[Lecture Three] The Art of Thinking
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Course summary: In this course Dr. Peikoff explains what happens in the mind when one thinks and offers a structure for how to get better at thinking. He applies the key principles of Objectivist epistemology to everyday thinking. The course explains the mental process of changing one’s mind, the role of integration and essentialization in proper thinking, and the application of thinking in principle and what certainty means. Read more »
In this lecture: This lecture identifies and describes the process of thinking in essentials. It explores what it means for something to be essential and how one determines that for any given idea. Dr. Peikoff illustrates the key ideas by working through examples of how to determine the essence of a person, a philosophy, or an argument.
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.
| What does it mean for something to be essential? |
| Why is causality closely involved in determining essentials? |
| What is the difference between a distinguishing feature and a fundamental feature? |
| How does knowing an essential assist in cognition? |
| What are the two key steps in determining the essence of a thing? |
| Using or creating an original example, what does thinking in non-essentials look like? |
| What is the key to defining the essence of a philosophy? |
| Select three sentences from a contemporary opinion piece and derive the essence of each sentence. |
| Selecting a new character from one of Ayn Rand’s novels, describe the essence of that character. |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 1:44:34 | Is it sufficient to just abstract what’s in common to all of these examples of nihilism in Weimar culture? Don’t you also have to go to what underlies it, what is its basic philosophic cause? |
| 1:47:37 | Where in 1992 can we find private tutoring 1/10 or 1/30 of what you had with Ayn Rand? |
| 1:48:44 | If I were making a list I would put down Wynand’s art gallery as an example of a strong streak of idealism in him. Is that a mistake on my part? |