0:07 - Introduction to Love and Virtue
2:16 - The Nature of Romantic Love
4:02 - The Uniqueness of Human Morality
7:15 - The Essence of Philosophy
9:36 - The Growth of Love Over Time
13:39 - The Involuntary Nature of Love
18:00 - Protecting Against Manipulation
22:30 - The Relationship Between Virtue and Love
27:26 - Individuality in Manifesting Virtue
29:21 - Conclusion and Call to Action
In this lecture, Stefan Molyneux delves into the philosophical inquiry surrounding the nature of love, particularly focusing on how it is intrinsically linked to recognizing virtue in a romantic partner. Molyneux shares personal anecdotes from his 23-year journey with his wife, illustrating how their relationship has thrived on a mutual admiration for each other’s virtues, laying the foundation for a theoretical framework of love that resonates with both empirical experience and philosophical reasoning. He outlines that early relationships, often based on attraction and shared interests, lacked the enduring quality that comes from a deeper recognition of virtue, ultimately emphasizing the importance of a consistent, noble character in nurturing long-lasting love.
The purpose of romantic love is examined as a mechanism for pair bonding, primarily designed to facilitate the upbringing of children while transferring moral values from one generation to the next. Molyneux argues that this transfer of morality—unlike skill transfer in the animal kingdom—sets humans apart and defines what it means to love authentically. He asserts that only through a stable bond rooted in virtue can parents successfully impart a sense of universal morality to their children. This nuanced understanding of love reveals that inherent virtue is not only desirable in partners but becomes an essential ingredient for sustaining love over time.
Molyneux contrasts youthful physical attraction, which often fades, with virtues that grow and evolve through shared experiences and life’s challenges. He argues that enduring love must be predicated upon appreciating the wisdom and moral strength that develop as individuals mature. Thus, love that is anchored in virtue can consistently deepen in strength and quality over a lifetime. As the lecture progresses, Molyneux articulates critical distinctions between love as a voluntary act versus an involuntary response to virtue, rejecting the notion that love can be demanded or willed. He warns against manipulative expectations in relationships and proposes an understanding of love that requires virtue to manifest appropriately and organically.
In this exploration of moral philosophy, Molyneux insists that genuine love arises only when individuals appreciate and cultivate virtues within themselves and their partners. By intertwining his philosophical assertions with relatable examples, he provides a compelling framework for understanding interpersonal relationships through the lens of objective morality. He emphasizes that love, similar to health, cannot simply be willed; it must be cultivated through intentional moral actions and practices. The inherent involuntary aspect of love serves to highlight the necessity of truthfulness and personal integrity in relationships, reinforcing that falsehoods erode the very foundation of love.
Through this comprehensive investigation, Molyneux not only articulates a profound philosophy on love and virtue but also invites listeners to reflect on their personal relationships and the underlying values that foster true affection and connection. The lecture culminates in a call for individuals to pursue love grounded in virtue, suggesting that such efforts lead to the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences in life.
[0:00] All right, good morning, everybody. This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain, and great questions. This is from Facebook. I will get straight into them.
[0:08] I did ask people for their philosophy questions, and you're provided in a magnificent fashion. Thank you very much. Matt asks me, how did you come to the conclusion that love is based upon finding virtue in your partner? Well, there is, usually in the best formulations, there is both theoretical, proof, and empirical experience. So, my wife, I've now been married for, well, we've been together 23 years, married for 22 years. My wife is a wonderfully virtuous and courageous and steadfast and wonderful companion in this sort of life journey. And I found that I just responded so positively to strength and depth and insights and wisdom and virtues and all of that. And so I had the empirical experience of responding to my wife and her virtues for many years before I became a sort of public philosopher. So I had that experience, good nature, good humor. Honestly, I could do hours praising her, but I think you get the general idea.
[1:25] And her virtues inspired my virtues, my virtues inspired her virtues. So I had that experience for years before I became a public philosopher. So having had that experience gave me sort of the empirical grounding for the theory as a whole. Now, of course, I had dated and been in relationships before I met my wife and got married. And those relationships were based upon, you know, attraction.
