The Philosophy of LOVE!

Stefan Molyneux

In answering this series of questions from Facebook, Stefan explores the philosophical examination of love, emphasizing its connection to recognizing virtue in romantic partners. He shares personal anecdotes from his marriage, illustrating how mutual admiration for each other's virtues strengthens their relationship. Stef argues that enduring love stems from a deep appreciation of moral character, as opposed to transient physical attraction, and discusses the role of romantic love in pair bonding and transferring moral values to future generations. He distinguishes between love as a voluntary act versus an involuntary response to virtue, cautioning against manipulative expectations in relationships. Ultimately, Molyneux advocates for love grounded in virtue, suggesting it leads to deeper and more fulfilling connections.    GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK!  https://peacefulparenting.com/   Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!   Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!   You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!   See you soon!  https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00All right, good morning everybody. Siddhanth Malani from Freedomain and great questions.

00:04This is from Facebook. I will get straight into them. I did ask people for their philosophy

00:11questions and you're provided in a magnificent fashion. Thank you very much. Matt asks me,

00:18how did you come to the conclusion that love is based upon finding virtue in your partner? Well,

00:24there is usually in the best formulations, there is both theoretical proof and empirical

00:34experience. So my wife, I've now been married for, we've been together 23 years, married for 22

00:41years. My wife is a wonderfully virtuous and courageous and steadfast and wonderful companion

00:50in this sort of life journey. And I found that I just responded so positively to

00:59strength and depth and insights and wisdom and virtues and all of that.

01:03And so I had the empirical experience of responding to my wife and her virtues for

01:12many years before I became a sort of public philosopher. So I had that experience, good

01:18nature, her good humor. Honestly, I could do hours praising her, but I think you get the general

01:24idea. And her virtues inspired my virtues, my virtues inspired her virtues. So I had that

01:31experience for years before I became a public philosopher. So having had that experience gave

01:39me sort of the empirical grounding for the theory as a whole. Now, of course, I had dated

01:49and been in relationships before I met my wife and got married. And those relationships were

01:55based upon attraction, fun, travel, and I mean some virtues, of course, but not the sort of

02:04really noble and consistent ones, not the sort of ones that a theory, it's really only consistent

02:10theory that allows you to have those kinds of virtues as a whole. So from that standpoint,

02:20those virtues that I saw before in relationships were not consistent, or at least consistent enough

02:29to maintain that kind of love. So, I mean, if you look at, let's talk romantic love,

02:38if you look at romantic love, you have to sort of ask yourself, what is the purpose

02:42of romantic love? Why do we have it? Now, the purpose of romantic love is a pair bonding

02:49for the sake of raising children, right? That's other kinds of love and so on. But the purpose

02:54of romantic love is to create a noble pair bonding for the having and raising of children.

03:01And the purpose of raising children is the transfer of morality from parent to child.

03:09I mean, the one thing that defines us as human beings, really, I would say the essential thing

03:13that defines us as human beings is our capacity for abstract morality, universal morality. I mean,

03:21all, certainly all mammalian, or most mammalian parents teach their children some skills, right?

03:30I mean, I guess, well, rabbits, there's just food everywhere. But if you look at wolves,

03:36and other K selected animals, they teach their children, or they teach their offspring how to

03:41hunt, lions do the same thing. And so, for a lot of mammals, there is a transfer, particularly the

03:47predator mammals, there is a transfer of skills from the parents to the children. And so, the

03:55transfer of skills is not what defines human beings, the transfer of abstract concepts,

04:00and in particular, abstract morality. We can talk about, of course, primary instance of that would

04:06be religion, in that, at least to our knowledge, it's not like a bunch of orcas, or hyenas, or

04:16porpoises are, what is the porpoise of life? They're not teaching their children about abstract

04:22morality, they're not teaching their offspring about gods and virtues, and so on, 10 commandments.

