Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - Life in Philosophy Grad School! CALL IN SHOW

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Sept. 25, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:38:29

Life in Philosophy Grad School! CALL IN SHOW

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	Hey, Stefan, can you hear me okay?
	I can hear you just fine.
	How are you doing?
	Pretty good.
	I mean, other than being a little sick here, I apologize.
	I caught something funky a few days ago.
	Oh, no, no problem at all.
	We've all been there.
	I've given speeches with half my brain pouring out my sinuses, so no sweat.
	Excellent.
	Well, I'm very honored that you invited me on.
	Just to, I guess, you're really interested what grad school is like in philosophy now.
	Sure, I'd love to hear.
	Yeah, are we beginning?
	Yes, it's a public call, of course, so just stay off names and places, and we're good to go.
	Okay, dog.
	So, yeah, I'm currently in my second year of grad school, philosophy.
	I guess we can start with the general format of grad school.
	I'm sure you took history grad school, which was a seminar format, correct?
	Yeah, it was mostly classes, a lot of reading and some group projects and that kind of stuff.
	And then a final thesis that went on and on and on, as you know.
	So go ahead.
	Right.
	Yeah, I would say philosophy is really similar in that regard.
	So most of the courses have been like in a roundtable seminar format where each week we are assigned readings and we study that and we go to class.
	A professor usually will give a brief lecture and then there'll be open discussion.
	Now, it really depends on how the professor approaches this.
	Like I've had one seminar course where it's more of like a typical class format where the professor standing up in front of everyone, you know, primarily lecturing, and then there would be people assigned to give like a 60-minute speech about the readings.
	That format's a little bit different than everyone kind of just chiming in in a seminar format.
	But that's primarily what the actual class format I dislike.
	It really depends on the professor's approach for the workload.
	Like there could be a weekly write-up or there could be a midterm paper, a final paper, or a different kind of project.
	Like I guess a lot of philosophy students want to be educators.
	So there's a lot of emphasis on that with pedagogy teaching.
	And so like you might have to create some modules to teach undergrads or something like that.
	But I would say it's, I've taken a couple electives in the history department, and history is certainly a lot more reading than philosophy.
	I would say the average weekly reading for a history seminar in grad school is about 300 pages.
	In philosophy, it's about 100 to 150 pages.
	Yeah, I remember taking a full-year course on Aristotle, and we spent about a week and a half on a paragraph.
	It can really dig deep.
	Yeah, that's certainly possible.
	Martin Heidegger, I believe, taught an entire philosophy course on just the first sentence of the Republic, you know, going down the little port city.
	I forget the name of the city, but he kept reinterpreting what that first line in the Republic meant.
	But fortunately, it's been more general in my studies at least, where, you know, we'll plow through a few major works of philosophy.
	Like I took social and political philosophy last semester and we hit the main marks there.
	We did Plato's Republic in its entirety.
	We did John Locke's Second Treatise.
	Then we did Hannah Arentz, The Human Condition, and we're able to go through all those pretty thoroughly.
	So I was really grateful for that.
	But getting into the contrast between philosophy and history, history, I feel it's a lot more reading and it's a lot more writing too.
	So history papers at the grad level are about 30 pages, whereas philosophy papers, they range from 15 to 20 pages.
	So I'm very like I'm not doing a thesis as a master's student.
	I'm just going to do a capstone.
	So I figured that a capstone?
	I'm not sure what that is.
	Well, it's in your final semester, they'll assign specific readings that kind of go over your experience, you know, what you've been studying in philosophy.
	And it's a three-credit course.
	And essentially, you have to, I believe you have to write a paper.
	There's tests and various factors that go into that.
	But you can do that instead of a thesis.
	And from what I've heard from some professors, a master's thesis nowadays is kind of frowned upon.
	Like there's no real weight to a master theses compared to the PhD level.
	Well, I mean, they want to keep people in the system, right?
	So of course they're going to downgrade.
	I mean, I think my master's was about 110 pages, if I remember rightly, or something like that.
	But I took on huge topics.
	So that's a matter of fact.
	I spoke that in philosophy as well, because I was asking questions because originally I wanted to do a thesis, but I was talked out of it and really into Schopenhauer, and I was kind of correlating a lot of different things, you know, like how he was influenced by Eastern philosophy.
	And that's what I did with my entrance paper.
	I wrote about the Eastern supplements and the world as will and representation, and that got me accepted into grad school.
	But I wanted to take that further and turn it into a master's thesis, but I was talked out of it.
	Honestly, with the like I'm doing a full load this semester.
	If I had to work on a thesis on top of that, I'd probably go insane because barely have enough time to, you know, especially taking, you know, the history because every week we're doing so much reading.
	And I'm doing actually an art of war class.
	So we started with Sun Tzu and we contrasted that with Mao's guerrilla warfare.
	Then we did Klausevitz, Carl von Klausevitz.
	You've heard of him?
	The Depression General.
	I love that because there's actually philosophy.
	I know there's philosophy and the art of war and all that, but Klausevitz, he really tapped into some Kant.
	I know he kind of works in the Hegelian dialectic a little bit.
	Well, I didn't really pinpoint that as much as also Plato.
	He worked in Plato's Tripartite Soul with his Trinity of Warfare.
	So I really enjoyed that in the Klausvitz.
	But that was a huge stone I had to read a couple of weeks ago.
	And I'm taking two philosophy courses on top of that.
	I'm taking German idealism and existentialism.
	So just the sheer amount of reading, if I had to do a master's thesis on top of that, I'd go insane.
	I'd just be strapped to my dev S 24-7.
	Yeah, I remember I had to do an unholy amount of reading for my master's thesis because I was doing, well, I was doing Plato, Locke, Kant, and Hegel.
	And anyway, I won't sort of get into the whole thesis thing here, but I was like, I had my own little corner of the library with my own little cubby, and I could leave the books there.
	And it was like my area, my little daimans.
	And I found out it was about a week after I'd handed in my thesis that the C D ROMs with searchable indexes came out for looking up these things because I, you know, I had to go old-fashioned, right?
	I had to go.
	I had to go to the indexes of the books and look up the topics that I wanted and make sure I got them in context and so on.
	And then the searchable C D-ROMs came out about a week after I handed in my thesis.
	So I guess it taught me well, but it would have been a whole lot easier the other way.
	So yeah, simply having searchable text is really a huge benefit.
	Oh, certainly.
	And I know in history, just from the electives I've taken, that they like you having a lot of sources to cite from.
	So philosophy may be required to have like five to ten sources of history.
	They require a whole lot more.
	So I just bought 15 because I plan to do my final paper on, it's kind of like blending anthropology with history, just the kind of cultural influences that influenced the warfighters during World War II.
	And, you know, like how the Japanese were influenced by the samurai ideals and all that.
	So I just ordered a whole bunch of books for that.
	It was like 15 bucks.
	And the professor just gave me the green light for that.
	But I know if it was under 15, he probably would have recommended me, you know, searching for more sources.
	So yeah, history, they definitely need a lot of sources for that, just from my experience.
	Well, but mine was actually more about, I mean, it was more about philosophical concepts that I was arguing.
	My basic argument was that the philosophers who believe strongly in a higher realm, the new amenal realm, the realm of forms and so on, inevitably end up having to advocate for dictatorship as their ideal political model, whereas the more rational empiricists end up with limited government.
	And that was sort of the general.
	And I had sort of go through and find all of the sources and prove all of that.
	And the argumentation was quite tricky.
	And yeah, so it wasn't so much in history.
	It was directly in philosophy.
	And yeah, searchable indexes would have been a big plus.
	All right.
	So are you in your 20s or 30s?
	Oh, I just turned 40.
	So I'm a late bloomer where it comes to philosophy.
	I was in the military.
	I was in the Air Force.
	Now, you sound older, but I wasn't sure if it was a cult or not.
	It's both.
	But I was in the Air Force.
	And then after I got out, I did the white collar job stuff.
	And then I got my bachelor's in business.
	And the entire time I was doing my bachelor's, I was, of course, born into philosophy.
	So I realized like in Texas, if you're a Texas veteran, yeah, it was called the Hazelwood Act.
	So I can go to any public university and do courses for free.
	So that's what I'm doing, philosophy.
	So I'm not actually spending money on the courses.
	Now, I do have to pay the school fees and all that.
	But no, I'm a late bloomer.
	Like, I'm really unsure what I want to do after this.
	Like, something I've always wanted to be more well-rounded in is philosophy because you can learn so much on your own.
	But having that friction between you and the professor is really important just to kind of smooth out your rough edges and all that.
	Like you're mentioning the numinal realm.
	And something that I always interpreted with Kant is that the thing in itself was like there was a thing that to it.
	But the thing in itself for Kant is just an epistemic boundary.
	It's just the you have the limit of what is knowable.
	Sorry, I'm having to pop up, come up here, but do you still hear me?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Okay, yeah, team just pop up real quick.