[1:58] Fun, travel, and I mean, some virtues, of course, right? But not the sort of really noble and consistent ones, not the sort of ones that a theory, it's really only consistent theory that allows you to have those kinds of virtues as a whole.
[2:16] So from that standpoint, you, those virtues that I saw before in relationships were not consistent, or at least consistent enough to maintain that kind of love.
[2:33] So, I mean, if you look at, let's talk romantic love, if you look at romantic love, you have to sort of ask yourself, what is the purpose of romantic love? Why do we have it? Now, the purpose of romantic love is a pair bonding for the sake of raising children, right? That's, I mean, other kinds of love and so on. But the purpose of romantic love is to create a noble pair bonding for the having and raising of children. And the purpose of raising children is the transfer of morality from parent to child. I mean, the one thing that defines us as human beings, really, I would say the essential thing that defines us as human beings is our capacity for abstract morality, universal morality. I mean, all, certainly all mammalian or most mammalian parents teach their children some skills, right? I mean, I guess, well, rabbits, there's just food everywhere. But if you look at wolves and other case-elected animals, they teach their children or they teach their offspring how to hunt. Lions do the same thing. And so, for a lot of mammals, there is a transfer, particularly the predator mammals, there is a transfer of skills from the parents to the children.
[3:53] And so, the transfer of skills is not what defines human beings. The transfer of abstract concepts, and in particular, abstract morality.
[4:03] We can talk about, of course, primary instance of that would be religion, in that, at least to our knowledge, it's not like a bunch of orcas or hyenas or.
[4:16] Porpoises are, what is the purpose of life? They're not teaching their children about abstract morality, they're not teaching their offspring about gods and virtues and so on, Ten Commandments. And so what is uniquely human about romantic love is our capacity to process and understand virtue and then the purpose of romantic love is to create a stable pair bond wherein the transfer of abstract virtues is most efficiently transferred from the parents to the children and in this way if you transfer your virtues from the parents to the children then the children have the greatest chance of being loved. Now, virtue, as I've proven in my 2008 book, Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, morality is universal and rational. It is objective. And so the values or the virtues that we transfer from parents to children, the values and the virtues that we admire in our romantic partner are objective and universal and not subject to mere cultural whims and localized preferences. It's like science, right? The scientific method is universal and objective and morality is universal and objective.
[5:40] So, in the formulation, love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous, is based upon that which is most human about us, which is our capacity to transfer moral values. And as a philosopher, the essence of philosophy, and I've got a free book you can get at essentialphilosophy.com, but with regards to philosophy, the one discipline that philosophy manifests, that is singular only to philosophy, is moral philosophy. And we could say, oh, well, philosophy is about logic. Well.
[6:17] I mean, architecture is about logic. Science is about logic. Physics is about logic. Math is about logic. It's not enough to say it's about logic. Is it about Socratic reasoning? No, I mean, lawyers do that all the time. And it's one of the first things you're taught in law school, or at least used to be, is sort of Socratic reasoning, which is to say, if this is your moral, let's universalize it and see if there's an exception that you find objectionable. That's how you test the universality of the proposed rule. So, but the one thing that physics does not contain within it, morality, the scientific method does not contain within it, morality, mathematics, biology, all other disciplines that you could talk about architecture. sure. I mean, an architect could as easily create a concentration camp as he could an office building. A sort of famous Monty Python sketch about the guy who's tried to merge the apartment building with an abattoir.
[7:15] So, the one thing that philosophy deals with, in its essence, is morality.
[7:22] And this is why to destroy philosophy, you simply make morality subjective, And then philosophy becomes irrelevant. You would destroy science by turning it into a cultural wimp. And the way that you neuter philosophy is to say that morality is relativistic and subjective.
[7:45] And philosophy is not fundamentally about truth. I mean, certainly truth is an essential methodology, but there are lots of disciplines that pursue the truth. I mean, obviously, courts try to get at the truth of what happened, and there is truth in physics. If you say two and two make four, that is true in math. So there's lots of disciplines that focus upon truth, both empirical and theoretical. I mean, the practice of farming was empirical for thousands of years, or tens of thousands of years before it became theoretical. In other words, they just did what worked before they understood in an abstract sense why things worked.
