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'A manosphere-vaccine.' Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star/Getty Images
Like every conservative intellectual, Jordan Peterson once was a man of the Left. Left-wingers were hard to come by in Seventies Alberta; Peterson grew up in what was in effect a one-party state. When he was a teenager, all but five of the representatives in the Canadian province’s Legislative Assembly were members of the Progressive Conservative Party, and of those five, four belonged to the Right-wing, crankish Social Credit Party.
The sole Left-wing voice belonged to Grant Notley, whose wife, Sandra, was the librarian at Peterson’s school, and whose daughter, Rachel, went on to be Alberta’s premier. Peterson worked for Grant and, aged only 14, came within 13 votes of being elected to the executive of his New Democratic Party. But it was Sandra who had the greatest impact on him, by introducing him to the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Ayn Rand, and George Orwell.
Conservative intellectuals are expected to have a narrative of their Damascene conversion, and Peterson’s came from Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier. That book, he says, convinced him that socialists are, as a rule, petty and resentful people, and that the whole ideology had therefore to be rejected. No matter that Orwell had explicitly cautioned his readers against exactly this fallacy: “To recoil from socialism because so many socialists are inferior people is as absurd as refusing to travel by train because you dislike the ticket-collector’s face.” For Peterson politics is a matter of character; and he conducts his war against petty and resentful socialism by trying to inculcate good character traits in his audience.
Peterson became the world’s most influential public intellectual by supplying anxious audiences with concrete answers. 12 Rules for Life, his 2018 bestseller, addresses all the usual self-help questions: how to succeed at work, how to find love, how to establish order in a chaotic and disconcerting world. The Peterson of 2018 seemed the right kind of person to provide the answers; he looked and sounded like a man who had his affairs in order. He was adept at playing the stern father figure: “Young people are mostly worthless because they don’t know anything.” The answers themselves were straightforward, practical, and have likely helped many thousands of people. Make friends with people who want the best for you. Clean up your room. Stand up straight with your shoulders back, bucko!
Now, however, Peterson prefers to ask questions. The distance of 12 Rules for Life from his latest book, We Who Wrestle with God, reflects a shift in Peterson’s public persona. It is a shift from no-nonsense instruction to high-falutin abstraction. It is a shift typified, even, in his manner of dress: the difference between a sleek, business-like suit and a gauche, flamboyant one.
We Who Wrestle with God is a kind of homiliary, a selection of moral teachings based upon Peterson’s reading of the Bible. Chapters start and end with rhetorical questions. He recounts various Biblical stories before following them up with his favourite rhetorical question of all: “What does it mean?” Abraham apparently employs “the longest-term and most comprehensive [mating] strategies possible” — “What does all this mean?” His wife miraculously conceives when she is 90 years old — “What does this mean?”
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SubscribeMost “Holistic” intellectuals go through stages of learning. You have to accurately grasp a wide variety of cultural, scientific and even linguistic variables to get to something that approximates an accurate representation of the concept you’re describing.
Peterson has consistently been saying that the Anthropological understanding of world history is fundamentally flawed. You can not deduce history or understand the world through a constellation of facts because there’s simply too many facts. He credits the Postmodernists for one thing; recognizing that cultural knowledge is passed down through Narratives.
He’s studying whether and what narratives approximate axiomatic truth in functional terms. He might seem loopy because he veers into the unknown but in many ways he’s just a Utilitarian like Bentham or JS Mill. He’s interested in maximizing good and minimizing bad. That Dawkins dismisses him is to be expected because Dawkins is a strict materialist. His mind is already closed to anything outside the Material realm.
I would say it’s a testament to Peterson that he can even get Dawkins to sit for an interview. He wants to hear from everyone to get maximum diversity of viewpoint. Many academics will always disdain Peterson especially if they find Materialist Socialism to be a plausible reality in perfect conditions. But he’s not wrong about Materialist Socialism. It will always be a Manichean ideology of resentment towards one group of people. It always will blame one group of people for all socoety’s problems in order to remove personal responsibility from the individual. It’s inescapable.
Honestly, I don’t see how he is similar to someone like Mill at all.
He presents himself as a classical liberal and he interacts a lot with ‘enlightenment values’, yes, but his philosophical outlook deviates from typical enlightenment thought quite a bit. I see romanticism, postmodernism and even mysticism, as far as I know his work. I’d say his way of thinking resembles Jung, Nietszche and maybe even someone like Meister Eckhart, with his transcendental notions of God. And I’m not saying that is less valuable.
It is indeed to his credit he sits down with someone like Dawkins but I think his disagreement goes further than simply not sharing Dawkin’s overconfidence when it comes to materialism. Peterson, although interested in science, does not seem to have a strong affinity for deeply engaging with dry logic, models, statistics and data. Yes, he does interact with science regularly but often pushes it through his strong narrative driven worldview. That is not necessarily good or bad, everyone does it to some degree, but he does it strongly.
