Category: current debate

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Jordan Peterson and Philosophy:Review of a Youtube Interview.

Views: 2414

Peterson is a thoughtful Psychologist using a popular platform to make people think deeply and this is undoubtedly a good thing. He believes that the virtualisation of society occurring via social media is pathological, and there is much truth to this claim. He believes that tyranny is the major political problem of our times and like Socrates he is out everyday in the agora spreading his message to some effect. Meaning and Responsibility are the categories he uses to analyse complex social and political phenomena. He uses these categories broadly so that it includes references to Empirical research, Freud, Christianity, Sociology, Popular Psychology, and T S Eliot. Seemingly controversial issues such as, there are more important issues for humanity than climate change and the “close the society”-practice during the Covid pandemic, are discussed by contrasting these “visions” with pragmatic alternatives such as why not feed starving children instead and the “keep the society open” policy implemented by Sweden(lowest death rates in the EU).

He claims that we must go back to the origins of society to understand its structure and function, but his example is surprisingly, Jerusalem, which he claims is the model for our Western Societies. There is some truth to this claim but it is not the whole truth. JP holds up the crucifixion of Jesus as a key moment of our Western ethos and claims that it highlighted the issue of sacrificing oneself for an issue, for the truth. There is in fact another figure who did the same thing in order to mark the importance of justice, knowledge and Philosophy for humanity, namely Socrates, and Socrates was convicted of attempting to sell the false-god of Philosophy to a people who believed that a belief in the gods was important to keep the society together(religio). Jesus was a later figure who believed that a different religion to the prevailing religions was necessary to save a people still wondering in the wilderness trying to find a promised land. Even though we hear his disciples claiming that “the truth will set people free”, there is no attempt by Jesus to theorise about how to rule a society that was clearly in need of remedial measures insofar as both justice and freedom were concerned. There is no attempt to define the role of knowledge(epistemé) in the development of society and there is no acknowledgment of the extent to which the Greek “philosophical spirit” still to this day bears the burden of the most fundamental cultural achievements of the West. Instead of focussing religiously on one individuals selfless sacrifice, those scholars concerned with all the issues JP is concerned with, focus upon a philosophical method constructed by a large number of generations of Philosophers beginning with the triumvirate of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, continuing with Kant and the Philosophy of the Later Wittgenstein and all the academic followers of these figures. This tradition preserves a role for Christianity as long as it is stripped of the dogma of the institutional church that has alienated so many people over such a long time. This tradition also places great emphasis upon the roles of principles and laws against an ethical background or “ethos”, as JP calls it, of areté(doing the right thing at the right time in the right way–virtue) and diké(justice) Emphasis is also placed, by the Greeks, upon the historical background of a rejection of tyranny, and the oscillation of civil war between the oligarchs and the democrats(who for Plato were the disgruntled sons of oligarchs). Plato, as we know, attempted to solve the problem of oligarchs and democrats abusing their power by suggesting a ruler class of Philosophers who were not allowed access to money nor allowed to have family. Such a class would rule in accordance with a philosophical knowledge of the principles of “The Good”. Aristotle rejected this idea of the rule of philosophers on the grounds of his principle of the golden mean, which would eventually ensure that an enlightened middle class would rule future societies(a logic which is playing itself out on the world stage, if one views this matter in the long term). References by JP, to Marx, totally ignore the possible Greek criticism of any simplistic criticism of the Marxist position. JP appears not to understand that the ethical principle–“to each according to their needs and from each according to their abilities” could also be a position attributable to the Socratic principle of specialisation needed to construct the “healthy city”. That we all now live in unhealthy fevered cities” would have come as no surprise to Socrates, Plato or Aristotle, and each would have given their differently nuanced explanations for the current condition of our civilisation. The appeal to “will to power” and Sociology that JP uses is from a philosophical point of view, simplistic. Of course the Nietzschean term “will to power” is psychologically appealing, but Freudian terminology and its complex appeal to the life and death instincts better explains the complexity of the human role in this debacle we call “civilisation”.

We are reminded of what was constantly on the minds of the Greeks, namely the oracular pronouncement that “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction”. The Greek solution to this fundamental challenge from the oracles point of view could only come if we met the challenge thrown down like a gauntlet, from the Delphic oracle, to “Know thyself!” For Aristotle, we could only avoid the ruin and destruction of our cities by living a contemplative life that values knowledge, the good , the just, and Art. The theoretical account of knowledge passed down to us from Aristotle is much broader and deeper than the sources to which JP appeals to justify his more controversial and insightful positions.

JP polarises the philosophical debate by seeing his “middle position” between the radical leftists and the extreme right and this too is somewhat superficial since the middle ground between these extremes contains so many possibilities, all of which could be covered by the slogan “meaning and responsibility”. He ventures into the “middle ground” of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle when he talks about the real enemies of Islam being the atheists, and reductionist materialists, but he does not offer a coherent argument against such positions(of the kind we find in the works of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Freud, and Wittgenstein). At the end of the interview we are given an anecdotal reference to a world run by machines and AI which would be a worse form of tyranny than any bureaucratically run society. Anecdotes, however, are not arguments (which must embody both principles(arché) and epistemé(knowledge-claims)).

