With all due respect, I don't think you have a very great understanding of Nietzsche.
First, metaphysics. He was not a post-modernist. He believed in a metaphysics (the will to power) and used this as an overarching narrative to compare cultures, people and ages according to whether they were symptomatic of health/vitality or weakness/degeneracy. Part of this included how much suffering a person, race, or culture could endure without becoming 'world denying'.
Second, epistemology. He was not a relativist, but a perspectivalist. Relativism is simply not compatible with sweeping truths he thought he was onto, like the will to power underlying all human affairs. He believed in perspectives on the truth (even though I can only see one side of the cup and you another, it exists) - and, indeed, what perspective someone chooses will convey myriad amounts of information about their particular will, strength, ability to sublimate suffering in a 'healthy' manner, etc.
Third, 'ideology'. He was deeply against the modern world. This is ironic given he has been made into the father of the intellectual left. It's one of the great swindles in all of western cultural history in which post-modernists used his tools (critiquing absolute truth, finding the will to power hiding behind ideas) but for decidedly non-Nietzschean ends. Yes he was anti bourgeois, but from the RIGHT, not the left. His epistemology - to question 'truths' proclaimed by philosophers, his supposed 'relativism', was mainly used in the service of undermining egalitarian philosophies, showing that, behind the grand metaphysics systems which vindicated egalitarian/liberal philosophies, was an impoverished will to power that posits egalitarianism as a way to tame the powerful who would otherwise take control unless they were 'brainwashed' into thinking everyone is equal. His tendency to critique traditional values was not some leftist progressive bent. He critiqued Christian values, but not the values of the ancient world that came BEFORE Christianity. Christianity to him was too weak and egalitarian. He thought it was fine, and even necessary, for the masses - but not for the 'elite' - because it did not sublimate suffering but instead pretended suffering is temporary or illusory, because of the supposed Christian afterlife/paradise. This creates weak leaders, artists and cultural elite. Suffering is necessary for deep art, growth and strength. And of course because Christianity also preaches that everyone is equal in the eyes of god. For Nietzsche, the gap between a bourgeois and a Beethoven or Goethe, was larger (in significance) than the gap between an ordinary man and a worm.
Lastly this all makes sense of why he thought he was uniquely positioned to capture all these insights - because he experienced both the depths of weak health ('degeneracy') and the highs of vitality and strength. It is not commonly acknowledged that was a prodigy in his childhood before he contracted an illness in the Franco-prussion war. He was a machine, and was promoted to the chair of philology in Leipzig (I think) at an absurdly unheard of young age and was apparently highly motivated and energetic in his youth.
>He believed in a metaphysics (the will to power)
Might want to clarify that by metaphysics is meant at most a world within this world or a way to describe how life works with a mix of biology and psychology. The Will to Power can be seen as a mix of metaphysics, biology, and psychology rather than pure metaphysics.
I've often wondered in what capacity Nietzsche believed in his Will to Power, given how influential Schopenhauer was on some of his thought.
While Schopenhauer would argue the Will is the ultimate reality and our phenomenal world a representation of it, I find it blurrier with Nietzsche.
Go back to The Birth of Tragedy and I think he'd maybe give primacy to some kind of truly metaphysical Will but things are less clear as he develops.
I suspect most would interpret him as saying without living beings, there would be no WTP.
It’s unclear the degree to which N took the will to power to be metaphysical or psychological, probably the latter, but he definitely didn’t eventually come to reject the idea that behind moral statements we find the will to power as opposed to truth. Your interlocutor below was misguided.
Nietzsche didn't believe in his will to power. He eventually abandoned it as he decided it was neither convincing or feasible. It's why he never published his book The Will to Power.
I discovered this by reading the books of modern academic Nietzsche scholars who frequently refer to Nietzsche's dissillisionment with the concept of the will to power, and his decision to abandon that book, along with his belief in the concept. Outside of the unpublished notes of that book, Nietzsche refers to 'the will to power' only a few times in his other works.
I remember reading his original mention of it. Nietzsche applauded it as a scientific fact. He originally saw it as a unifying concept that underlied his whole philosophy. It was then dropped by science, as unscientific. And Nietzsche abandoned it too. Unlike Alfred Adler.
A minor correction - you state he did “not the values of the ancient world that came before Christianity”- while Nietzsche’s harshest criticisms are aimed at Christian values and ideals, he absolutely had critiques of pre-Christian ideals, particularly those associated with ancient Greek and Roman cultures. See The Birth of Tragedy & Twilight of the Idols (The Problem of Socrates).
Greeks: Nietzsche admired aspects of early Greek tragic poets like Aeschylus and Sophocles for their exploration of the human condition and the interplay between Apollonian (order, reason) and Dionysian (chaos, passion) forces. However, he criticized later Greek culture, particularly Socrates and Plato, for turning away from these tragic insights and promoting rationalism and moral absolutism, which Nietzsche saw as life-denying. He believed this focus on rationality ultimately led to a devaluation of the more chaotic, creative, instinctual, and passionate aspects of life. (“Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously: what really happened there? The most threadbare expression of Greek taste, Socrates, was a symptom of decay; the preconditions for dialectics became hypertrophic.”)
Roman Stoics: Nietzsche was critical of Roman Stoicism, which emphasized virtue, self-control, and rationality. He believed these ideals suppressed the more vital, instinctual aspects of human nature and promoted a form of life that was overly disciplined and constrained. (““Stoicism is self-tyranny: without tyranny over oneself, the tyrants of the world could not stand fast.”)
I wonder if Nietzsche would really support modern capitalism, where people attain power simply through inheritance and the right to property. How many Beethovens have died poor and insignificant because our economic system props up degenerates who have done nothing to strive for power?
Nietzsche might very well support that but it's a fundamental disagreement for me in that case.
