F*ck Immanuel Kant! (UPB)

Stefan Molyneux

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.  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  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. Somebody who writes to me regularly said, the categorical imperative is more logically

00:07sound than UPP and was around for centuries. And that couldn't save society. Christianity

00:13saved society more than that. So that, of course, is very interesting. Very interesting. So,

00:23the categorical imperative is, in general, act as if the principle of your action becomes a

00:29general rule for everyone, right? Act as if the principle of your action becomes a general rule

00:38for everyone. And, I mean, obviously, there's more to it, but that's the, obviously, there's a lot

00:45more to it. I mean, Critique of Pure Reason is quite a lengthy tome, and other stuff that Kant wrote is

00:52quite a lengthy tome, quite a set of lengthy tomes. But the general idea is that. Act as if the

01:01principle of your action becomes a general rule for everyone, which is basically, how would you like

01:06it if someone did it to you? How would you like it if somebody did this to you? X, whatever X is to

01:13you. Oh, sorry. And that is a fine and interesting question. I mean, the first thing that I think of

01:22is, well, why? Why? Why should I act as if the principle of my action becomes a general rule for

01:29everybody? There's no reason why I must or should act in that way. It'd be nice if people thought

01:38about, you know, how would you like it if someone did it to you? Sort of the golden rule, do unto

01:43others as you would have them do unto you. And it's what we say to kids, right? Oh, you took his toy.

01:48How would you like it if he just came along and took your toy? Right? And that's fine for little

01:55kids. I don't see how it solves the problem of morality at all. See, the problem of morality is

02:02not individual bad moral actors. The problem of morality is invalid, self-contradictory moral

02:12theories. That is the issue. UPB, of course, does not stop any bullet. It does not stop any

02:20pilfering hand. It does not stop any pickpockets at all. But these are not the dangers that we face

02:27in the world. The dangers that we face in the world come from invalid, incorrect moral theories.

02:38That's the issue that we have to deal with. That's the issue that is tearing us apart.

02:43What is taking down the West at the moment is not individual bad actors. You can protect

02:50yourself against them. You can move away from them. You can hire security guards. You can be

02:54armed. You can have alarm systems. You can hire security. You can do anything to protect yourself

03:02against individual bad moral actors. Bad dudes. Bad hombres. You can do anything. You can band together.

03:10You can get neighborhood watch. You can do just about anything. You can improve parenting. You can do

03:15tons of things to deal with this bad, individual bad moral actors. Right? What you can't win against

03:27is generally accepted self-contradictory moral theories like statism. Is Europe in more foundational

03:35or existential danger from pickpockets or statism? Are you worried about somebody stealing your credit

03:46card or are you more concerned with the fact that each one of your children is born into over a million

03:54dollars in debt? It is not individual bad actors that we have to foundationally fear in society.

04:05It is false, self-contradictory moral theories. And even Kant himself did not believe his own

04:19system. Immanuel Kant did not believe his own system. Act as if the principle of your action becomes a

04:27general law for everyone. Great. Fantastic. Immanuel, let's run that past, say, the prince.

04:37Because Kant said, hey, man, you got to obey the prince. Whatever the prince says, that's social

04:41stability. That's the good. Bullshit. Absolute stinking, steaming, wretched, horrifying, evil, blood-soaked

04:51bullshit. Oh, act as if the principle of your action becomes a general rule for everyone.

04:58Fantastic. So the prince has the right to tax people. Great. Okay. So everyone has the right

05:04to tax people. Look at that. We've just dealt with the categorical imperative. Huh. I wonder

05:11if Immanuel Kant was an advocate for a stateless society. Because, you see, the categorical imperative

05:20tells everyone that you should act in such a manner that the principle of your action becomes

05:28a general rule for everyone. So clearly, clearly, when Immanuel Kant looked at the state,

05:36he said, huh, well, that's interesting. So the prince has the power to create laws. The prince has the

05:48power to declare war. The prince has the power to impose taxes. The prince automatically owns land

05:54simply by being born. Ah, well, I suppose those are rights and powers that everyone should be able

06:03to exercise. The prince taxes you. You tax the prince. The prince says he owns land by virtue of

06:12being born. Oh, look, you get that same rule. You get to own land by principle of being born.