	But that's something that was really eliminating when I came in.
	So right now I'm doing a one-on-one course with the professor in German idealism.
	And we're doing it at breakneck speed.
	So really fortunate to have this.
	And by the way, the critique of pure reason, that is the most difficult text I have ever read.
	But it's great to actually sit down and pound it out and flesh out exactly what Kant is saying there, especially the two different editions, the A edition and the B edition and the differences between those.
	But with I was totally, because I got into Kant through Schopenhauer.
	So I was learning all this Kantian terminology to understand Schopenhauer better.
	And Schopenhauer, for the thing in itself, there is a thingness to it.
	It's will.
	Will is the thing in itself for Schopenhauer.
	But I kind of interpreted there was a thingness to the thing in itself for Kant.
	But no, it's an epistemic boundary.
	It's the limitation of our knowledge.
	It's not an actual thing.
	So that in itself is wonderful that I'm able to be corrected in that instance and be better at philosophy.
	But I understand what you're saying about the higher realm.
	A lot of people interpret Plato's forms, especially like he has the different levels, like the noble lie with the bronze souls, the silver souls and the gold souls.
	And he kind of places aristocracy above democracy and frowns upon democracy and all that.
	And a lot of people interpret that as could lead to authoritarianism.
	But my interpretation of Plato's Republic, yes, there's the political side of it, but there's also like a psychological side.
	Like the whole thing is about harmony.
	And that's expressed throughout the Republic.
	But did I answer your question?
	Yeah, I mean, of course, with Plot, Plato, he watched his mentor and beloved father figure get voted to take Hemlock.
	So I can see why he'd be a little bit leery of democracy as a whole.
	And of course, when he tried to get into politics, he ended up being sold into slavery.
	It was only redeemed by a fortunate student who came by who bought him for a song of the dance.
	So, I mean, yeah, there are definitely personal experiences with Plato that would lead him that way.
	But yeah, totalitarianism does seem to be the case when you believe in a higher realm that's inaccessible to the general census because then you need to be part of a mystery religion to make good decisions in society.
	And most people aren't.
	So they just have to be told what to do, which is why I think the noble lie comes in.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And, you know, we have our own kind of noble lie here in America where this is the American dream where you can go out and be successful at anything, which is obviously a fucking lie.
	But that's kind of what it's presented as when you're in school.
	It's like you can become the president.
	You can become a doctor or astronaut.
	It's all bullshit.
	But yeah, we kind of have our noble lie here in the US.
	So that in itself hasn't gone away.
	Having that, you know, civilizational or societal type of noble lie just to kind of have like this idealistic view of the nation that you live in.
	Well, I mean, I wouldn't say that the noble lie, it's not particular to America, is you can go out and be anything you want.
	What they're saying is that, you know, the pursuit of happiness, not the guarantee of happiness.
	There's no legal barriers to have you go out and stop trying to and try there's no legal barriers to stop you going out and trying to become a captain of industry or something like that.
	That doesn't mean that everyone can do it.
	Like there's no law that says I can't go and be a ballet dancer.
	I just I won't be a ballet dancer or an opera singer or something like that.
	But I think one of the big lies in the West is that we vote and because we vote in our politicians, they listen to what we do and therefore we have to obey them because the majority has gotten what they want.
	And I had Dr. Brian Kaplan on my show many years ago, The Myth of the Rational Voter.
	And also there's been countless studies that what the people actually want and what they vote for has almost no correlation to what the government actually does.
	So I think the noble lie is, well, hey, man, you voted for this, so you have to obey it.
	And it's like, but there's almost no correlation between what the voters express that they want and what the politicians actually do.
	I mean, heaven's sakes, I mean, didn't the Trump voters want the Epstein files released and all of that kind of stuff?
	So there's sort of not much correlation and barely any, but I think the noble lie is, and it's a very convenient lie for those in power.
	Like we give you a vote, which legitimizes the political process.
	And then you have to obey us because, hey, man, we gave you the vote.
	But, you know, if they just do whatever they want, regardless of the vote to a large degree, with Trump being, I think, an outlier in that area as a whole.
	But it's a very convenient way to get people to obey you to pretend that they're participating in your decisions.
	Yeah, certainly.
	I certainly agree with that.
	George Washington warned us about political parties forming.
	So it's more about what those parties want to do than the actual will of the people voting for those parties.
	So like we, you know, there's the promised wall that Trump would do, and that got him his first presidency.
	And where is it?
	Where's the wall?
	But it seems like he's cracking down more on illegal immigration now.
	So at least there's that.
	But I remember like Anne Coulter was really pushing for Trump and a strong voice there.
	And she was super pissed off when that wall wasn't built.
	But yeah, I definitely see that as a kind of noble lie.
	Representative democracy.
	So as goes back to George Washington with the political parties, you know, ruling more than the actual will of the people.
	Yeah, or the idea that the government is interested in teaching you how to think.
	We've got to have kids, got to educate them, got to put them in these government schools for 12 years straight, where they emerge with no capacity to think, very few math skills, few writing skills, and absolutely zero economically valuable skills at all.
	I mean, it's just a holding pen to release the parents to go to work so that they can pay more taxes and to program the children into leftist gobbledygook nonsense.
	But yeah, so this idea that government education is anything other than programming people to obey the government and be dependent is, you know, it's the old saying, like if you send your children to be educated by Caesar, don't be shocked when they come back as Romans.
	Oh, certainly.
	Even in higher education, when I took microeconomics and macroeconomics, it was just a whole bunch of memory work and memorize all these different terms, and that's it.
	And, you know, after the course is done, you brainfart all that.
	It's all gone.
	Right after the course is over, you don't really retain much.
	There's a lot of courses like that in business.
	I have met people with MBAs that can't even spell.
	Like, it's ridiculous.
	But I would say philosophy is a little bit different in that regard.
	Like you do get confronted by the professors.
	They will grill you once you are wrong about something.
	Yeah, I just had a professor try and do that with me on Wednesday.
	I listened to that and John or whatever his name is.
	It's not an example of what I've experienced at grad school.
	No, but I really, sorry, but I really appreciated him calling in.
	I really did.
	I mean, I enjoyed the conversation.
	I'm very glad that it happened because, you know, for better or for worse, I have a big voice in the world of modern philosophy.
	I've had like a billion, almost a billion views and downloads.
	So I have a big voice.
	And it's always sort of surprised me that more professors of philosophy aren't calling in to set me straight, to help me think better, to communicate their great skills to an audience.
	Because, you know, I mean, certainly in my heyday, a professor might teach, you know, a couple of thousand people over his whole career, but a professor who called in and had a debate or a conversation with me could reach like a million people.
	And I guess it was all surprising to me that more philosophy professors didn't call in and say, you know, here's what I think you got right.
	Here's where I think you could improve.
	And, you know, give a sort of public lecture because they care about philosophy.
	And I have a big voice and a big audience.
	And I was just kind of surprised.
	And then I thought, well, maybe it's because reputational damage, you know?
	But then, of course, I thought, well, I mean, everybody who studies the history of philosophy knows for absolute certain that philosophers suffer reputational damage if they're good.
	If they're bad, nobody cares, right?
	But if they're good, and we won't go through the whole list, but if everybody knows the number of philosophers who've been attacked and slandered and lied about and maligned, that's just the gig.
	That's the deal.
	And so I thought, well, it can't be because of reputational damage because they are fully aware that good philosophers, and by good, I don't necessarily mean right or correct in every instance, obviously, but I mean like has some influence on the world, has some significant influence on the world.
	And yeah, I was just kind of surprised that none of them said, gee, you know, because they only have philosophers to study because people in the past took risks.
	And yet philosophy professors don't seem to want to come on my show.
	Maybe it's too risky, in which case it's like, well, then you're just studying men more courageous than you are, which seems not ideal.
	Yeah, that kind of goes back to Plato in the Republic.
	Like philosophers in a democracy are delegated to the fringes in a democracy.
	So for Plato.
	Well, no, but they don't have to be on the fringes.
	They could just call in.
	And if they were worried about reputational damage, we could just use a voice changer.
	I mean, that's, you know, not the end of the world.
	They could put on a Scottish accent for all I care, right?
	But right.
	I was a little concerned about that too, because obviously in the humanities, it's quite left-leaning.
	And there's a lot of people who are really passionate about their political beliefs.
	Oh, yeah, we saw that last week.
	So I was a little concerned in that regard, but as long as we speak generally, I think we're okay.
	Well, and of course, you're welcome to say, as everyone does, well, I don't agree with everything Steph says.
	I mean, I'm sure you don't.
	And if it sounds any consolation, neither do I, because I've been doing this for 43 years and I've changed my opinion on, not my opinion.
	I hopefully improved my arguments on a wide variety of topics.
	So you and I wouldn't.
	I can see eye to eye on everything for sure.
	But so tell me a little bit.
	I mean, how is the philosophy departments that you've been exposed to, are they leftist too?