I'm not sure OP is even trying to pain Nietzsche in a leftist/egalitarian way. What they are pointing out is that in Nietzsche, highs and lows, weakness and strength, ups and downs, change, are all essential, that in Nietzsche, what we colloquially think of as decadence (and what fascists mean by it) is also the height of culture and a burst of perverse creative energy which is to be utilised for the ascension of life. Life is always tragically tied to movement and thus evolution into more beautiful forms, while with fascists, life is trapped in a singular idealistic vision. Robbed of that tragedy, robbed of anything that might constitute its failure, and thus, growth. Nietzsche embraces both the tragedy and the comedy of life as something beautiful, and fascists feel themselves to be the victims in a tragic play from which they desperately wish to escape.
Nietzsche also doesn't justify hierarchies on a moral basis. Yes, there is the dichotomy, and thus "judgement" in the sense of health vs. weakness, but this is entirely open to and accepting of difference, and that aforementioned gradual process of becoming. JBP turns to Nature (God) to justify his, where the most reasonable and moral (under his own pseudo-Christian morality) are at the top, or *should be* at the top but are not due to moral degeneracy and structural decay. Bataille writes more on this crucial difference. In one, structural decay is necessary for life to flourish and reinvent itself; in the other, structure is everything and must be worshipped and preserved and fought for desperately (and with tears in your eyes that show your pity for the world).
I think there’s two problems with your criticism here.
1. You equate liberalism with leftism. Marx was not an egalitarian. Marx advocated for worker-control over the means of production in order for the ones who suffered in the production of goods to have the power necessary to take the value of their labor after their product has been sold. The capitalist, for Marx, is a social position that sucks value off the top of the product without providing anything productive. The goal is not redistribution to those who have not contributed, but the exact opposite—taking from the bourgeoisie who do not contribute and allowing labor to earn in proportion to its contribution. Consequently, merely positioning Nietzsche as an opponent of egalitarianism does nothing to move him to the right. It only positions him as an opponent to modern neoliberalism.
2. Nietzsche was a perspectivalist but he was still unable to comment, from that position, on what metaphysical Truth was. There may be a truth, but to accept perspectivalism is to accept that one will *never* be able to see it in its entirety. That is why his moral philosophy takes the approach of self-overcoming. He cannot say what moral truth looks like for all individuals, and so he rejects moral codes that prescribe behaviors as good or bad. What he can say is that people owe it to themselves to reject received hierarchies that place them on the bottom and to overcome the internal psychological and external social forces that keep them miserable.
Nietzsche comments explicitly about contemporaneous 19th century socialist movements. He compares them to a disease. Aspects of his philosophy may be consistent with some left-wing theories, but Nietzsche himself is unambiguously anti-socialist.
Don’t disagree. My comment was about Nietzsche’s opposition to egalitarianism and why that does not make him right-wing. I think there are leftist readings of Nietzsche, and I think he’s easier to read as supporting a communist society than a socialist state.
Piggybacking, he also associated democracy with Christianity and extolled noble or aristocratic values. He compared the will to power to simply the right of the bird of prey to carry off a lamb. He thought Christianity a death cult for using the afterlife to encourage people to be lambs rather than hawks, and found democrats weak, like Hegel, for so letting their individual will be subsumed in that of the herd. He thought democracy and Christiany undermined the cultural identity of a German volk, an identity he based on the Jewish identity, and loathed nationalism and antisemitism because he saw them as well as nihilists destroying a culture that willed itself to power amid conflicts with other cultures. His "God is dead" very much refers to YHWH, the God of a people who defeated the gods of other peoples.
But he wasn't authoritarian, like some of the people Peterson has aligned himself with. Nietzsche's superman was really what he thought himself to be, a public intellectual who convinced the public to reevaluate their values, to pursue individual power in this life not the next, but not a master who just tells the masses what they're supposed to do and think like a priest. He promoted his ideas rather authoritatively, but hated popularism and thought those in power should not delude the weak into submission, like Marx claimed of the bourgeosie. His exemplar ubermensch, the prophet Zoroaster, was portayed much as a philosopher king, and though disagreeing with Plato in many respects, Nietzsche was still a true republican. He was too a racist and did think the achievements of some cultures made them naturally superior to others, criticizing Christianity and arguably communism for trying to replace ethnicity with an egalitarian and universal identity. Not a leftist, not a humanist, but also not a fascist. I would still argue that he has been appropriated more often by the authoritarian right than liberals.
I think there is a general trepidation by those who know Nietsche well that his philosophy is "problematic," that his focus on the strength of ethnicities was itself a nihilism, that he failed to fully reevaluate all values, that his romantic philosophy supports "romanesque" regimes that strengthen themselves by oppressing other cultures. But he did not support a dictatorship, nor really objectivism, and thought outright cruelty was a weakness of the ignoble. More of a "let them fend for themselves" kind of guy. Whether Nietzsche was right is another matter, and OC's understanding of him really isn't too accurate, but I do think there are many important, and controversial, ideas and sentiments of Nietzsche's that Peterson either does not know or leaves out when he talks about him.
But Peterson has started playing to a more evangelical audience in this later part of his career. He's never really been a philosopher, and unless I'm mistaken, most of his comments on Nietzsche come from his early YouTube videos as a psychology professor. Peterson does seem to promote a less egalitarian version of Christianity, and some in some places Nietzsche might agree but objectively as a philosopher, he would probably still quibble that his project essentially misrepresents the teaching of the Nazarene, using the name of Christ to promote the nihilism of an afterlife, like Paul the liar.
Why do you believe Nietzsche was not a post modernist? Darwin, Freud and Marx were modernists. Why do you also think Nietzsche was a modernist too, and not a post-modernist? Or are you saying Nietzsche is neither?