In many of his arguments JP is insightful and he uses the Socratic method of elenchus to illustrate the power of argument over opinion, but what he does not realise is that argumentation is a philosophical tool that is itself in need of justification byreference to principles (rather than psychological explanation–even if the latter may be one component of the justification). He does, however, argue effectively using the method of comparison for very insightful positions such as arguing against the current extreme focus on climate change which in itself is being run by opinion(insofar as the proposed solutions are concerned–there is no doubt that the science of the matter is accurate). This position is perhaps not taking into account the magnitude of other problems we have such as indoor pollution and child starvation.

His remarks on Elon Musk and Twitter, use the strategy of “well things could be much worse and at least my account has been restored”, are confusing. He presents a puzzling position. In such a context his silence on the matter of the restoration of the account of the second most dangerous tyrant on this planet(Trump) is also truly remarkable. Below is a response to a question on Trump in another interview which would have left all of the Philosophers mentioned above aghast:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Jordan+peterson+on+Trump&oq=Jordan+peterson+on+Trump&aqs=chrome..69i57.8552j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:0351075f,vid:J_K_nWYpXTI

Many psychiatrists(on the grounds of academic psychology) have diagnosed Trump as narcissistic and extremely manipulative, and as suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. Some have gone further and classified his behaviour as Psychopathic. Such omissions and refusals on the part of JP to address what is so obvious to so many, speaks volumes and testifies to a blindness for tyranny which is alarming. This is an error of judgement which requires that we classify individual cases correctly insofar as classificatory categories are concerned.

Otherwise his position on feminism and the excesses of some of its more extreme forms would appear defendable, but perhaps not exactly on the grounds he would appeal to. His concern for the mental health of the young ought also to awaken us from our self satisfied acceptance of the status of chaos that currently characterises the condition of our civilisation. In this kind of concern JP resembles Diogenes more than Socrates. He is shining a lantern in our faces and asking if we are honest men and this is always controversial–and useful.

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The Delphic Podcasts by Michael R D James: Kissinger, the New World Order and Isolationism: Kant, the Old World Order and Globalization. Season 17 episode 6

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“By the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century. Wilsonianism seemed triumphant . The communist ideological and Soviet geopolitical challenges had been overcome simultaneously. The objective of moral opposition to communism had merged with the geopolitical task of resisting Soviet expansionism.”(Kissinger 1994)

“”The absence of both an overriding ideological or strategic threat frees nations to pursue policies based increasingly on their  national interest. In an international system characterized by perhaps 5 or 6 major powers and a multiplicity of smaller states order will have to emerge much as it did in past centuries from a reconciliation and balancing of competing national interests.” (Kissinger 1994)

“Both Bush and Clinton spoke of the new world order as if it were just around the corner. In fact it is still in a period of gestation and  its final form will not be visible until well into the next century- Part extension of the past, part unprecedented, the new world order like  those which it succeeds will emerge as an answer to three questions: “What are the basic units of the international order. What are their means of interacting? What are the goals on behalf of which they interact?”(Kissinger 1994)

I believe Kissinger’s book on Diplomacy to be one of the best works written on the subject because it implicitly acknowledges a political and ethical philosophy which is conspicuous by its absence in many other similar works. Kissinger is correct in his formulation of his three questions  but he pays scant attention to perhaps “the two political events of the twentieth century” which may answer his question concerning the basic unit of international order, namely the formation of the United Nations and the European Peace Project. He points out how the US  was a polyglot formation of many different European nationalities and that the Soviet Union was an empire containing many Eastern nationalities. He does not emphasise this point but these seem to the Kantian political philosopher to be precursors to both the United Nations and the European project in the sense of their  manifesting a disbelief in the unit of the nation state(See my earlier post on the Pathological nation state)

Kissinger goes on to point out that:

” No previous international order has contained major centres of power distributed around the entire globe. Nor had statesmen ever been obliged to conduct diplomacy  in an environment where events  can  be experienced instantaneously and simultaneously by leaders and their publics-“(Kissinger 1994)

Kissinger then asks the Aristotelian and Kantian question: “on what principle shall  the new world order be organised.” His answer is unfortunately narrow and suburban::

“..can Wilsonian concepts like “enlarging democracy” serve as the principle guides to American foreign policy and as replacement for the cold war strategy of containment? Clearly these concepts have been neither an unqualified success nor an unqualified failure. Some of the finest acts of  20th century diplomacy had their roots in the idealism of Woodrow Wilson: the Marshall plan, the brave commitment to containing communism,   defense of the freedom of Western Europe and even  the ill fated League of Nations and its latest incarnation, the United Nations”(Kissinger 1994)

It is clear from these quotes that Kissinger does not place any faith in any unit of international order which does not naturally grow out of the historical units of the nation state. He points to Americas victory in the cold war but simultaneously reflects on the fact that their power to influence has decreased and regretfully and nostalgically  reminisces on Wilson’s desire for universal collective security. Kant had pointed out at the end of the 18th century that this would not be possible without an organisation like the UN.