Also, I’m not entirely sure what “materialist socialism” is but I assume you mean the historical materialist part of Marxism? Peterson rejects this on the same account as postmodernists do: that it’s an overarching grand narrative. Particularity, as you seem to point out, the class struggle part. However, the question is not whether resentment is good or bad, that is just a pedestrian question. The question is whether class struggle is indeed an overarching driving force behind human societies. I would say that a lot of the enlightenment thinkers did actually believe in class struggle and reforming or even overthrowing old power structures. In fact, many of the concepts we see in various schools of libertarianism, anarchism and socialism, actually come straight out of the enlightenment tradition. See Rousseau, for example. Ironically many consider Mill’s later work to be even proto-socialist as well. It’s all not so black and white and if people would just study Rousseau, Voltaire, Locke, Adam Smith and Montesquieu, I think they would see that.
Yes, but only when it serves him well to take down opponents. Ditto his many references to research. He does all this very effectively. But if the same approach was taken to many of his own ideas, they would fare no better.
By Materialist Socialism, I am effectively referring to the Godless Communism that Marx probably envisioned. Marx wasn’t really a Utopian but he thought if workers controlled productive forces, it would create radical Egalitarianism where social cooperation would almost occur unconsciously.
That implies a values alignment built on Rousseau’s concept that people are inherently empathetic and unselfish. That if social conditions didn’t create unjust hierarchy than people wouldn’t feel the need to compete for scarce resources or hoard property.
Most people agree that the world would be a better place if people were nicer, more charitable and concentrate on things like slashing absolute poverty. These aren’t bad goals but the idea that you get there by creating a class division paradox to reappropriate existing property and use force to level out disparities has a zero probability of achieving a good long term result.
There should be less focus on blaming and reappropriating the rich and more focus on improving the plight of the poor. Its not zero sum. You can raise the floor incrementally without going Robinhood on the Rich.
Worthwhile discussion. In my own nonbeliever’s, incomplete reading of Marx I’d say he had both an idealistic and practical side; there are mystical aspirations that are not canceled out by his materialism. Like his fellow over-influential thinkers Nietzsche and Freud, he was a brilliant mind at war with itself, claiming certainty when there was little or none. (A cheap equivalence I know, but they are often treated like the Big Three).
His contention that “the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles” (italics added), implying that it was only that, is quite absurdly overstated.
And the notion that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would self-dissolve into mild, egalitarian rule instead of a new (predictably worse) oppression was an opium fever dream.
Still he was not all wrong about the real and potential abuses of capital and the “ownership class”. Nor about the alienation and commmdification of “laboring class” human beings under a system of exploitation. Especially in his own times, when brutal factory conditions and widespread actual slavery were still the Western norm.
In my opinion a brilliant overreacher like Marx—or Freud, or Nietzsche—should rarely be assigned until college. Or maybe 11th grade with a good teacher and prepared students. And as part of a “balanced diet” that includes other bright lights like Plato, Aristotle, Meister Eckhart, Pascal, Locke, Hume, Burke, Mill, Nietzsche, (reluctantly) Freud, and Jung. Plus some others that are neither Greek, British, German-speaking, or French. Way more easily assigned than read through, for sure. In fact, I have quite a bit of reading to complete myself!
The three you listed are so relevant in the West because of the Critical Theorists at the Frankfurt School. Nietzsche’s question- “God is Dead Now what?” Then applying Marx’s dialectic of using activism to change social conditions along with Freud’s psychoanalytics. It’s dark stuff.
I don’t dispute that Marx was a smart guy and made alot of accurate assertions. The main problem I have with Marx other than his total inversion of values is that he over-simplified classes in order to create a simple, digestible paradox. It’s just Manichean philosophy Good/Evil without the supernatural.
Obviously owners have disparate power over workers/tenants and may use that power to oppress. But the idea that being a wealthy owner is an indisputable sign of villainous greed and less well off workers are selfless angels just doesn’t match reality. There are extremely compassionate owners and extremely greedy worker/tenants.
That’s why I hate the “Tax the Rich” cliche. If not all Rich people are bad and not all Poor people are good than its almost certain that the compassiomate, rule-abiding rich will be more punished by “wealth taxes” than rich people that play the system without a care. I think wealth taxes play into the hands of Monopolists more than anyone.
I agree with all of that, except for your sole attribution of their influence to the Frankfurt School. Nietzsche in particular has a major following on the far right. And Freud (mid-20th Century) and Marx (ongoing) have found significant mainstream cultural influence outside of any intellectual school.
The “Big Three” were all intellectually gifted, and all given to wild oversimplifications. They all continue to attract credulous followers who credit them with some version of rational method (most applicable to Marxists) taboo-breaking bravery (Freudians) and inspired, worldly soothsaying (Nietzscheans). (These can be mixed and matched to a great degree). Rabid followers of Marx are, by far, the most prone to violent revolution, but Nietzsche plays a role there too, on the far-far right. The Freudian era contributed to a pathologizing and reductive badmouthing of normal-range human experience that still haunts our society today.
To be honest, I regret the net influence of all three—at least so far. But in modern Western thought, they have to be contended with to some degree.
I know these thoughts are generalized and well away from the original thread at this point. But you know and care about economics more than I do and this is what I have to say on the topic writ large.
Edit: removed, repost. There were some hiccups I guess.
