The Hunger for Meaning
“It is tempting to dismiss Peterson as a stupid person’s idea of a smart person. But perhaps he is just a desperate person’s idea of an intellectual lifeline.”
That’s from Becca Rothfeld’s recent Washington Post review of Jordan B. Peterson’s We Who Wrestle with God.
Rothfeld’s review is an amusing takedown (“at the level of the sentence, We Who Wrestle With God is probably the most unendurable book I have ever suffered through”) but also an inquiry about Peterson’s popularity.
She thinks he is addressing a popular need, and succeeding in part because others—including philosophers—aren’t doing so.
She writes:
At a time when humanities programs are hemorrhaging funding; when anti-intellectualism is such a badge of pride that crypto tycoons brag about hating books; when the cost of college is rising exponentially and the percentage of Americans pursuing higher education is declining; when religion, once the site of regular and ritualized self-examination, is attracting fewer and fewer adherents; and when humanists in the academy are turning their back on the public in favor of uninviting jargon: Is it any wonder that Peterson-style hucksters can so easily step in to fill the void?
Call me impractical or romantic, but for my money, the hunger for meaning is as basic as the craving for food. The fundamental questions aren’t luxuries, and people will always find a way to ask them. Peterson is a charlatan and a fraud, but at least he does what academics and the philistines of Silicon Valley refuse to do: He takes the public’s propensity for philosophy seriously (if only to exploit it), and he presents the life of the mind as an exciting pursuit (if only to flatten it into a Disney movie).
The full review is here.
Related: The Demand for Philosophers
There seems to be a sweet spot in between being a total novice and being an actual expert which, if hit, actually allows one to do interesting and important public-facing work. On the one hand, novices can’t do such work because they’re, well, novices. On the other hand, I genuinely think that a big (not sole) reason why most legitimate legitimate philosophical experts don’t do public-facing work is that we’re now too informed, too aware of the subtleties and difficulties which cannot be addressed in public-facing work, leaving us (at least, speaking for myself) with the impression that public-facing work is somehow irresponsible, or can often be. (Also, it simply isn’t rewarded or highly regarded. As always, economic and professional incentives absolutely must be a part of the discussion.) Not sure what to do about this.
I agree and would like to add that it’s very easy to talk about capital-M “Meaning” when you think there is some golden, familiar, recipe for the good life (clean your room!). It’s a lot less satisfying to ask “what should I do with my life” and hear:
“Well, rank your preferences over the set of possible states of affairs, and modify that with your informed view of their likelihood.”
Or something philosophical, or personal, like that. Even though I think it’s a better answer, it doesn’t provide the easy meaning-fix people seem to crave. That doesn’t mean more popular Phil. work is bad or impossible, just that it’s unlikely to be as popular as Peterson.
Perhaps the lesson to be learned from your example is that there is something deeply unsatisfying about utilitarian-bayesian approaches to practical thinking and less so one about ethics and popular philosophy
Sure! Perhaps! Though “unsatisfying” doesn’t seem to imply “incorrect.”
The broader point was that a philosophical answer to this question is, agreeing with marketeer, unlikely to be as clear-cut and old-fashioned as Peterson’s seems to be.
Aside: according to the PhilPapers Survey, those thinking the meaning of life is objective (versus subjective, non-existent, pseudo-question, agnostic, unknown… ie the “unsatisfying answers”) are in the minority. Even fewer are theists! That doesn’t mean I’m right either, of course, but the average philosopher’s story about the meaning of life is unlikely to appeal to the average person searching for objective or traditional meaning.
It may not logically imply that the theory is incorrect as a theory of meaning in life, but it definitely counts against it. It isn’t a good sign if the theory of meaning in life makes contact in no way with the yearning expressed in terms of meaning in life that motivates the inquiry in the first place.
Yeah I agree that that is the first thing indicated (to me) by this example. It seems to me that the craving for meaning is precisely for something more than the satisfaction of one’s own preferences. Like, that’s kind of ground floor for 99% of work on the topic.