	I can see that in, I don't know, the education department or the social sciences or whatever, but the sort of rigorous logic stuff, I'm not sure that skews specifically political.
	So what has your experience been of sort of political bias or perspectives?
	Just like the humanities as a whole, and I think it's just universal, not just to the U.S., but Europe as well.
	Philosophy is certainly left-leaning with the faculty and all that.
	Now, I've had some very left-leaning professors, but they still knew their shit.
	So I was still very valuable.
	The courses are still very valuable, but occasionally there will be a contemporary political conversation.
	And they might try to work in what the material that we're reading and interpreting that through a modern lens.
	But no, there's certainly in philosophy, there's certainly a left-leaning skewering there.
	Now, is that because, is that just taken for granted?
	Or do they make the case and they say, you know, we're about rigorous logic from first principles and that just leads you to the left?
	And here's how and here's why.
	Or is it just accepted as that's the good?
	A lot of the people, you know, in the, you know, the humanities in general, they want to be educators.
	And those types typically are a little bit more on the progressive side.
	Now, I'm not saying, you know, that's 100% universal.
	Certainly there's right-wing professors.
	Like when I was an undergrad, I went to a private Baptist university, and I was primarily right-wing professors and libertarians.
	But I'm in a public university setting now, and it's like the complete opposite.
	Yeah, you can't, you can't, whoever pays the piper calls the tune, right?
	You can't do much to criticize the state if the state pays and protects your job.
	Yeah.
	So it's something that it was eye-opening to begin with.
	And I did clash a few times with other individuals, but mainly I don't stick to politics at all at school.
	I'm there to learn about the material.
	But do the professors ever talk about that conflict of interest?
	Because if in the medical field and in other fields, but in primarily the medical field, if you're paid by Pfizer, then you're supposed to disclose that, like, because that's a potential conflict of interest so that people are aware that you have a financial conflict of interest.
	And of course, philosophy is fundamentally, to me at least fundamentally, is about ethics.
	And so do professors say, here's my political perspectives, but remember, I'm paid by the state.
	So I may not be fully objective and I'm certainly willing to have my arguments attacked and overturned, but I have enough self-knowledge because, of course, Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living and you know thyself and so on.
	And so I have enough self-knowledge to know, because I love Socrates, that I have a conflict of interest being protected and paid by the state.
	And so here's my political perspectives, but be aware of this potential conflict of interest because that's what's required in other fields where you have to reveal your source of income so that people can take that into account when evaluating your perspective.
	So obviously here in Texas, we've had that DEI ban.
	And I'll just say this.
	I feel like I could get into a little bit of trouble by expounding the detailings of your question.
	When the DEI ban happened in Texas, like my university had a DEI office, and there was a lot of backlash to that.
	A lot of people were really upset, including people in my department, and passions were really high.
	So, yeah, it's well, I'm sorry, I'm not talking about DEI specifically at all.
	I'm talking about if you're going to evaluate the state, but you are paid by the state, and not only are you paid by the state, but your entire job is fenced in and protected by state edicts and state power.
	Would that not be something to talk about, right?
	Yeah, certainly.
	And there's it doesn't matter whether you're DEI hire or not, you're still paid and protected by the state.
	And it would seem to me that that would be something to discuss.
	Like, if I had a particular, let's say, company XYZ, if corporation XYZ was paying all my bills and I was talking about corporation XYZ, it would be unethical for me to not disclose that I was being paid by XYZ.
	Like if you're in the financial reporting industry or you write financial articles, if you write about a company and you hold stock in that company, you kind of have to tell people, right?
	And so that sort of basic ethics of disclosing conflicts of interest, I guess that would be something that I would expect philosophy professors to do when talking about politics, saying, well, I am talking about politics, but remember, I'm paid by the state.
	So take that into account when you're evaluating my position.
	I'm paid and protected by the state.
	I get summers off, four months off in the summer because of the government.
	I get my sabbaticals every couple of years where I get to go and write and read on the taxpayer's dime.
	And nobody can come and compete for my position because the government or the contracts enforced by the government require a PhD.
	So that to me would just be sort of basic disclosure of conflict, a potential conflict of interest.
	And I'm just wondering if anyone's done anything like that.
	No, no.
	Wild.
	I mean, it's pretty much assumed that they're all paid by the state and all that.
	But yeah, it's something that it's not really expound upon.
	And I guess people aren't, I mean, I know that everyone knows that they're paid by the state, but it should certainly for undergrads, it would be important to remind people who may not have been exposed to that kind of thing.
	And I suppose if an undergraduate were to stick his hand up or her hand up and say, hey, but you're paid and protected by the state.
	Do you think that has any influence on your view of government?
	I mean, would there not be a rather chilly silence in the room in that situation?
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	Especially, you know, when they're criticizing the state, but the state allows them to push their political opinions.
	Yeah, there is kind of a catch-22 there.
	But yeah, it's not something I've really experienced.
	I understand that, you know, obviously with a lot of left-leaning sentiments, it's more about the passion that they have.
	And a lot of that sentiment comes out to, you know, disagreeing with the current administration and all that.
	But this semester, there's not much of that happening.
	It's all just been about philosophy.
	Understand, like the there's a lot of stuff happening on campuses about Charlie Kirk being assassinated.
	And one of my professors said, We're not mentioning that at all.
	Like, you know, we're just going to stick to the material that we're covering.
	Sorry, so you had a professor who explicitly said, although a truly groundbreaking and horrifying political assassination occurred because of philosophy, because of moral ideas and arguments, the philosophy professor said, we are not going to talk about that.
	Well, he was cautioning us because, you know, obviously students have been getting in trouble and expelled from universities.
	So it's more of a caution not to go there.
	And he preferred to just delve into the material that we're covering.
	Sorry, sorry.
	Just so he wasn't like, this is not going to be part of our course.
	He was cautioning students to not talk about it at all.
	Like, don't post videos because you might get kicked out of university.
	No, I think it was in that specific class that he was teaching that we're going to be covering the material and not delving into that.
	But that would be interesting because you were talking about Klaus Witz and Mao and Sun Tzu and so on.
	I mean, so they're willing to talk about political violence, political terrorism, and so on, but just not in any contemporary way.
	Well, it's because a lot of students have been getting in trouble.
	And obviously, you don't want to end up being on the evening news because, you know, so.
	Sorry, and what is the perception about why?
	I mean, I don't know if he said this, and I appreciate you sharing this, but what is his perspective as to why students are getting in trouble?
	Well, obviously, people have been mocking Charlie Kirk's death, and that has resulted in a lot of videos going viral.
	Like Greg Abbott called for the governor of Texas called for one student to be expelled, not at my university, just at a different university.
	And but I think we're buying a little too much into this.
	Like, I don't, I apologize for, I'm still recovering from being sick, but he just kind of gave a little warning, like, hey, if we delve into this, you know, it could get into some turbulent waters.
	But isn't that the job of philosophy is to get into turbulent waters?
	I'm sorry if I'm missing that, but I mean, what a fascinating thing to talk about in a philosophy course, which is the political assassination and people's responses to it and where that fits into philosophical concepts and virtues and so on and partisanship and cognitive dissonance.
	And, you know, it's a fascinating topic.
	But again, I understand that it could ruffle some feathers, but I mean, they're studying people who ruffled everyone's feathers in the past.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	No, you're certainly correct to point that out.
	Like, philosophy is about, you know, questioning, you know, the state that we live in and the different ideals and how those clash and what is the most moral in that regard.
	But I apologize.
	I may be putting too much projection onto what the professor said.
	But it was a very brief passing comment that he said that he mentioned that people have been getting in trouble at universities for discussing.
	And I don't want to push you on this topic, so I recognize the sensitivity of it.
	So I would just point out that from my standpoint, and we can move on after this, but I would just point out that from my standpoint, for a philosophy professor to say, don't do something because it might get you in trouble, does not seem to me specifically philosophical.
	I think it was more about be careful.
	Right, right, right.
	So be careful, but how about not be careful, but be moral, right?
	Like, let's look at the ethics of mocking and doing some Korean TikTok dance over somebody getting shot through the neck for expressing peaceful and rational opinions, or at least hopefully rational opinions or arguments.
	So rather than saying, don't do stuff that will get you in trouble, how about don't do stuff that's kind of cold-hearted and immoral?
	But, you know, it might get you in trouble is not a very philosophical argument.
	That's just rank consequentialism.
	And that's sort of how you would train a puppy to not go on the rug.
	But anyway, I get it's a sensitive topic.
	So I just, I know the professor pretty well.
	He's also teaching me German idealism 101.
	And I think it was more of just a warning for other people that may be really passionate and may, you know, go over the boundaries and get themselves in trouble.
	I think it was more of a warning to them.
	Again, I may be projecting.
	I may not be accurately presenting what he said.
	It was just a really brief passing comment that he made.
	And I do have utmost respect for this professor.
	So that was.