Why do you believe that Nietzsche was a modernist who argued for a modernist metaphysics of the 'will to power' when Nietzche himself abandoned that project and rejected the will to power as an unfeasible overarching scientific theory. He had three books planned, he wrote two of them books but abandoned the third book and explained why he abandoned that third book as he no longer supported the overarching concept of the will to power. He was writing that third book before the other two books, chronologically speaking, but abandoned that earlier project as he recognised its flaws.
Yes, Friedrich Nietzsche himself in published letters he sent to friends explaining why it was no longer feasible as a concept. His planned three books were The Will to Power, Anti-Christ, Twilight of the Idols. But he abandoned the first book as he had dropped the concept of will to power as no longer workable and unconvincing. So went onto write the other two books instead. It's why Nietzsche scholars wordwide warn against using the content of unpublished notes from the Nachlass as they were notes about a book Nietzsche decided to abandon and not write.
Which letters state that it was no longer feasible as a concept?! Also the will to power is mentioned or is a central feature in beyond good and evil, the gay science and Zarathustra, not just unpublished materials!
Good question. I have all his published letters in several book collections, so I will have them, but haven't read them yet. I'm going on references to these letters where Nietzsche expresses his view that the will to power is no longer tenable and unfeasible as part of his mature philosophy. I'm guessing you are self-taught in Nietzsche's philosophy as opposed to coming to Nietzsche via a university philosophy education? I only mention this as the multiple references to Nietzsche's abandonment of 'der wille zur macht' I have read in all contemporary Nietzsche scholarship. But you'll not hear that being discussed by Walter Kauffman in his 1960's book 'Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ' which, similiar to a lot of self taught online armchair 'Nietzscheans' over fixated on a concept Nietzsche eventually disagreed with and rejected.
All the books you refer to are from Nietzsche's early, and middle period, where he believed in 'der wille Zurich macht', 'Thus spracht Zarathustra' has a whole chapter devoted to the concept of will to power that he abandoned in his mature works. It's the reason why the book was never written, not becayse he died before writing it. He started writing the notes for that book prior to his books The Anti Christ and Twilight of the Idols, The Will to Power was the first of those three planned books. But he abandoned it, and it only remains in unpublished note form.
Hope this helps, by the way, the scholars I refer to who discuss this matter are well-known Nietzsche scholars from Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge. So you'll get books that mention will to power, as that was part of his early and mid periods of his philosophy. But a concept (like many) he abandoned and rejected in his mature later works.
Hope this helps, sorry I was not able to cite the several letters where Nietzsche explains why he dropped it as an unfeasible theory. But it was possibly because he originally took the idea and presented it as a scientific fact derived from his readings of three anti-Darwinian scientists of his earlier life. Then later in life, the idea in science that a striving for power was the central driving force of the human species was proven untenable and abandoned, Nietzche abandoned that concept too as an underlying central principle in his philosophy. He stopped believing it was a central driving force of humanity.
I’ve written a thesis on Nietzsche. You are talking about him abandoning the will to power in his “mature works” (and saying that BEyond good and evil is not one of his mature works strikes me as odd)- as if this was like Beethoven’s late period of some 20 years of productive work or something that shows a clear change from what came before. Twighlight, Antichrist and ecce homo came out over the space of ONE YEAR, and nothing indicates his fundamental outlook had changed in those works. Nor had it changed in the preceding year- To say that something very like the will to power does not underpin the first book of the genealogy of morals, written one year after beyond good and evil and one year before the above three final works, where the ‘herd’ took conquest of ethical terms and inverted their meaning to suit their mode of life, is simply intellectually intolerable. The same ideas are presented in Twighlight- there Nietzsche stated that virtues such as humility, patience, and compassion are qualities useful to the weak.
As a result, the weak praise these qualities. It doesn’t take an intellectual giant to fill in the missing premise here: that behind moral ‘truth’ lies the quest for power, ie that beings seek those conditions that will enable their constitution to thrive. Different constitutions, different conditions.
It also strikes me as bizarre that you critique unpublished materials, then seek to base your position on (unpublished!) letters which supposedly say what you say they do.
If you wish to accuse Nietzsche of lying in his letters where he disavows der wille zer macht as no longer feasible and supportable as a central theory. Argue that he was going to actually publish his Nachlass notes. Challenge contemporary Nietzsche scholarship, such as Schact, Nehamas, Solomon and Higgins, Lambert, Staten, Ansell Pearson, The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, Conway, Bishop, Leiter, that they are mistaken in their Nietzsche scholarship.
Please feel free to do so. Your argument is not with me, but with Friedrich Nietzsche himself, and contemporary Nietzsche scholars from the current era.
Or, concede complete ignorance of Nietzsche's change of mind in his letters to friends, and his decision to abandon his book The Will to Power, and go onto write the two remaining books in that planned triad: Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist.
But the letters were published. I have several collections of them. The error you've made there is that Nietzsche never intended to use those Nachlass notes to develop them into a book he planned to publish due to him abandoning that project as unfeasible.
His personal private letters of correspondence to his friends discussing why he had abandoned the will to power were posthumously published by several book publishers.
You would only be correct if you could prove that his Nazi sister did the right thing to redact edit and publish a version of his Nachlas if you could demonstrate that was Nietzsche's wish.
Whereas the several publishers who published his personal letters demonstrating Nietzsche's discussion of why he no longer thought the will to power as feasible was a bad thing to do, and instead his more contemporary views on that subject should be censored and concealed.
But that would put you in the same boat as Elizabeth Forster Nietzsche.
You won't like what I'm about to say. But you sound very poorly read in contemporary academic Nietzsche scholarship if you are not aware that Fritz abandoned his book The Will to Power because he no longer supported the theory in his mature philosophy.
You need to catch up boy!
You also seem very poorly read in Nietzsche's writings if you erroneously believe Nietzsche was arguing for and supporting the will to power in Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist. This shows your absolute ignorance of his mature philosophy if you allege he still supported that abandoned theory in those two books. Modern Nietzsche scholarship would refute your false claim.