How much more satisfying is:
“Well, rank everyone’s preferences over the set of possible states of affairs, and modify that with a broadly informed view of their likelihood.”
Yes, this is a great point. Those “hungry for meaning” might not even be interested in the wares we have to peddle. I mean, what can we responsibly say to someone who asks what the meaning of life is?
“Supposing there is an answer at all, it will depend on what you mean by ‘life’ and ‘meaning.’ So, what do you mean?” And then the conversation would end.
“Well, it seems to me that you’re assuming from the outset that life does have a meaning. Why think that?” And then the conversation would end.
“There’s a wide range of perspectives on this. For example: X, Y, and Z.” “Ah yes,” our interlocutor would respond, “but which is correct?” What can we say in response? Little more than: “Well, here’s what I think [if we happen to think anything at all about this], based almost entirely on my perhaps idiosyncratic and potentially unreliable intuitions, values, preferences, and desires. Other philosophers will, of course, differ. In fact, we’ve reached basically no agreement on these matters in ~3000 years. Actually, we don’t even agree on the meaning of the terms in the question — much less on an answer to it.” In disbelief, our interlocutor may respond: “But surely there must be a reliable way to decide which of the going answers to believe, right?” What honest reply do we have available? “We have not yet decided which of the competing views about how to decide between competing views is best. Perhaps only god him/her/it/themself knows the answer to this one…” And then the conversation ends.
I don’t mean to be a downer, but it’s just not the case that philosophers have the kind of “deep wisdom” about the “meaning of life” (etc.) that the public craves. In fact, this seems to be one of the first major lessons philosophers learn. We’re pretty much just as in the dark about the meaning of life (including whether there even is such a thing) and other significant topics as everyone else — and perhaps even more so.
It is an inherently anti-intellectual – dare I say reactionary – impulse that drives insistence on a simple, convenient, unambiguous answer to such a question, where by nature none exists. Perhaps the solution to this quandary actually lies in emphasizing this very point. Doing so is an act which, in itself, also involves the positing of a moral worldview.
Let’s replace your 2nd potential riposte (“Well, it seems to me that you’re assuming from the outset that life does have a meaning. Why think that?”) with something stronger:
“You are wrong for posing question in this way. Looking for someone to tell you where ‘Meaning’ lies is a problematic goal both morally and politically. It is your responsibility to determine what is meaningful to you and fight for it. I know this is less convenient than looking for the revelation of Meaning, but you can do it. We can help each other.”
This is a pop-culture caricature of French existentialism: a version of the movement packaged to appeal to a non-academic audience. I would also suggest that the success of TV shows like Bojack Horseman shows that it can be delivered effectively.
Of course, committing to this position requires that one do exactly that: commit. Which might entail overriding our academic caution to some degree. But insofar as we’re interested in combatting Peterson and the totalizing ambitions of the Christian conservatism he spearheads, I think this is one of the most promising strategies.
ok but the thing about french existentialism is that it didn’t really need pop-culture caricatures. outside of the critique of dialectical reason perhaps, “average people” can/have/do engage with sartre, camus, beauvoir, fanon, et al. there are vanishingly few philosophical monographs written in english over the past 40 years that have real depth while at the same remain legible to the reasonably educated/read (german thought seems to share this problem). you don’t have to like pragmatism or utilitarianism to ask where we might find the jameses, deweys, du boises, rortys, or mills of today.
perhaps this is why (e.g.) effective altruism has such a strong following—a smart person who doesn’t know the history of philosophy or the jargon can read e.a. texts and feel enriched and affected. pop-culture caricatures aren’t needed for singer’s work + right place/right time.
This sequence of disappointing replies applies to pretty much every subject in philosophy — justice, the good life, meaning in life, knowledge, God, personhood. So it seems to reveal something more about philosophy than about the meaning of life.
I mean, I for one am not surprised to learn that serious philosophical thinking isn’t all that popular or satisfying to the average person!
