[Lecture Eleven] Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 38 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 presents the philosophy of Objectivism and its answers to some of the central questions in the history of philosophy. He highlights how its unique metaphysical starting point—the primacy of existence—helps orient the entire philosophy. He explains its implications for free will, the validity of the senses, and the nature of consciousness. Peikoff introduces the crucial distinction between the intrinsic, subjective, and objective.
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.
| Why is the starting point so important in philosophy? And where does it lead one astray if you start in the wrong place? |
| Explain what Objectivism means by the primacy of existence. |
| What does it mean to say that man has free will? |
| How does the law of identity apply to human consciousness? |
| Explain Objectivism’s account of the validity of the senses. |
| What is the metaphysical status of sense qualities? |
| Define the difference between the intrinsic, subjective, and objective. |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 2:00:47 | Please prove the existence of free will. |
| 2:07:47 | How do you reconcile free will with cause and effect? |
| 2:10:51 | Can the existence of free will be known introspectively? If so, is that sufficient proof of free will? |
| 2:12:12 | Doesn’t free will involve the capacity to act as well as to think? |
| 2:14:24 | In your proof of the causal principle, doesn’t the premise “the kind of action an entity performs depends on the kind of entity it is” beg the question? For it assumes that the traditional objections to causal necessity have been answered. For instance, we say that if we release a cigarette in the air it is necessary that it falls because, in the nature of things, all things that are heavier than air fall. But how can we establish this? For the principle that all things heavier than air must fall has simply been verified by experience in some instances and not in all possible experiences. This of course is simply a form of the Humean criticism. If, on the other hand, we say that all things heavier than air will in fact fall even though we haven’t experienced all instances of things falling, how can we claim to know this? Isn’t this a claim of omniscience? |
| 2:26:52 | Why is logic identified as an art rather than a science? |
| 2:28:39 | Does the Objectivist definition of an entity demand materiality? Could a thought, or a state of consciousness, fall under this class? |
| 2:31:49 | If all that we perceive is both a product of existence and of our specific means of perceiving it, then all which we perceive must be objective. What then would be an example of the intrinsic? |
| 2:36:03 | Can anything be properly labeled “subjective”? |