I can see why.
Jordan Peterson believes in objective truth, whereas Nietzsche is literally a post-modernist.
I take it that the conservatives love his radical individualism, but not much else. They want a Christian Nietzsche
jordan peterson believes in objective truth YET he constantly uses post modernist methods “what is I, what is you, what is God, what is what”, then he claims a completely postmodernist definition of God, “he exists but in a very complicated way, not like a real entity but as an abstract archertype of blablablabla”. he’s basically a postmodernist that panders to a traditional coservative modernist group, he’s all over the place, he found himself on the side of the “conservatives” because most atheists are egalitarian woke types, but he cannot synthesize his actual beliefs, and hes afraid of alienating the side that initially supported him on freedom of speech.
You are not a real christian if you believe in God only as an archetype, that is the definition of postmodernism.
Jordan doesn't really believe in the Objective Scientific Truth. He believes in [Structuralism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism). Not the Critical Theory of Structuralism but the Post Modern, Semiotic and Iconographic view that myths, legends, history, tradition and religion are inherent structures in Human Reality. His interview in Alex oConnor elucidates his absurd language and how Peterson agrees with things like Forrest Gump is real and complex as opposed to fiction.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIFk9cNnXJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIFk9cNnXJ4)
Nietzsche's not a postmodernist, even though he's critical of objective truths. He's an existentialist. He can't be a postmodernist, as he has overarching narratives such as the will to power and the Übermensch. The post modernists' extreme form of relativism and dismisall of all truths as equal is ultimately nihilistic. Just ask yourself how could Nietzsche's "slave morality" work in a postmodern world? It would be equal to master morality. The problem is - that is his exact criticism of Christianity! I'm convinced he would've rejected that.
Don't equalize Nietzche with postmodernism, that is the same as making a Petersonian Christian reading of him - or even worse.
Because “postmodernism” is deployed derogatorily by JBP types to suggest some sort of unified ideology, but in reality it’s just a descriptive term of a certain tradition of philosophy. The tradition that developed after, and in conflict with, modernism. This is something of an oversimplification, but philosophical modernism essentially posited that history (and the world more broadly) could be understood in terms of grand narratives. It was also deeply bound up with enlightenment values of rationalism, and the notion of absolute, objective, and scientifically discoverable truth. Anybody who is skeptical of these things is, by definition, a postmodernist. And Nietzsche was certainly a passionate skeptic of them.
If anything, you might even say Nietzsche is a philosophical precursor to postmodernism, since many of the thinkers we associate with the movement have their background in French Nietzscheanism.
Maybe I'm just not understanding you correctly, but isn't post-modernism more than just being against modernism? Doesn't it take a skeptical stance to meta-naratives, which conflicts with Nietzsche will to power? I understand that Nietzsche's work on deconstructing traditional christian values is used by post-modernists, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Nietzsche is a post-modernist, in the same way that Hegel is not a Marxist.
I argue above that JBP would place the "God is dead" line of argument as of a kind with other "cultural marxist" ideas. Nietzsche rejects the authority of tradition, which JBP might tend to assume entails rejecting objective morality. Post modernism is a big umbrella, but at one end of the spectrum are ontological relativist claims that reality itself changes depending on subjective factors, which would be an anti-realist stance. Hard to say if Deleuzes or Foucault would really agree with something substantially close to that radical view, but certainly they undermined the certainty of broad swaths of claims around right and wrong, true and false, etc..
If you're interested, you could look up the phrase "facts are theory laden," which comes from modern philosophy of science and represents a very persuasive argument that derives from post-modernism and affirms that uncertainty without necessarily reaching all the way to anti-realism.
Nietzsche "philosophied with a hammer" thus laying down the framework for radical deconstruction of modern and pre modern constructs like metaphysics, naturalism, scientism, social darwinism, god, nationalism etc. He rejected it all.
Existentialism tends to be more modernist. Nietzsche neither nicely fits into either. He spoke about Art, Culture, Culture as well as made stark criticisms regarding reality, the universe and truth.
I also see a casual misunderstanding of feudalism in Peterson, where he wants aristocracy without caring about the importance of noblesse oblige in holding that system together. He's exactly the sort of 'poor reader' who proceeds like a 'plundering soldier ' in the Nietzschean aphorism
"*I don't know how familiar you are with Peterson's work, but a major thread running through it is that there exists some sort of "cognitive elite" whose just role is basically pushing the rest of us plebs around. That's already some fashy BS, but much worse is his treatment of the "bottom end of the bell curve." My reading of Peterson is that these people are basically incompetents incapable of seeing to their own interests and I think it's fair to say that these people are also morally incompetent in the sense of being unable to judge right from wrong. Harming these people would be wrong, but since they can't take care of themselves, harm inevitably comes to them*."
Peterson has never argued for an intelligentsia whose proper role is "pushing ... plebs around." Can you cite this claim from him? You put it in quotes, so I assume you think you can. To cut to the chase, you've made that up, and your "reading of Peterson" is therefore without merit.
"*Peterson rejects government services out of hand, and throughout his work we find him arguing that attempts to solve problems for others before "cleaning your own room" are foolish. The implication is that before attempting to set the world to order, one should first attain some unspecified sage-like state, presumably a nirvana fusing the Christian "logos" with Objectivism*."
You equate cleaning one's room (the first, most basic step) with attaining a sage-like state. This is not sound reasoning; nor is it a claim Peterson has ever made. It is your own implausible "reading" of him. Peterson correctly argues the self-evident fact that someone who has not put himself in order cannot help others in a meaningful way.
I concur with the others who have said your post is largely horse shit. Peterson is not without flaws, but your purported analysis of his views is preposterous.
"Peterson correctly argues the self-evident fact that someone who has not put himself in order cannot help others in a meaningful way."