Fair. I tend to think if they weren’t canonized in an extremely influential Theory than their names would be less influential…but that’s conjecture.
Nietzsche was definitely not a Leftist. He was in many ways a “Might makes right” kinda guy which obviously codes Right at least in the current era. But as you’ve noted before, I don’t know how valid these Left/Right dichotomies really are.
Exactly. Often not really valid or helpful but hard to get away from, and I still use those terms way too often. It’d be nice to discuss particular ideas and policies without resorting to those labels so often, or widening the discussion into a grand Left vs. Right morality play. At the moment, it’s often impossible to avoid an argument—even with some established common ground—except by remaining silent (or dishonestly agreeing I guess—I can’t do a lot of that). So I applaud people like you, who value real discussion and make a consistent effort to be civil and operate in good faith.
Nietzsche is also the driving force behind postmodernism. It’s hard to really pin him down, in fact, he said that he wrote to be misinterpreted. But I do think – as Fukuyama also predicted if I remember correctly – that our world is more Nietzschean than Marxian.
I like some of what he has to say but: Is Fukuyama still considered a credible source of predictions?
Well, the main academic discussion point about Marxism is usually not its morality but that it essentially presents itself to be scientific and prophetic. This is the central concept postmodernists (and many others) criticize.
The bulk of theory in Capital is not really about class struggle, breeding resentfulness or blame, but about economic theory. Using abstract models Marx and Engels tried to ‘prove’ that contradictions within capitalism of under- and overproduction would necessarily lead to ever greater inequality and instability, eventually producing a revolutionary state. Just as the bourgeoisie became a revolutionary class after the mode of production switched from feudalism to capitalism, so too Marx believed that capitalism would morph into socialism and the proletariat would become a revolutionary class in a similar fashion. The reason why that had to be the case was because he performed a Hegelian analytical trick called historical materialism. Emphasizing that material conditions produce ‘societies’ and not the other way around. Of course many (but certainly not all) Marxist argued that this revolution should happen sooner rather than later. People like Lenin even took it a step further and produced a vanguard that would just go ahead and build a totalitarian socialist state that was not even industrialized yet.
Now, obviously there are a lot of problems with all of this. But still, one might argue that all kinds of antagonisms, as well as class struggle, is a reality within society. So then the questions remains what to do next. Well, asking people to be nice is good.. The enlightenment idea of expressing the general will in a social contract and laws is probably also a good idea. Protecting individual rights and private property might be smart. But here also starts the problem. Locke considered private property could be defended as long as there was enough left for others. Many of the later radicals (e.g. anarchist and socialist) have a point when they argue that capitalism developed in a way that violates such basic liberal principes in ways that early thinkers could not have foreseen. For example, that inequality and monopolies become so extreme that the most powerful class captures the state, frustrates democracy and actually produce an inverted Robin Hood system. And so we actually go back into feudalism. Well, I don’t think it’s very hard to see those signs in contemporary society and so the question of redistribution and the validity of privately owned capital remains relevant. Note, private and personal property is something different. That a resentful impoverished proletariat will take your house is a typical middle class fear and I can understand that fear considering historical events. But that is not the essence. Of course, others might argue that a solution can be found in the opposite direction such as Austrian School economics.
How do you account for the fact that key postmodernists like Foucault and Frederic Jameson took an avowedly Marxist approach, at least in large part?
They seem to have used the more directed critiques of Marx to advance or insinuate a near total absence of any real meaning, purpose, or non-subjective value. I’d legitimately like to hear your response if you have time. Thanks for your contributions thus far either way.
I’d say that Fredric Jameson is not really a postmodernist himself but a Marxist observer and critic of postmodernism. In fact, I find his idea that postmodernism is the cultural logic of late capitalism quite thought-provoking.
So I haven’t read a lot of postmodernism myself, can’t get a lot out of it. But I like more accessible analyses of trained philosophers about postmodernism. Foucault is also known to be a bit of a philosophers’s philosopher, he takes a lot from everyone. Nevertheless, his, arguably, subversive moral philosophy obsessed with power and truth is certainty more influenced by Nietzsche than Marx. Using Nietzsche’s Genealogy, the will to power and the rejection of universal truths makes him almost a Nietzschean. I think many people mistakenly attribute this to Marx. From here, he does take the concept of class struggle, critiques capitalism and expands it to all types of other dimensions such as the prison system and mental asylums. He argued that all of these things were simply oppressive power systems, i.e. he is Beyond Good and Evil. So again, a lot of Nietzsche and a bit of Marx. And he slso rejects Marx’s economic determinism.
Having just now seen your reply I’ll attempt a concise, substantive response:
You’ve given me a lot to consider. Seems correct that Jameson is more “associated with” the postmodernists than a member of their elusive tribe. (Only read his critique of Heart of Darkness for a class). But I don’t think it’s merely the power dynamic that connects Foucault (of whom I’ve read a good deal, sometimes by choice rather than college assignment) to Marx, but also his insistence on an ruler/ruled, have-not/have-not framework. I do find salience in the Nietzsche connection, especially where he and Nietzsche intersect at radical cynicism, or nihilism. Something worthwhile to consider going forward, though I haven’t read very deeply of the postmodernnists or high theorists either, and don’t intend to.