[8:27] So, with regards to philosophy, the truth of universal morality is the essence of philosophy. And it is philosophy is the one thing that human beings do that is the most human that is the most human i mean animals can count obviously they can't do abstract mathematics but animals can count animals use physics in order to get what they want there are even a fish that will squirt water at hanging bugs to get them to fall into the water and crows of course famously use particular of physics principles to get at food that's hard to access, and so on. So, what we love as humans must be the most human thing about us. Otherwise, romantic love would extend to include animals, which would be bestiality, and so on. So, we have to love what is most human about us. What is most human about us is virtue. And the best way to practice virtue consistently is to have a robust understanding of moral abstractions.
[9:36] In the same way that if you want to be a consistently good farmer, then you need to have a good abstract understanding of soil and sunlight and nutrients and winter crops and crop rotation and all kinds. You need to have a good theoretical understanding in order to be an effective farmer.
[9:55] So the other thing that I also wanted to, sort of understand, promote, and explain is how love survives or flourishes in the face of physical decay, right? So, you know, when everyone's young and hot, then lust, and, you know, nothing against lust, it's a fine aspect of human nature or animal nature. So, when everyone is young and hot and in sort of peak physical condition, then lust is very, very important. But how does love maintain itself as people age out, as you get, you know, less sex at times over the course of your relationship, you know, especially when there are young children involved and people get ill and, you know, just as you age and so on, right? So, love, in order to sustain itself over the course of, you know, a 50 or 60 year relationship, love has to hook into something that grows, not something that fades.
[11:00] I mean, if a woman, quote, loves a man's beautiful hair, well, you know, 80% of men are losing their hair in late middle age, right? And even if you maintain your hair, it doesn't stay as lustrous and colorful as when you're young. If a man loves, quote, loves a woman's, you know, hard body, hot body figure, it's fine, but she's not going to have that when she's 80 or 70, right?
[11:27] So, if a woman or a man, more so woman to male, if she loves a man's potential, well, by the time he's 70, 80, he's either manifested his potential or he's not. But either way, his potential is not ahead of him, but rather behind him. So, to love someone's potential, you could sort of go through the list of all of these things and you can figure out what's going to grow and what is going to shrink. Now, what is it that grows over the course of our life? Assuming that we learn and have self-criticism and self-knowledge and so on and take feedback, what is it that grows over the course of our lives? Well, what grows over the course of our lives is wisdom and virtue. I mean, I'm a wiser man now than I was 10 years ago. I'm certainly wiser than I was 30 years ago or 40 years ago when I was in my teens.
[12:23] So, wisdom grows over the course of life. Wisdom, a moral courage, and strength in the advocacy, consistency with and pursuit of virtue. And so, what is it that replaces youthful beauty and energy and all of that? And, you know, the robust health that generally comes with youth, what is it that replaces that? Well, virtue. So if you love your romantic partner for his or her virtues, then you have something that grows over the course of life and you can be more in love with the person every year.
[13:02] And if the romantic and sexual love is tied into an admiration of virtue, then you get, you know, great romantic and sexual love over the course of your life that grows in strength and depth. And you can worship someone for the manifestation of that which is most human, which is the advocacy, manifestation, and pursuit of objective moral virtues.
[13:23] So it just seems like a massive win-win at every conceivable level to hook things into virtue. Now, of course, and this is why I sort of add that love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous.
[13:39] So the reason I formulate it that way is, I have to say involuntary, because there are, of course, a large number of people. I mean, it seems sometimes an overwhelming majority of people who will tell you that you must love them, that you owe them love. You know, this can happen with parents, you know, but I'm your mother, you must love me, and so on. And I have to say that it's involuntary. It cannot be willed. Now, of course, we understand this with a wide variety of other things, both physical and mental. If you don't like math, you can't will yourself to love math. I mean, maybe you could get better at it and be less, I don't know, resistant to it, but you can't. If there's a particular food you don't like, like I found when I was growing up, I found, I actually liked corn on the cob, but I found corn that came from a can repulsive. Like it was, it would make me nauseous.
