6223 F*ck Immanuel Kant! (UPB)

Freedomain with Stefan Molyneux

Stefan Molyneux

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4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stefan Molyneux critiques Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy, focusing on the categorical imperative, and argues it doesn't offer a firm base for morality. He questions why the principle should apply universally and how it works in societal setups, pointing out the risks of taking on flawed moral theories that support oppression. By showing contradictions in Kant's ideas, especially around authority, he stresses that moral theories need to apply the same to everyone. He suggests the true danger comes from ethical breakdowns in systems rather than lone acts of wrongdoing, and promotes Universally Preferable Behavior (UPB) as a way to address that. He pushes for rethinking moral theories to help create a fairer society, noting how misguided moral reasoning can affect public health and ethics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, somebody who writes to me regularly said,
0:05.0	The categorical imperative is more logically sound than UPB
0:08.7	and was around for centuries, and that couldn't save society.
0:12.9	Christianity saved society more than that.
0:17.0	So that, of course, is very interesting.
0:21.9	Very interesting.
0:22.6	So the categorical imperative is, in general,
0:27.0	act as if the principle of your action becomes a general rule for everyone, right?
0:32.9	Act as if the principle of your action becomes a general rule for everyone.
0:40.8	And, I mean, obviously there's more to it, but that's the, obviously, there's a lot more to it.
0:46.0	I mean, critique of pure reason is quite a lengthy tone and other stuff that Kant wrote is
0:52.3	quite a lengthy tone, quite a set of lengthy tomes.
0:56.1	But the general idea is that, act as if the principle of your action becomes a general rule for everyone,
1:04.5	which is basically how would you like it if someone did it to you?
1:08.0	How would you like it if somebody did this to you? X, whatever X is to you.
1:14.3	Oh, sorry. And that is a fine and interesting question. I mean, the first thing that I think of is
1:22.9	why? Why? Why should I act as if the principle of my action becomes a general rule for everybody?
1:31.0	There's no reason why I must or should act in that way. It'd be nice if people thought about,
1:39.5	you know, how would you like it if someone did it to you, sort of the golden rule do unto others
1:43.2	as you would have them doing to you.
1:44.6	And it's what we say to kids, right?
1:46.6	Oh, you took his toy.
	...

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