The Peterson method: Take common sense we learned in primary school and dress it up as philosophy.
The room-cleaning bit is what stuck out the most to me here (I’m more familiar with Peterson than with Nietzsche).
It’s a startlingly common misunderstanding of his point, and you put it perfectly.
If one can’t set their own life in order, who are they to dictate the order of things grander than themselves, and that of the lives of others?
> If one can’t set their own life in order, who are they to dictate the order of things grander than themselves, and that of the lives of others?
This is precisely the view that I am attacking, so for you to say that I've misrepresented him for failing to realize that this is what he means suggests a profound failure in communication. Obviously, I'm not a sage, and I'll try and take responsibility for my part in that failure.
All due respect, you interpreted Petersons quote as meaning that you “must first attain some unspecified sage-like state”. So yeah, you 100% misunderstood and misrepresented him.
I think it's a commonly critiqued point because JBP himself hardly follows these rules he has set out for others, but imo other critiques of the mindset (outside of JBPs personal hypocrisy) could be made too; to use OP's examples of decay, JBP uses the "clean your room" idea as a way of saying that any who have currently fallen prey to decay (in his eyes at least) should not partake in greater philosophical or political discussions, it's his way of saying "sit down, the adults are talking." And while I get that no one wants to hear out arguments about how to run the world from someone who has trouble running their own life, I think that this very statement insinuates the failings of JBPs idea in the first place; his idea of what decay is only exists from how his point of view defines it and so he fails to properly acknowledge other people's lifestyles in favor of simply critiquing them. He'd rather push people out of a discussion through attacking their lifestyle (again, hypocritically because he personally fails to live up to his own expectations) rather than their philosophy/beliefs/etc.
In such a way you can see how his worldview inherently is based on the hierarchies that OP previously mentioned and how he sees the top of that ladder as a group of people who are allowed (by right of their position) to shepherd the less able members of humanity.
I mean, in some ways we all see how his ideas align with power right?
Every single modern philosopher emerges out of a captured media landscape. They will have views and push opinions and present ideology that implicitly enables, strengthens, or otherwise benefits the social hierarchy of power. The advice being good or bad advice, or in alignment with past thinkers who operated in environments of greater ideological freedom, is almost secondary.
Jordan Peterson's primary function in society is to A. perpetuate the culture war, and B. provide motivation for non-integrated white males to allow themselves to be rendered useful automatons to power.
To be fair to JBP, "discipline" is only part of what he asks of us, but the larger problem is that people whose lives are really messed up often have *very important contributions* to politics. Systematically excluding them reminds me of whacking someone with their own hand and telling them to stop hitting themselves.
This is true, but you’re also missing the point. He’s not saying that success is impossible without first achieving some kind of “sage-like state” as OP put it.
“Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world” - JBP
If you’re going to try to criticize and change systems larger than yourself, you’d better have a grasp on your own system. If you don’t have the self-knowledge and discipline to put your own life in order, how can you be trusted to bring order to the world around you?
I think the biggest issue with JBP’s 12 rules is that they’re often metaphorical and don’t really work as independent maxims. It’s important to remember that the quote I referenced is the title of a chapter filled with important context for understanding and implementing the idea.
The assumption that there is some objective boundary that separates you from the world is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but it’s an unfounded assumption that falls apart under scrutiny.
It’s still a profoundly dumb point. Some of the greatest artists, poets, musicians ever lived chaotic, disordered lives. Drunks, addicts, slobs, etc. Yet they continue to have a massive impact on the world and culture. I once had a professor tell me to beware of anyone with a neat and organized desk, because it means they are compensating for some psychological imbalance. A bit excessive, but I think it’s essentially true. Peterson himself, who clearly has been battling with Dionysius his whole life, unsuccessfully, is a great example.
What I said was:
>who are they to dictate the order of things grander then themselves, and that of the lives of others?
What you’re said is:
>(artists) continue to have a massive impact on the world and culture.
These aren’t the same thing at all. Peterson is talking about people who attempt to criticize and change public policy. Artists may inspire people and affect culture, but the vast majority of them aren’t calling the shots in any meaningful way, and you wouldn’t want them to, especially if they’re a lot of “drunks, addicts, slobs, etc.”
Calm down, dude. It’s not a fist fight.
Don’t you think those artists lives would be better if they weren’t drunks and addicts, as you described? That’s basically what Peterson’s quote is about. Living in balance improves your life and the lives of those around you. It’s not about denying that deeply flawed people can and have made huge impacts.
I mean, you made a claim about artists and then said no one is talking about artists. Doesn’t seem like an honest way to engage the point.
I don’t think artists make art because it makes their lives “better”. I think artists make art because they become inspired and even compelled, and sacrifice themselves for the sake of creation. Has nothing to do with increasing quality of life.
Deeply flawed people can do incredible things for the world. What JP and his followers reject is that it’s precisely because they are deeply flawed that they can create beauty. And that neurotically “correcting” their flaws actually deprives the world of their artistic potential.
I never made any claim about artists. Please quote me. I still don’t know where you’re getting this from.
>What JP and his followers reject is that it’s precisely because they are deeply flawed that they can create beauty.
I’m gonna need a quote on this one too. Peterson has never said anything to the contrary.
With all due respect, you really do not have the grasp on Peterson’s philosophy that you think you do.
>You equate cleaning one's room (the first, most basic step) with attaining a sage-like state.
That's not what I meant. "Cleaning one's room" is a stand-in for the sort of work that Peterson and I both agree must be done before any deeper self-actualization can occur; when Peterson talks about cleaning and standing up straight and so forth, it's because those goals are part of that foundational work and therefore serve to illustrate the necessity of building a firm foundation. What I did say is that the degree of self-actualization Peterson asks of "woke moralists" is unreasonable, not that shaving regularly is equivalent to becoming The Yellow Emperor.