I find Foucault to have been an intellectually brilliant person with little or no core belief in anything beyond his own pleasure and comfort, or in knowledge as an amoral (dead)end in itself.
I hope you’ll keep making thoughtful and civil contributions to these comment boards.
Edit: removed, repost.
A wonderful contribution.
Peterson, like Jung, Freud and indeed Walter Pater or even Nietzsche, are perhaps best understood as literary figures.
While you are right to point to the potential mysticism of Petersons interventions on questions of the mind and the divine, this aspect of his genius must be borne in mind.
It stikes me that Peterson inhabits a very English strand of mysticism, more literary than scientific or philosophical, which could be said to have passed from the Lollards on through Tyndale, Winstanley, Milton, Bunyan and Blake.
Althought Milton and Tyndale were first rate linguists Bunyan voiced the tenor of the tendency – immeasurably strengthened by the beauty of the English idiom of the King James Bible – when he scorned to be counted with those who could “speak Greek and Latin with Pilate”.
A hermeneutic at once rigorous and yet unaccountable to any conventional tribunal of appraisal – it sometimes seems a form of old fashioned Bibliomancy when given free rein.
It would be nice if more people saw these and a number of other reputational giants largely as literary or imaginative thinkers, not secular prophets of some sort. I do think Jung’s work contains key insights and a rare marriage of the rational and inventive—but of course that’s an opinion not a scientific proof.
Having read much of his work and listened to many hours of his speech, I disagree that Peterson is primarily literary in what you call his mysticism. Speculative and abstract, yes. Fascinated and increasingly self-fascinated, yes. In my view he used to have more of a playful and benevolent side that was misunderstood or missed altogether by his many prejudicially opposed critics. Now, he’s a bit too much like the angry, reactionary polemicist they painted him to be. I still admire his intellect and see underlying sincerity but think he’s fallen quite far since his obscure and early-famous days.
” It always will blame one group of people for all society’s problems in order to remove personal responsibility from the individual. ”
Very true.
You’re still talking about this grifter? I suppose the pseudo intellectualism impresses you people.
In much the same way that Trump is a poor person’s idea of what a rich person is like, Peterson is what dumb folks think an intellectual sounds like.
You’re wrong on both counts…
There is no conceivable definition of the word in which Peterson is not an intellectual. He’s incredibly well read across a wide array of disciplines, and is legitimately interested in the search for truth. I don’t always agree with his conclusions, i.e. I thing he’s still way too trapped in the pseudo-science of psychology, but he’s a legitimate seeker of truth.
You’re right, but why bother casting your pearls before swine?
I think pseudo intellectual is blanket term used by some commenters to cover everything they can’t really understand. So it covers everything from gobbledegook to the genuinely profound. Sadly they can’t tell the difference.
I guess that makes you a conservatives idea of what a rich socialist is like.
Where have you been? Licking your wounds over Trump’s landslide?
I guess the truth about this book will be in the reading itself. Rubinstein has taken a position about Peterson and his book then selected passages to support his position. There’s nothing wrong in that, but a few selected quotes may not actually represent the substance of the book itself.
To my eye, Jordan Peterson is legitimately searching for the truth. That’s what sends him off into questioning spirals. He honestly doesn’t know the answer to the questions he’s asking, but he’s determined to find out. My reading is he is on the road to a Christian conversion, as his wife has already done. He’s not there yet, and that causes some of the wheel-spinning as well.
That’s a plausible read. But in your own view dos the search stop once you’ve fallen upon the rock and converted?
Isn’t it perfectly obvious to anyone with a claim to a brain that all this – all of it – is just sheer pseudo-intellectualism of the most egregious kind?
Which thinking human being would fall at the feet of someone like Peterson; someone whose road in life originated from reading The Road to Wigan Pier? It’s laughable! Wigan and it’s eponymous “pier” is in my neck of the woods, and it’s a useful tale of it’s time by Orwell but bears no relation to reality on the ground. And that’s exactly what Peterson Isn’t – grounded.
This latest attention-seeking tome of his should be treated with the contempt it deserves. He, and other pseudo-intellectuals make a very good living out of the gullibility of a great many people who purport to offer ‘solutions’ instead of doing the work of thinking for themselves.
PS: omg, i’ve just read the comment by CS – i actually agree with him!
Too late. Your fate is fixed.
Ha! I take back not a single word.
I once sat on a short flight to Munich. I am a engineer and sitting next to me was someone who taught philosophy in a college. He started the conversation. “Why are you investigating that product.” “Why don’t you spend more time thinking, instead of travelling to Germany? “Why are you wasting time selling products to industry, instead of solving the problems at home in your neighbourhood?”
All good question, in fairness. At the end, I couldn’t resist, “Who is paying your wages and paying for your flight?” Of, course that was some noble government fund/charity/rich people…
Walk around Blackpool and it becomes obvious from its condition that someone – not Mr P – needs to write a book about the road to Blackpool piers.
Good comment.