04:28And so, what is uniquely human about romantic love is our capacity to process and understand

04:37virtue, and then the purpose of romantic love is to create a stable pair bond, wherein

04:41the transfer of abstract virtues is most efficiently transferred from

04:46the parents to the children. And in this way, if you transfer your virtues from the parents to the

04:51children, then the children have the greatest chance of being loved. Now, virtue, as I've proven

04:59in my 2008 book, Universally Preferable Behavior, a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, morality is

05:07universal and rational, it is objective. And so, the values or the virtues that we transfer

05:14from parents to children, the values and the virtues that we admire in our romantic partner

05:22are objective and universal, and not subject to mere cultural whims and localized preferences.

05:31It's like science, right? The scientific method is universal and objective, and morality is

05:37universal and objective. So, in the formulation, love is our involuntary response to virtue if

05:44we're virtuous, is based upon that which is most human about us, which is our capacity to transfer

05:52moral values. And as a philosopher, the essence of philosophy, and I've got a free book you can

05:58get at essentialphilosophy.com, but with regards to philosophy, the one discipline that philosophy

06:09manifests that is singular only to philosophy is moral philosophy. We could say, ah, well,

06:15philosophy is about logic. Well, I mean, architecture is about logic, science is about

06:19logic, physics is about logic, math is about logic. It's not enough to say it's about logic.

06:26Is it about Socratic reasoning? No, I mean, lawyers do that all the time, and it's one of

06:31the first things you're taught in law school, or at least used to be, is sort of Socratic

06:35reasoning, which is to say, if this is your moral, let's universalize it and see if there's an

06:41exception that you find objectionable. That's how you test the universality of the proposed rule.

06:47So, but the one thing that physics does not contain within it, morality, the scientific

06:53method does not contain within it morality, mathematics, biology, all other disciplines

06:59that you could talk about architecture. I mean, an architect could as easily create

07:05a concentration camp as he could an office building. A sort of famous Monty Python sketch

07:11about the guy who's tried to merge the apartment building with an abattoir. So,

07:17the one thing that philosophy deals with, in its essence, is morality. And this is why to

07:24destroy philosophy, you simply make morality subjective, and then philosophy becomes

07:29irrelevant. You would destroy science by turning it into a cultural wimp. And the way that you

07:37neuter philosophy is to say that morality is relative, relativistic, and subjective.

07:45And philosophy is not fundamentally about truth. I mean, certainly truth is an essential methodology,

07:54but there are lots of disciplines that pursue the truth. I mean, obviously, courts try to get at

08:00the truth of what happened, and there is truth in physics. If you say two and two make four,

08:06that is true in math. So, there's lots of disciplines that focus upon truth, both empirical

08:11and theoretical. I mean, the practice of farming was empirical for thousands of years, or tens of

08:19thousands of years before it became theoretical. In other words, they just did what worked before

08:23they understood in an abstract sense why things worked. So, with regards to philosophy, the

08:34truth of universal morality is the essence of philosophy. And philosophy is the one thing that

08:42human beings do that is the most human. I mean, animals can count. Obviously,

08:48they can't do abstract mathematics, but animals can count. Animals use physics in order to get

08:56what they want. There are even fish that will squirt water at hanging bugs to get them to fall

09:02into. The water and crows, of course, famously use particular physics principles to get at food

09:07that's hard to access, and so on. So, what we love as humans must be the most human thing about us,

09:15otherwise romantic love would extend to include animals, which would be bestiality, and so on.

09:21So, we have to love what is most human about us. What is most human about us

09:26is virtue, and the best way to practice virtue consistently is to have a robust understanding

09:33of moral abstractions, in the same way that if you want to be a consistently good farmer,

09:41then you need to have a good abstract understanding of soil and sunlight and nutrients and

09:46winter crops and crop rotation and all kinds of things. You need to have a good theoretical

09:51understanding in order to be an effective farmer. So, the other thing that I also wanted to

10:01sort of understand, promote and explain is how love survives or flourishes in the face of physical

10:11decay. So, when everyone's young and hot, then lust, and nothing against lust, it's a fine

10:18aspect of human nature or animal nature. So, when everyone is young and hot and in sort of peak

10:26physical condition, then lust is very, very important. But how does love maintain itself

10:33as people age out, as you get less sex at times over the course of your relationship,

10:42especially when there are young children involved and people get ill, and just as you age,

10:45and so on, right? So, love, in order to sustain itself over the course of, you know, a 50 or 60

10:53year relationship, love has to hook into something that grows, not something that fades.

