Literally any topic that one might try to have an intellectual debate about.
In this case, you're choosing "Marxism", but my point is far more general than that. If you're going to stand up and publicly make arguments about feminism, dark energy, protecting endangered species, the rise of China, post-impressionism... the very least you can do is enough background reading to not make a fool of yourself.
Contrary to your assertion that "accusing a non-marxist that he is clueless about marxism is not that big of a thing", I am saying that being clueless about the very thing you've arrogantly stood up to talk about in public is a big deal and should be humiliating.
I don't think you and I actually disagree that Peterson is an embarrassment.
>Peterson isn't making many scientific claims, or even claims as such.
My first encounter with Peterson was hearing his "lobster theory", which struck me as such pseudoscientific piffle that I've tried to pay him as little attention as possible ever since.
I imagine the reason Peterson elicits such strong reactions is because he presents differently for different audiences. As suggested elsewhere in the comments, "he's built his own persona into this gigantic strawman that looks like an ogre to everybody", luring them into attacking a position he never held so that he can appear calm, wise and reasonable in his rebuttal, and take the role of the poor attacked underdog.
He speaks of "postmodern curtural marxism", yet by his own admission, has never debated a marxist. Like the best controversialists, he picks his fights very carefully, preferring to "debate" with campus teenagers than other "intellectuals".
For those who haven't heard it, his "lobster theory" goes:
1. Lobsters are animals with a hierarchical society
2. Lobsters have a "seratonin based nervous system". Humans also have a "seratonin based nervous system".
3. Therefore, a hierarchical society is natural (and therefore best) for humans.
Have you considered that Jordan Peterson is part of the problem with the education system? I doubt he could pass this math test given the arguments he’s trying to make about marxists.
Peterson is one of tre most repulsive figures in modern (political/philosophical) discourse, in my eyes. His strawmen only make sense if you either know nothing about any most modern theorists or philosophy in general or if you need some narrative to sustain your beliefs that (((something))) went wrong. In short, besides being absolutely no authority on the issue, extremely emotional most of the time, he's constantly trying to push the story that "his side" is the rational, sane and logical , while everyone he opposes can be put into a nice linear group from Marx over Lenin & Stalin to Derrida and the rest of the "post modernists". And at the risk of being dismissed as a paranoid, I'm going to point out that there is a certain anti-semitic undertone to all of this, just like with the "cultural Marxism" conspiracy, that has surprising parallels to Peterson's story. It might not be his main point, or any point part of his actual argument at all, but his proud fanbase of "Kekistanis, Pepe memers, alt-right Nazis"[0], sure might.
And regarding this said fanbase, the fact that they're de facto paying him ~$60.000 a month[1] to play their intellectual "red piller", will probably not help him become more objective, if you ask me.
As a great antidote I'd recommend Rick Roderick's lectures[2], since already back in the 80's the same arguments were being put out against these alleged horrible post modernists, treating them as some destoryers of civilisation. In short, he's a hack.
>He is captivating to a certain audience, but so are televangelists. That's the whole crux of the problem. If you recognize it as being entertainment and an aesthetic/subculture, that's fine. But Peterson is presented as a leading thinker to people, which is a problem. Despite what I've written, Peterson isn't even someone I'm specifically interested in, it's more about the underlying issue of which he is a prominent example.
I think that's a reasonable point. I'd still maintain that his message is useful and his ideas are, imo, interesting and illuminating. I haven't thought of JP-televangelists comparison before so I'd need some time to mull it over. But in my personal experience I listened to Peterson for a while, internalised what I thought was useful and moved on. Whether televangelists have the same effect - I don't know.
>Consider the following: during the Žižek debate, it became clear that not only was the Communist Manifesto the only Marxist text he had read, but he could not accurately recall some of its main points. And it's a really short pamphlet! That means that Peterson had expounded at length on Marxism, made it a central point of his critique and philosophical brand, while having almost no knowledge or understanding of it. Even with the most charitable interpretation, that goes way beyond just occasionally making mistakes due to a discursive style.
I wish I had more knowledge on Marxism/leftists school of thoughts right now to have a more interesting discussion on this, but I don't. It does look bad on Peterson that he was so ill prepared for that debate.