That’s too harsh! I might agree on the jungian stuff, and the crankiness, but it’s unfair to dismiss him as a pseudo intellectual. As a critic (mainly of dodgy ideas on the left) he is very effective.
As for people thinking for themselves, most of us simply aren’t very good at it. It’s hard work. And to ignore the ideas of others would leave most of us spouting nonsense.
Strange, no mention of ‘Maps of Meaning’, the masterpiece Peterson wrote before he became famous. He is returning to what interested him before he became embroiled in the culture wars: how humans create meaning in their lives.
My respect for Peterson’s intellect went west when he became addicted to valium, blamed the Western medical system for his illnesses real or imagined, followed the advice of his strange daughter and sought relief in Russia of all places. He really displayed an anti intellectualism of the bucko Trumpian type of which he is the Canadian pseudo-intellectual Abel. What a kerfuffle and yet he still earns millions from podcasts and books pandering to, well, Canadians or people like Canadians. I’ve never trusted them. Peterson least of all. Canadians are deranged, on the one hand Woke and the other Presbyterian.
It’s true he seems to get crankier by the day. Even down to the suits he’s taken to wearing. The younger JP, complete with wool cardigan, was funnier, cleverer and all round much nicer. And it’s true, his daughter is more than a little odd. For both of them it’s almost as if they think that conforming to some sort of stereotype will make them happier.
I have to say though – I do think it’s a shame.
Having ventured into new waters, JP is now completely out of his depth.
His neo-Jungian approach to Christianity, delivered with much less flair and erudition than Jung did in his day, satisfies neither the atheist materialist nor the Christian faithful.
You can’t approach the Bible as stories, myths, or symbols, even if those are all key features of the text. You have to approach it in the fullness of tradition, with the wisdom of the Church Fathers in your sails.
This is why an Orthodox Christian like Pageau trounces Peterson in exegesis, while Dawkins looks sober by comparison.
JP is smart, he’s helped a lot of people, but he’s just a man. He needs the Church.
He’s on the way. Anyone with any knowledge of Christian conversion should be able to see that.
“The Road to Wigan Pier” doesn’t lead to Christian conversation, but straight into a branch of the Leeds/Liverpool canal.
You are a witty b****r. Great comment. btw I thought I had received the most red down votes on this topic’s comments but you beat me by a good few yards.
I agree that he’s out of his depth, but (as you might expect) i disagree about why he’s out of his depth when seeking “meaning” in biblical texts.
I can find a great deal of meaning in those texts, but unlike Peterson, i see them for what they are – genuine and valiant attempts to explain the world and existence by our forefathers, and in a spiritually uplifting way, whilst lacking the more modern insights into biology, evolution and the cosmos – all of which continue to evolve, of course.
Dawkins’ analysis of his problem is pretty accurate.
Science has nothing meaningful to say about how to live a good and fulfilling life. That’s the question Peterson is trying to engage with. Dawkins is too narrow-minded to even understand the questions Peterson was asking.
That’s not the purpose of science, nor do i claim it is so your reply lacks context.
Dawkins has the more wide-ranging intellect. He’s fully aware of how religion can impact upon our search for meaning; just as i do, he maintains that it impedes the search by narrowing the focus upon doctrines whose spiritual basis has simply been undermined. They were of their times.
In terms of our current status, it’s understood by those who’re able to escape from doctrines and dogmas that meaning – real, spiritual value – can be gained without them. That’s what those who still cling to them fail to understand, and that’s clear enough when we read comments which fall down when challenged.
Unfortunately, the empirical evidence completely contradicts your position. The more people abandon religion, the more we see them struggling to find meaning. The more secular people are, the more mental illness and depression they suffer, the fewer meaningful relationships they have, the less likely they are to marry and have children. All the evidence points to irreligion making peoples’ lives worse. Even atheists like Dawkins, and Douglas Murray admit this.
> The more people abandon religion, the more we see them struggling to find meaning
Yet people abandon religion because they struggle to find meaning in it.
People want simple answers so they don’t have to think. Religion supplies this, so it satisfies many people. If you want to go deeper, religion fails you because living with uncertainty (the struggle for meaning) makes people uneasy. Hence the depression etc. If you can handle not ‘knowing,’ irreligion isn’t a problem.
So are you saying you’ve managed to explain God away and have a superior path to finding meaning in life. Hmmmm, sounds like a tall order.
Science may tell you the how, but it often fails at that. However, it can never tell you the why.
Meaning is not a universal like a ‘law of nature,’ it is specific for each individual. That’s why the search for meaning is so hard. You have to find meaning within yourself.
I don’t think the author has actually read any of Peterson’s work. “Wigan Pier” was written in 1937, when a socialist like Orwell could just about close his ears to the atrocities of international or national socialism unaware of what was about to take place. This is an attempt at “gotcha” which falls the flattest.
Peterson reads the Bible and wonders “What does it mean?”. Shocker. Why disparage intellectual curiosity as some sort of childish game? Dawkins is far less coherent – the God Delusion being thrown under the bus by many of his more recent statements. It’s a shame his devotees are clinging on to their holy writ. The author goes on to say that Peterson uses language that is too academic – he is an academic after all – but then describes him as a self help guru. One is too vulgar the other too high falutin. He does both and everywhere in between. Surely a mark of some sort of intellect.