	Yeah, he was doing, he was giving a caution, and I sort of understand that.
	Now, what's the, sorry, if there's other stuff that you wanted to mention, I have a couple of questions, but I don't want to preempt if there's other topics that you wanted to talk about.
	And I really appreciate this view into the modern academia.
	Yeah, certainly.
	Yep.
	Feel free to ask anything you want.
	So what would you say the general purpose is, and let me just give you a tiny bit of backstory as to why I asked this.
	So I had a professor.
	Most of my professors really loved what I did, although they disagreed with me quite strongly, which of course turned out to be really great in hindsight because it gave me a chance to sharpen my rhetorical blades, so to speak.
	But I had a professor who made me rewrite an essay twice.
	And I was very tempted to ask him, although I chickened out at the time, I was very tempted to ask him, okay, but what's the purpose of history?
	Because for me, the purpose of history is to learn moral lessons to avoid them in the future.
	And I guess I never quite understood with that professor, or indeed with most professors, like what is the larger purpose of history.
	So for me, the purpose of history is to change the future by learning the lessons of the past because you can't change the past, but you can use it to, like, the purpose of pain is not about the past, right?
	You pick up something as a kid.
	It's too hot.
	You burn yourself.
	The purpose of the pain is not about the past.
	It's about preventing you from doing something in the future.
	And that, to me, was why you study history.
	And I did have some of those conversations with some professors, but this guy kind of gave me the creeps in the willies.
	And I ended up doing quite well in the course, but that was only because I basically had to just do what he said.
	And, you know, I was a young kid and all of that.
	So it took me a while to get more of my moral musculature developed.
	But in philosophy departments, is there a sense as to the why?
	Because, you know, that's the fundamental question of philosophy is the why.
	And is there a larger sense of purpose or mission?
	Is the goal where we want to get people to think more critically, more rationally?
	We want to get them to challenge their assumptions.
	We want to get them to be resistant to propaganda.
	We want to oppose sophistry and promote Socratic reasoning.
	Is there a larger mission in any of the sort of philosophy people that you've been around in this arena?
	So for critical thinking, certainly, I think that's where the roundtables and the seminars, they really flourish with having people discuss the text because you want to do it through a critical lens.
	And when someone veers off into nonsense land being corrected or just having some rough edges that need to be smoothed out, they're given that opportunity.
	Last week, I saw one student completely be grilled while presenting a section of Heidegger's Being in Time.
	And I did not expect that student to be grilled.
	I thought he was actually doing really well with his presentation.
	But the professor kept grilling them and grilling them and grilling them.
	And I see the benefit of that because you're constantly having to delve deeper into the material that's being covered and really consider it at a deep level, especially when we're getting to Heidegger and all that.
	Heidegger itself is something that I'm glad I'm finally getting around to, but it was very complex stuff.
	So the grilling, sorry, and I know, of course, you can't recall it verbatim, I'm sure, but what sort of grilling?
	Is it more definitions or is it exposing contradictions in the text or contradictions in the argument?
	What sort of form did that grilling take?
	Well, there was Heidegger brings up the word facticity.
	I'm sorry, what was the word?
	Facticity.
	Facticity.
	Okay.
	Sounds like truthiness, but all right, facticity.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah.
	And the professor asked what the definition of that was.
	And the student couldn't give a satisfactory answer.
	And the professor kept grilling him about what does this mean in the context that Heidegger's saying in relation to design.
	And it turns out the professor is actually curious what it meant.
	He didn't know.
	And so it was a learning experience for everyone.
	I understand he used that as an opportunity to try to get to what the true meaning of facticity is for Heidegger in that context, which people looked up online what other Heideggerians say it means, but the professor found all of those unsatisfactory.
	So he was using a specific instance of Heidegger that's universally unclear with all the scholars to really have the student given the presentation consider deeply the material that's being covered by certainly bringing something like facticity that there's some issues there with interpretation.
	So I feel like even when there's not a correct answer to something, but just having that, just the discipline and the rigor to dig deep into that is beneficial overall.
	And that's part of philosophy is that critical thinking and trying to reach the best conclusion, the most preferable.
	So I feel that being very rewarding and philosophy grads.
	As well, I understand you're talking about the historical context.
	Granted, it's really cool that you're able to do your master's thesis on philosophy in the history department.
	Like whenever I mention Plato or Kant and my history elected as a professor, it just kind of gives me a weird look.
	But in the philosophy department, it's like different linguist in different departments.
	But I would say professors feel like some of them at least, and I'm speaking for all of them, of course, but there's some that may view the current administration or the current, you know, what's happening with the Trump administration being like the downfall of democracy and all that.
	And do they invite criticism in a 360?
	Like when I was in the business world, you have sort of 360 reviews where you don't just give performance reviews to your employees, but your bosses give it to you, your colleagues give it to you, your employees give it to you so that you can get a sort of 360 review of what you're doing and how to improve.
	Do the professors say, yes, I think that Trump is the downfall of democracy or something like that.
	Let's hear the counter arguments.
	Let's examine this.
	Let's examine even my own perspectives from a critical point.
	Yes, I have heard professors ask for, you know, if there's any contrary opinions or anything like that.
	And I've had some professors wish students would speak up and present contrary opinions.
	But the thing is, I've had just personal experience.
	I've clashed with some individuals, not professors, but some other students.
	And I realize it's like it's very fruitless for me to go down that channel and voice my authentic opinion about the current state of the world and where we live in and all that.
	But yeah, it just gets messy because there's different factions of different students having different views.
	And typically what we would consider woke, they tend to be the loudest and they tend to be the most dominant voices.
	So it's really, I don't know.
	I prefer just to me personally just to kind of stick to my own devices and not let that stuff get to me.
	And have you seen if the professor invites a contrary opinion, particularly about current events, have you seen those conversations go well as a whole or do they usually go badly or how does that work?
	I would say even if someone has a contrary opinion in some instances that they realize that it could just turn into, you know, I really, so like me personally, and this is just my opinion, not representative at any university or anything like that.
	Like I've I've clashed with individuals and they catch you off guard because it's not one-on-one argument.
	It's numerous people.
	It's like you're poking the wasp nest.
	So I realized early on, like, yeah, let's just not go down that road.
	It's going to, I'm going to get upset and I'm going to go home and I'll be ruminating and it's not going to do me any favors poking away.
	Now, is this sort of in class or in the calf?
	It's happened more outside of class.
	But there was one instance where a couple individuals spoke up to me for othering, which I really don't go into details and all that, but they viewed that I was othering, quote unquote, othering another group of people, and they both really just loudly shut me down.
	Beautiful old struggle session, right?
	Yeah.
	So that's when I kind of realized, oh, I need to be quiet in this regard.
	But, you know, that's just a small part of grad school.
	Like, you do have the political orientations and all that.
	But I still view my education as still very valuable.
	Like, I love I have to be very disciplined to get through some very difficult texts and understand what I'm reading, especially of Kant, the first critique.
	Oh, my goodness, that was a behemoth to tackle.
	And, you know, I felt so accomplished from doing that.
	And, you know, every Monday, I have two-hour one-on-one discussions with the professor where we discuss the text very thoroughly.
	And he ensures that I'm getting it.
	I feel so it's very wonderful to have that experience and be more well-rounded in that regard, especially a section of philosophy that I'm very interested in and getting a good education there.
	So I feel like the benefits definitely outweigh the cons of perhaps the ideological side of some of the students.
	Definitely not all.
	Like, I would say maybe it's one fourth of the students share that the quote-unquote wokeness and they're very vocal about it.
	So it's definitely not all of them.
	Yeah.
	And good luck saying if people start talking about white privilege and you say, I'm sorry, you're othering white people.
	Yeah, good luck with that, right?
	Oh, no.
	Yeah, that's a nightmare.
	Or, you know, anybody who expresses any satisfaction about Charlie Kirk's assassination or says good riddance or he deserved it or something is like, you're othering conservatives, you're othering Christians.
	And it's like, yeah, othering seems to be kind of a one-way street as these things tend to be.
	So how did you, I'm sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, fortunately, I have personally not heard anything negative in that regard about Charlie Kirk's assassination.
	So take that as you will.
	Like people are just not talking about it that much.
	But that is negative.
	To not talk about it and say, look, obviously this was an evil act and we should talk about it because that is something that is contemporaneous and is the result of a great evil.
	And we need to trace the roots of the thought that might have ended up with this justification because we assume that the shooter felt that he was justified.
	And we have to look at the justifications because justifications open the door to these kinds of evil actions.
	And to me, I think that would be like, let's trace the threads of what he believed and how he came to believe it.
	And because this is, I mean, this is crime and punishment stuff, right?
	So the murderer felt that he was justified.
	And in the same way that Raskolnikov in crime and punishment felt that he was justified in murdering the old pawnbroker.
	And the belief systems that give rise to those justifications, I think, are really important to examine.
	So not saying anything about it is interesting because if they could use it to further their own political ends, I'm sure they would say a lot about it.