06:19The prince gets to declare war. Oh, you get to declare war. The prince gets to run up debt on behalf

06:26of others, future taxpayers. Oh, so you get to run up debt on behalf of the prince and his family.

06:33Oh, the prince gets to impose trades restrictions and tariffs on trade. Oh, look at that. So does

06:41everyone get the ability to impose or repeal tariffs and taxes on trade. The prince gets to impose a

06:50sales tax and the prince gets to repeal a sales tax. Oh, by the law of categorical imperative,

06:56everyone gets to do that. Everyone. Oh, so the prince imposes a tax on you. You just use that same

07:05power to both impose and repeal taxes to repeal his tax on you. That's the categorical imperative and

07:12he believes none of it. None. It's all bullshit. And evil blood soaks getting hundreds of millions of

07:23people slaughtered. Absolute fucking bullshit. He didn't believe in the categorical imperative at

07:30all because he said you had to obey the government no matter what, even if the government was unjust,

07:35even the government. Where's the categorical imperative? Where? Oh, I have to obey the

07:42prince's edicts, but according to the categorical imperative, the prince also has to obey my edicts.

07:48The prince can inflict or repeal edicts upon me. Therefore, by categorical imperative, I can inflict

07:59edicts or repeal them on the prince because he's just another bro or brony or bro-ess sister. You see,

08:09he doesn't believe it at all. This is a massive, obvious, suicidally catastrophic moral error.

08:21Immanuel Kant didn't believe in the categorical imperative at all because the categorical

08:29imperative would demand no special rights and privileges for anyone and yet he was a bootlicking

08:35toady fucking statist worm tongue. Now, quick question. This is blindingly obvious, is it not?

08:44Blindingly obvious. Act as if the principle of your action becomes a general rule for everybody.

08:51Okay, let's just say that that's a valid approach. Then the first most obvious thing you would do is say

08:58that there should be no rights and privileges that cannot be universalized. So if the prince

09:04imposes coercion on others or repeals that coercion, then the prince should accept that everyone has

09:12that right and therefore he is no longer the prince in any way, shape, or form. You follow?

09:19Sorry, this is, uh, uh, it's important to be repetitive. I don't feel that I'm that repetitive.

09:25It's like ten minutes and change to dismantle a central and foundational enlightenment moral fuck-up

09:32that has the slaughter and blood and murder of hundreds of millions on its fucking enlightenment

09:40stained hands. It's evil beyond words. There is no language. There are no words to encompass just how

09:49evil this doctrine is. And people say, well, but, but, but, but, but, but UPB is just like

09:55the categorical imperative. Well, all rules are supposed to be universal. The question is,

10:01why the fuck didn't Kant make them universal? Oh, he's such a logician. Oh, such integrity. Did you

10:07know that he, he took the same walk every day in the town wherein he lived and he, you know?

10:14Hypocritical fucking asshole moralists are the biggest murderers of mankind.

10:19And I shit you not. Hypocritical, bullshit, lying, cucked, self-contradictory asshole moralists

10:28are the greatest enemy of mankind because they are the portal through which the tyrants come.

10:36They are the portal through which the Pol Potts, the Saarlins, the Maus, the Hitlers, all of them come.

10:43High end day if he hadn't been stopped. The false moral theories are the gates and the portals that

10:52summon the demons, right? Don't you always have to summon the demons, right? They don't just come

10:56on their own. You've got to write things on the ground like a pentagram. You've got to do your

11:00rituals. You've got to open a portal and then the devils come. You see, the moralists are the black-hearted,

11:08evil, lich sorcerers who summon the devils that disassemble mankind. Why didn't Immanuel Kant

11:19take his moral theory to... It's not even a logical conclusion. It's not, well, you know,

11:2712 steps after the categorical imperative, it turns out that you can't give special rights and privileges

11:32to individuals because that breaks the entire fucking point of the categorical imperative.