11:00I mean, if a woman, quote, loves a man's beautiful hair, well, you know, 80% of men

11:07are losing their hair in late middle age, right? And even if you maintain your hair,

11:12it doesn't stay as lustrous and colorful as when you're young. If a man loves, quote,

11:18loves a woman's, you know, hard body, hot body figure, it's fine, but she's not going to have

11:24that when she's 80 or 70, right? So, if a woman or a man, more so women to male, if she loves

11:35a man's potential, well, by the time he's 70, 80, he's either manifested his potential or he's not,

11:41but either way, his potential is not ahead of him, but rather behind him. So, to love someone's

11:47potential, you could sort of go through the list of all of these things, and you can figure out

11:53what's going to grow and what is going to shrink. Now, what is it that grows over the course of our

11:58life? Assuming that we, you know, learn and have self-criticism and self-knowledge and so on, and

12:04take feedback, what is it that grows over the course of our lives? Well, what grows over the

12:10course of our lives is wisdom and virtue. I mean, I'm a wiser man now than I was 10 years ago. I'm

12:17certainly wiser than I was 30 years ago or 40 years ago when I was in my teens. So, wisdom

12:25grows over the course of life. Wisdom, moral courage, and strength in the advocacy,

12:32consistency with, and pursuit of virtue. And so, what is it that replaces youthful beauty and

12:40energy and all of that, and the robust health that generally comes with youth? What is it that

12:45replaces that? Well, virtue. So, if you love your romantic partner for his or her virtues,

12:53then you have something that grows over the course of life, and you can be more in love with the

12:59person every year. And if a romantic and sexual love is tied into an admiration of virtue, then

13:07you get, you know, great romantic and sexual love over the course of your life that grows in strength

13:12and depth. And you can worship someone for the manifestation of that which is most human, which is

13:18the advocacy manifestation and pursuit of objective moral virtues. So, it just seems like a massive

13:25win-win at every conceivable level to hook things into virtue. Now, of course, and this is why I sort

13:33of add that love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous. So, the reason I

13:40formulate it that way is, I have to say, involuntary. Because there are, of course, a large number of

13:49people, I mean, it seems sometimes an overwhelming majority of people, who will tell you that you must

13:55love them, that you owe them love. You know, this can happen with parents, you know, but I'm your

14:01mother, you must love me, and so on. And I have to say that it's involuntary. It cannot be willed.

14:08Now, of course, we understand this with a wide variety of other things, both physical and mental.

14:14If you don't like math, you can't will yourself to love math. I mean, maybe you could get better at

14:19it and be less, I don't know, resistant to it, but you can't. If there's a particular food you don't

14:25like, like I found when I was growing up, I found, I actually liked corn on the cob, but I found corn

14:30that came from a can repulsive. It would make me nauseous. And I couldn't make myself

14:39like a food that I did not like. You can't force yourself to understand a language that you do not

14:46speak or know. You cannot, with regards to, say, sexual desire or lust, if, let's say, you prefer

14:55slender women, you cannot force yourself to have a lustful or sexual response to women who are

15:02morbidly obese. You can't will that kind of stuff. And that's really important, because if you

15:08believe that love and respect can be willed, then you are very susceptible and you will be

15:17manipulated. You're very susceptible to manipulation, and you will be manipulated.