I regularly teach undergrad courses on the meaning of life and I strongly disagree with your assessment that we have nothing to say on this matter. In fact, your statement ‘Supposing there is an answer at all, it will depend on what you mean by ‘life’ and ‘meaning.’ So, what do you mean?’ is more or less what we start with in these courses.
Then, we can talk about what ‘meaning’ could mean: are we talking about the purpose of life? (But whose purpose would this be and where does it come from?) Or about what makes a life significant in the grand scheme of things? (But what criteria are there for being significant and why should we accept them?) Or are we talking about how a life can be valuable? (But must it be valuable only for me, or in some kind of objective way?)
And what does ‘life’ mean? You own life? Human life in general? Or maybe the existence of anything at all?
Often, people asking about the meaning of life have never asked themselves these questions and don’t really know what it is they’re asking. A thorough philosophical analysis of the concepts used here can be really eye.opening and helpful.
Philosophers don’t need to have ready answers for these questions. But we can teach people the tools to work on these questions themselves.
Sorry, my point was not that philosophers have nothing to say about these matters. It’s that discussion with John Q. Public about them is highly likely to break down or lead nowhere, if we try to engage responsibly — i.e. with conceptual subtlety and sophistication. This is because John Q. Public, in general, is not after genuine or deep understanding in asking such questions. He (often but not invariably) wants tidy prescriptions with no subtlety, complexity, or intellectual merit, which Peterson offers — not anything that actual philosophers might have to say. So, actual philosophers seem to face a trilemma: (i) engage with John Q. Public sincerely and responsibly but fruitlessly, (ii) engage irresponsibly by vastly oversimplifying matters, or (iii) refrain from engaging.
Well, I haven’t met this John Q. Public so far, but he sounds like a piece of work.
Let me ask you: Is your opinion based on actually trying to talk to ‘ordinary’ people about philosophy or is this something you just presume? Because in my experience, the general public is not just interested in philosophical in-depth discussions of matters like the meaning of life, but also capable of understanding conceptual subtleties. Not everyone, sure, but far more people than you think.
I’m doing a lot of academic outreach, to high school students, for example, or to the part of the general public that’s interested in philosophy and shows up for public lectures outside the university (i.e., mostly old people who have time for this). Don’t underestimate them! You don’t need a BA in philosophy to be capable to understand the distinction between, say, meaning as purpose or meaning as significance, or between objective value and subjective valiue, or to understand an infinite regress argument against ultimate values.
Also, what’s the point of John Q. Public paying for our faculties and programs with his taxes if all we have to offer him is: ‘Leave me alone with your questions, you are too dumb to understand my sophisticated insights on these matters anyway!’?
I would add that much of Peterson’s popularity is probably due to the fact that he has perfected the art of couching Christian conservatism in academic-ese (albeit an unbearably contrived version of it). He’s not a genius, and he’s not a historical-class intellectual. He’s just providing a comfy way for religious conservatives to feel more cerebral when they wax pontifical about their beliefs.
Rothfeld — who is not a philosopher — picks up Peterson’s book with a pair of tongs. I suppose the people who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like. However, since the human craving for meaning is indeed here to stay, those wishing for an actual engagement with Peterson’s ideas can turn to Imprint Academic’s 2020 Myth, Meaning, and Antifragile Individualism (preface available here):
https://philpapers.org/archive/CHAMMA-13.pdf
Rothfeld is a philosopher–she’s a PhD candidate at Harvard.
She says in the linked review (which is very enjoyable to read btw) that she spent (past tense) five years in a philosophy PhD program. So apparently she’s no longer a graduate student but a full-time book critic for WaPo.
Oh boy will the British Journal of Aesthetics be embarrassed to learn they have published an article by someone who is not a philosopher!
Sounds like a retraction is in order
I mean whatever. It’s only the British Journal of Aesthetics. It’s not like she’s managed to get her work published by a powerhouse like “Imprint Academic.”
She’s quite a good philosopher, actually. She’s on leave from our program, but as far as I know intends to complete her Ph.D.