11:39All of it is rendered moot, self-contradictory, and evil by continuing to praise the state

11:47and praise the prince and demand subjugation and obedience to the prince despite having an entire

11:54fucking moral theory called no special rights and privileges to anyone. Do you know what kind of

12:01fucking sadist you have to be to inflict that on mankind? And what about all the academics?

12:07Well, they're bought and sold by the state. Their brains are on the quivering jelly auction block

12:15of government power. They are bought and fucking sold and manacled by the ghost chains of fiat currency

12:21and unjust bloody privilege. They are the aristocrats. They cannot criticize the king because

12:28the king is the source of their legitimacy and power. How do you reconcile? In any sane fucking

12:38universe, how do you reconcile? A. Nobody should have any special privileges whatsoever. And B. The

12:46divine right of kings. What an asshole. In a just future society, they will dig up the bones of these

12:54people and summon the ghosts of half a billion dead to fucking pee on them. See, the individual actors,

13:04while important to their victims, are not important to society as a whole. So what I mean by that is,

13:11you can get food poisoning. You could get, theoretically, I guess, cholera or something like that.

13:18But you're infinitely more likely to get these illnesses if the food is rotten and there's no

13:27indoor plumbing, right? And the entire system is rotten as a whole, right? If you have water

13:38filtration systems, if you have clean plumbing, if you have UV eradication of bacteria, if you boil your

13:48water, like all of the, if all of these things are known to the point where you turn on the tap in a

13:53first world country, you turn on the tap and you can drink the water without dying. It's a plus. It's a good

14:01thing. So individual bad actors are like people, something gets misstamped on the best before date,

14:11something gets sold too late, they get sick, you know, something ends up in the food at a sandwich

14:17shop. That happened to me many years ago, lost a whole day of my life because some sandwich shop

14:21produced something that was bad. And these are individual acts of food poisoning, as opposed to

14:28everything's fucking rotten and you're taking your life in your hands every time you take a bite.

14:37When people didn't even know they had to wash their hands before putting their hands in people's

14:41innards in sort of surgery and I think it was late in the 19th century when people finally figured out

14:47you should wash your hands and not transfer germs. When people thought that washing your hands was bad

14:52for you and people thought that bathing as a whole was bad for you, people thought all of that. People

14:58died by the millions. Now, how many people die from simple infections? Well, we've got water purity,

15:08we've got good food standards, frozen food, fridges, hand washing, lots of things to make sure we don't

15:17die or don't have a significant risk of dying every time we eat. Oh, well, I'm going to die if I don't eat,

15:24but I might die if I do eat, right? A few children will die over the first couple of years of life,

15:32but not half. See, when people had bad ideas about health and safety and bad equipment,

15:40then people died by the hundreds of millions. When people have better ideas about these things,

15:48then they don't. So, what I'm saying is that when you have a terrible system, it's the system that is

15:57the problem. When you have a good system, there will be individual exceptions, but the system is

16:05not the problem. So, UPB fixes the system. Will there still be individual bad actors? Yes, for sure.

16:15But the system is fixed. Will a few babies still get sick and die after childbirth? Yes, but not half.

16:22Will there be occasional cases of food poisoning? Sure. Yeah, we've all been through it, right? It's

16:27very rare. You don't die, usually. And it's not common. It's not commonplace. I've had maybe,

16:37I don't know, I'm guessing maybe three to five instances of, that's hard to tell, right? Because

16:42it'd be a 24-hour bug, right? You know, probably, I don't know, three or four or five instances of

16:47food poisoning over the course of my entire life. So, UPB says, we need to correct the bad moral

16:55theories. And people say, well, this, will this make everyone moral? No, but it fixes the system.