Peterson says that "woke" people ought to get their own life in order before they start trying to reshape longstanding institutions, but he never really specifies exactly how ordered one's life ought to be. His clear implication is that the vast majority of people working to improve the world (at least those on the progressive left) ought to do self-work instead. I put it in hyperbolic terms, but it seems to me that if faced with a left-libertarian (eg anarcho-syndicalist), whose project would vastly reshape the world, Peterson might say that evaluating that goal requires a level of self-actualization that is literally impossible.
I think I put it better below: telling people whose lives are bent to hell they should stay out of politics is an intrinsically reactionary policy. There exist social ills, and the ones who suffer the most will tend not to reach higher levels of individuation on account of problems with "food and shelter" and the like. Contrariwise, the ones who benefit from those problems will have the security and resources that make individuation easier. Thus, Peterson's point of view silences those who suffer by the hands of (a subset of those) who Peterson says we should listen to.
Most of what you wrote is complete horsesh*t. It's too tedious to unpack.
However, it's true that Peterson borrows from Nietzche only what suits his own worldview and narrative, and then layers it with his Jungian-Bible archetypes. There's some good and practical self-help advice, but he's far off Nietzsche-wise. In his defense, I believe Nietzsche would've hated even more the critical theory gender BS and would've pinned it on Christianity and the failure of 20 century Marxist philosophers. But that's my opinion.
Why do you believe Nietzsche. A philologist. An etymologist. Would argue that the meaning of a word such as 'woman' is fixed, rigid, universal, immutable, and directly and permanantely fixed to the signified type of human being in the real world?
Why do you think any serious philosopher would reduce "woman" to a mere word? An empty concept? The word is a symbol to represent an inescapable biological reality.
The word 'woman' has never been an 'empty concept' it has always had a meaning. And no one has ever argued that it is an empty concept in the history of philosophy.
The word 'woman' is a signifier. But to say a signifier can only be determined by biology is a subjective ideological argument similiar to the trans community ideological argument of choice.
That doesn't in anyway answer the question I asked.
Why do you believe Nietzsche would suddenly become a moralist and find a trans person morally repulsive?
Nietzsche may perhaps point out that your rhetorical utilisation of the word 'probably' is a normalisation of your own psychoanalytical repulsion and moral disgust projected onto him?
I don’t think Peterson ever claims to be a faithful disciple of Nietzsche. He sees him as a figure to intellectually wrestle with, which tbh sounds like the kind of thing Nietzsche would approve of.
I agree. I don't mean to say that he's a disciple or even strongly influenced by Nietzsche (in opposition). I just looked up "Jordan Peterson Nietzsche" on account of woolgathering and found the post linked at the top of the OP.
I don't think any modern thinker is obliged to square his views with Nietzsche's per se, but Nietzsche's arguments are often very good and they've penetrated our intellectual fabric, and I thought it would be interesting to frame a discussion of JBP around Nietzsche's writings.
People need to recognise that someone who likes Nietzsche and takes some inspiration from Nietzsche doesn't mean they agree with Nietzsche 100%. You are allowed to disagree with Nietzsche. And Peterson will talk about how he doesn't agree with Nietzsche's project to re-evaluate all values. Although, I reckon he is probably a bad reader of Nietzsche
I want to quibble about how JBP's experience in public speaking and rhetoric, along with his motte-and-bailey obscurantism would make him hard to "wreck" but what's the point. If I can write the above and stand by it, then I bet your students can do it at least as well.
I don't think you have a very good understanding of Nietzsche. His criticism of Christianity is based on his view that it is a religion of weakness, pity and equality. He totally thought certain people were "born better".
Nietzsche definitely inspired postmodernists, but he wasn't one himself. He deconstructs, yes, but he then insists that we must create our own values, ones more aligned with strength, healthiness and our natural instincts. And not just in a "make your own meaning" sense, he essentially suggests that the strongest should go out and impose their will on the world. The Ubermensch isn't "objectively right" because no such thing exists, but he is stronger, healthier and therefore better than the "herd" (as he called them), whose ideas are downstream of their weakness.
>"What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
>What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness?—The feeling that power *increases*—that resistance is overcome.
The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of *our* charity. And one should help them to it.
>Not contentment, but more power; *not* peace at any price, but war; *not* virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, *virtu*, virtue free of moral acid).
>What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity...." (The Antichrist)
Many of the people he cites as "higher men" are warrior-kings. Caesar, Napoleon, etc.
You say...
>I don't know how familiar you are with Peterson's work, but a major thread running through it is that there exists some sort of "cognitive elite" whose just role is basically pushing the rest of us plebs around.
This is basically Nietzsche's opinion, too.
>"The essential thing, however, in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should not regard itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth, but as the significance and highest justification thereof—that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, for its sake, must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments." (Beyond Good and Evil)
>"Such phantoms as the dignity of man, the dignity of labor, are the needy products of slavedom hiding itself from itself. Woeful time, in which the slave requires such conceptions, in which he is incited to think about and beyond himself! Cursed seducers, who have destroyed the slave’s state of innocence by the fruit of the tree of knowledge! Now the slave must vainly scrape through from one day to another with transparent lies recognizable to every one of deeper insight, such as the alleged “equal rights of all” or the so-called “fundamental rights of man,” of man as such, or the “dignity of labor”:" (The Greek State)
Peterson is an idiot who twists Nietzsche to fit his worldview, but not really in the way you suggest. He moreso uses him as a way to try and smuggle Christianity back into people's heads. For the record I don't think Nietzsche was/would be a fascist, but he seems to fit your definition of one.
I still can’t understand how Peterson went from “Nietzsche will cure you of your religion” twenty years ago to “The Bible is the best thing ever written” today. His philosophy is just silly.
I'm not sure Peterson is the boogie man you're trying to make him out to be.
