Political Philosophy

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...

View Start

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...

View Start

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...

View Start

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...

View Start

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...

View Start

Leonard Peikoff

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

Lectures on Culture and Politics

5 Lessons

6h 10m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

In this collection of talks and lectures, Leonard Peikoff addresses key cultural, philosophical, and political phenomena from the perspective of Objectivism. Topics include: the philosophic foundations of capitalism and the rise of statism in America,...

View Start

Leonard Peikoff

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

The DIM Hypothesis II

6 Lessons

9h 2m

Level

Advanced

Completed 0%

In this six-lecture course recorded in July of 2010 at the Objectivist summer conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Leonard Peikoff discusses the final parts of his then book-in-progress The DIM Hypothesis, published in 2012. Here is...

View Start

Leonard Peikoff

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

The DIM Hypothesis I

6 Lessons

9h 34m

Level

Advanced

Completed 0%

In this six-lecture course recorded in July of 2007 at the Objectivist summer conference in Telluride, Colorado, Leonard Peikoff discusses the first parts of his then book-in-progress The DIM Hypothesis, published in 2012. Here is a...

View Start

Onkar Ghate

Gregory Salmieri

Seminar on Ayn Rand’s Political Philosophy

6 Lessons

12h 5m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

Ayn Rand wrote extensively about political philosophy, arguing that the principles and ideas responsible for the remarkable economic and social progress of the nineteenth century were little understood a century later, and that their implicit...

View Start

Subtitled

John Ridpath

The Philosophical Origins of Marxism

4 Lessons

3h 55m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

Available with Spanish subtitles! ¡Disponible con subtítulos en español! Although Marxism as a political system has now been widely repudiated, it remains an intellectual force in the universities. These classes examine Marxism as a secular version of...

View Start

Subtitled

Onkar Ghate

Tara Smith

Gregory Salmieri

Yaron Brook

Harry Binswanger

Individualism in an Age of Tribalism

5 Lessons

3h 45m

Level

Beginner

Completed 0%

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,...

View Start

Subtitled

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer & Senior Fellow

Religion and Politics

3 Lessons

4h 19m

Level

Beginner

Completed 0%

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...

View Start

Subtitled

Onkar Ghate

Gregory Salmieri

What Is Liberty?

7 Lessons

3h 41m

Level

Beginner

Completed 0%

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...

View Start

Leonard Peikoff

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

Leonard Peikoff at the Ford Hall Forum

14 Lessons

20h 29m

Level

Beginner

Completed 0%

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...

View Start

Subtitled

Ayn Rand

Originator of the Philosophy of Objectivism

Ayn Rand at Columbia University

14 Lessons

6h 50m

Level

Beginner

Completed 0%

Throughout the 1960s, Ayn Rand conducted a series of radio lectures and interviews on Columbia University’s campus radio station, WKCR. The lectures were often written works that had previously been in print elsewhere, while the...

View Start

Ayn Rand

Originator of the Philosophy of Objectivism

Ayn Rand at the Ford Hall Forum

19 Lessons

25h 41m

Level

Beginner

Completed 0%

In 1961 Ayn Rand was invited to speak at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, America’s oldest continuously operating free public lecture series. This marked the beginning of Rand’s relationship with the Forum. Over the years,...

View Start

Subtitled

Ayn Rand

Originator of the Philosophy of Objectivism

The Anti-Industrial Revolution

1 Lesson

1h 8m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

Available with Spanish subtitles! ¡Disponible con subtítulos en español! In this 1970 lecture, Ayn Rand analyzes the arguments and underlying motivation of the emerging “ecology” movement, the forerunner of today’s environmentalism. Separating legitimate concerns about pollution from...

View Start

Subtitled

Elan Journo

Debi Ghate

The Ayn Rand Bookshelf

1 Lesson

0h 56m

Level

Beginner

Completed 0%

Available with Spanish subtitles! ¡Disponible con subtítulos en español! You may already know of Ayn Rand as author of The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. But did you know that Rand wrote two other novels, plus many nonfiction essays on topics...

View Start

Subtitled

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer & Senior Fellow

The Morality of Freedom

1 Lesson

1h 8m

Level

Beginner

Completed 0%

Available with Spanish subtitles! ¡Disponible con subtítulos en español! Do all people desire freedom? If we look at the history of civilization and at popular political movements over the last hundred years, argues Onkar Ghate, the answer...

View Start

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer & Senior Fellow

We the Living

7 Lessons

4h 53m

Level

Beginner

Completed 0%

We the Living is Ayn Rand’s first and least-known novel. It is the story of a young woman, Kira Argounova, who is solemnly dedicated to living her own life. But she is trapped in a collectivist...

View Start

Subtitled

Ayn Rand

Originator of the Philosophy of Objectivism

What Is Capitalism?

1 Lesson

0h 47m

Level

Intermediate

Completed 0%

Available with Spanish subtitles! ¡Disponible con subtítulos en español! This 1967 lecture is Ayn Rand’s flagship talk on capitalism. In it she explains in depth what capitalism is, why it is often misunderstood and why it is...

View Start

Topic: Political Philosophy