As someone working in the field of 20th century continental European thought, I’d like to make something unequivocally clear:
Peterson’s asinine, uninformed ravings about “postmodernist neo-marxism” have done atrocious damage to the reputations of figures like Derrida and Foucault, especially outside of the academic circuit. Aside from my personal affinity for these figures, I would also point out that young men in Peterson’s audience who might otherwise discover interesting and helpful strategies for interpreting and confronting the problems of our era by listening to what these figures have to say have been permanently deterred from doing so because of Peterson’s inane well-poisoning.
Not sure if I agree on the Derrida part. Foucault may be an unfortunate casualty (as someone poorly familiar with his work I don’t think I can judge him) but Derrida has been attacked even by analytic philosophers. The question however is if his critique of Derrida is in the same lines from those we see in the analytic tradition. If the answer is positive he’s being hypocritical given his appeal to authors and themes who also play with ambiguity and symbolic language.
Yes of course Derrida has been attacked, often quite viciously, by analytic philosophers. This has been going on since Derrida’s own lifetime (famously, faculty at Cambridge threw a massive temper tantrum over Derrida being awarded an honorary doctorate there). Of course, I would contend that anyone who is willing to read Derrida charitably and holistically will find that many of these attacks amount to windmill-tilting.
However, this isn’t really a suitable forum for an involved discussion of Derrida’s merits from the analytic perspective. I do think that the core point you’re gesturing at is a good one, namely, that some analytic philosophers have made good-faith critiques of Derrida. Derrida is not unassailable, after all. The problem is that Peterson is not partaking in any of these reasonable criticisms. Rather, he has consistently traduced Derrida as a “relativist”, and a “post-modern neo-Marxist” with no interest in defining these terms rigorously, nor in accurately portraying the subtleties of Derrida’s relationship to them.
In short, Peterson has ridden roughshod over standards of academic criticism in order to present his audience with an easy and convenient whipping-boy.
Yeah, you can think some person or other is a charlatan and a fraud without granting support to some other charlatan and fraud’s rebuke of the first charlatan and fraud if by your lights the second charlatan and fraud’s grounds are charlatanical and fraudulent.
It’s really quite simple!
i almost hesitate to say this but imo the petersonian depiction of “neo-marxist postmodernism” is both flatly wrong in one way and broadly correct in another. the way in which peterson types depict post-structural thought is absurd to anyone who’s actually really the work of the central figures of that thought. indeed, the strains of thought in the post-structural era aren’t in any way homogenous. the term post-structural has more to do with periodicity than it does with shared notions.
that said, the adoption and adaptation of post-structural thinkers in the american academy as the primary well of citation and “theory” for american humanistic academics who are far less well-read and sophisticated than foucault or derrida or deleuze were has been darkly comical. take for example the use of “deconstruction” as a shibbolethic everyday term that’s lost all heft or the fact that foucault citation remains after 40 years a thriving industry. i say this sarcastically, but i’m fairly sure that 70+% of foucault citations outside of philosophy might as well just be citing pink floyd’s “the wall” or kesey’s “one flew over the cuckoo’s nest” for what they have to say.
I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said here. If Peterson were leveling this critique, and complaining about the laziness of contemporary academics, then I wouldn’t be hating on him. The problem is that he’s not doing that, but rather name-dropping Derrida and Foucault really without engaging with them, while branding them the perpetrators of what he views as “cultural decline”. In fact, Peterson himself is guilty of the misuse of the term “deconstruction” in more-or-less the way you’re describing.
i agree that the misattribution of views to post-structuralist thinkers is a sign of j.p.’s lack of seriousness and heft. but the reason his ridiculous oversimplifications and misrepresentations find grounding is that they point to something real.
it’s probably not fair to blame derrida et al for their corrupted legacies in some of the american academy (although my understanding is that derrida was happy to be the celebrity he was made in the us) but i’m not sure the genie goes back in the bottle through assiduous work on the work of these thinkers. not to say that work shouldn’t be done, but those legacies are what they are.