17:03So, if you say, you should wash your hands to try to avoid getting sick, and certainly before

17:11you operate on someone, you should wash your hands. Practice good hand washing. Now, if people don't

17:21even know that, they'll get sick a lot more. Ah, but once you tell people that they have to wash their

17:28hands, particularly before eating and touching somebody else's innards, does that mean that

17:34everyone will? No. Some people won't. I'm sure some doctors don't wash their hands when they should.

17:43I'm sure 99.9% of them do, but if people don't even know that they need to wash their hands,

17:50and you make the proof, and you establish the science, and you make the data absolute,

17:57and you make it impossible to not know this and to not understand it, and you've got the theory,

18:02you've got the practice, you've got the data, you've got the proof, you need to wash your hands.

18:07Does that mean that everyone will wash their hands? Not everyone. And can you imagine if you

18:14were the first guy to figure out that doctors need to, surgeons, surgeons in particular, need to wash

18:18their hands. Doctors, surgeons need to wash their hands. If you were the first person to figure that

18:22out, and you were to say, ah, you know, I could say something, I don't know, man, I could say

18:29something about it, but I know that it's going to save hundreds of millions of lives over the

18:36centuries. I could say something, but, you know, the problem is, you know, I can't guarantee that

18:43absolutely everyone is going to wash their hands, so I guess I'll just be silent. Do you get how

18:50nuts that is? How crazy it is? How deranged that is? How monstrous that is? Well, it's true that I,

19:01uh, I have a patient, says a doctor. It's true that I have a patient dying of antibiotics. In fact,

19:08the dying of an infection. I should give them antibiotics, but a patient is dying. But I can't

19:15guarantee that everyone is going to take their antibiotics at exactly the right time. So, I guess

19:21I'll just not give anyone antibiotics. Do you see? I don't, obviously, don't understand it. I don't.

19:30I do not understand it. Why you wouldn't want to fix the system. You should act as if the principle

19:37of your action becomes a general rule for everyone. First of all, Immanuel Kant didn't believe that at all.

19:42So, I, I, what, what, what would I care about a dietician who doesn't follow their own diet?

19:50That's the opposite of their own diet. There should be no special privileges for everyone,

19:54except for the prince. He should have the power of life, of life and death over tens or even hundreds

19:59of millions of people. A billion people, whatever. Yeah, let's give it to the prince in,

20:03the government in China. And to communism. Yeah, yeah, sure. Absolutely. Millions. Billions.

20:09This is the moral rule. Asterisk. Also the complete opposite. Come on. Imagine that in

20:18physics. This is the rule of physics. Also complete opposite. Everyone should act as if the

20:25principle of their action becomes a moral rule for everyone, except for those people with the

20:28most power of life and death. They can do whatever the fuck they want and you should never say no

20:32or disobey them. They can kill your family. You should just nod and smile and bob your head and

20:37say, yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir. Anything you want. Do what you will. Slaughter my

20:44children. Ostracize my wife. Exile my grandparents. Whatever, right? But of course, the other question

20:51is, well, why? What is the reason that we should act as if the principle of our action becomes a general

20:57rule for everyone? Certainly the incentive, the incentive is to convince other people that they

21:05should follow rules while you don't have to follow the rule at all, right? The most advantageous

21:12resource acquisition strategy is to convince everyone else to respect property rights while

21:20giving yourself permission to steal. Or in the case of the prince, giving yourself the right

21:27to steal, right? There's no better strategy. If you were the only thief in society, you could just

21:34walk around taking stuff and people wouldn't even imagine that you'd stolen it. Or that it had been

21:39stolen. Oh, my misplaced it or the wind took it away or whatever, right? A magpie. And there'd be no

21:45locks, no personal protections, no pins, no passwords. You'd have a very easy time of it.