“In the absence of a potentially dominating power, the principal  nations  do not view threats to the peace in the same way: nor are they willing to run the same risks in overcoming those threats they do not recognise”(Kissinger 1994)

Clearly Kissinger sees the UN project to be flawed, partly perhaps because of its reluctance to  globally engage its military for its values in the way in which the US has. America will, Kissinger predicts. be the  greatest and most powerful nation well into the 21st century but it will be a nation with peers and become a nation like others but it is moving into uncharted waters and History cannot be its guidebook. Wilsonianism he is convinced  is no longer relevant.

“Curbing the power of the central government has been the central concern of Western political theorists, whereas in most other societies, political theory has sought to buttress the authority of the state. Nowhere else has there been an insistence  on expanding personal freedom…The society, and in a sense, the nation, preceded the state without having to be created by it. In such a setting political parties represents variants of an underlying consensus, today’-s minority is potentially tomorrows majority. In most other parts of the world the state has preceded the nation. It was and often remains the principal element in forming it. Political parties, where they exist, reflect fixed, usually communal identities: minorities and majorities tend to be permanent. In such societies the political process is about domination, not alternation in office, which takes place, if at all by coups rather than constitutional procedures.”(Kissinger 1994)

Kissinger goes on to say that our Western democracies presuppose a consensus on values. In America the single most important value is freedom to live as one wishes. This is not the European Kantian idea of freedom which recognises necessary limitations imposed by  the pluralistic life styles of modern communities and pursuing happiness collectively and ethically  rather than as a collection of psychologically motivated individuals. Kantian reflection on the universal values required for our collective projects arrived at a universal ethical theory which then gave rise to the conviction that human rights were universal. This way of thinking has always been ambiguously regarded in the US  especially in those historical instances where it is clear that  leaders have  very often  put American interests first and human rights second. It remains to be seen what will happen if Kissinger’s prediction  actualises itself : if, that is America finds itself in a world of equally powerful peers.

Russia’s domination has been limited by two factors: the anticommunism which is prevalent throughout Russia but also anti-imperialism which is present especially in  the new non Soviet republics. What is going on in this region of this world is very different to what is going on in the West. Russia never had an autonomous church, it missed the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Age of Discovery, and modern market economics. Experiments in the introduction of market economics has usually resulted in failure and a wish for the good old days of communism, allowing  the communist party on occasion to achieve 90 % of the vote(1995). The major problem for the new world post Wilsonian order, according to Kissinger, is the integration of Russia into the international community.. But he does not mention the difficulties that putting America first has caused in the world. He does not mention how this is related to the individual putting themselves  first. Or how this  compromises  the universal and collective project of  ethical values  which involves  so much more than the often materialistic concerns of the individual. Previously Wilsonianism, the bearer of  the Kantian humanistic world view that the ethics of the individual and the politics of the state were isomorphic, had sustained the hope of cosmopolitanism but subsequent isolationism brought with it a disbelief in universal ethical  aims

Kissinger notes the tendency for leaders of the US  to come from the South and the West, regions of America with the least emotional and personal  contact with Europe. President Trump is of course from New York  but he carries on the post modern attitude of political detachment from the concern of Europe for its security and development.  He carries on along the path of individualism and the individuals uncertain psychological relation to his community.

Peruse these words written in 1994:

“In the years ahead all the traditional Atlantic relationships will change. Europe will not feel the previous need for American protection  and will pursue its economic self interest much more aggressively: America will not be willing to sacrifice as much for European security and will be tempted by isolationism in various guises. In due course Germany will insist on the political influence to which its military and economic power entitle it and will not be so emotionally  dependent on American military and French political support.”(Kissinger 1994)

The future of the European Project, which incidentally Kissinger does not believe in, the United Nations, which he also believes to be flawed, and the deeper processes of Globalisation in accordance with Ethical universal values which lay masked behind Woodrow Wilson’s largely academic view of politics, is uncertain in the wake of the rising tide of isolationism and populism which appears to have the power once again to  submerge the accomplishments of the Enlightenment and Greek Political Philosophers.

But Kissinger believes that the 21st century will be marked by a seeming contradiction between fragmentation and Globalisation:

“On the level of the relations among states the new order will be more like the European system of the 18th and 19th centuries than the rigid patterns of the cold war. It will contain at least 6 major powers–the US, Europe, China, Japan, Russia and possibly India–as well as a multiplicity of medium sized and smaller countries. At the same time international relations have become truly global for the first time. Communications are instantaneous, the world economy operates on all  continents simultaneously. A whole set of issues has surfaced that can only be dealt with on a worldwide basis…”(Kissinger 1994)

Yet  nowhere can we read in his work about the possibility that the academic political vision of Wilson, imitating poorly the Enlightenment ethical and political messages of Kant, might contain the recipe for the success of either the UN or European peace projects.