Certainty and Happiness
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 40 minutes
Dr. Leonard Peikoff examines the connection between the key concepts of certainty and happiness. He illustrates why a philosophy of success and happiness depends on a rational and properly defined concept of happiness and why the contemporary philosophy of failure grows out of the attack on certainty. He reveals the fundamental error that unites opponents of happiness and certainty and provides a solution to achieve both.
Lecture
Q&A Session 1
Q&A Session 2
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download a printable PDF version below.
| What are the two bromides that indicate the state of ideas about the human condition? |
| Why does the concept of certain arise at all? |
| What is the proper definition of evidence? |
| What are the definitions of possible and probable? |
| What is the arbitrary? |
| What is certainty about a claim? What is the definition? |
| What must know the contextual standard of proof to determine what is certain? |
| What is the proper definition of happiness? |
| Why is the proper approach to values essential to understanding happiness? |
| How do the intrinsicist and subjectivist approaches deal with happiness? |
| Why do both approaches lead to the same endpoint? |
| What does it mean to call this a benevolent view of life? |
| Why has given rise to the moral/practical dichotomy? |
| Why must a false theory of concepts be at the root of the contemporary scorn of principles? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
Q&A Session 1
| 0:53 | Objectivism claims that moral principles are absolutes except when one finds oneself outside the principles’ context. Doesn’t this mean that principles are absolutes… except when they’re not? How does one know where to draw the line between contexts? Wouldn’t one have to make a distinction between absolute moral principles and contextual moral principles? |
| 3:26 | Is the use of “value” different in the way you’re using it when you say “happiness is the state that results from the achievement of one’s values” than the use of “value” in the definition of value? |
| 7:46 | Objectivists don’t advocate violence. But isn’t it quixotic to allow the ever-growing totalitarian influence in our country to continue? Will Objectivists only counter with education? At some point the overwhelming power of the government will enslave the citizenry through economic controls, etc. The options of the citizenry will be reduced to such a low level that when they come finally to close the Objectivist schools, our power will be too emasculated to resist. Revolution now! |
| 10:04 | I’m interested in this idea that psychology is in a pre-Socratic state. I thought the difference between the pre-Socratics and Plato was that Plato came along and divided the subject up into different areas and had positions on each area. I was under the impression that psychology had gotten at least that far, with clinical psychology and so forth… |
| 13:16 | Is homosexuality a moral issue? |
| 14:04 | What’s the status on the Atlas Shrugged movie? |
| 15:31 | Is any private financing being solicited for the Atlas Shrugged movie? What can I do to help? |
| 16:04 | How would you make a movie—which has to be a visual experience—and yet get in the Objectivist message? |
| 18:28 | Could you boil down what you think are the key points that somehow have to be indicated in an Atlas Shrugged script? |
| 23:55 | In Objectivism, belief in the supernatural is irrational. But what about Judaism? What about the cultural and ethnic factors involved? What would you tell Objectivist Jews to do regarding their cultural and ethnic ties and activities? Should they discontinue any Jewish practices because of their association with religion, or continue them in a secular sense as the majority of North American Jews have already done? |
| 26:01 | Will your last Ford Hall Forum talk be included in the upcoming book, The Voice of Reason? |
| 26:10 | What are your hobbies? |
| 27:17 | Which of the following do you consider to be the most reprehensible and contemptible: a) a man who has no moral principles and proudly proclaims it, b) a man who has irrational principles and lives by them diligently, c) a man who claims to have rational principles but is a hypocrite? |
| 28:55 | In your lecture, you said that skeptics and subjectivists separate perception from concepts. Can you tie that back to how they also have to imply that A is not A? |
| 31:49 | What would be the fate of Objectivism if there had only been Atlas Shrugged and Galt’s speech and no Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology? |
| 34:48 | I know a couple of people in my life who are religious, and yet they have a delightful sense of life. They seem to have compartmentalized religion even though they’re serious about it and I don’t know how they can achieve the happiness I observe. |
| 37:38 | How long before your book comes out? |
| 39:00 | Has the time come to market and sell Objectivism to the general public? |
| 40:32 | If further research on animals shows that some of the more intelligent species are capable of volitional behavior, would that argue for the limited recognition of animal rights? |
| 41:43 | As a member of a campus club, I have met many Objectivists of whom I can count my greatest friends. However, a large number of the self-professed Objectivists I meet are anything but. Many are dogmatic and mean-spirited and often downright deranged people. My experience of this is so strong that my initial reaction to someone who calls themselves an Objectivist is one of apprehension. Why does Objectivism seem to attract both the best and the worst people? |
Q&A Session 2
| 0:34 | Would you please give us a progress report on your new book, which I understand is going to be called Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand? |
| 5:15 | Have you ever considered publishing Miss Rand’s novels in the format of being read aloud and recorded onto cassettes? |
| 3:59 | In the most recent The Intellectual Activist, in his article “Sanctioning the Sanctioners,” Peter Schwartz has expressed the view that he will not associate with Objectivist intellectuals who speak before libertarian social groups or who autograph their books for Laissez Faire Book Service. Caught apparently in this broadly cast net, Dr. David Kelley has privately circulated a particularly articulate, eloquent, and I think cogent response. Please express and explain your views on the subject of this controversy. Are you ostracizing David Kelley? |
| 6:02 | In reference to Edwin Locke’s tape “Animal Lovers: The Human Haters”… I have to agree for the most part, but I love animals. My question is: Is it moral to support wildlife or environmental concerns and, if so, on what ethical basis? |
| 11:04 | I’m wondering if you’ve heard about Senator Sam Nunn’s plan for involuntary national service and, if you have, do you regard it as a Hitler Youth program? |
| 13:14 | Can you comment on the conclusions of quantum physics, which say that nothing happens until it is observed? |
| 15:06 | One of the strongest arguments I get in graduate school against certainty is Popper’s Falsification Theory of Knowledge and Kuhn’s Shifting Paradigms of Science… that you can never know anything for certain because new knowledge will invariably shift the old knowledge aside. You’ve given me a lot of ammunition tonight. Do you have any other hints as to how to attack these arguments? |
| 18:25 | Concerning the issue of epistemological certainty, I’ve heard it argued by some philosophers—some cogently and some rather eloquently and some not so much—concerning the issue of certainty, about certainty being contextual. If all of one’s conclusions depend on the truth or falsity of one’s definitions, and all definitions are contextual, then how does one really define absolute certainty? It would almost seem that you’re subtly redefining certainty? |
| 20:41 | Could you clarify your statement that “certainty is the normal condition of the mind”? For example, there are probably some scientific things that we won’t be certain of throughout our lifetimes. How is that compatible with the fact that people aren’t omniscient? |
| 23:12 | During your talk, you mentioned the Rushdie affair. Could you comment on that a little more extensively? |
| 33:47 | I was recently told by a librarian at a big university that the books Philosophy: Who Needs It and The Ominous Parallels should not be in the library because they are not academic books… not published by university presses… |
| 35:05 | If all facts can be known, then… I understand that you’re against the death penalty… |
| 35:40 | What would be your response to the statement that Objectivism is a branch of fanaticism? |