Having said that, we cannot not say that there isn't a cultural shift happening in the academia and in our societies at large. Traditional cultural norms are being thrown out and in some extreme cases even shamed(not saying that's a 100% bad thing, but imo such things must not be done rashly), instead of bringing equality there are some attempts of inversing the inequality, and people are getting cancelled/silenced/fired/deplatformed in some cases simply for having a different opinion. Whether this is Marxism or not is really irrelevant, what's important is that we note these changes and act to mitigate them, and I believe this is what Peterson was referring to as "cultural Marxists". It might be embarrassing if he got the name wrong, but it doesn't change WHAT he's talking about.
>Most of this can be found on YouTube or his Wikipedia page.
Not a Peterson acolyte, a Jungian, or even right wing for that matter, but I'm a political philosophy junkie so I have some familiarity with Peterson's claims, mostly from watching debates and listening to arguments. And I will say this, your random out of context quoting, and hiding behind "check his Wikipedia page and YouTube yourself" is the same sophistry you're accusing him of. To give just one example, the claims around Western Civilization you bring up imply neo fascism, while they are in defense of Enlightenment ideals. Forget Peterson, there has been a debate between idealists and materialists about the value of Enlightenment ideals since the horrors of WWII (Frankfurt School being prominent critics), and a defense in the 90s by Idealists and classical liberals (The End of History) and an attacks by Postmodernists since the 70s (Foucault et. al).
Today there still is that debate, because the Postmodernist epistemology dominates and both other dominant alternatives, let's call them free market Western liberals and Marxists, don't agree. For you to summarize the debate Peterson weighs in on as a Western superiority is straight up manipulation on your part. You hide behind the manipulation by telling readers to go to his Wikipedia page and YouTube videos as if you've just cited something.
Does his proper discourse include getting to wildly misrepresent the law, marx, marxism more broadly, individual postmodern thinkers, and postmodernism more broadly?
Peterson doesn't publish his ideas in academic outlets. He is avoiding the proper discourse.
(First, thank you for continuing this discussion. I feel I have to say that because often they fall apart.)
(edit: oops, this was to comment on the wikipedia article you posted)
So, it seems to me this critique of Peterson's Boogymen of cultural Post-structuralist Neo-Marxists (or something like that) comes down to "He didn't use the right words to describe what he's talking about." as opposed to "What he's describing doesn't exist" or what I seem to smell in the most muddy of critiques "He's a dangerous idiot".
"He then proceeded to stumble his way through Marxist philosophy with such a shallow assessment as to be laughably incorrect."
But then doesn't back it up with anything. And shallow doesn't mean incorrect.
So it seems to me that his detractors are grasping at straws.
Again, a hearty shrug from me.
Though, looking at the work from Andray Domise, the author of above, like his articles and his TED talk "TEDx Toronto: Colour Coded: race, gender, and representation in video games" He seems very very occupied with group identity.
His takes on postmodernism and the semi-fake concept of Cultural Marxism, while seemingly fancy and erudite, are deeply flawed and stem from bad or non-existent scholarship. That he uses this to flame his fandom is damning in my opinion.
Edit: "The ending quote on that article: Peterson’s attempt to buttress these reactionary positions with readings of contemporary philosophy, now preserved for posterity in the pages of 12 Rules for Life, is not without precedent. But the tendency finds its most thorough realization in his zealotry. Peterson goes beyond Lilla, Chomsky, and Buchanan, arguing that what he calls “postmodern philosophy” is not merely a symptom of social unease, but its cause. By charging this poorly defined discourse of postmodernism with shaping contemporary society and bending the arc of history, he is doing precisely what he has accused his adversaries of doing: imposing a world of ideas upon the actually existing world, one which is more complex than he has the ability to grasp."
"During an event at the Cambridge Union Society in November 2018, Žižek had called Peterson's work "pseudo-scientific", labeled him as his "enemy" and criticized Peterson's work on the idea of cultural Marxism. Peterson said he could meet "any time, any place" to debate and it was announced on February 28, 2019 that the debate was scheduled for April 19. The two professors before had argued against happiness as something one should pursue. Peterson had said people should seek meaning through personal responsibility and Žižek had said happiness is pointless and delusional."[1]
Debate itself[2][3]:
"...In a similar fashion, Žižek asked Peterson to name him personal names of "postmodern neo-Marxists" in Western academia and from where he got the statistical numbers because according to him the over-the-top political correctness is opposed to Marxism, on which Peterson did not mention any names, yet statistical percentage of those who declare as Marxists in the academia according to Jonathan Haidt's research and explained replacement of the Marxist idea of class struggle with identity politics by which one group is oppressing the other. Some view this exchange as evidence that cultural Marxism had been invented by Peterson and other members of the intellectual dark web without any evidence of its existence. In the end, they both agreed that happiness is rather a byproduct of life itself."