	So it's kind of a confession that they can't use it to further their political aims.
	Therefore, there's no point talking about it at all.
	But it would be the same if a prominent leftist got shot.
	It would be fascinating and instructive and hopefully preventive to examine the ideological threats that led to those justifications and figure out what philosophy can do to de-escalate or oppose those ideas.
	I certainly agree with you, Mr. McBallino.
	Like, I do see it as a quote-unquote turning point of this political assassination because it's not just killing a person, it's attacking what that person stood for, their ideas.
	And that's what philosophy is.
	It's about testing ideas and understanding where those ideas come from.
	So I certainly agree with you in that aspect.
	Well, seeing, especially the combination of Kirk and Kimmel, right?
	So seeing all the leftists, you know, protesting, outraged, canceling subscriptions and so on because a late-night comedian lost his job, but they specifically weren't having the same level of outrage when a young family man got murdered in front of his wife and kids.
	That's troubling on every conceivable level.
	And that to me would be a very interesting philosophical discussion to have.
	Indeed, indeed.
	Another thing, too, this semester, I'm not taking political or social philosophy.
	So I'm taking existentialism, German idealism, and the art of war.
	I guess, but the art of war is in the history department.
	It's not the philosophy department.
	But that could be another reason why, like, I would definitely see if this was political and social philosophy, Charlie Kirk, his assassination being discussed in that course.
	But it could also be, you know, just the type of courses I'm taking this semester, why there's not a spotlight on that right now.
	Or you could say we're not going to talk about the Charlie Kirk murder because whatever beliefs led that person to murder Charlie Kirk may be so prevalent that it might be physically dangerous for us to do so, which would be an example of how violence works.
	Yeah, certainly.
	That could be a factor as well.
	There's probably a multitude of reasons why I. I mean, do you think if a leftist had been murdered, it would not be discussed as well?
	In these specific courses, I don't see a reason why it would be because, you know, the content of these courses aren't dealing with social or political philosophy.
	No, but moral philosophy, for sure.
	I mean, most philosophers focus on moral philosophy.
	Yeah, you're right.
	So like what would Kant have to say about this or Hegel or categorical imperatives for Kant?
	Then you have Heidegger, which, you know, care is very important for the interaction of designs.
	Like care is, you know, very, very important.
	So compassion, even Schopenhauer, which he viewed compassion as very important.
	Nietzsche's will to power would be interesting to discuss in this context.
	Yeah, yeah, a political will to power happening right now.
	But yeah, there's certainly a lot of different ways you can look at it.
	And I kind of do wish that, you know, I was in political philosophy right now where we had that discussion.
	I think it might be illuminating.
	Well, again, I would argue that it would be more relevant to moral philosophy than political philosophy.
	Because what he did certainly was politically motivated, in my opinion.
	But it is The question of when, you know, just war theory, when is violence, justified self-defense theory, and so on.
	You know, if the shooter believed that Charlie Kirk was advocating for the murder of himself or people that he liked, this is the old, you know, do you go back and kill Hitler when he's little?
	That argument, right?
	When is preemptive violence acceptable?
	When is, you know, you don't have to wait for the guy to cut off your arm with a chainsaw to use self-defense if he's just running at you.
	He hasn't harmed you yet, but he's going to.
	What's the relationship between words and violence?
	I mean, there's a lot to talk about philosophically from this kind of stuff, but.
	No, you're right.
	You're very right.
	I also get it's volatile and could be challenging.
	And it also might reveal a certain bloodthirstiness, you know, because I think that's what's come out of the left.
	Yeah, yeah, over the last week is a certain kind of bloodthirstiness.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	No, I certainly agree.
	There's they want blood.
	It was very apparent.
	So, yeah.
	So next question.
	You said you had another question.
	Oh, yeah.
	So how did you get into philosophy, your interest in philosophy as a whole?
	Oh, that's a great question.
	Thank you very much for asking that.
	So my father, he was part of the Theosophical Society.
	So he exposed me to what they interpret as philosophy, quote-unquote, which is a mishmash of a lot of different practices, a lot of it being Eastern and all that.
	And so I had always heard the word philosophy and kind of, as a child, I correlated it to more of esotericism.
	However, it's actually through music that I got into traditional philosophy.
	I was really into heavy metal and extreme metal, as well as classical music.
	And there's a lot of Nietzschean themes in metal.
	And so I started reading Nietzsche.
	When I was in the Air Force, I had The Will to Power, this book, Zarathustra, and read those while I was in Japan while stationed there.
	But it was all metal.
	And there's, you know, classical music too, there's a lot of Nietzsche references.
	And, you know, there's Mahler and Strauss.
	And so got into Nietzsche and started working my way backwards from Nietzsche.
	Eventually landed on Schopenhauer.
	And that really, it just really resonated with me on a lot of different levels.
	Because at that point in time, I had delved into some Eastern philosophies, especially at Vaitub and Danta, which really spoke to me, non-dualism.
	And here's a Western philosopher who's a trust.
	Of course, Schopenhauer, his knowledge of Hinduism and Buddhism, it was just now being presented in Europe.
	Like there wasn't a lot of information on it when Schopenhauer was getting into it.
	So it's kind of at the forefront of that.
	And a lot of what he said may not be 100% correct just because it was in this nascent stage there in Europe while he was writing about it.
	But getting into Schopenhauer just blew my world, especially when I got into his aesthetics and music.
	And I would say I've always kind of viewed philosophy as I know the definition of it.
	A lot of people say it's the love of wisdom.
	But for me, it's illumination.
	And illumination can take forms outside of traditional philosophy.
	It could take form in music, take form in the arts, it could take form.
	And whatever that broadens or expands our minds and understanding, I would say is philosophy.
	And Schopenhauer really, really resonated with me and got into him.
	Then, you know, to understand Schopenhauer, you need to get into Kant.
	So got into Kant.
	Now I'm very fortunate to be studying, you know, very formally Kant.
	Also got into Plato and delved into a little bit of Neoplatonism.
	I wouldn't say I'm a Neoplatonist, more like traditional Plato and some other Platonists.
	But yeah, of course, you know, just started expanding from there more and more.
	But I would say initially, my interest in philosophy came from my father, but that was more from the esoteric side.
	But music is what thrusted me into traditional philosophy, if that answers your question.
	It does, yeah.
	I mean, I think that it sounds to me, and obviously, correct me if I'm going astray, it sounds to me like you got more into maybe muscular or manly philosophy out of the metal.
	Because the esoteric stuff, you know, this tentative stuff kind of drives me.
	Like, I had a guy at the show last night who was saying he thinks that two and two make four.
	And that kind of esoteric stuff is very sort of tentative, very sort of world consciousness, brain, soul uniting stuff.
	I was always looking for something more practical, Anglo-Saxon, perhaps robust, certain, because if I'm going to build my knowledge base, I want to build it on certainties, not on sort of this mystical, goopy, everyone is everything kind of stuff, which struck me as, I mean, it's pathologically female.
	It's an extension of female nature to the point of absurdity.
	Yeah, you would probably like Schopenhauer thinking about this.
	Have you read Schopenhauer?
	I've read some Schopenhauer.
	I've certainly been very curious about, because, of course, most people will talk about Schopenhauer's view of women in the modern context.
	Yeah, that's exactly what you're thinking.
	Yeah, so tell me, tell me a little bit about the stuff that you like about Schopenhauer.
	Oh, like I was saying, I like his aesthetics because he gives music metaphysical weight.
	So there's like a metaphysical aspect of music.
	And I've experienced something kind of transcendental with music, especially sitting up front at a symphony like Bruckner's ninth or eighth symphony and just being transported into a different realm.
	Like everything about the phenomenal world just disappears.
	And I'm just, you know, focusing straight on the musical forms.
	But with Nietzsche, you brought up the will to power.
	Nietzsche was really influenced by Schopenhauer's The Will to Survive, which is very Darwinian.
	But Schopenhauer viewed that there's a metaphysical will embedded in everything.
	And that kind of correlated to some of the esoteric stuff I was into, like the Ed Vita Ventanta, the non-dualism, and all that.
	Of course, I wasn't really into Christianity because it is dualism or pluralism, depending how you look at it.
	Sorry, you mean sort of the mind-body stuff?
	Yeah, yeah.
	But yeah, I felt that Schopenhauer had a more coherent metaphysical system than Nietzsche.
	It was more fleshed out.
	And I felt it was more convincing in that regard.
	Like, Nietzsche, there's a lot of commentary.
	Like, I saw some criticism of Nietzsche would have focused more inwards and got into metaphysics more, that he could have been one of the main thinkers in that realm.
	Well, and who knows what he might have achieved if he hadn't gone mad, whether we got symbolists from that unfortunate prostitute or not.
	Yeah, some people say Nietzsche is very thought-provoking.
	He's like, he's king of the aphorisms, which really make you think, but he's not a systemic concept builder from metaphysics to epistemology to ethics.
