CAMPUS COURSES

Unique philosophical content that challenges conventional views

74 Courses

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Harry Binswanger

Member, Board of Directors

John Locke’s Political Philosophy

3 Lessons

4h 22m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

More than any other Enlightenment thinker, John Locke was responsible for the creation of the United States. His thoughts on the nature of human knowledge, individual rights, and the sacred value of free thought against...

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Robert Mayhew

Professor of Philosophy Seton Hall University

Aristotle: Father of Romanticism

3 Lessons

4h 7m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

Could there have been a Romantic school of art if not for the ideas of Aristotle? In this course, Dr. Robert Mayhew addresses this intriguing question. Plato, the first philosopher with a theory of esthetics, saw...

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Gregory Salmieri

Senior Scholar of Philosophy at the Salem Center, University of Texas at Austin

Aristotle’s Theory of Knowledge

3 Lessons

4h 30m

Level

Advanced

Completed 0%

Aristotle is the father and chief defender of the view that the human mind can achieve a deep and rich understanding of the world in terms of fundamental principles derived ultimately from sense-perception. Aristotle’s theory...

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John David Lewis

Ancient Greece (Part 3): The Early Fourth Century

3 Lessons

2h 53m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

The fourth century BC, the events after the defeat of Athens by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, is often seen as the decline of the Greek world, a mere echo of a golden age. But...

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John David Lewis

Ancient Greece (Part 2): Fifth-Century Athens

4 Lessons

4h 0m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

The apex of classical culture is the intellectual revolution of fifth-century Athens: she was nothing less than the intellectual capital and the exemplar of the Greek world. The political context for this development was set...

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John David Lewis

Ancient Greece (Part 1): The Archaic Period

3 Lessons

4h 25m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

Archaic Greece encompasses the three centuries prior to the ascent of classical Greek culture. As historian John David Lewis illustrates, it subsumes intellectual, artistic, and political achievements that are self-sufficient in their own right, but...

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Harry Binswanger

Member, Board of Directors

Logic: The Cashing-In

5 Lessons

5h 5m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

Concepts, though fundamental, are only tools—only means to an end. The end is the practical, productive, rational use of your mind to achieve your values, secure your survival, and enhance your life. That is the...

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Gregory Salmieri

Senior Scholar of Philosophy at the Salem Center, University of Texas at Austin

Atlas Shrugged as a Work of Philosophy

4 Lessons

4h 47m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

Available with Spanish subtitles! ¡Disponible con subtítulos en español! Ayn Rand stated the theme of Atlas Shrugged as: “the role of the mind in man’s existence—and, as corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of...

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Leonard Peikoff

Ayn Rand’s Foremost Student and the Author of the Definitive Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

Reflections on Life and Personal Values

5 Lessons

5h 54m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

In this collection of talks spanning more than a decade, Leonard Peikoff reflects on a wide range of topics of significant importance to his life, both personally and professionally. Several of these discussions are informal:...

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Yaron Brook

Chairman of the Board

In Defense of Financial Markets

7 Lessons

7h 56m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

Free, unregulated financial markets serve the vital function of providing capital to the producers. Yet, through the ages, banking and other financial activities have been viewed as corrupt and exploitative. From the money-changers of the...

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Gregory Salmieri

Senior Scholar of Philosophy at the Salem Center, University of Texas at Austin

Objectivist Epistemology in Outline

4 Lessons

6h 3m

Level

Advanced

Completed 0%

Ayn Rand held that “philosophy is primarily epistemology,” the “science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of acquiring and validating knowledge.” This class surveys Rand’s “new approach to epistemology” — the most original...

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Jason Rheins

Kant’s Philosophy (Part 2): Moral Philosophy

3 Lessons

3h 0m

Level

Advanced

Completed 0%

No thinker has had a greater influence on philosophy in the last two centuries than Immanuel Kant. Building on his metaphysics and epistemology, Kant proposed an ethics that dispensed with the need for a divine...

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John Ridpath

John B. Ridpath (1936–2021) was an associate professor of economics and social science at Toronto’s York University from 1975 until his retirement in 2001. During his career he received several awards for excellence in teaching, related primarily to his large-group introductory economics course and his course on ideas and Western civilization. Dr. Ridpath was an active debater, appearing at many universities to debate other scholars on the question of capitalism versus socialism, communism, the mixed economy and welfare statism. He also spoke frequently to university audiences on the topics of individual rights, capitalism and the history of economic ideas. Following the Ayn Rand Institute’s founding in 1985, Dr. Ridpath served on its board of advisers (1985–93) and board of directors (1993–2011). He was also a popular lecturer at Objectivist conferences, often examining the causal importance of ideas in history and paying tribute to America’s Founding Fathers. A native of Canada, Dr. Ridpath studied engineering as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, earned a masters degree in business administration from the same institution, and received a doctorate in economics from the University of Virginia in 1975.

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