An Erudite Crticism Of Jordan Peterson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKQwyy4dNnI
This presenter is an Oxford-educated Political Philosophy professor, not some opinionated schmuck.
Yes but this has gone to the other end of the spectrum. An academic referencing other academics and intellectuals while talking to his audience of fellow academics and intellectuals. Ninety percent of people won't have a clue what he is talking about.
For instance can you summarise what he was saying in a paragraph ?
To anyone who has watched it and is none the wiser it might help to read some of the comments ( but I won't guarantee it ! ).
PS: The guy has a bad case of the Ox-Bridge superiority complex, to a nauseating extent. Sniffing at a glass of Rose. Having a few friends over in ten minutes for a bit of fine wine and lofty conversation. Thought it might be amusing to spontaneously dash off this devastating critique while I'm waiting for them to arrive.
He packs a lot of concepts into a few minutes. Firstly, he makes a distinction between JP's 'angry moralizing', which he puts down as JP's main game, as opposed to something effectively prescriptive, or useful in the scope of the rather large problems JP sets himself as equal to evaluating. JP couches his complaints as ersatz solutions, with a weakness elaborated upon below.
The insults (per Frued) of science to concepts philosophers & theologians long held regarding our humanity the presenter alludes to, break down to (post-Nietzsche) a realization of the contingency of human knowledge, the (non) cosmic (strictly humanistic) scope of our ends, a decent regard for the complexities, the interdependent spheres of action within sociopolitical problems we face, that JP expounds upon on, simplistically. Simplistically, because he doesn't appreciate those contingencies & complexities. JP constantly rants about wokeism as, for example, part of the root of Putin's desire to acquire territory in Ukraine.
His main criticism is that most of JP's talk, again, is a complaint. He seeks to purport/enforce, as 'cure', some cultural paradigm that he himself only half-believes in, because he doesn't want to be considered a rube - even though is the Gandalf of the rubes.
The presenter lays out what he considers a critical capacity for any basis of solution to be grounded in a. insights into the levers available in the current socioeconomic context, and b. levers available in human capacity. I have to confess I don't follow this concept so well, and so consider it to be a schematic of the complexity facing analysis/solutions of world-class problems.
The individualism JP flogs is somewhat undercut by the spectacle of JP weighing in, publicly, upon matters for which he is no expert at all.
That's my take, anyway. I didn't follow his trail to all the names the presenter dropped, just the main ones alluded to in his presentation. He is careful to say how smart he thinks JP is, but I'm not sure that is genuine. I believe he more honestly considers that JP is a blustering self-deluded fool out way over his skis on just about everything. A master equivocator, when you push through some of that bluster.
Good try. Understanding the guy's arguments relies to a large extent on having an understanding of the people he refers to in my opinion.
He makes a good point about Peterson being angry a lot of the time but I think he is wrong about why Peterson does it. He thinks Peterson being angry is about representing the anger of his audience. A marketing strategy basically. But actually Peterson uses anger as a tool to help him overcome the anxiety he suffers from. Which as a coping mechanism for an anxiety sufferer is nuts in my opinion ( just adds more fuel to the fire ) but there you go.
To me Peterson is a conservative. He wants to preserve Christian ideals and the work ethic. Also his pep talks ( self help strategies ) are really designed for his elite students. Fine it won't hurt some dumb schmuck if he gets his act together and works hard. He might then be able to get a job and make ends meet. But that guy is not Peterson's target audience. So his advice is for how to succeed in the elite world for elite students.
Peterson acknowledges that there are some people who are going to fall through the cracks. And that might be regrettable but it's just a fact of life. He's got nothing for them.
Peterson also has enormous faith in human progress and innovation. Over-population and global warming ? No problem, we'll work it out. The wrecking ball that is globalisation and the ruinous and rapacious nature of unregulated capitalism ? Well maybe it's not all good but it's mostly good.
He's a status quo man. Keep everything as it is but crank it up to eleven ! I think he's wrong and that humanity is heading for a big fall, probably before the end of this century.
Well I'd say good try, but that would be condescending. :)
I disagree with you entirely about his opportunism. That's a huge miss, he's a narcissist, it couldn't be more obvious. He is -also- nuts.
Vlad is very nicely applying a wrecking ball to the man's pretensions, formally.
Which is precisely what makes JP so obnoxious - his pretension, the pseudo-intellectualism. There is no rigor behind his pronouncements that I've ever seen. His rubes lap it up. Elite students don't lap stuff up - they turn it over for themselves, they aren't easily convinced by facile explanations of the world. May it be ever thus.
JP is Cliffy Claven with graduate school.
Oh yes I suppose that could be read as condescending. What I meant was "good try" at the impossible task of putting the guys mostly incomprehensible academic gobbledygook into plain English.
Though dost protesteth too mucheth :). Philosophers do tend to be remote. Glad you checked in on this.
shareWell not really because I have no University education. I've never read a philosophy book and only know what I have picked up here and there. And yes I don't think there will be too many people willing to chime in on this thread ( in any meaningful way ) ! The intellectual bar is set too high.
One thing I was glad to hear from the guy was his criticism of the intellectual heavy hitters for remaining largely silent on Jordan Peterson. I think there has been a lot of academic cowardice on display over the past ten or twenty years. They have simply abandoned the field. Where was the learned academic response to the ludicrous claim that the British Empire had stolen thirteen trillion pounds from India for example ? Crickets !
On the other side I would like to know where he is coming from. Where does he stand on Woke matters ? What is motivating his critique of Peterson ?
I think it boils down to this, Quasi. He is not a fan of folks peddling simple-minded answers to complex questions.
I'm sure he's progressive-left. But he has an instinct for fairness, and is well smart enough to make his arguments carefully, respectfully. For example, here is a presentation where he went after Noam Chomsky over his, to my and Vlad's opinion, ultra-left too-smart-by-half take on the Ukraine-Russian situation.
He does it respectfully, carefully.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG1txVP2pZs
But actually Peterson uses anger as a tool to help him overcome the anxiety he suffers from.
He may say that (I wouldn't know), but it seems more likely he gets genuinely angry at the stupidity of some people, particularly those with institutional power (government, college admins, etc). It's only natural to get angry occasionally. Some viewpoints and actions he criticizes are genuinely offensive. So why not get angry? Frankly, Peterson doesn't seem all that angry to me. I don't think it's true that anger is one of his primary characteristics. He often has the patience of Jobe when suffering through interviews with soundbite-baiting jerks like Cathy Newman. His home country of Canada is ruled by one of the most idiotic virtue signalers on the planet. I believe what I see, not what some pompous Oxford intellectual claims. That erudite individual seems to be judging Peterson as if he's a professional philosopher, something he's never claimed. I look at Peterson as a public intellectual who is well informed in a number of areas (e.g. psychology literature) and has strong opinions about government compelled speech, religion, and other things, opinions that he does not advertise as fact. share