	He's an observationalist and an incredibly keen one.
	Very thought-provoking, but not a system builder.
	Correct.
	Very correct.
	But Schopenhauer is all about building systems.
	So he's in the Kantian tradition.
	So, yeah, that's what I was initially drawn to Schopenhauer.
	And there's, you know, the element of music and aesthetics just reaffirmed his philosophy for me.
	Now, like, a lot of people view Schopenhauer as a pessimist.
	I feel that's epiphenomenal of his observations because he saw like, you know, how nature, like, there's the element of suffering throughout the world.
	That's why we should definitely have compassion for each other.
	But for Schopenhauer, there's just boredom and suffering just so prevalent in reality, which is a huge parallel to Mahayana Buddhism, which he talks a little bit about.
	He didn't get that far into Mahayana.
	He got into the Heart Sutra, which is like a Chinese simplification of the Diamond Sutra, which is all about negation.
	Like two negations equal, you know, an affirmation essentially is Mahayana Buddhism.
	And Schopenhauer is really drawn to that too, because there's this, he felt like the way you get out of suffering is to kind of transcend either through being an aesthetic monk or through aesthetics, you know, great musical profundity.
	You temporarily relinquish the will.
	So, yeah, there's a lot of wonderful things in Schopenhauer.
	I understand, and he even admits this too, that you're not convinced, there's nothing more I can say, but it's not for everyone.
	It's not something I could see being applied on a societal level or anything like that.
	It's more very personal, but he does speak broadly about having compassion and all that.
	So that could be translated into on a societal level, but not the, you know, if you view, you know, life itself as boredom and suffering, it's like, it's not a good foundation to build a society.
	No, no, I get that.
	And of course, also, Schopenhauer being such a, you know, once in a century kind of genius, I mean, how much is he going to actually have in common with the average person or even the intelligent person or even the highly intelligent person?
	It's like putting Papharati in a choir.
	He's going to be like, I'm surrounded by people who aren't as good as I am.
	And I can certainly, you know, one of the things that's challenging with philosophers is if you're really good at it, then you have a distance from the general population.
	And it's easy to interpret your distance from the general population as something existential.
	Man is doomed to be isolated and bored.
	And it's like, well, no, that's because you're super smart.
	And so you're going to have less in common with the average person.
	But that's not human nature.
	That's your amazing mind not being able to connect with the average or even the above average around you.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, he did view like, even for the average person, they're always in a constant state of boredom, at least boredom.
	But, you know, but they also might have been bored by him because they didn't follow what he was saying.
	So he might be like, everyone I interact with is bored.
	It's like, ah, that may not be the human condition.
	That may be like, you always have to be careful about yourself as the observer.
	Like if I were to say, well, most people are highly aggressive and contentious.
	It's like, well, yeah, but I go wading in where fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
	I go wading in with some of the most contentious topics around just because I have a preference for the truth and I really don't care.
	I mean, if I cared about people getting upset by what I said, I never would have escaped my mother, right?
	So sort of foundational training on that sort of stuff because my mother was very mystical and kind of crazy and I had to pursue reason, even though it upset her mightily.
	So I had lots of training long before I was in the public square.
	So if I were to say human nature is to be contentious and angry, it's like, well, no, that's a lot of the reactions in a sense that I wouldn't say I provoke, but that telling the truth provokes in people.
	So I wouldn't say that's human nature.
	I would say that's human nature in the proximity of me and detaching how human beings react in the proximity of you and saying what's human nature outside of my interactions with people is one of the big challenges.
	Yeah, I can see that as well.
	Even explaining Schopenhauer to people, they get bored to depth.
	Even if you put it in simplistic terms, the average person has zero interests in Schopenhauer.
	Like, I have a shower curtain with Schopenhauer's face on it, and it's my Schopen shower.
	Just wanted to throw that out.
	It's nothing better than being watched by a grim-faced philosopher while you're washing your balls.
	Yes, sir.
	The world is will and idea.
	I will washing myself.
	That's pretty funny.
	Yes, sir.
	And how do you, and this is another thing that bothered me about Kant is, as you talk about the impenetrability of the text.
	And it's like, if you have a great idea, and this, you know, it goes back to one of the most influential things I ever heard was, you know, Shakespeare, sorry, that Socrates never used the word epistemology.
	And Socrates spoke in sort of plain language of the people and got his ideas across the plain language of the people.
	And to me, it's like, if you have great ideas, then part of your responsibility to those great ideas is to put them forth in a digestible fashion for the common man, especially if you're talking about ethics.
	Because ethics, yeah, ethics is something that we have to teach to children.
	So there has to be something in your ethical system that can be communicated to children.
	And if you don't, I'm always suspicious of people who don't take the time to express ideas of ethics.
	I mean, if you're talking about something technical in metaphysics, okay, I get that.
	We don't teach brain in a tank to three-year-olds, but we do teach ethics to two and three-year-olds.
	So you have to find a way to, if you have a great idea, then you have to find a way to communicate it in a manner that people can follow, particularly kids.
	And the more esoteric the text, the more I'm suspicious about the creation of a mystery religion that requires divine priests of philosophy to interpret it for you.
	The less accessible the text is to the general population, the more concerned I am about incipient totalitarianism that only the Pope can talk to God and you have to obey the Pope.
	And only the philosophy professor can understand Kant and you have to obey the philosophy professor because the text is inaccessible to the genpop.
	That's always a bit my suspicion lens, my spider sense starts tingling in those scenarios.
	Yeah, I have 50 pages of notes on Kant just going through the first and third critiques.
	I was very diligently going page by page, comparing with the first critique.
	There's two additions, two versions.
	There's the A and B versions.
	And, you know, even you have to kind of understand what he is actually meaning by the different faculties of the mind.
	And it's different in the different versions.
	So, imagination in the A version for Kant is its own faculty.
	Like, understanding is its own faculty.
	But in the B edition, imagination is subordinate to understanding.
	But when you get to the third critique, imagination is also its own faculty again.
	So, you know, there's Kant is very difficult, especially when you or just contradictory.
	It is like with the different editions.
	So, it's bad, right?
	Contradictory in philosophy is bad.
	If you define things as something in one book and then something else in another book without referencing the change, that's just bad philosophy.
	I mean, if you tried doing that in a philosophy paper or a philosophy lecture, you'd be rightly called out for, hang on, you change definitions of terms without even saying why or acknowledging it.
	Yeah, so the B edition, I believe he tried to streamline that to make it more accessible.
	But in doing so, he made imagination subordinate to the understanding.
	But when you get to the third critique, he positions imagination as its own faculty of the mind again.
	So I think with the B edition, just because I don't think the critique of pure reason caught on immediately.
	I think he went in, you know, the revision with the B edition to make it more digestible for people.
	It was just still not digestible at all.
	But yeah, this is definitely the hardest philosophical text that I have tackled.
	And it also troubles me when people talk about ethics and they've never had kids.
	And the reason being, not that you have to have kids to be a good philosopher, but once you've gone through the process of trying to explain right and wrong, good and bad to children, you realize that you do have to have a moral system that can be explained to children.
	Otherwise, children simply have to have authority inflicted upon them.
	I mean, can you imagine?
	I mean, it would actually be quite a good comedy skit to have a Kantian father attempt to explain Kant's categorical imperative and his critique of pure reason to a three-year-old who had taken a cookie without permission.
	Yeah, that's nonsense.
	No way you can, I don't even think you like Schopenhauer, he does simplify Kant with the principle of sufficient reason.
	You know, everything, every cause, like everything must have a reason.
	And he does so with time and space being bound by the law of causality, which is a lot more simplistic.
	You know, that's cause and effect, essentially.
	You can explain that to a child, but no, you can't explain, you know, the 12 categories of understanding.
	Yeah, yeah, good luck.
	No, I remember with my daughter, I gave her a cookie and then I said, you stole from me when she was very little.
	And she said, I did not steal from you.
	And I said, yes, you did.
	Well, why do you think you didn't steal from me?
	Because you gave it to me.
	And I'm like, yeah, okay, so that's you, PP.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, there's no way for to communicate that in a digestible way that a child can understand it.
	I don't think that's possible for Kant.
	And that's a really good question.
	And the other thing, too, if moral philosophy is so complicated, how can we hold people in society morally responsible?
	I mean, if, let's say, you had to have a PhD in physics to be charged with a crime, well, we'd be back to a Hobbesian state of nature, right?
	Because very few people have PhDs in physics.
	And so if moral theories are so complicated that you need graduate school studying of Kant's 12 categories or his critique of pure reason, and even then it's still difficult and impenetrable, then what you're saying is that like 99.9999% of humanity has zero moral responsibility because it's too complicated for them to understand.
	And that to me is like if you cannot provide a moral theory that I mean, we could scale down to, I don't know, IQ 70, 75, wherever it is that the cutoff is that people can't really understand cause and effect, but that's that's a very tiny percentage of the population.