> his most recent debate with Cathy Newman from three days ago
God, that was a terrible interview. The interviewer refused to understand a single thing that JP was saying. I am no fan of Peterson (in particular, I am left liberal), but he makes quite a lot of good points.
Jordan Peterson is a blowhard conservative who's had more success wooing impressionable edgy teenagers than any actual academic pursuits. I don't understand how anyone takes him or his ideas seriously.
Peterson an academic who is clueless about the real world. His best work was discussing politics in connection with liberty, especially the Trucker protests.
His biggest flaw is that (like the other Daily Wire pundits) he never goes into economics and has absurd ideas that we live in a competence hierarchy.
The whole "intellectual dark web" imploded after the start of the Ukraine war, when they first went full neocon, then realized that their audience does not like that and now start backpedaling massively.
It's only recently that Peterson has formally denounced the alt-right. Before, he was on JRE saying things like "as far as I can tell, Kekistan is a defense of comedy," when it was obvious to everyone else that it was blatant nazi propaganda. Only when the alt-right became emboldened enough to attend his lectures and start asking pretty direct questions about the Jewish question, globalist conspiracy, etc. that he finally saw what his audience was becoming and sorted himself out.
Most people on the left don't think that JBP is a nazi, or alt-right, or whatever is the inverse of the "postmodern neomarxist" boogeyman. People on the left are critical of JBP because of his blatant misreadings of Marx, Deleuze, Foucault, his confusion about Bill C-16, etc. His overly broad equivocation of postmodern critiques of power and Marxian class theory is the basis of his incredibly nasty attacks on these so-called "postmodern neomarxist feminists" yet he has published no real thesis.
He can't even be said to be critical of leftist ideologies because he never puts forward any real arguments, and all he does is signal that the left are evil.
And I'm saying all of this as a leftist who has supported Bret Weinstein from the beginning. I accept the postmodern feminist criticism of identity politics and agree that SJWs and their constant search for categories is harmful to the left. I would love for Peterson to put forward an actual, rigorous criticism of leftist ideology, but frankly he doesn't seem to have one.
He is captivating to a certain audience, but so are televangelists. That's the whole crux of the problem. If you recognize it as being entertainment and an aesthetic/subculture, that's fine. But Peterson is presented as a leading thinker to people, which is a problem. Despite what I've written, Peterson isn't even someone I'm specifically interested in, it's more about the underlying issue of which he is a prominent example.
Consider the following: during the Žižek debate, it became clear that not only was the Communist Manifesto the only Marxist text he had read, but he could not accurately recall some of its main points. And it's a really short pamphlet! That means that Peterson had expounded at length on Marxism, made it a central point of his critique and philosophical brand, while having almost no knowledge or understanding of it. Even with the most charitable interpretation, that goes way beyond just occasionally making mistakes due to a discursive style.
Imagine a charismatic professor with a large audience and who has talked at length about the worth of various programming concepts. Now imagine that it turns out the professor can't pass Fizz Buzz. Following that, his fans defend him by saying that he's a captivating explainer who is only sometimes wrong, and that the size of his audience and fantastic delivery is proof of his worth as a leading expert on computer science and programming. Wouldn't that set off alarm bells in your mind?
The issue with Peterson is that anything outside of socioeconomics and psychology are drivel.
He has two tendencies which make him frustrating: first, he will state a statistic and follow up with an opinion, and when challenged he will reply that it’s not his views it is simply statistics. This can be very disingenuous, as you can infer many things from the same statistic.
The second, and much more egregious crime, is that he’s a climate change denier and proposes appeasement towards Russia.
His life advice is very good, and he talks about many interesting societal things, but when I see videos of him claiming himself to be a prophet: I am left with a sour taste.
> Peterson's book sales are skyrocketing, and not among convinced rightists.
That's because Peterson is a leftist. He has contrarian viewpoints on exactly two topics: pronouns and communism. Other than that, he's as left wing as they come. He's a great example of how bad the political discourse has gotten. The left won't even allow dissenting opinions among their own people.
Your comment is too brief to parse properly but yes Peterson talks about "Cultural Marxism" on his YouTube channel and so does Damore in the famous memo.
reply