Available with Spanish subtitles!
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If you have ever wondered what philosophy is and how ideas shape human life, this course is for you. Join Gloria Álvarez as she interviews Ayn Rand Institute philosophers Harry Binswanger and Onkar Ghate on Ayn Rand’s revolutionary philosophy: Objectivism. This in-depth but accessible discussion series covers a broad range of topics, starting from the fundamentals of philosophy to ethics, politics and art.
Available with Spanish subtitles!
¡Disponible con subtítulos en español!
Many educated people today dismiss free will as an illusion and instead view themselves and other people as determined by their environment and their genetics. Objectivism offers a very different view. It holds that the key to understanding yourself as a human being is that your mind functions by choice. This gives you a fundamental, delimited control over your own life and actions, which you can choose to exert or not. Further, a proper understanding of free will shapes a proper understanding of good and evil and of the nature and personal importance of justice.
Ayn Rand embodied three extraordinary qualities: philosophic genius, heroic rationality and passionate man-worship. The result was the outstanding figure of the modern era—perhaps, of any era.
These two lectures portray the essence of a world-historical figure who lived life with the passionate intensity and full consciousness of her greatest fictional heroes. (A pdf chronology of Ayn Rand’s life is included.)
Available with Spanish subtitles!
¡Disponible con subtítulos en español!
This course examines Ayn Rand’s views on art, it’s importance to individuals and the culture, in her own words.
“Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments. Man’s profound need of art lies in the fact that his cognitive faculty is conceptual, i.e., that he acquires knowledge by means of abstractions, and needs the power to bring his widest metaphysical abstractions into his immediate, perceptual awareness. Art fulfills this need: by means of a selective re-creation, it concretizes man’s fundamental view of himself and of existence. It tells man, in effect, which aspects of his experience are to be regarded as essential, significant, important. In this sense, art teaches man how to use his consciousness. It conditions or stylizes man’s consciousness by conveying to him a certain way of looking at existence.”
–Ayn Rand
Available with Spanish subtitles!
¡Disponible con subtítulos en español!
Increasingly, our culture pushes us to view ourselves as passive members of one group or another. What matters, we’re told, is not the choices we make as individuals, but our ethnicity, our gender, our inherited “privilege” or lack thereof. This view is pervasive in our culture—in politics, in psychology, in philosophy, in science, in law, in ethics.
In her novel The Fountainhead (and in her other writings), Ayn Rand challenges the doctrines of collectivism and introduces a radical new conception of individualism. She rejects the tribal mindset and offers a vision of human existence in which we are not interchangeable members of some collective, but sovereign, independent individuals, whose true interests align. In this course, you’ll hear experts on Ayn Rand’s philosophy discuss her unique perspective on individualism and its antithesis: tribalism.
Available with Spanish subtitles!
¡Disponible con subtítulos en español!
In Ayn Rand’s philosophy, the most important issue in human life is the supremacy and absolutism of reason. This leads Rand to reject any form of faith or belief in the supernatural, including God, as well as religious moral teachings, which order man to obey authority rather than to pursue his own rational interests. Rand argues that reason leads to freedom and that faith leads to force.
How then should politics be structured to allow men of reason and men of faith to live together peacefully? What should be the proper relation between religion and the state? And what is the moral response to religious extremism in free societies? In these three talks, Onkar Ghate answers these questions and more.
Available with Spanish subtitles!
¡Disponible con subtítulos en español!
Dr. Peikoff’s analysis of the contrast between Objectivism’s “philosophy of success” and the culturally dominant “philosophy of failure”; and the fundamental error shared by the enemies of certainty and of happiness.
Disclaimer: Although Dr. Peikoff granted permission for the creation of this course in a new format, he has not reviewed or approved any of its content.
This lecture was delivered at Conceptual Conferences 1988 in Staten Island, NY.
Available with Spanish subtitles!
¡Disponible con subtítulos en español!
Political figures from Jefferson to Lenin to FDR and philosophers from Locke to Marx to Rawls all claim to stand for liberty, but they have radically different understandings of what liberty is, and so they advocate very different sorts of societies.
The same is true of many of today’s political and cultural groups, from Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party to Black Lives Matter to libertarian student organizations like Students for Liberty.
So: What is liberty? What does it look like to truly advocate it? What does it mean to be for liberty? Onkar Ghate and Gregory Salmieri discuss these questions and others at Ayn Rand Student Conference 2017.
Available with Spanish subtitles!
¡Disponible con subtítulos en español!
In this video, philosopher Leonard Peikoff presents the essentials of Ayn Rand’s philosophy to a group of students, then answers their questions. Peikoff, who was Rand’s friend and associate for three decades, is the author of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand and is the preeminent authority on her ideas. This presentation, recorded in San Francisco in 1995 by the Ayn Rand Institute, features a 42-minute lecture followed by a 33-minute Q&A session.
Disclaimer: Although Dr. Peikoff granted permission for the creation of this course in a new format, he has not reviewed or approved any of its content.
In 1961, Ayn Rand received a speaking invitation from the Ford Hall Forum, a group that sponsors free public lectures on social and political issues. She spoke there almost every year until her death.
From 1982 to 2003 philosopher Leonard Peikoff continued that tradition. Over this period, Peikoff gave several talks in which he applied Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism on a wide range of topics such as education, medicine, the religious right, the fall of communism, art, crime and America’s response to 9/11.
Explore Leonard Peikoff’s twenty years at the Ford Hall Forum.
Disclaimer: Although Dr. Peikoff granted permission for the creation of this course in a new format, he has not reviewed or approved any of its content.