	So if you can't have a moral theory, I mean, how can you hold children morally responsible if your moral theory is so complex?
	The average person, you know, I mean, if you have people who've studied Kant for their entire lifetimes who come up with different conclusions, then how can the average person possibly be held morally responsible if experts with decades of study can't decide on what is right and wrong?
	Right.
	And I think Kant makes that admission too, because with the second critique, the critique of practical reason, no, it's different than pure reason.
	So now, there's three metaphysical questions for Kant.
	And one is, you know, God, the soul, and freedom.
	With the second, like, that's incompatible with pure reason.
	It's incompatible with what's in the first critique.
	But the second critique, the critique of practical reason, he allows for freedom.
	And then, you know, practical reason is good.
	Like, it helps us have morals for Kant.
	So you don't have to understand the first critique fully to kind of get where Kant's coming from with his morals.
	But yes, it is still very dense stuff.
	And I don't see a child understanding it sufficiently.
	Well, even the average, no, even the average adult with an IQ of 80 or 85 is held to be morally responsible.
	And so the question is, can you explain your moral theory to somebody of below, let's say just a standard deviation below the average, right?
	Can you explain your moral theory to somebody with an IQ of 85?
	And such that they can really understand it.
	If you can't, get it, Kent.
	If you can't, then that person is not morally responsible because they can't understand ethics.
	Can you explain your moral theory to a child of three or four or wherever you would say that children's moral responsibilities would begin?
	Well, if you can't, then all you can do is bully and punish them and bribe them, which is anti-philosophical.
	So that to me was the big sort of challenge that I set out for myself was, and I did this very early on in my podcast series called The ABCs of UPB, How to Explain UPP to Children.
	And I did it with my own daughter, who's obviously smarter than your average bear, but she got it at about two, two and a half, I think it was.
	And that's really the first time I explained it to her.
	And so all of this esoteric stuff, I mean, Plato's higher realm of forms necessitates the noble lie because you cannot explain it objectively to children or the average person, which means all you can do is order them around and create a mystery religion of those who have the inside scoop on what virtue is but can never explain it to you in rational terms or terms that the average person or the child can understand.
	And so all you can do is order them around, which is why these realms, higher realms, always lead to these kinds of totalitarian ideologies.
	Yeah, I can see that, you know, especially Plato.
	But for Kant, We see, at least I see on social media, a lot of like little snippets of this saying from Kant or other philosophers, like how to encapsulate his philosophy about getting really into it, you know, just certain maxims or whatnot, which I think people innately understand.
	And also something to consider for Kant.
	He uses the word rational very specifically, like what separates man from animal.
	And with the critique of pure reason, what he means by rational is essentially a functional mind.
	So when you get into, like what you're saying, very, very low IQ people that just can't comprehend, you know, even simplified Kant or, you know, the maxims or whatnot, that is unable to really understand it.
	Kant would say it doesn't apply to them, like this philosophy, like well, but then you have to take you, then you have, but if moral rules don't apply to people and they're not morally responsible, what's the, where are they in society?
	Right.
	I mean, are they out there roaming around doing whatever they want?
	And we assume that they would be more violent because they couldn't reason.
	So do you allow people out there who you withhold moral responsibility from?
	Do you just allow them to roam around in society?
	It seems unlikely because you would never be able to prosecute them for any crimes.
	Right.
	I meant that Kant's philosophy is like for the reader, the person to understand it.
	It's only for functional minds, the rational mind.
	Right.
	And then the more so to interrupt.
	The more simple you make your moral explanation, the wider the net of freedom you can provide to society.
	Because if a thorough and deep understanding of Kant was required for moral responsibility, there'd be like eight people in the world who would have moral responsibility.
	Everybody else would be in an asylum or in some sort of confinement in the way that somebody who's got an IQ of 65 is probably not, I mean, they couldn't function out there in society.
	They're probably in some kind of home or some sort of place where they can be taken care of.
	So to simplify and make it easily understandable is a way of extending people's moral freedoms and moral responsibilities.
	And we want to spread moral responsibilities as wide as possible until it becomes unjust, right?
	So if somebody's got a really, really low IQ and they just cannot piece together cause and effect, it would be wrong to hold them morally accountable.
	It would also be wrong to grant them freedom to roam around in society because they wouldn't be able to survive and they would probably turn pretty feral.
	And so for me, a moralist has to make the moral arguments as clear as possible to as many people as possible because the more clear it is, the more people it covers and the more people we can allow to be morally autonomous and independent and responsible.
	And so making it esoteric to me is limiting it to a sort of mystery religion of elites.
	And it condemns the majority of people to have no rational moral responsibility.
	I'm so sorry.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, I understand that.
	But there's two layers to Kant.
	We have the pure reason, which is for just the rational minds who can quote unquote understand it once it's penetrated.
	And then there's the practical reason, which allows for God, soul, and freedom.
	And that can, he, Kant was a champion of that.
	A lot of people think that he was a Christian because Christianity has morals and all that.
	And with the second critique, the practical reason, Kant allows that.
	It's like, yeah, it's not part of pure reason.
	Like reason itself for Kant, which I'm sure you understand is just for the listeners out there who may not know.
	Reason is like when the mind filters the raw sense data that we filter into empirical concepts.
	Reason tries to bring that all into totality.
	And sometimes reason, this is the issue with metaphysics of his day that he was trying to correct with the critique of pure reason is that reason could go out of bounds and say, oh, everything comes from God and everything comes from whatnot that may not be part of reason itself.
	Reason is trying to make complete what it has and knowledge of everything.
	But practical reason allows for God, soul, and freedom.
	It allows for the superstition and all that.
	It's kind of like for the people who are unable to understand the first critique, them having morals from a higher power like the Christian Bible would be good for Kant.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, I mean, and this certainly accords to, I think, what we were talking about earlier, or what I was talking about earlier, not to put words in your mouth, which is that if you can't explain your moral theory, you have to rely on rewards and punishments.
	So he would say, well, my theory of ethics with its 12 categories and blah, blah, blah, that's for the elite, but for everyone else, hell and heaven.
	Yeah, you're right.
	You're right.
	And that's the noble lie.
	That would be Plato's, well, you can't understand this realm of higher forms.
	So, you know, bribes and punishments.
	Yeah, yeah, the noble lie of the different metals and our souls.
	Plato's weird.
	He wanted to treat comedy seriously.
	So when he talks about like communal children and all that and telling them they're all raised, you know, from the earth and make them more grounded in their republic, he's treating comedy seriously in that aspect.
	And philosophy should do that.
	Like philosophy, even what's comical for most people, like having communal children, should be seriously thought about.
	If there's any possible positive outcomes that might come from that.
	But yeah, I think what he's doing, there's a lot of metaphors and analogies and symbolic aspects to the Republic.
	And it all revolves around the aspect of harmony.
	But yeah, that's something that's really out there that everyone kind of raises their eyebrow at in the Republic is that Plato advocated for communal children and not knowing your parentage, which means that incest would be an inevitable result.
	And personally, just very brief aside, this may be prejudicial, but because we're all mortal and you only have a certain amount of time to study people, the moment I come across something seriously deranged and obviously wrong in a philosopher, I mean, I don't throw the whole book aside, obviously, because they're still, but it means that they're not systemic.
	Because if Plato is like, okay, my ideal society is a tyranny and the children don't know who their parents are and they're going to end up with brothers and sisters marrying each other.
	And if he doesn't sit there and say, okay, something's not right about this, I'm promoting incest or the conditions where incest will be inevitable, something's got to be not particularly right about this.
	Or when Kant says, yeah, but all moral considerations aside, you have to obey the king, no matter what.
	And it's like, okay, but that's just a recipe for pure subjugation, enslavement, and totalitarianism.
	And would justify Chairman Mao, Stalin, Hitler, whoever, right?
	Paul Pott.
	And so if a philosopher says something clearly wrong, clearly immoral, clearly evil, such as obey the king no matter what, or here's the conditions wherein incest will be an inevitability, and breaking the entire family bonds and so on.
	I'm like, okay, so if they don't notice they got this wrong completely, what else did they not notice?
	that they got wrong.
	And it would be like, if the first time you use a GPS, it takes you in entirely the wrong direction, are you ever going to trust that GPS again?
	I mean, I had a phone once with an alternate GPS system.
	It took me to the wrong place.
	I never used it again because it's like, I now cannot trust the GPS.
	And so for me, it's not like everyone has to be perfect.
	Lord knows I'm not either.
	But in general, it has to be self-correcting.
	And there has to be a process of rigorously evaluating thought to make sure you don't come up with something crazy.
	And again, this is another thing that changed my life, which is Aristotle saying, you know, if you come up with some theory of ethics that proves that murder is good, I don't care what you've done something wrong.
	Because, you know, there's a sort of instinct for truth that we have.
	And if you come up with a system and somebody, I'm sure people at the time said to Plato, you know, this is incest, right?
