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March 12, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
07:14
The Purpose of Philosophical Ideas
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And I assume that Bentwood is more vertically strong.
Just copy it, copy-paste, copy-paste, copy-paste.
So you blank slate anything in life that you want to achieve, you must blank slate to be original, to think for yourself.
So when it came to philosophy, I started with a blank slate.
I don't care what people have talked about before.
I don't care what is defined as a philosophical problem.
I don't care what arguments have been made in the past.
What I care about is what is the purpose of philosophy and how can I best achieve it?
Without tradition, without history, what is the definition of philosophy and how can I best achieve it?
Now, the definition of philosophy must be the promotion of virtue, which means you have to define virtue and find a way to promote it in a way that's actionable, because if it's not actionable, it's not virtue.
If it's just theory, it's not virtue.
The purpose of philosophy is the spread of virtue.
It means you must define virtue and find a way to make it actionable.
Arguing about whether a fucking brain in a tank is not actionable about anything.
So I say, okay, what is virtue?
UPB, self-ownership, non-aggression principle, property rights.
Self-ownership, non-aggression principle, property rights.
Okay, okay.
How do I spread the non-aggression principle?
It has to be actionable, which means you have to be able to control the outcome.
Can you control the outcome?
Of the government printing money?
No.
Can you control the outcome of the government borrowing money?
No.
Can you control the outcome of the government passing laws?
No.
Can you control the outcome of the government starting wars?
No!
What is the most prevalent violation of the non-aggression principle that people can do the most about?
That's a blank slate.
The purpose of philosophy is to spread actionable morality.
What is the most prevalent violation of the non-aggression principle that people can do the most about?
Child abuse.
Simple.
Child abuse.
Which is why I focused on it.
It's not a compulsion.
It is an inevitable domino that falls when you say the purpose of philosophy is to spread morality that is actionable.
No dietician Goes to a gulag and tells prisoners what to eat because they have to eat whatever roach-infested slop is put in front of them.
Dietary advice has to be actionable.
Moral advice has to be actionable.
I don't care what came before.
Because what came before has been a rank failure.
because we have the largest and most powerful governments in human history.
Everything that came before has been a failure.
I suffered as a child from child abuse because society didn't do anything to stop it and in fact supported it.
And this was the result of 2,500 years of theology, morality, and philosophy.
So all of that shit was a total failure.
So when something's a total failure, you blank slate it, you wipe the slate clean, you empty whiteboard it, and you start from fucking scratch.
No history.
No culture, no momentum, no past.
If everything that led society to where it is was a failure, you have to ignore everything that came before except as a warning of what not to do.
Now, not that complicated.
How many philosophers wrote detailed tracts on parenting?
I mean, you hear it a little bit here and there.
John Locke mentions it in passing.
Rousseau talks about it in a little bit more detail, but it's monstrous.
And he himself was an abusive, terrible parent who abandoned his children to almost certain death in a wet nurse daycare factory in France.
Thanks, Dylan.
Dylan says, we can't get quality like this anywhere else.
True.
And I thank you for your support.
Thank you.
So, it's not complicated.
Everybody knows the child is the father of the man.
Everybody knows that what happens in childhood echoes forward through people's lives.
And because I wanted to stay, blank slate, which means to think for yourself, which means no inheritance, and the past is only an example of what not to do.
Like my mother was an example of what not to do.
And other people in my family were examples of what not to do.
I view the history of philosophy as a history of catastrophe and avoidance in general.
There's exceptions.
There's exceptions.
But the idea that when I took a philosophy class, I took Aristotle, I took a history philosophy class, I wrote an entire graduate school thesis on the history of philosophy.
It's a history of error because it does not address Actionable virtues, primarily.
The non-aggression principle, self-ownership, and property rights in childhood.
You cannot reason with adults who were not reasoned with as children.
You cannot teach reason to adults who were not reasoned with as children.
So rather than going around trying to teach everyone a language they don't understand and find no use for, like Esperanto, how about we just teach that language to children?
How about we grow rational people rather than try to convert rational people?
Especially because through reason you cannot bribe or threaten people to become rational.
And that's, of course, what all philosophers should have been doing.
The reason why they didn't remains relatively incomprehensible to me.
Ayn Rand herself wrote nothing about parenting.
Children, Do not exist in her world.
She herself never became a parent.
There are some rumors she had an abortion, who knows?
But there were no children in her environment.
All philosophers who failed to address childhood failed as philosophers.
Because the language of reason is far easier to teach to children than to try to inflict on adults.
Because if you weren't reasoned with as a child, You are allergic to reason because if you weren't reasoned with as a child and then somebody tries to reason with you as an adult, it reminds you of everything that was taken away from you, inflicted upon you, and that you were punished by.
Child abuse makes people revolt against reason because if you can be reasoned with as an adult, it reminds you of how you weren't reasoned with as a child.
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