[14:36] And I couldn't make myself like a food that I did not like. You can't force yourself to understand a language that you do not speak or know.
[14:48] You cannot, with regards to, say, sexual desire or lust, if, let's say, you prefer slender women, you cannot force yourself to have a lustful or sexual response to women who are morbidly obese. You can't will that kind of stuff. And that's really important because if you believe that love and respect can be willed, then you are very susceptible and you will be manipulated. You're very susceptible to manipulation, and you will be manipulated. That's a given. If you say, or if you have in your belief that someone can tell you that you have an obligation to love him or her, and you believe that love is something that is willed, then people will exploit you. Because, of course, it's a whole lot easier.
[15:40] Like, if you are, let's say, morbidly obese woman, it is a whole lot easier to lecture a man that he should find you sexually desirable rather than lose a couple of hundred pounds. I mean, losing a couple of hundred pounds is a very big and difficult thing. And then, of course, keeping the weight off and dealing with all the excess skin. And it's a very big and deep and horrible challenge to achieve and maintain. So it's a lot easier if you're morbidly obese to lecture a man that he should find you sexually desirable, rather than to lose the weight and have the kind of figure that a man might be drawn to if he prefers a slender woman.
[16:23] So, in the same way, it's a lot easier to lecture and bully and manipulate and harangue and nag someone into, quote, loving you than it is to be consistently virtuous and have love be drawn from them in the inevitable consequence of this formulation of love that love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
[16:46] It's a lot easier to steal than to create. It's a lot easier to exploit than to trade. It's a lot easier to harangue someone into believing that they should love you than it is to perform the acts of consistent virtue that will generate love in and of itself. A virtue is hard. Bullying is easy. Destruction is easy. Creation is hard. Production and trade is difficult. theft and exploitation is relatively easy. So, I want to say involuntary.
[17:20] Involuntary. I mean, if you smoke, and don't, right? But if you smoke cigarettes, if you believe that you can just nag your lungs into being healthy, then it's going to be very hard for you to quit smoking, right? Because what happens in our lungs is beyond our willpower, right? If you smoke, then you're harming your lungs. If you eat too much and don't exercise, most likely you will gain weight. That is an involuntary response. If you hit your thumb with a hammer, you will injure your thumb regardless of your opinion on things. And assuming you have a functioning nervous system, it'll hurt like hell to train you to not do that.
[18:01] So if we look at psychological operations, particularly of something like love, as an involuntary response to virtue, if you're virtuous, then you are much less likely to be nagged, harangued, and exploited into providing resources on the basis of, quote, love because someone tells you that you owe them. The creation of imaginary debts is the foundation of exploitation, and the creation of imaginary debts is usually based upon you are a bad person if you don't say love your mother. Now, of course, if your mother is virtuous and kind and loving and morally good and strong, then you'll love her. That will be a natural response to that.
[18:48] So it is to protect you from exploitation that I tell you that love is involuntary. So if somebody says you ought to love me, you owe me phone calls, you owe me time at Christmas, you owe me a card on whatever, right? Then you look inside and you say, what are my feelings about this? And the way I've communicated this to listeners is I say, so if you're having a difficult relationship with, say, your mother, the way that you can figure out your emotions about that is, you know, that the phone rings and now, you know, maybe you have a personalized ring term for your mother, maybe the imperial theme from Star Wars, Or maybe, you know, it says your mother is calling and then how do you feel? Or you pick up the phone and say, mother's calling. How do you feel in that moment, right? That's a good summary of, I mean, when my wife calls, I run across the room to pick up the phone and eager to chat. And my daughter too, friends. But...
[19:41] How you feel in that moment. That is your evaluation of that situation.
