icon:: 🙎‍♂️
- Lecture “Introduction to Objectivism” {{video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlJD0i_WwdQ&t=261s}}
- Peikoff divides philosophy into five categories. They are connected
graph LR Metaphysics --> Ethics Epistemology --> Ethics Ethics Ethics --> Politics Ethics --> Aesthetics
- Metaphysics: There is a reality. It exists independent of consciousness, i.e. objectively.
- The natural world interacts according to cause and effect.
- Human will is a form of cause.
- Epistemology:
- Reason is the only means of knowledge (expressed as explanations).
- Contrast to that to mysticism “you get a direct, unmediated insight into reality” (revelation, intuition)
- Our senses give us access to reality.
- Concepts are our objective way of ordering knowledge.
- Logic is the method of reason. Core: There are no contradictions. Check your premises
- Truth is absolute.
- Contrast with Sceptics: “We can’t determine if there is objective truth.”
- Reason is the only means of knowledge (expressed as explanations).
- Ethics
- Selfishness is good.
- Politics
- Start with rights of human beings.
- Life, liberty, property.
- Capitalism
- Police (because competition about violence leads to more violence), Military (defense from outside), Court Systems (solving disputes without falling back on rules of force)
- Aesthetics
- value oriented art: “Art should present the world according to as it could be and as it should be.”
- could be: stay within the bounds of reality
- should be: be an inspiration
- value oriented art: “Art should present the world according to as it could be and as it should be.”
- Ayn Rand and he consider Immanuel Kant the most influential mystic of the last few hundred years.