15:21That's a given. If you say, or if you have in your belief that someone can tell you that you

15:28have an obligation to love him or her, and you believe that love is something that is willed,

15:35then people will exploit you. Because, of course, it's a whole lot easier, like if you are, let's

15:43say, morbidly obese woman, it is a whole lot easier to lecture a man that he should find you sexually

15:50desirable, rather than lose a couple of hundred pounds. I mean, losing a couple of hundred pounds

15:55is a very big and difficult thing. And then, of course, keeping the weight off and dealing with

16:00all the excess skin, it's a very big and deep and horrible challenge to maintain, to achieve and

16:09maintain. So it's a lot easier, if you're morbidly obese, to lecture a man that he should find you

16:14sexually desirable, rather than to lose the weight and have the kind of figure that a man might be

16:20drawn to, if he prefers slender women. So, in the same way, it's a lot easier to lecture and bully

16:28and manipulate and harangue and nag someone into, quote, loving you, than it is to be consistently

16:35virtuous and have love be drawn from them in the inevitable consequence of this formulation of

16:41love, that love is our involuntary response of virtue, if we're virtuous. It's a lot easier

16:47to steal than to create. It's a lot easier to exploit than to trade. It's a lot easier

16:54to harangue someone into believing that they should love you than it is to perform the acts

17:00of consistent virtue that will generate love in and of itself. Virtue is hard. Bullying is easy.

17:09Destruction is easy. Creation is hard. Production and trade is difficult. Theft and exploitation

17:15is relatively easy. So, I want to say involuntary. Involuntary. I mean, if you smoke, and don't,

17:24right, but if you smoke cigarettes, if you believe that you can just nag your lungs into being

17:28healthy, then it's going to be very hard for you to quit smoking, right, because what happens in

17:34our lungs is beyond our willpower, right. If you smoke, then you're harming your lungs. If you eat

17:41too much, and don't exercise, most likely you will gain weight. That is an involuntary response,

17:50right. If you hit your thumb with a hammer, you will injure your thumb, regardless of your opinion

17:54on things, and assuming you have a functioning nervous system, it'll hurt like hell to train you

18:00to not do that. So, if we look at psychological operations, particularly of something like love,

18:08as an involuntary response to virtue, if you're virtuous, then you are much less likely to be

18:18nagged, harangued, and exploited into providing resources on the basis of, quote, love, because

18:22someone tells you that you owe them. The creation of imaginary debts is the foundation of exploitation,

18:28and the creation of imaginary debts is usually based upon you are a bad person if you don't

18:37say love your mother. Now, of course, if your mother is virtuous, and kind, and loving, and

18:42morally good, and strong, then you'll love her. That will be a natural response to that.

18:48So, it is to protect you from exploitation that I tell you that love is involuntary.

18:53So, if somebody says, you ought to love me, you owe me phone calls, you owe me time at Christmas,

18:59you owe me a card on whatever, right, then you look inside and you say, what are my feelings

19:05about this? And the way I've communicated this to listeners, as I say, so if you're having a

19:09difficult relationship with, say, your mother, the way that you can figure out your emotions

19:14about that is, you know, that the phone rings, and now, you know, maybe you have a personalized

19:21ringtone for your mother, maybe the imperial theme from Star Wars, or maybe, you know, it says,

19:26your mother is calling, and then how do you feel? Or you pick up the phone and say, mother's calling,

19:30how do you feel in that moment, right? That's a good summary of, I mean, when my wife calls,

19:35I run across the room to pick up the phone, and eager to chat, and my daughter too, friends, but

19:41how do you feel in that moment? That is your evaluation of that situation. And rather than

19:47saying, well, I'm a bad person for having a negative response to my mother calling,

19:52and I owe her, and I got to pick it up, and I got to talk to her, even though I don't want to,

19:56well, that's just a form of bearing false witness. And what you should do, in my humble opinion,

20:00is tell the truth. Pick up the phone and say to your mom, you know, I'm kind of having a negative

20:03response to you calling, and I'm not saying that you're doing anything wrong, but I'm not really

20:09looking forward to these phone calls. Can we talk about that and figure out what's going on? I mean,