21:53So the best resource acquisition strategy is to convince others that they should obey all the

22:02moral rules while you should not. And that's the source of the prince's power. So Immanuel Kant

22:09could not have served evil any better if he were Satan himself. Act as if the principle of the

22:17action becomes a general rule for everyone. Why? He didn't prove that it's self-contradictory if you

22:22don't. He just says, well, you're kind of a hypocrite if you convince other people to follow a rule that

22:30you're not following. Well, you're a hypocrite. A UPB doesn't rely on that because that's bullshit. Of

22:38course there are hypocrites. Hypocrisy developed in human society because it's so unbelievably

22:44profitable to be a hypocrite. It's so unbelievably profitable to be a hypocrite. To convince other

22:56people of moral rules you don't have to follow yourself. And the way you do that is through bribery

23:02and threat. You bribe people to agree with you and you threaten people who point out the con.

23:07Which is why, despite being an absolute servant of the worst fucking evils on the planet,

23:15Immanuel Kant is still an honored moralist in the halls of academia. What, what? Oh, such a deep and

23:22wise and predictable moral reasoner. Think if Immanuel Kant had pointed out the evils of the prince,

23:35he would be taught anywhere. He's only taught because he serves power, he serves evil, he justifies the

23:45slaughter of hundreds of millions and the pillaging of generations based upon the wealth and exploitation

23:53of the present. Immanuel Kant serves those in power, as does Hobbes, as does, I mean,

24:01I've got a whole history of philosophers series, right? And Locke served those newly in power,

24:08i.e. the founding fathers in America. So, very, very helpful for them, because Locke justified,

24:17um, why you overthrow a government and, uh, get a new one. Which, for the people who want to have their

24:23own government, uh, it's, uh, it's a plus. But it's really not that complicated. Thou shalt not steal

24:30applies to human beings. The prince is just a human being, therefore he should not steal.

24:35It's not complicated. If you were to say to a kid, nobody should use violence except for the very

24:44tallest kid. The very tallest kid can totally use violence. No, that's not fair, no fair,

24:48no fair. Why, why does he get to do it? Right? If the teacher were to say, everyone gets an hour

24:59of homework tonight except the redheads. Oh, why? What's, what's, what's, what's so special about

25:05being a redhead? Why, why do they get exempt from the rules? Right? You see, you follow, right? It's

25:09not complicated. Kids understand it. And for tens of thousands of years, adults have pretended not to

25:14understand it. Um, I get it. You, you can get into some serious shit. It's a serious blowback. I get

25:20that. I get it. But, I mean, the time has passed. Now we can, we can be honest, right? Let us not talk

25:28falsely loud, for the hour is getting late. So, UPB stumps not one bad actor. In the same way that saying

25:37wash your hands does not force everyone, like when you say wash your hands, giant mechanical arms

25:43don't descend from the sky and force everyone to wash their hands. I understand. Just because

25:51there are airplanes that go from one end of Canada to another doesn't mean that Terry Fox isn't going

25:57to run, or I guess technically hop, from one end of Canada to the other. But you can't. Just because

26:03there are planes, and trains, and buses, and cars, and bicycles, you can't, you can't guarantee that

26:12there's nobody who's going to walk across the country. Yeah, can't guarantee it. But it's very,

26:18very, very much the exception. In the same way that even if everyone washes their hands, who's a doctor,

26:26or at the hospital, it doesn't guarantee that nobody gets post-op infections, but the ones

26:31that happen will be very rare. It could be the case that the safety on a gun is faulty. But still,

26:40we have safeties on guns, because it lowers the incidence of accidental discharges enormously.

26:50So, UPB says that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior. It's

26:56logically impossible. It's self-contradictory. It can't happen at all. It's impossible. It is

27:02self-contradictory. It cannot occur. It cannot be valid. It cannot be sustained. It cannot be logical.

