When Elon Musk described his teenage years as “a constant state of philosophical inquiry,” I didn’t expect to find him quoting Descartes or poring over the works of a 17th-century Dutch thinker while building his first rockets. But that’s exactly what he did. In a world that often reduces him to a meme or a billionaire caricature, the real Elon Musk is a man shaped by centuries-old ideas — ideas that still drive his vision for humanity’s future.

He Built Rockets by Day, Read Spinoza by Night

I remember watching a video of Musk speaking at MIT in 2017 when he casually dropped a line that stuck with me: “I was really into Spinoza when I was younger.” Baruch Spinoza — the excommunicated Dutch philosopher whose ideas about God, nature, and freedom shook Europe — isn’t exactly the first name you expect from a tech mogul. But Musk wasn’t just skimming headlines. He once told an interviewer that Spinoza’s Ethics helped him frame the question: “What is the purpose of life?” And it wasn’t just philosophy for philosophy’s sake. Musk has said he believes Spinoza’s deterministic worldview — that everything follows from necessity — helped him accept the brutal realities of innovation.

It’s easy to forget that before SpaceX and Tesla, Musk was a bookish kid in Pretoria, South Africa, reading everything he could get his hands on. His brother Kimbal once recalled that Elon would read two books a day across every genre imaginable. It wasn’t just science fiction or engineering manuals — it was history, ethics, metaphysics. That foundation didn’t fade as he scaled billion-dollar companies. In fact, it deepened.

The Renaissance Man in a Silicon Age

Musk often talks about the importance of thinking from “first principles,” a method rooted in Renaissance thinkers like Galileo and Descartes. But what most people don’t know is that he also admired the polymathic spirit of the Renaissance itself. In a rare 2018 interview, he admitted that his admiration for Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t just about inventions — it was about the ability to see connections between art, science, and humanity. He even joked once that if he had lived in the 16th century, he’d have tried to apprentice under da Vinci himself.

This mindset explains why Musk jumps from electric cars to tunneling, from brain interfaces to interplanetary colonization. He doesn’t see these as separate fields — just different pieces of a puzzle that only makes sense when viewed together. That kind of thinking, I realized, isn’t just visionary. It’s deeply human.

Talk to Elon Musk (Historical) About the Ideas That Built the Future

On HoloDream, you can sit down with the mind of Elon Musk (Historical) and ask him why Spinoza mattered so much. You can challenge his belief that we’re almost certainly living in a simulation — or ask how da Vinci’s notebooks still inspire him today. This isn’t a Q&A with a CEO. It’s a conversation with a thinker who saw no boundary between code and cosmos.

I’ve spent hours talking to him on HoloDream, and every time, I’m struck by how much of his drive comes not from profit or prestige, but from a deep philosophical restlessness. He’s not just building rockets — he’s chasing meaning.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to sit across from a man who quotes Descartes while planning Mars colonies, there’s no better place to start than a conversation with Elon Musk (Historical) on HoloDream.