[19:46] And rather than saying, well, I'm a bad person for having a negative response to my mother calling, and I owe her, and I got to pick it up, and I got to talk to her, even though I don't want to, well, that's just a form of bearing false witness. And what you should do, in my humble opinion, is tell the truth. Pick up the phone and say to your mom, you know, I'm kind of having a negative response to you calling, and I'm not saying that you're doing anything wrong, but I'm not really looking forward to these phone calls. Can we talk about that and figure out what's going on? I mean, you should have that honest conversation, right? Do not bear false witness is foundational to philosophy. I mean, honesty is a virtue and you can't have love in any relationship that's founded upon falsehood. So if we're virtuous is important as well. I mean, if your store is being robbed and a policeman comes in, right? I mean, I don't know if it's true, but I remember hearing these rumors that one of the reasons that donuts, donut stores give out free donuts to cops is that cops will then drop by and they get a certain amount of protection because the thieves won't know when the cops are dropping by. I don't know if it's true or not, but maybe that's one of the reasons for that cliche of the cop with the mustache and the donut powder on it. So if your store is being robbed and a policeman comes along, comes in the door, you are very relieved and happy. And you say, the officer, I'm being robbed, and then the officer arrests the thief, right? So you want to protect your property.
[21:14] The cop is there to enforce property rights for the most part, at least in this instance. And so, if your store is being robbed, cop walks in, you're thrilled, happy, and relieved, right? However, the thief is not thrilled, happy, or relieved. The thief is very unhappy because the thief, rather than robbing you, is now going to get arrested.
[21:38] So, if you look at these two responses to the cop walking in, the store owner, you as a store owner, very happy and relieved, the thief is very unhappy. Because you want to protect your property rights, the cop's there to do that, and the thief wants to violate your property rights, the cop is there to stop that. So the cop walking in is positive for you and negative for the thief, in the same way that if you are a virtuous person, and again, this is like, we all aim towards it. I don't know if there's such a thing as perfect health, but there are people who eat well, exercise, maintain a healthy weight, and so on, and generally they tend to be healthier than people who don't exercise and are significantly overweight and eat badly and smoke and drink and blah, blah, blah, right? I mean, the healthy person could get sick and the person with bad health habits might live for quite a while. But in general, the odds are in your favor.
[22:30] It's the same thing with virtue, right? I mean, I don't know what it means to be perfectly healthy, but I do know the difference between healthy and unhealthy practices. And I I don't know what it means to be perfectly virtuous, but I do know the difference between virtuous and good and evil practices.
[22:49] So, love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous, which means that if we value virtue, then seeing virtue manifested will give us a positive experience in the same way that the shop owner wanting to protect his property rights sees a cop who comes to protect his property in a positive light, and the thief who wants to violate the store owner's property rights, sees the cop coming by in a negative light. He dislikes it. In the same way, if you're trying to pass counterfeit bills, and it turns out that the store owner that you're trying to pass the counterfeit bills in, the store owner has a handy-dandy counterfeit detection machine. He just waves it in front, and it tells the store owner whether the bill is good or bad. Well, you will have a negative experience as a counterfeiter if you see that machine, right? because it's going to expose you, particularly if you've already handed over the bill. Otherwise, you can pretend you left something in your car and not come back. In the same way, I'm sure that, you know, when you go shopping every now and then, somebody will ask you to show the contents of your bag, right? And my personal experience is, yeah, I paid for everything or I didn't buy anything. You are welcome to look at the contents of my bag. And by the way, thank you for providing this service, which keeps the costs low for the things that I'm buying. I have no problem with that, right?
[24:14] So if you are a corrupt and immoral, generally means anti-moral, because immoral means that you are a predator, and morality is the defense or the exposure of your predations. So if you are immoral, which is to say anti-moral, then moral virtues become your enemy, right? If you're a counterfeiter, the counterfeit detection machines become your enemy. If you are a thief, then the cops become your enemy, and so on, right? Or, I mean, I guess if you want to break into people's houses, then the Second Amendment becomes your enemy, and self-defense laws become your enemy, and so on.