Using Marx as some sort of proponent of the bourgeousie is ridiculous. He saw the productive forces they unleashed as exploitation which needed eliminating.
I agree that his obsession with Disney is beneath him but how do you reach the masses who actually do prefer Disney’s Snow White and the Lion King to the original fairy tale or Beowulf.
Why disparage intellectual curiosity as some sort of childish game?
This reminds me of the Covid era and how “do your own research” became a sort of pejorative, as if we normals could not possibly understand the thing that our betters were lecturing about
His attitude to the bourgeoisie was obviously ambivalent – but yes it did include admiration.
Ambivalent? He wanted them eliminated (take this as you will but most Marxist regimes didn’t do this peacefully). He only admired their ability to oppress and exploit the proletariat.
Peterson, and the movement he is part of, are a pretty obvious product of postmodernity. I wouldn’t say postmodernism doesn’t give answers, it just rejects universal answers because it assumes those answers originate from grand narratives, which it assumes are overstating their strength. Of course, one might argue that this statement is itself a grand narrative overstating its strength. So postmodernism is more like a condition, automatically self-critical. However, in the light of pragmatism, positivism and the hard sciences this stance is often just not very useful.
In any case, before it was called “woke”, many were seeing signs that a cult-like herd of uncritical identity politics, grievance studies etc. got out of hand. It was good that an intellectual counter-movement appeared. Peterson was clearly one of the prominent figures, if not the most prominent. The danger I see is that this movement is now slowly turning into the other side of the same coin. The resentfulness against perceived left wing caricatures, the anti-intellectualism, the Pavlov anger and shielding against any criticism. It all starts to look like the thing the movement was supposed to criticize. But that’s not precisely Peterson’s fault.
I think Peterson’s strength was always his ability to search for meaning in poetry, the spiritual and the highly abstract archetypal stories. I suspect he truly is a good Jungian. Does he go overboard, connecting dots where there are none? Probably, but how can you ever be sure? It is not necessarily a problem. Many thinkers who have followed Peterson’s path have added essential elements to our culture because they challenge us to think outside of established frameworks. But by the same token I think his weakness is that, although interested in science and economics, he is not very analytical and mathematical, and tries too hard to make it work with his highly ideological worldview.
Perhaps his greatest contribution is that he taught a new generation, often impoverished by poor education, that there are other ideas out there. And that intellectual giants like Nietzsche, Jung and Marx even exist. A small group of those people will be curious and conscientious enough to actually read into it and truly enrich themselves.
I mentioned something similar in the comments of another article, but you put it much more eloquently. The part about the other side of the same coin. All these social movements lately always seem to start out with admirable aspirations, and eventually folks get so caught up in them that they lose track of the original point, and they oftentimes end up having the opposite effect that they wanted. Knocking “woke” down a peg or ten is great, because it was clearly out of control. But continuing to beat it after its already down, acting as though there was nothing useful or worthwhile in the movement, and then championing a new “anti-woke” sentiment, is going to wind up going down the same path.
Resenting or hating people after the fact gets us nowhere. I was fortunate enough to be a pretty open-minded Democrat, and I have the ability to see things and adapt my worldview based on that, which led to me voting Trump this time around. But not everyone does that on their own. And continuing to shout down the other side and generalize them as awful humans is no different than Hilary calling Republicans “deplorables.”
Anyway, I got way off topic there, but I like where you are going with this comment.
It strikes me that the phenomenon we call Postmodernism resembles nothing so much as the Pyrhonnian Skepticism of Sextus Empiricus which dominated the Platonic Academy at the time of Christs birth.
Postmodernism in our own day seems the last refinement of the hermeneutic of skepticism reasserted in the English tradition by Francis Bacon.
Do these things go in cycles?
“All the generations of the mortal man add up to nothing! Show me the man whose happiness was anything more than illusion followed by disillusion.” as Sophocles said.
Yet Job and Solomon present a life-affirming response to that particular portion of the world riddle.
People think Christianity emerged in at atmosphere of universal primitive credulity. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
I’ll use your apt and learned comment to opine that most of the often-inspired mortal authors of the Bible, from Genesis onward, understood their works in a far more symbolic and figurative sense than a dogmatic or literal believer of today.
Peterson genuinely admires Nietzsche and has probably taken on his concept of ressentiment to apply to his socialist fores.
And ‘ressentiment’ is a concept, it’s more than envy and spite- it’s the desiring drive of the priestly caste that creates a human psychological history via the mutations of the Abrahamic religions (Islam excluded).
My perception of Dr. Peterson has always been a mix of admiration and an ache bordering on pity. He is a prime example of many on the Right who recognize the un-rooted emptiness of modern, socialist, atheistic life, but who cannot bring themselves to commit to a belief in an intentional, personal Force behind the universe. The brilliant Douglas Murray is another.
Without that humbling commitment, the universe remains unmeaningful, because it’s un-meant, accidental. No wonder that Dr. P is constantly asking “What does it all mean?” His courage and discipline and mental rigour are perhaps the highest of any public figure, but – for now – there’s a faint echo from a hollow spot in the center.