20:12you should have that honest conversation, right? Do not bear false witnesses foundational to

20:17philosophy. I mean, honesty is a virtue, and you can't have love in any relationship that's

20:24founded upon falsehood. So if we're virtuous is important as well. I mean, if your store

20:32is being robbed and a policeman comes in, right? I mean, I don't know if it's true,

20:37but I remember hearing these rumors that one of the reasons that donut stores give out

20:41free donuts to cops is that cops will then drop by and they get a certain amount of protection

20:46because the thieves won't know when the cops are dropping by. I don't know if it's true or not, but

20:50maybe that's one of the reasons for that cliche of the cop with the mustache and the

20:55donut powder on it. So if your store is being robbed and a policeman comes along,

21:03comes in the door, you are very relieved and happy, and you say, officer, I'm being robbed,

21:07and then the officer arrests the thief, right? So you want to protect your property.

21:14The cop is there to enforce property rights for the most part, at least in this instance,

21:20and so if your store is being robbed, cop walks in, you're thrilled, happy, and relieved, right?

21:27However, the thief is not thrilled, happy, or relieved. The thief is very unhappy because

21:33the thief, rather than robbing you, is now going to get arrested. So if you look at these two

21:40responses to the cop walking in, the store owner, you as a store owner, very happy and relieved,

21:45the thief is very unhappy because you want to protect your property rights. The cop's there

21:49to do that, and the thief wants to violate your property rights, the cop is there to stop that.

21:53So the cop walking in is positive for you and negative for the thief, in the same way that if

21:59you are a virtuous person, and again, this is like, we all aim towards it, like, I don't know if

22:06there's such a thing as perfect health, but there are people who eat well, exercise, maintain a

22:12healthy weight, and so on, and generally they tend to be healthier than people who don't exercise and

22:16are significantly overweight, and eat badly, and smoke, and drink, and blah blah blah, right?

22:21I mean, the healthy person could get sick, and the person with bad health habits might live

22:26for quite a while, but in general, the odds are in your favor. It's the same thing with virtue,

22:32right? I mean, I don't know what it means to be perfectly healthy, but I do know the difference

22:37between healthy and unhealthy practices, and I don't know what it means to be perfectly virtuous,

22:42but I do know the difference between virtuous and good and evil practices.

22:48So, love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous, which means that if we value

22:54virtue, then seeing virtue manifested will give us a positive experience, in the same way that

22:59the shop owner wanting to protect his property rights sees a cop who comes to protect his property

23:06in a positive light, and the thief who wants to violate the store owner's property rights

23:09sees the cop coming by in a negative light. He dislikes it. In the same way, if you're trying

23:16to pass counterfeit bills, and it turns out that the store owner that you're trying to pass the

23:21counterfeit bills in, the store owner has a handy-dandy counterfeit detection machine. He

23:25just waves it in front, and it tells the store owner whether the bill is good or bad. Well,

23:32you will have a negative experience as a counterfeiter if you see that machine, right?

23:38Because it's going to expose you, particularly if you've already handed over the bill. Otherwise,

23:42you can pretend you left something in your car and not come back. In the same way, I'm sure that,

23:48you know, when you go shopping every now and then, somebody will ask you to show

23:54the contents of your bag, right? And my personal experience is, yeah, I paid for everything,

24:01or I didn't buy anything. You are welcome to look at the contents of my bag. And by the way,

24:06thank you for providing this service, which keeps the costs low for the things that I'm buying. I

24:11have no problem with that, right? So, if you are a corrupt, and immoral generally means anti-moral,

24:21because immoral means that you are a predator, and morality is the defense or the exposure of

24:29your predations. So, if you are immoral, which is to say anti-moral, then moral virtues become

24:35your enemy, right? If you're a counterfeiter, the counterfeit detection machines become your enemy.