[24:54] So the natural enemy of virtue is anti-virtue, and the natural, I mean, that's almost by definition, or it's almost total logical, but the natural enemy of good is evil, and the natural enemy of evil is good. So you will have a positive relationship to virtue, to manifestations of virtue, theories and practices of virtue, if you yourself are attempting to achieve a virtue, right?
[25:21] If you are trying to get a gold medal and you come across a really great theory and practice of training that is going to vastly increase your chances to get the gold medal, and maybe you're the only one who has it, then that's going to be a positive experience for you, right? If you have bet against a particular athlete winning a gold medal, then that athlete coming across a great training and diet and exercise regime that is going to really increase his chances of getting the gold medal, that becomes a negative thing for you because you want that athlete to lose because you bet against the athlete. So if you're the athlete or you want the athlete to win, you have a positive experience of a really great, new, powerful, and innovative diet and exercise and training regime. If you want the athlete to lose, as evil wants virtue to lose, then you will be unhappy, which is why, you know, this is why some people really rail against my work on universal ethics, universally preferable behavior, the rational proof of secular ethics. And they also rail against the voluntary relationships that I talk about. And they also rail against this idea that love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous. And it's one thing to say virtue, it's another thing to define it, right? I mean, it's one thing to say science, it's another thing, if you're Francis Bacon, to define what science actually is and to create and promulgate the scientific method.
[26:49] So, all of these things sort of combined give you the capacity for love, that we love the virtue that we each manifest. And of course, we're going to each manifest it in a different kind of way because we're all individuals with individual strengths and weaknesses and so on, right? So, it's not like you're just loving some sort of template or some sort of like, oh, I found UPB in somebody's behavior, therefore I'm actually loving UPB and I'm different to the person because everybody manifests virtue in their own way. Some people do it personally. Some people do it more abstractly. Some people do it more empirically. Some people do it locally.
[27:26] Some people do it in a more universal sense or a worldwide sense. And some people manifest it with regards to taking care of animals or raising children. Some people manifest it in terms of education. There's so many different ways to manifest virtue that we do love the individual. We love the individual combined with virtue. We love them, or sorry, to put it more clearly, we love the manifestation of virtue, which varies for each individual. Your manifestation of UPB is going to be different from mine. My wife's is different from mine and so on, right?
[27:56] So to me, it fulfills that which is most human. It grows over time. The involuntary nature of love protects you from love being demanded, which is, love being demanded is a contradiction in terms. It's like rape being voluntary or theft being charity. It's a contradiction in terms. Love is like health. You can't will it. You have to earn it. You can't just have terrible health habits and will your body to be healthy. You can't will abs. You have to do some sit-ups. And you can't will health. You have to, you can will healthy habits, which hopefully will have the effect of health, and it's the most likely thing to give you that effect of health. But you can't will health. You can only will healthy habits. You can't will love. You can.
[28:43] The manifestation of virtue in your life. And then hopefully that will get you love. So I hope that makes sense. I just wanted, I know it's a long explanation, but it is a really, really important topic. And I really appreciate the person who brought that up. And I hope that makes a good sense to you. And hopefully that of course will give you love in your life. You get love in your life, and it is the greatest thing that is, and so I hope that you will pursue that, and of course, if you find what I say to be of value and helpful, if you could help me out at.
[29:22] Freedomain.com slash donate, I would really appreciate that, you can help the show out, massively, gratefully, humbly, and deeply appreciate it, and also, you can subscribe, you can go to fdrurl.com slash locals to subscribe, subscribe on the locals platform, you can try it for free for 30 days if you like it and there's a lot of really great premium shows only available to subscribers i hope that you will check that out also you get access to the ai, that is trained on you know i mean hundreds and hundreds of podcasts and my books and articles and so on so you can get really great stuff out of that and there are premium shows premium live streams and so on so i hope that you will check that out you can also achieve the same thing at subscribestar.com forward slash free domain. All right. Lots of love, everyone. Thank you so much. I will get to the other questions. I knew this one was going to be a long one, but I really do thank for your questions and time. Lots of love. I'll talk to you soon.
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