“un-rooted emptiness” – that’s only true if you have not imposed your own meaning. There is no meaning to life save what you bring to it. Until you understand that, a search of that which exists not will consume you.
Succinctly expressed.
But how do you do that? By arbitrary choice? By turning your preferences and prejudices into values?
I get what you are saying – and obviously people like Sartre thought this was the solution – but I don’t think it is. Meaning must come from beyond oneself. Our tragedy is that we no longer believe in such transcendent meaning. We’re kind of stuck.
I might not be understanding a deeper meaning of your questions here, but for me, I believe in a God because I believe. Isn’t that what faith is? I don’t follow any religion that I know of, I just, at some point in my late twenties, began to realize that there must be more meaning to everything than just what we see. I don’t really define my God (at least not strictly), just a feeling that there is some force guiding us and tying us all together. I came to this conclusion after witnessing enough wonders of the world with my own eyes, and also seeing and experiencing things that seemed too well-timed to chalk up to coincidence.
Anyway, if I missed your point, I apologize.
Meaning must come from beyond oneself.
Not exactly, it comes from observing things beyond oneself and putting them into a philosphical/moral system. That’s your meaning. No one can simply hand it to you.
I think Peterson rejects the Nietzschean call to create one’s own values. We can, however, discover and recover the truths and values embedded in creation through the tradition that preserves and illuminates those truths.
What if the truth embedded in creation is that it resulted from a series of mindless accidents? I think the tradition that preserves and illuminates that POV is called atheistic materialism.
The physical objects don’t have meaning. Your relationship to them provides the raw materail from which you create your meaning.
“Imposed your own meaning” is just a hi-falutin’ way of saying “did what you liked”. This morning’s telephone scammer tried to impose his own meaning on my life.
That’s just the intelligent man’s dilemma. He recognises the human situation as problematic – but is reluctant (even unable) to believe a lot of daft nonsense as a way of resolving it.
Peterson seems to be involved in trying to convince himself to believe in something that is beneath his intelligence. No wonder he struggles.
What makes the human situation “problematic”? If we’re free to impose a meaning on what is only accidental and meaningless, what’s the problem? Why should I care about the suffering of others, as long as I’m healthy and wealthy and have a solid internet connection?
And yet we do sense that something is objectively wrong, don’t we? And that’s why the “daft nonsense” has powered most of the artistic and moral progress in the world.
It’s a depressing sign of the times that an Oxbridge student (and I’m guessing from the quality of the argument that he got this gig whilst passing the sherry) expects answers from his books. Absolutely fine if you’re reading an instruction manual for a vacuum cleaner but not a particularly enlightening attitude when reading philosophy/literature …
I remember when I had peak interest in JP, and I spent a few hours scouring Youtube for his definition of Truth. I came out with the suspicion that he didn’t want to define it, or rather that he couldn’t. For some reason he is caught in his own paradoxical post-modern trap, that being: Well if everything can be defined, and doesn’t have infinite [post-modern] meaning, then it’s exclusive meaning must be concretely defined by intense deliberation and contemplation BUT he never actually reaches a satisfying definition or explanation, he just wants to keep up the mystery in the deliberation as he ‘asymptotically’ approaches the grand alter of the definition of Truth.
Sure, some things are complicated, like epistemology and Philosophy, Quantum Physics, Imagination and God, they get seemingly unfathomably deep, but the idea of contemplating modern Truth itself and getting far too lost in the process is farcical.
Anyway, I concluded from his silly supporting of the idea that if we can’t see or measure what has happened then it can’t possibly be True, e.g. if you haven’t seen a star in another galaxy far away then it probably doesn’t exist and isn’t ‘True’. Even if Physics says it should, can and does exist and that is coming from the most proven Natural theory in the history of the world. The point is:
Physics is powerful enough to prove things True which human thought couldn’t yet fathom or imagine, even if simultaneously human imagination can conjure things which Physics could not prove, and yet both can still be True.
Peterson doesn’t subscribe to that, it’s too nebulous for him, yet his definition is also lacking.
Peterson would say only that which we already imagine can be proved True by Physics, as humans must be prior to Truth, and the finding of Truth must be post investigation. i.e. to him Truth is not universal, it’s localized to human teleology only.
As far as I am aware, he has not defined it better than his poor attempt in his peak years.
Honestly, as a detour, if you haven’t read “The Beginning of Infinity” or “The Fabric of reality” By David Deutsch, I recommend it a thousand fold over JP. And I don’t even mind JP as a popular thinker, but I don’t believe his books provide ways forward for most intellectuals.
Can’t be bothered to find a direct quote, but remember that Peterson defines ‘truth’ as ‘reality’ or at least ‘full understanding of reality’. He also points out that reality can be very complex (as well as sometimes simple), to the extent that contradictory realities can seem to exist. Don’t think anyone ever claimed to have full access to reality-truth, isn’t that pretending to be God?
Not that I am an acolyte or apologist for Peterson, but the writer of this ‘critical’ essay is an intellectual light weight, this piece merely a hasty, insubstantial and unnuanced ‘toss off.’