To some degree, the same could be said of any number of historical thinkers. Plato, Kant, Hegel, Marx, etc. all have their incompetent interpreters, and they all have their public-facing caricatures. It seems that any celebrity philosopher will likely undergo some distortion when it comes to the public reception of their ideas.
With that said, if Peterson were directing his invective to “lazy postmodern intellectuals who have failed to understand the figures they purport to represent” or something like that, then I wouldn’t have any objections. The fact that he instead opts to target the figures themselves is what galls me.
all true. americans have been trying to rescue nietzsche from the right wing since kaufman’s days. the only problem was that nietzsche was in important ways a right winger, if not at all a nazi, anti-semite, or a racist!
As someone who, during my teenage years, was captured by alt-right media (which was common for young men of my age due to YouTube algorithms of the time), I can say that Peterson does not ruin these figures for all of us. Nor does James Lindsay, who also attacks the postmodernists and has a similar audience.
After some time, and actually reading them (mostly Foucault), I have had no problems coming to enjoy their work. Of course, I was no longer so ideologically captured by the alt-right by the time I came to appreciate these authors, so maybe this isn’t a great counterpoint.
This is great to hear! Yes, entanglement with the alt-right was all too common (still is, to some extent) among young men for a while. I wish there were more who, like you, were courageous and discerning enough to break out. To me, your willingness to read Foucault at all signals from the outset that you were never truly as far gone as you might have imagined.
There is something tragic to the fact that when you dress Jung and Joseph Campbell up (however poorly) in the trappings of modern-day right-wing rhetoric, they’re super popular. But you couldn’t fill a real course on their work–or if you did, you’d be kicked by the right for peddling outdated PoMo ideas.
I think Rothfeld and the others who have said it are right: there’s a hunger for the kinds of ideas you encounter in the humanities. And as more departments close due to cuts or right-wing attacks, the right ends up being the main or only place you can find those ideas, however poorly represented.
(Of course, as an analytic philosopher, I also lament the tragedy that it’s Jung and Campbell which everyone seems to love, when they could get far better brain food elsewhere. But that’s beside the point, really.)
People who gain followers are charismatic. No one can just aspire to that, so it’s weird for any of us to be told to try to step into some role like that Peterson plays. Peterson has the same appeal as Trump and as popular preachers have always had. It can’t be about some unmet hunger for philosophy. For one, we’d see that in our students. For two, Peterson doesn’t even encourage his followers to read those studies he mentions. Try to imagine one of his fans arguing with him. It’s instead the same old hunger followers have always had: to look up to someone, to identify someone as an authority who can offer some gospel truth. Like she describes, they just like *watching* him think. They like whatever he is doing,
PS I have one question when I see philosophers suggest they are just too experienced in philosophy to explain it well “for the public”. Don’t you teach? What’s the difference?
In answer to your postscript: I have 42 separate one-hour-long meetings with my students over the course of 3.5 months, intentionally for the purpose of educating them with institutional support, policies, standards, expectations, and more undergirding this. To engage the general public, I have, what, maybe a pop article in an online magazine, which I have to hope that the public somehow stumbles upon and shows undivided attention while various other apps and websites are actively vying for their attention and provide a quicker dopamine hit? Maybe a YouTube channel? Perhaps a podcast? That’s about it. The situations really aren’t very similar at all. Besides, this also doesn’t address my concern expressed above that what I have to offer (conceptual clarity in my small sub-sub field of philosophy of language) is not what the public wants (the intellectual equivalent of a get-rich-quick scheme, a find-the-“meaning-of-life”-quick scheme).
Right, without the charisma of those who gain followers I don’t think the situation you would be in is similar. But you lecture and explain philosophy? Type up or record your lecture and that’s philosophy for the public. I don’t think there is some unmet hunger for it, but surely what you are saying to students could be addressed to the public (surely in meetings you are coming up with explanations, too). I am not suggesting it would be popular or make you a star, just that it is not hard to offer even if you are a non-novice in philosophy. If number of readers matters I was not saying you would do big numbers.