24:40If you are a thief, then the cops become your enemy, and so on, right? Or, I mean, I guess,

24:46if you want to break into people's houses, then the Second Amendment becomes your enemy,

24:51and self-defense laws become your enemy, and so on. So, the natural enemy of virtue is

25:00anti-virtue, and the natural, I mean, that's almost by definition, or it's almost tautological,

25:04but the natural enemy of good is evil, and the natural enemy of evil is good. So, you will have

25:09a positive relationship to virtue, to manifestations of virtue, theories and practices of virtue,

25:15if you yourself are attempting to achieve a virtue, right? If you are trying to get a gold medal,

25:24and you come across a really great theory and practice of training that is going to vastly

25:30increase your chances to get the gold medal, and maybe you're the only one who has it, then

25:34that's going to be a positive experience for you, right? If you have bet against a particular

25:39athlete winning a gold medal, then that athlete coming across a great training and diet and

25:44exercise regime that is going to really increase his chances of getting the gold medal, that

25:49becomes a negative thing for you, because you want that athlete to lose, because you bet against

25:55the athlete. So, if you're the athlete, or you want the athlete to win, you have a positive

26:00experience of a really great, new, powerful and innovative diet and exercise and training regime.

26:07If you want the athlete to lose, as evil wants virtue to lose, then you will be unhappy,

26:12which is why, you know, this is why some people really rail against my work on universal ethics,

26:20universally preferable behavior, the rational proof of secular ethics, and they also rail

26:25against the voluntary relationships that I talk about, and they also rail against this idea that

26:32love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous, and it's one thing to say virtue,

26:36it's another thing to define it, right? I mean, it's one thing to say science, it's another thing,

26:41if you're Francis Bacon, to define what science actually is, and to create and promulgate the

26:47scientific method. So, all of these things sort of combined, give you the capacity for love, that we

26:57love the virtue that we each manifest, and of course, we're going to each manifest it in a different

27:03kind of way, because we're all individuals with individual strengths and weaknesses, and so on,

27:07right? So, it's not like you're just loving some sort of template, or some sort of like,

27:12I found UPB in somebody's behavior, therefore, I'm actually loving UPB, and I'm indifferent to

27:17the person, because everybody manifests virtue in their own way. Some people do it personally,

27:22some people do it more abstractly, some people do it more empirically, some people do it locally,

27:26some people do it in a more universal sense, or as a worldwide sense, and some people manifest

27:33it with regards to taking care of animals, or raising children, some people manifest it in

27:37terms of education, like there's so many different ways to manifest virtue that we do love, the

27:43we love the individual combined with virtue, we love them, or sorry, to put it more clearly,

27:47we love the manifestation of virtue which varies for each individual. Your manifestation of UPB

27:52is going to be different from mine, my wife's is different from mine, and so on, right? So,

27:58to me, it fulfills that which is most human, it grows over time, the involuntary nature of love

28:05protects you from love being demanded, which is, love being demanded is a contradiction in terms,

28:12it's like rape being voluntary, or theft being charity, it's a contradiction in terms.

28:18Love is like health, you can't will it, you have to earn it. You can't just have terrible health

28:23habits and will your body to be healthy, you can't will abs, you have to do some sit-ups,

28:28and you can't will health, you have to, you can will healthy habits, which hopefully will have

28:35the effect of health, and it's the most likely thing to give you that effect of health, but you

28:39can't will health, you can only will healthy habits, you can't will love, you can will the

28:44manifestation of virtue in your life, and then hopefully that will get you love. So, I hope that

28:53makes sense, I just wanted, I know it's a long explanation, but it is a really, really important

28:57topic, and I really appreciate the person who brought that up, and I hope that makes a good

29:03sense to you, and hopefully that of course will give you love in your life, you get love in your

29:09life, and it is the greatest thing that is, and so I hope that you will pursue that, and of course,

29:16if you find what I say to be of value and helpful, if you could help me out at freedomain.com

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30:08right, lots of love everyone, thank you so much, I will get to the other questions, I knew this one

30:11was going to be a long one, but I really do thank you for your questions and time, lots of love, I'll

30:16talk to you soon.

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