I agree, except for the fact that I am a Peterson apologist. Peterson’s podcasts are fascinating in their breadth of subject and in displaying his approach to unravelling his thoughts around complex subjects. He does this while explaining the process very clearly to the viewer. I found this article to be a puff piece.
I fully agree. I am getting far more out of the comments. The only value of the article is that it prompted the comments that followed.
Why are the media so hostile to Jordan Peterson?
Anyone know? Of course the left will hate him, he eats them for breakfast. But all the rest? Why?
They are daunted. And remember that most of the media by far are left leaning.
Daunted yes. He makes you think and most people don’t like that.
Media is woke left?
Oh dear. Poor man. IMO he’s a decent ethical courageous and highly intelligent chap, who has had a bit of a breakdown. His early works are laudable and have doubtless helped millions. His later works are of a very different nature, with maybe less value, to fewer people. I sense a sacrificial element. As if he’s giving himself up to something incomprehensible. I hope he finds eventual peace of mind.
I think you are bang on, and couldn’t bear to see you sitting there with just a down vote – so upvote from me.
He is a sum total of far more than just his ‘works’.
“His early works are laudable and have doubtless helped millions. His later works are of a very different nature, with maybe less value, to fewer people.”
The exact opposite is the case, at least if by ‘works’ you mean books. His only ‘early work’, was Maps of Meaning, a very dry and dense tome of existential symbology which few have succeeded in reading to the end, and fewer have understood. His later works (12 Rules, Beyond Order) are the accessible ones which have apparently turned lives around and even saved many of them (if self-reports on YouTube can be believed). By all accounts his latest book hovers somewhere between the style and content of the older and more recent ones.
You are undoubtedly right to sense a sacrificial element. Perhaps Peterson’s major contribution is his insistence that every act of perception requires a sacrifice, namely of all the phenomena we might – but choose not to – pay attention to in that moment. I daresay this insight – a sort of transcendental deduction of sacrifice as the ground of all conscious experience – is a major influence in his current grappling with the religion which has perhaps more than any other made sacrifice its centrepiece and proclaimed sacrifice as the key to understanding the nature not only of the world but of God as well.
The old Peterson, prior even to the tidy your room stuff, was far more interesting, as is the critical Peterson pointing out the holes in other peoples ideas. Many of his own ideas are just as dodgy, and he becomes more cranky by the day.
It’s hard not to feel that he is dogged by some pretty serious personal issues, including his proneness to depression. He’s a smart and likeable guy, but he always comes across as very troubled. You sometimes wonder if he is mistaking his own personal malaise for that of humanity in general.
“To recoil from socialism because so many socialists are inferior people is as absurd as refusing to travel by train because you dislike the ticket-collector’s face.”
That’s true. There is plenty to recoil from from socialism itself and its creed of envy. That it tends to attract inferior people is just a predictable side effect.
Any ideology that labels a large number of people as inferior is going to provoke a backlash from those people.
I’m not entirely sure what the writer was getting at.. perhaps I too must ask,what does it mean? Peterson is like most radical thinkers, good in spots and flawed in others.. but since he mostly adks questions rather than provide answers maybe it depon what you mean by ‘flawed’.. No stupid questions right?
““To recoil from socialism because so many socialists are inferior people is as absurd as refusing to travel by train because you dislike the ticket-collector’s face.””
This isn’t a fallacy. A ticket taker’s face has nothing to do with his ability to collect tickets or how the train operates. A person being inferior (e.g., being petty and resentful, or simply unprincipled), will be intimately related to that person’s qualification to reasonably and honestly participate in the administration of his or her fellow man.
I might be wrong, but I suspect he used this comparison as a way to explain that he finds both things ridiculous, not necessarily that they are perfect parallels.
The good part is that Peterson is asking questions, searching for meaning and truth, unlike too many closed-minded ideologues, usually (but not always) on the left/’woke’ side.
He has no original idea. He is regurgitatetor! so at some point, it paralyzes him!
If you’ve ever studied the Bible you’ll know it does not offer answers. So I’m not sure what this author is after other than trying to pigeonhole Peterson. He doesn’t manage it, he sounds every bit as crabby as Dawkins, a peevish “Bucko.”
Maybe Peterson needs to take a break.
Peterson is for the uneducated who appear to believe he speaks truth bc they literally do not know better.
Samuel Rubinstein wrestles with pseudo-journalism. Fun fact is that every time someone tries a hit piece on him, he gets more followers and readers. Keep it up, buddy 🙂
Because he is a vile Narcassist?
Harshness is more effective if you can spell.
He’s a lonely superhero. He must appear, as if from nowhere, to right wrongs then flee back to his ice fortress; the curse of the celebrity status he has sought. No quiet seat in the bar for him.
Like growing up and, older, playing golf with your old boss or headmaster, always that early distance, rarely equal status. Often overtaken in life by often undeserving Presidents and Prime Ministers.
There are others like him, those who speak out, social catalysts who would one day like to join in but must accept their role in the chemical reaction then depart. Their acolytes want them as their politicians but it’s not to be.