So philosophy textbooks are philosophy for the public? We’ve got a ton of those. I always thought “for the public” was something different than a “textbook”. (Contrast with science: Sean Carroll’s textbook in Relativity theory vs. his popularization From Eternity to Here).
Well I’m not sure! But that good philosophers can write textbooks in philosophy is another bit of evidence that we can explain philosophy for a general audience even if we are non-novices.
But why can’t we count the work we do which is accessible to the public (in the sense of shared openly) as public philosophy?
I think Agnes Callard has said public philosophy is not really philosophy but entertainment, somehow aiming to be pleasurable but not rigorous for readers/ listeners. But (as I imagine she might just agree) we don’t have to accept that understanding of it. I think of scholars as having a public role anyway.
Completely agree with you. Peterson is an entertainer. People follow him because they have a craving for entertainment in a philosophy adjacent space that seems meaningful and exciting. They find it entertaining to criticize people they consider political enemies as well. If I wanted to do a little dog and pony show on TikTok and make fun of people I’m sure I could gather a popular following of the people who found it amusing. But since I’m not a clown I don’t wish to behave like one in public. Many philosophers do interesting and popularly accessible philosophy that isn’t just written for technical experts. Philosophers are podcasting and making videos and doing all kinds of cool things. To make it catch on the way that popular intellectual figures catch on, you need to appeal to something else that has nothing to do with philosophy.
I remember when Peterson first came on the scene in 2016-2017. I was in graduate school working on virtue ethics in the eudaimonist tradition. Even though Peterson lacks a background in academic philosophy, his moral philosophy (even if you think it is bad) fits pretty squarely into the eudaimonist tradition. (I write about this in an essay titled “Are We Made for Happiness?” for a volume on Peterson’s work).
So it always puzzled me that philosophers overlooked this obvious connection, especially when the public also has an appetite for “philosophy as way of life” and “the hunger for meaning.”
Might it be because we are not nearly as persuasive, influential, and successful as JBP? At the very least, the presence of such a person with the wrong politics is an easy channel for envy, especially for status-obsessed academics.
I think philosophers (writing for the public) have tried to take him that way and found it impossible (maybe they need your essay). https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2018/05/29/nope-jordan-peterson-aint-no-stoic/
Yes, there is another essay in the same volume as mine discussing the relationship between JBP and Stoicism. Anecdotally, when teaching Stoicism I have had students make the same connection. So there is clearly something there. But I think what matters more is not whether he counts as a Stoic, a Christian, an Aristotelian–or whatever–the point is that he is engaging the same set of questions in a way that appeals to members of the public who have no (or little) previous contact with philosophy or Christianity.
Yes, agree- he would not have to be an adherent of any of those old views to be developing a virtue ethic. I guess I can grant him “engaging with the same questions as.” (The linked piece tries to suggest that’s done only incoherently, though.) I wonder if anyone has looked into how his fans fare after a few years of learning from him?
It’s not very scientific, but one could simply read the comments on his YouTube videos. They are overwhelmingly positive, with many stories of people coming back from hell. Again, this is not something normal people speculate about—the positive influence is clear. It’s only when the wrong politics are involved that philosophers sound the alarm. It seems they would prefer that young men remain miserable and left-wing than build a life, start a family, take on responsibility, and in doing so, embrace the right.
Indeed, if accomplishing all of that involves embracing reactionary politics, I would call it a good end reached through very objectionable means.
However, the notion that the right has a monopoly on any of those achievements is pure nonsense. Young men can, and do, accomplish all of that without imbibing reactionary mythology. This is why it’s imperative that Peterson’s claims to the contrary be challenged.
I’m pretty normal. Peterson seems overtly miserable to most of us and I know how young people feel about his fans (worried). I don’t doubt people “come back from hell” (depression?) but Brene Brown and Oprah have more fans, don’t they? People get inspired by things other than coherent philosophy. But I haven’t read your chapter maybe you correct what Massimo worries about in the above link.