27:08It cannot be moral. It cannot be consistent. They cannot be moral. Again, does that mean that there'll

27:15be no evil? No, because there's free will. But what we need with free will, obviously, what we need with

27:22free will is better information, right? We need better information. If somebody doesn't even know,

27:30they don't have a germ theory, they don't have a theory of soap, or anything like that.

27:34If somebody doesn't even know that washing their hands will help prevent infection before they

27:39operate on someone, they don't have the choice to wash their hands, really. I mean, unless they happen

27:46to have some OCD fetish for it. So, UPB is like saying to surgeons, wash your hands. But they won't

27:55all do it. Who cares? Right now, almost none of them do it. After washing your hands becomes a standard.

28:03Almost all, like one out of 10,000 might not, which saves hundreds of millions of lives over

28:11centuries. I don't know. It's physics envy, is it? Because, is it to say, well, things have to be

28:18absolute? Well, they can't be absolute. The reason we need morality is because people choose badly. The

28:22reason we need a science of nutrition is people choose to eat badly. Because taste is not a reliable

28:26indicator of what is good for you. Right? So, act as if the principle of your action becomes a general rule

28:33for everyone. Why? Because that's moral. That's good. Well, but there are evil people in the world

28:39who are going to be hypocritical. They're going to advocate for morals that they don't follow

28:45themselves. Right? So, people who are already moral can only be led astray by bad moral theories.

28:54If there was a theory of surgery that said dip your hands in animal fecal matter or human fecal

29:02matter before you operated, then doctors, even those doctors who, especially those doctors who wanted

29:09to do right by their patients, would dip their hands into more fecal matter before operating on people

29:13and therefore would cause people to get infected and die. And it was their conscientiousness that would

29:19cause them to harm their patients because they had bad information. So, UPB is just there to say to

29:27people, we are going to remove the bad information you have about morality. And we're going to demand

29:33that that which you claim is universally preferable behavior can actually be universally preferable

29:38behavior. That's all. And that gives people better information. And yeah, it's disorienting. I get all of

29:43that. I get all of that. But it's really essential. UPB aims not at individual actors, but at bad moral

29:51theories. Because bad moral theories program the individual actors to achieve evil while trying to

29:58be good. People who just want to be evil, UPB won't touch them. It will, of course, justify self-defense

30:02against them, which will eliminate them quite quickly. If people want to do a lot of violent evil and you

30:07have the right to weaponry and self-defense, they're not going to last super long, right? So, it doesn't

30:13touch individual actors. Like, if there are, of course, occasional surgeons who are just sadists,

30:19they just became surgeons because they're sadists and they want to hurt people and this and that and

30:22the other, right? Okay. So, they may only pretend to wash their hands because they want to infect

30:27their patients. Okay, but that's such a wild exception to the general rule. Most surgeons want to do a

30:32good job and don't want to infect their patients and want the healing process to go well, right? So, it's

30:38those people who need the best information. The most conscientious and virtuous among us, if programmed

30:43by bad moral theories, become the most evil among us. This is sort of the awfully affluent white liberal

30:48female situation, right? So, it's removing bad information from the conscientious and good-hearted

30:54so they can actually do good rather than serve evil. And Immanuel Kant has them serving evil.

31:02And for that, given how powerful he was in terms of logic, for that, he can never be held inexcusable.

31:09He can never be held excuse-free. His behavior, his writings are absolutely inexcusable.

31:17Because, if it's not safe, for whatever reason, he chose, right? You could put this in your will,

31:23you could put this in the end of your life thing, right? But if, for some reason, he felt it wasn't

31:28safe to say what was moral, then he should have shut the fuck up and not hand more weapons to the

31:35enemies of mankind to ensure as much human enslavement as inhumanly possible. And for that,

31:41well, his memory should be cursed, forever and ever. Amen.

31:47freedomain.com slash donate. Thank you so much, my friends. I'll talk to you soon.

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