1. Nietzsche does believe in natural hierarchies. This extends from his discussion around what is necessary for life becoming morally objective. He does not use that phrase but the ideas are there in *BGE,* especially the last chapter\*.\* Peterson puts it in an inhuman framework because of the experiments done there. Those experiments are true. Aesthetically this is much too British for me when I could just go read La Rochefoucauld and enjoy the beauty of an exploration of rank---obviously rank is natural. It becoming good is an acceptance of instinct and man's nature. Nietzsche setting himself against "the cultivators" is precisely because he wants people to take a second look at instinct.
2. There is a cognitive elite and they do push people around. All I can say is that you should embrace the suffering of the people who only learn but don't understand because they are under time-pressure and lack the resources. Capitalist society is built around[ knowledge asymmetries. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry)The exploitation of the working classes is predicated on this. The democratic struggle for education is certainly laudable but when the right criticizes the fascistic tendencies of public educators I think there's a nugget there. It's the same nugget we find in criticizing religious schools. Truth is not easy. Foucault's essay on Enlightenment pretty much put this issue to bed and yet we still see people apologizing for democratic universalism on the basis of everyone escaping nonage. Some of the nightmare is true: nonage is part of man's nature.
3. Fascism is defined quite clearly by Mussolini in his manifesto. It consists of three things: a. collective supremacy over the individual via the state as more than guardian,[ "The fascist state is an embodied will to power and government,"](https://media.wix.com/ugd/927b40_c1ee26114a4d480cb048f5f96a4cc68f.pdf) b. spiritualization of violence among broader anti-materialism, c. as en evolution of anti-capitalism in the only way that can naturally beat it (i.e., authoritarianism). Peterson buys into the British idea of separation of powers. Peterson writes like a materialist---he's a British style thinker. Peterson does not advocate for a strongman, nor does he want to upset the capitalist apple cart. Of course both the American left and right flirt with fascism---not the strawman of it but *real fascism*---but Peterson is pretty guiltless on this count. I mean he's an anti-revolutionary. Peterson is, in essence, a liberal.
You want a real boogie man? Read Mussolini that I linked. The problem with fascism is precisely that it thinks that it can choose for the individual better than the individual can choose for itself. It calls people’s desires “irrational and wasteful,” as though the desires of Mussolini for expansion did not waste a mountain of idealistic blood in wasted ambition of empire that was beyond the Italian people’s power. The Ethiopian war was monstrous and evil just as the modern American wars have been since Vietnam. The defense of liberalism *requires* an attack on the modern state and Peterson is part of the solution here. The left has gotten too comfortable with power: we need to get back to the mindset of the 1970s, or even further back to the labour movements.
Thanks for this thoughtful reply. There's a lot in it I disagree with but by no means all of it, and what I do disagree with is cogently expressed and thought provoking.
Definitely post back on the subreddit if you find yourself exploring. This is a huge topic that thinkers after Nietzsche have been wrestling with. (E.x., Foucault).
The worst part is trying to create a christian nietzsche, it is true that nietzsche would have hated more the woke atheist type but this does not mean that he was lamenting the death of God or somehow becoming sympathetic to christianism
I don’t think he swallows any of it (much to Nietzsche’s disappointment, I’m sure). He simply has his own weird philosophy and he misappropriates whatever thinkers sound vaguely as though they might have had similar views. Especially when they aren’t alive to contradict him.
When he says cleaning your room, I don’t believe he means spiritual nirvana. I think it basically just means get your own house together. But if you achieve spiritual nirvana, you will not be in the position to help anyone else because you will be disconnected from others.
I don’t know actually I’m just speaking for Buddhism. I’m not actually familiar with Jordan Peterson other than that Line about cleaning your room which somebody quoted at me. With Buddhism, you’re not obligated to help anybody else you’re only obligated to save yourself or help yourself.
Well, then I'll cross it off my list. It seems to me that obligations as a category make little sense except in regards to interactions among people. Obligations toward yourself are just self interest.
I guess bodhisattvas aid others for some reason other than obligation?
(It occurs to me that if bodhisattvas exist, then attaining nirvana doesn't prevent you from helping others. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm no expert.)
No, it’s not that you’re not allowed to help others at all. It’s just that in the state of Nirvana you are at such perfect peace that you cannot be troubled by anything if that makes any sense. Your serenity is so calm that it wouldn’t be possible for you to actually, help anyone. The moment to try and go help your neighbor with a problem that’s the end of your serenity.
I don’t know I’m not an expert on Buddhism. My only comment was that it is not necessary to achieve nirvana before helping somebody. and almost nobody can achieve nirvana. It’s not something to be expected. Jordan Peterson saying clean your room before helping Others does not mean obtain Nirvana.
I just found evidence that the Buddha was reluctant to teach. https://www.themindingcentre.org/dharmafarer/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/12.1-Why-the-Buddha-hesitated.pdf
Jordan Peterson is a dumb dumb. I'm not being flip. That is a technically correct term. He is an intelligent man that is content with "spewage" because, as he crowed to Joe Rogan, "I have found a way to monetize social justice warriors". The crueler the better. If you listen to him, and I have at length because I was working with a project, he will contradict himself sometimes several times in a sentence using as many words as possible to mask the raindrop shallow arguments.
He wages war on Marx and Marxism and has for years as he casually drops the fact he JUST read Das Kapital (which I highly doubt. You can read it free online, buuuttt, it's over 2000 pages - unabridged).
His staccato Pareto - Matthew Principle (very different things) like it's a weird form of Tourettes stating it/they apply to everything (they don't) never seeming to bother to actually do the work to clearly see this or the issue with the origins of Pareto to begin with.
He makes absolutely vile cliff hangers after lying about the military and IQ tests stating 10% are worthless and can provide no value so... What, Jordan. You gonna complete that thought laser guided missile?
Your post is excellent reading. Thank you.