	This is just going to promote incest.
	And if Plato was like, no, I'm still going to stick with it.
	It's like, you know, maybe you got some other stuff right, but it's mostly accidental because if you don't have an instinct for truth and just get a feel for when you've gone wrong, like if your theory can be used to prove that murder is good or incest is good or at least not bad, then, I mean, the instinct doesn't prove things, but it is very important that if you do end up with something like that, that you go back and check your logic to see where you went wrong.
	No, you're correct to point that out.
	My interpretation of the Republic is more like a psychology, work of psychology, harmonizing the psyche and all that rather than a political document.
	Some people would argue that Plato's politics is actually in his book, The Laws, which I myself have not read very in-depth, just kind of skimmed it.
	But the Republic is really an example of idealism.
	And I view it mainly as metaphor and symbolism rather than a concrete political document.
	But other people, they do take what he says verbatim and they point out.
	Well, they take what he says.
	I mean, it's like Thomas Moore's Utopia, right?
	I mean, you take what the person says literally.
	This is my description of an ideal society.
	Okay, I'm going to assume that you know what you're doing and this is your description of an ideal society.
	And then saying, well, no, it's not actually what Plato said he was doing.
	It's something else completely.
	I think that's going a bit too far to try and rescue the text from the author's clearly stated goal.
	Yeah, I mean, that's an issue a lot of people have with Plato.
	Here's my recipe for cheesecake.
	No, no, you're really talking about how to organize the human soul.
	It's like, I'm not sure.
	I think it's a recipe for cheesecake, if that's what the author does and all the ingredients are how to make cheesecake.
	But anyway, I mean, I think that's an interesting discussion.
	But I look for the outliers.
	And if something's really nutty and evil in a philosopher's advocacy, I mean, they're still worth studying.
	They're still worth, you know, I don't obviously agree with the blonde, dominant beast overlord stuff that Nietzsche went on about, but nonetheless, it's still worth reading and Plato is worth reading.
	I've got a four-plus hour presentation on Plato at fdrpodcast.com.
	I've done Aristotle and, of course, I've got the whole history of philosophers series, which if you are a subscriber, you should check out.
	I've stopped right before Kant because he's such a giant jagged pill to swallow sideways that I'm going to need at least a month, at least a month to refresh my memory on Kant and make because I don't just evaluate, I provide counter-arguments.
	But yeah, I definitely look for, okay, if there's one wildly nutty thing that's clearly wrong, like even by the standards of the time, then although I mean, the question of Kant and you should obey the king or the prince or the ruler, no matter what.
	Of course.
	Duty is the highest good for Kant.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	And of course, you know, the idea that it's vaguely Buddhist, right?
	That you, if you take any pleasure in your charitable deeds, they're not charitable or good.
	It has to be something that is either neutral or ideally causes you to suffer.
	Oh, and I guess theory causes grad students to suffer.
	That's only fair.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, don't write off your philanthropy on your tax returns.
	You'd be a bad Buddhist if you do that.
	You said you're not sure what you're going to do after this.
	So you're in a two-year program.
	Is that right?
	Do you think you might FUD it up after this?
	So I'm actually, I'm weighing a few different possibilities.
	You know, I do miss having income.
	So I've been living very frugally while doing grad school.
	I apologize.
	I'm sick.
	But there's one university that has a PhD program that kind of aligns more with my personal philosophy, which is more on the traditional side.
	And I may apply to that or I may go back into the workforce.
	It really depends.
	I apologize with the comments.
	Oh, no, it's fine.
	So, sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I was going to, I'm going to finish this semester.
	The next semester would be my end as a master's student.
	And I have a 4.0 GPA.
	We've been doing really well.
	I've been in journals.
	Not big journals or anything, but enough to get some credentials to be a good applicant for a PhD program.
	And I did apply to speak at a conference at Yale next year.
	So waiting for word about that.
	But yeah, it's working on, you know, when I'm doing something, I want to do it to the best of my abilities.
	So even if I don't pursue a PhD, at least as a master's student, did the best I could.
	But if I did pursue a PhD, I'd be a solid candidate.
	But I don't know.
	Like I said, I miss having a steady income.
	My bachelor's is in business.
	So after a philosophy degree, I don't have to work in an iPhone store.
	So yeah, there's not really.
	It's also really nice.
	I just wanted to mention it's also really nice to talk to a student of philosophy who's actually worked with his hands and done practical things in the world.
	Because I could tell, man, I mean, the moment you wanted to come on the show and the moment I heard from you, I'm like, okay, this is a man who's had practical experience doing real things in the real world.
	Because nothing grows Platonism like a tumor in your brain than only dealing with concepts and not things in the real world.
	And nothing grounds you in empiricism more than doing real things, hopefully with real consequences in the real world.
	Because you can't manipulate objects in the same way that you can manipulate concepts.
	And it does give you a lot of grounding.
	So I was like, pleased to hear that.
	And the moment you spoke, I'm like, and then you started to talk about your time in the army and practical things that you've done and so on.
	And I can always tell.
	It's like a weird, it's a weird kind of Tourette's that I have where I'm like a practical man, a practical woman that's done real work with their hands, real things.
	And that conditions the consciousness.
	And I can always tell the people who've never done very practical work with their hands, particularly with negative consequences.
	Like you get things wrong in the army and people can die.
	And when I was working, doing my gold panning and prospecting, and I was using flamethrowers and giant drills.
	And if you get things wrong, you're going to die because you're like three days from a hospital if you're lucky.
	So, yeah, there's sort of a practicality that comes out of that.
	I worked missiles in the Air Force, but I actually do like Plato, but like I said, I view it not as law.
	I view it more as a metaphor, like harmonizing the psyche than a political document.
	If I were to view Nietzsche's will to power as the ultimate truth, I end up being a fruitcake.
	But yeah, I appreciate the compliment there.
	And I appreciate what you're doing.
	And I'm glad you're uncanceled.
	But to some degree, I mean, it's one platform, but it's better than nothing for sure.
	I appreciate that.
	Yeah, I remember watching your videos back in like 2015, 16, and steady rotation on YouTube and very insightful voice on there.
	It was sad to see you go.
	But yeah, it's a great honor to be on your program.
	Did you have any other questions before we wrap up?
	Yeah, if I could just ask one more.
	And obviously, don't talk about anything you're not comfortable with, but you haven't mentioned anything about wife and kids or anything like that.
	And if you're sailing 40s and thinking of maybe doing a PhD, missing an income, is that something that's part of your life?
	Are you a bit more monk-like and ascetic?
	Because you mentioned that a little bit earlier with reference to, I was at Schopenhauer or something.
	But is that something that you're interested in or focused on?
	Or is that part of your life and you just don't want to mention it, which is totally fine too.
	But where does that realm of life lie for you?
	Right.
	I did have a fiancé that fell through because she was a gold digger.
	And from there, I'm like, well, my master will be.
	Wait, she was a gold digger and you don't have an income?
	So she was a really bad gold digger.
	No, I had income back then.
	I actually had a really nice position as an analyst.
	Oh, so you've had the money and given it up?
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's there.
	Yeah, you mentioned you had a business degree.
	So sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, it fell through.
	Like, we're going to do a pre-nuptial agreement because she- Oh, is that how you found the gold digger thing was in the prenup?
	Yeah, she went on a hunger strike for five days.
	I'm like, yeah, this isn't going to work out.
	Wait, what?
	Yeah, she threw a prenup, and she said, I'm going to need to not eat now.
	No, she agreed to the prenub because she had said some sketchy things and I raised a red flag and she agreed to the prenub to for us to get married and then called a lawyer up just to outline what would be in the prenup.
	Like, I wasn't going to protect everything.
	So, if you had a divorce, you could at least have whatever.
	But she threw a tantrum, started crying on the phone call with the lawyer, and then went on a hunger strike for five days.
	And I'm like, yep, that's it.
	Goodbye.
	So, that is an impressive level of dedication to accessing your money with those, I'm sure, heavily painted nails.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	How long ago was that?
	Oh, that was four years ago.
	But that was my last effort at settling down.
	But now it's, you know, philosophy and music are my masters.
	Oh, come on, man.
	You can't be ignoring all of those hotties in the philosophy department.
	Yeah, right.
	Come on, man.
	Let's look around you.
	It's like a chill eater of reason.
	Yeah.
	Well, anyway, I've really enjoyed this conversation, Mr. Mullino.
	I'm glad that you invited me on.
	Well, thank you very much.
	I really appreciate you giving us a view on the inside of the philosophy departments.
	And I obviously wish you the very best.
	And I hope that you'll stay in touch.
	Let me know how things are going.
	We'll do.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, if you ever want me to come back on, if you want to do another philosophy chat of some kind, I'm on the Twitter and you have my email.
	So anyway, it was great chatting with you today.
	All right.
	Thanks, man.
	All the best.
	Have a great day.
	You too.
	Bye.

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