Send me an email, I’ll send you a copy of the essay.
Who are these philosophers hostile to young men being happy, responsible, and having families? Sounds like a great plan, but if that’s the measure of success, JP sure isn’t the one to emulate. He’s a stoic or eudaimonist like a cold stale poptart is a deli sandwich. His politics aren’t the problem.
I would be happy to send the essay to you too.
Yeah if Peterson were only propounding a bad version of eudaimonist-adjacent ethics then we probably wouldn’t be as harsh in our remonstrations. We dislike him
(a) because his ideology amounts to little more than the same tired old Christian conservatism with a marginally more academic veneer,
(b) because he is actively luring young men down a political path which will be destructive to both themselves and society at large, and
(c) because he is (at best) irresponsible and (at worst) imbecilic in his name-dropping of “post-modern neo-Marxist” philosophers as scapegoat culprits for his ravings about “cultural decline”.
The implication that academics dislike Peterson because they “are just jealous” of him is outright ludicrous.
“Charlatan and a fraud” seems a bit harsh… so far as I can tell, he is representative of a large tier of YouTubers adjacent to philosophy. So you think their work is wack and derivative? Guess what Immanuel, so is yours. The difference is that, unlike your 1000th article on Rawls or epistemic injustice, this dude has an audience and a (deranged) passion for his message.
This review strikes me as sort of… selectively critical.
With all due respect to my religious friends, the Biblical stories are already kind of insane. JP might interpret them as being about the Antiwoke Divine Feminine Dragon or whatever, but they are already *about* burning bushes and murdered guys coming back to life and people being turned to salt. And they feature an angry omnipotent punisher who, for some reason, doesn’t want you to shave your beard, and so help you, if enough of you continue to do things like shave your beard, he will drown the entire animal kingdom. I don’t say this to trash religion, honestly, mythology matters. But biblical mythology is already custom tailored to produce exactly the stream of wild, fanciful interpretation that Peterson and millions of others have produced, where “Density passes for sophistication, and verbosity conceals vapidity”, where the author’s political priors are firmly confirmed… AND where sometimes the author even gets tenure at some fancy institution!
Rothfeld is closer to mark with her initial observation- Peterson is a stupid person’s idea of an intellectual- than speculating about the unrequited desire to find meaning in the world as the source of Peterson’s popularity.
Peterson offers pseudo-intellectual camouflage for run of the mill bigotry, while celebrating disdain for actual intellectual pursuits. In a review for Los Angeles Review of Books of Peterson’s earlier execrable productions (‘A Messiah-cum-Surrogate-Dad for Gormless Dimwits’: On Jordan B. Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life”) Houman Barekat summarizes what Peterson is all about:
The world is full of snake oil salesmen; why should this one concern us particularly? Because male self-pity is a killer….
In the current climate it behooves us to be extra vigilant about the creeping normalization of reactionary chauvinism, and call it out when we see it. What happens in the realm of discourse has consequences in the real world.
Admittedly it’s not always easy to distinguish between a harmless retro eccentric and a peddler of poisonous and potentially murderous ideas. So let’s take stock: Masculinist persecution myth? Check. Repeated appeals to Darwinism to justify social hierarchies? Check. A left-wing conspiracy to take over the culture? Check. Romanticization of suffering? Check. Neurotic angst about “chaos”? Check. Like many of his sort, Peterson sees himself as a defender of the best traditions of Western civilization and the Enlightenment. But there is an old adage: if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are it’s a duck.
I’ll speculate why Rothfeld, and many of the commentators here, miss the dynamic at work with Peterson’s fans- predominantly disaffected cis hetero White males. Rothfeld, her audience, and the cohort who comprise the Daily Nous community of readers, are highly educated. This is a decided minority of the population.
In the US, barely forty percent of those who graduate high school will complete a four year undergraduate program (fifteen percent don’t graduate high school). In other words, 65% of US adults do not receive a basic college education. And this is about as successful as our education system has ever been.
