The highly anticipated intellectual debate between the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and the Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson will be held tonight in Toronto. The fame of these two scholars in popular culture made this debate an important cultural event in Western ideology, as they have an overwhelming number of fans that rival – if not surpass- the fame of pop and rock singers. The former started garnering an ever-growing global attention since the late 80’s, with his prolific English writings and his enthusiastically bizarre method of delivering it. Meanwhile, the latter rose to fame in the year 2016 when he scrutinizingly criticized the Canadian government for the law that protects the transgender identity against discrimination. It is a law that -as Peterson claims- limits freedom of speech to an extent that it enforces the left’s agenda and its encroachment in Western societies.
- Trying to understand Peterson
I remember a sentence that stuck in my head when I read Peterson’s first book “Maps of Meaning” (1999), in context of mentioning the existential crisis he went through in the time of his university education: There were nights when I return home and sink my weight into the couch until I nearly disappear from the intense sense of loss of meaning (and how strange it is: the absence of something is heavier and more burdensome than its existence.) What Peterson is discussing is nothing but the death of God, in the context of Western societies, which is a crisis of oscillating the prospects, moral basis, and values that the Abrahamic religions’ culture is based upon in the West. In “Maps of Meaning”, he presents his view on facing the question of meaning, which is a point of view that is undoubtedly worthy of appreciation as he assesses the tripartite balance between psychology/biology and Jungian psychology (coined after Carl Jung). He also showcases what could be called a pragmatic existential philosophy (Nietzsche, Heidegger, and American pragmatists), the unfamiliar combination and intense content made the responses towards the book, upon its release, waver between commending its seriousness and the oddity of its composition. The book emerged during a generation that lived through the Cold War, totalitarian regimes, and the horror of the atomic bomb that may eradicate humanity to the ground. The hidden concern in his book is to study the causes of an individual’s dissolution in totalitarian ideologies. Peterson’s vision of these systems of all kinds is that they are the fence and incubator of meaning in the time of the loss of religion in Western societies, that is, those political movements in the twentieth century had become at that time the horizon of collective meaning in light of the loss of value meaning formed by Christianity, but nevertheless it is a terrifying and catastrophic incubator that killed millions in Soviet Gulag and Nazi extermination camps, and – as Peterson sees it – these horrific human disasters should not go unnoticed without examining their causes and its motives. Hence his constant attack on ideology, his intense hatred of the word, and his constant exhortation to find meaning individually and away from any political group and movement, whether on the left or the right.
Peterson defines himself as a “radical conservative.” He emphasizes traditional Western Christian values, albeit from a different angle, insisting that binary gender discrimination remains permissible and justified, and that traditional masculinity values are more urgent than ever, and he stands against the protests of university youth and their political penchant for Marxism and postmodernism. He sees these collective political concerns as a veil from finding a real solution to the crisis of meaning that is an individual solution away from these collective movements, and he sees Marxism and postmodernism as complementary to each other. Marxism is the area where young people collectively engage in useless political protests, while postmodernism, by asserting that no explanation of something can be justified as the only and most correct one, sees all interpretations that are equally justified and reasonable; therefore, it cannot establish a “Map of Meaning” so to speak. This radical conservative attitude seems understandable given that Peterson is also a psychiatrist, and you will most likely not be treating a psychopath who is depressed and sinks into his couch from excessive loss of meaning by saying that all interpretations are equally plausible.
Peterson’s fame did not come from “Maps of Meaning”, as his sweeping fame in the English-speaking world during recent years cannot be understood without reference to the context of the rise of populism in Western societies throughout the past decade, a rise that comes against existing institutions and their laws with the increasing number of immigrants and the imposition of laws that protect minorities of all kinds. This outburst of anger is most evident against the so-called political correctness where legal and customary boundaries have been imposed that should not be crossed in word and deed, and this discomfort we see from the stars of the Hollywood industry (for example, Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle expressing concern about the culture of political tact in their recent comedy shows) to this popular anger from the rest of the public. It is precisely in this context, in the context of political tact, in the context of building uni-sex bathrooms, and in the context of restricting people’s words to protect minorities, we should understand Peterson’s rise and his provocative comments against Islam, women’s clothing, and transgender people.
- Did you say ideology, Mister Peterson?
