntarism produce a conflict between self and reason? |
| Why does Kierkegaard believe that free will creates a burden on man? |
| How does Heidegger arrive at the concept of Being? |
| Explain Heidegger’s view of man and some of its implications for ethics. |
| What is Sartre’s concept of freedom? Why does he think we are condemned by that fact? |
| How might Zen Buddhism be taken as the logical extension of existentialism? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 2:09:01 | Why is Ayn Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology inaccessible to the general reading public? |
| 2:09:18 | How does one argue or reason with an Analyst on ethical problems when he in principle rejects reason in this sphere? He will play his linguistic game and you will never resolve anything. |
| 2:11:35 | Regarding ethics, is it because of emotive reasoning and the theory that there are so many social metaphysicians (e.g., “you’re a bad boy”), that the boy later wishes to become a good boy in order to get social recognition, not because he actually knows the difference between “good boy” and “bad boy”? |
| 2:13:34 | Wittgenstein starts by asserting that some uses of language aren’t descriptive of reality, but he appears to end up asserting that all uses of language aren’t descriptive. How does he justify this jump? |
| 2:14:53 | Does Kierkegaard believe in heaven and hell? If so, how does man get to heaven (presumably where God is) without a rational code of ethics to guide his choices of actions while he is on Earth? |
| 2:15:57 | When man achieves essence, does he then lose his free will and become determined once he is now defined, limited, identified? |
| 2:17:39 | What is the Objectivist position, if any, on the problem of the void? |
| 2:19:27 | Does the cliché “ignorance is bliss” originate with Schopenhauer’s state of Nirvana? |
| 2:19:50 | Are either Ayn Rand or you planning to write a book about propositions and universals at any time in the future, or is such a work in the planning stage or has it been done by either of you in detail? |
| 2:20:44 | What does one answer to someone who in answer to your stating that things are indeed black or white not gray, says “simple-minded solutions are for simple minds”? |
| 2:22:43 | Is Schopenhauer considered a forerunner of existentialism? |
| 2:25:08 | If man having a specific nature does not imply determinism, why does Objectivism hold that man having a brain possessing instinct as well as intellect would be deterministic? By “instinct” I mean a motivational drive such as seeking to obtain identity as opposed to alienation, stimulus as opposed to boredom, security as opposed to anxiety? |
| 2:27:34 | Since usages are entirely arbitrary, how should we regard the recommendational utterances of ordinary language philosophers? Do these philosophers expect us to heed their advice or do they expect us to note the rules of their linguistic game? |
| 2:28:51 | What is the Objectivist explanation of how mental events come to affect physical matter, i.e., the nervous system, independent of physical determinants of the functioning of the physical mechanism upon which consciousness depends, the so-called “problem of interaction”? |