The majority of US adults do not speak the academic dialect of the Daily Nous community, and so have neither the interest in what academic philosophers have to say, nor an affinity for the academic jargon that serves as signals of credibility among graduate students and tenured faculty.
Peterson, on the other hand, tells his audience that they can celebrate their worst characteristics and impulses, encourages them to embrace contempt for the intellectual ‘elites’, and does so with a vocabulary suited to a sixth grade reading comprehension level. He informs them they are naturally superior, by virtue of demographic advantage, to all the ‘others’ who seek to usurp their birthright. He massages their egos while stroking his own. And if you aren’t noticing the whiff of fascism percolating through Peterson’s ramblings, you aren’t paying attention.
Would Peterson’s fanboys be interested in Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’?
I think not.
If you google “Jordan Peterson” and “Man’s Search for Meaning”, you will find many videos related to Frankl from his Youtube channel. The book is #11 on the reading list on his website. I agree that he encourages the worst impulses in his listeners, but I think Rothfeld’s right that he is also capturing some kind of genuine yearning for meaning on the part of his audience
Almost always, for our ideas to do someone any good, that person must receive our ideas. That’s one reason to work like heck to deliver our ideas to the public.
Another is that if we want the public to fund us, we’d better be showing them how they benefit from us.
Peterson’s success should inspire us to engage. Many people have pointed out the very real problems we face, but those problems are not a justification for failing to do the best we can.
A couple relevant links:
“Philosophers should be keener to talk about the meaning of life”
https://aeon.co/ideas/philosophers-should-be-keener-to-talk-about-the-meaning-of-life
“Should Philosophers Teach the Meaning of Life (and other Possibly Depressing Subjects)?”
https://dailynous.com/2017/07/10/philosophers-teach-meaning-life-possibly-depressing-subjects/
On the topic of making philosophy relevant for the public, what about journals requiring a public significance statement alongside submissions? Here’s the description of what such a statement entails for Developmental Psychology (psych journal):
“Authors submitting manuscripts to the journal Developmental Psychology are now required to provide 2–3 brief sentences regarding the relevance or public health significance of their study or review described in their manuscript…
…The public significance statement (similar to the Relevance section of NIH grant submissions) summarizes the significance of the study’s findings for a public audience in one to three sentences (approximately 30–70 words long). It should be written in language that is easily understood by both professionals and members of the lay public.”
For philosophy, the public significance would usually be a step or two removed from any practical problem, but this still might be a step in the right direction?
If this ever happens, I will have ChatGPT write my “significance statement”.
Whatever you think of Peterson (I’m not a fan), Rothfeld is right that he fulfills a ‘need’ that is ignored by most philosophers: the desire for purpose or meaning in life.
After publishing my — very scholarly — dissertation, I decided to write a book for both philosophers and lay people (now almost finished). Title: Philosophy of the Outdoors: Physical Activity and the Experience of Meaning in Nature.
I hope more philosophers will realize that there’s value in (also) writing popular or crossover books that can appeal to a wider audience.
This doesn’t have to diminish scholarly substance. A part of the solution is to move most of the academic discussion to the endnotes so that the main text can be more appealing and accessible.
Peterson is hit or miss.
A stupid person’s intellectual? Quippy, but it’s too harsh. At times, Peterson can be a smart person’s intellectual. At other times, well, meh. When he goes off on Marxism or Foucault, I’m not terribly impressed.
Many of the criticisms of Peterson, especially his oversimplified take on various lines of thought is correct. But he also has very inspiring videos in which he makes points that young people ought to hear about the possibility of self-development and the importance of taking responsibility seriously. These are the videos that many people have found so important and profound, and there are—if you are open-minded enough to actually look—lots of people who found in Peterson the initial impetus for positive change and transformation. And, Peterson can at times articulate these points in a compelling way, which most of us philosophers have not been able to do. That doesn’t negate the criticisms but I think it’s also important to really understand why he has such popularity. It’s not because he’s a charlatan but because he sometimes does say important things that people are desperate for.