Peterson presents his criticisms of his opponents by reducing them in a crude and strange way. As anyone with a slight knowledge of Marxism and postmodernism knows, there are fundamental differences between the two intellectual orientations which amount to contradiction and contradiction. The most important of which is that Marxism still believes in the teleology of history as it falls within the so-called grand narratives, while postmodernism stands against this completely. These are philosophies that have lost faith in all grand narratives and their claims, a position that stems from their excessive sensitivity to all “essential” discourses that offer a teleological and comprehensive explanation be it in the name of the enlightenment, religion, or Marxism. Moreover, the tension between the traditional left and postmodernism has existed since the spread of postmodern philosophies in English-speaking countries, and this tension is due to the leftists’ sharp criticism of postmodernists’ reluctance and isolation from direct political struggle. Perhaps this reduction is one of the unconscious effects of his in-depth study of the discourses of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes that prefer this reduction to demonizing opponents, it is a poor diagnosis cognitively but useful for mobilization.
Bernard Schiff, who was responsible for Peterson’s admission to the University of Toronto, mentions that one of the most critical comments that Peterson’s students used to make about him was that the latter was delivering the conclusions of scientific studies as accepted facts if they were in favor of his vision and intellectual theses, and this is a problem, especially if it is in the context of the scientific lesson that is based on the spirit of suspicion, skepticism, constant and continuous research. In his debate about the relationship of science to ethics in his recent interviews with Sam Harris, Peterson rejects Harris’s naïve position that science can provide us with answers to our ethical dilemmas without reference beyond the framework of science itself. There are infinite scientific facts and information around us, and the choice itself between these facts and information requires a specific narrative. This is true, but this selectivity of choice is what is called “ideology” in philosophical research, it means, among other things, choosing a certain set of facts and information and isolating another group in line with your vision of existence and the world, and in this sense, we are all in equal ideology. Peterson’s issue is that he does not see that problem, at least in its broader political framework. Perhaps the most important characteristic of his intellectual opponent in this debate is precisely this: emphasizing the difficulty of the issue of ideology in an age that calls itself the post-ideological age.
- So, what does populism mean?
In her recent book on populism, Belgian political theorist Chantal Mauve argues that populism is not a bad thing in itself, as the protests and demonstrations that have come under the umbrella of “right-wing populism” rising in the West in recent years should be understood as the failure of left-wing politics to offer a successful alternative. Žižek seems to agree with this diagnosis as he mentioned in his recent journalistic books. He also asserts on more than one occasion that the culture of political tact is far from the spirit of the left, as Peterson likes to say, it is rather a structural flaw in modern liberal politics and, more precisely, the problem of freedom of expression: on the one hand, freedom of expression wants to guarantee the right of everyone to say what he wants, and on the other hand, it wants to protect the freedom of individuals who may be harmed by some of these statements.
- Slavoj-Peterson
This radical conservative and that radical Marxist may be seen as complete opposites in almost every way possible. Peterson is a charismatic speaker who weighs his words well and tries to ensure that everything he says does not fall within the theoretical architecture that he built for himself combining his vision between theory and action, while perhaps the most appropriate word to describe Žižek’s delivery method is “chaotic”. He jumps from one idea to another, making a joke about Lenin with a reflection about quantum physics and a phrase from Lacan with a concept from Hegel. Peterson does not write much; he has only published two books in twenty years, while Žižek has written over twenty books. Although the two are descendants of the Freudian psychoanalysis, their lineage differs: Peterson adopts the tools of analysis of Carl Jung and his “Collective Unconscious” which stresses the importance of the traditions of earlier civilizations and makes it lean more towards the conservative spirit, while Žižek is Lacanian (relating to Jacques Lacan) to the core and is influenced by radical French thought and the post-structuralist trend in general in the second half of the twentieth century.
However, taking it from a distance shows that there are two commonalities that they themselves may refuse to emphasize: both emphasize, in a sense, the importance of cultural continuity for the elements of Western civilization. Žižek reads Christianity as, at its core, a revolutionary movement that has erupted to change the status quo, and that Christ is only a revolutionary like other revolutionaries. Žižek has written more than one book in which he defends the importance of the Christian heritage, including his book “The Fragile Absolute”. As for the emphasis on the importance of the Christian heritage, in Peterson’s case, it is clearer and clearer in his theses; He believes that Western civilization was founded on the example of a crucified person, a person who symbolizes sacrifice, to endure existential pains and suffering in this life. Also, about two years ago, he presented a series on the psychological significance of biblical stories. They are also aware of the state of Westerners’ almost loss of self-confidence, and Žižek went beyond simply emphasizing the importance of the Christian legacy when he emphasized Eurocentrism, as a good thing (and this was the main reason for the left’s attack on Žižek himself three years ago). What the two have in common is that they are fully aware of the problem of the culture of political incivility, and they always try to remind us of the danger of being lenient with it, even if the ways and methods of diagnosis differ.
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