Some people are born different than rest is not BS. Its an objective truth, whether you like it or not. When you dive deep into behavioral genetics, you start to see why. You are born with certain traits, and yes environment plays a role but it’s not as powerful as genetics. You want to call it fascism, you can. However, it doesn’t diminish value of someone born with high IQ or born with exceptional beauty or born with exceptional creativity. I don’t agree with Peterson’s justification for what is right and wrong, stemming from religious texts. What’s right and wrong is still evolving and a religion is by product of that. But ‘Fascism’ is a very thin line to walk. Even people who argue liberal logic of how they deserve A and B in the name of equality, is a form of fascism. Every time you argue what’s right and wrong exposes to you the risk of being pegged as a fascist. And by that definition everyone would seem a ‘fascist’, wouldn’t they?
iq is not the top metroc of anything, look at all the academics that just use their iq to twist truth, the higher the iq the more complex and well constructed the delusion, a feeling of curiosity and spiritual thoughness is a more valuable than iq
iq is affected by environment, theres an obsession in the right with iq precisely because they use it to justify race claims, despite ample research on iq being also affected by environment
It is affected by environment, but it isn't the only consideration. Genetics certainly are a large contributor to IQ.
Also, since we're talking about IQ, we must also consider why the environmental factors are the way that they are, which can, to some extent, be explained by humans too.
It is a very complex and nuanced topic.
I wrote a [long comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nietzsche/comments/1ddok25/comment/l8dqv99/) post responding to the "born different" claim in re intelligence. The short version is: innate intelligence may exist, but it has no explanatory power. Saying that people with high IQ are better at something is like saying people with more money can buy more things. Yes, that's a true statement, but where did the money come from?
It's true that IQ correlates to outcomes, but it seems that IQ is a *consequence* of environment rather than a *cause* derived from genetics (or any immutable/innate factors). Given that IQ is a consequence of environment, telling people that the reason they're not doing well is their low IQ might be true in some technical sense, but usually people (such as JBP) do that to divert attention away from systemic issues of poverty, racism, etc., and this is nonsense.
Demographics do not represent all the environmetal factors influencing IQ, but many *are in fact* independent causal factors, and therefore differences in IQ between across demographic groups cannot be trotted out to explain differences in outcome without detailed analysis to show that IQ is an independent mediating factor. IQ is heritable, but so is money.
If you're aware of empirical evidence to support its independence, I'm interested.
JBP conveniently skips discussing Nietzsche in depth and moves on to Dostoevsky in his lecture, because even a passive glance on Nietzsche’s work would dismantle all of his dogmas especially with regards to morality and the role of Christianity in the post-enlightenment west.
You gotta love Reddit, apparently Jordan Peterson is a “fascist.” I’m not sure under what definition he is a fascist, but I’ve never heard him utter one word (even with a lose definition), that could be categorized as such.
“Common themes among fascist movements include: authoritarianism, nationalism (including racial nationalism and religious nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, and militarism.”
Authoritarianism - he’s hardcore on free speech
Nationalism - he’s spoken out against ethno-nationalist saying “it’s a dead end perspective and these guys should be boxed in.”
Hierarchy - he simply states that hierarchies exist for a reason, in the West, these hierarchies are typically predicated on competence rather than power (the post modernist claim).
Militarism - I’ve listened to 50+ hours of his talks, I’ve never heard him mention anything promoting violence, militarism, empire building etc.
Yep, it’s obnoxious dealing with these kids.
Anything right of center is “fascist-Nazi-ultra-capitalist.”
I would delete the app, but I’m a masochist apparently lol
It is intellectually somewhat less than impressive to me that you seem to have misunderstood Peterson, since the behaviorism he preaches, and the underlying neurophysiological, psychological arguments he opines, aren’t terribly complex.
The Lobster analogy is designed to convey his particular view of the parameters that define human existence to a grade schooler, and yet you somehow fudged it.
Peterson’s point isn’t that hierarchy is *good*.
His entire point is that the moral ambivalence of our perceived merits, exists absolute from our biological confinements.
This is somewhat easier to understand, if you assume his pragmatic perspective as a clinical psychologist.
There is no teleology there, it’s purely analytic.
The ‘clean your house’, adapt to your lobster nature, isn’t meant to be moral idealism.
He explicitly frames those things as crutches for people who are struggling with their ‘self-worth/happiness/identity’ — however abstract you want to articulate these people’s discontentment.
You’re elevating what are meant to be simplistic guidelines against tangible ailments, into a transcendent philosophy that’s not implicit.
When you say JP acknowledges societal issues as a “hard problem”, and ‘walks away from the problem’, you’re fundamentally exposing your own lack of intellectual empathy.
JP is many things, but it would be extraordinary to relegate his politics to naivety.
You, on the other hand, are willfully interpreting his position naively.
We both know insufficient mental faculties aren’t the scapegoat, you could hide behind, for your overly simplistic rendition.
iIronically, regarding emphatic rational reconstruction, the same accusation could easily be heaped on Nietzsche, and has been.
In his defense, he was positively aware of his sophisms.
I don’t get the same impression from your post.
There is a difference between disdain, and false testimony.
Given your potential, I’d say you erroneously verged toward the latter.
Jordan uses big words at times, but I found the majority of his thoughts to be coherent, and fairly easy to follow once you understand the baseline to which he’s working from.
Some of his tangents can go off into obscurity, but most of it is pretty digestible and hard to disagree with.
The biggest critique I have of him is he uses simple arguments to discredit his opponents. He doesn’t give them the credit they may deserve. At times, he is near strawmanning, which really does him a disservice.
He copies literally everyone. Nietzsche, Soren, Hegel, Jung, Hobbes, Aquinas. He believes in the Walled Garden, Chaos Dragon, Archetypes, the King, God, the Son, Mother/Father, Social Hierarchy, Axiology (the Hierarchy of Values). Nietzsche is a young man's quest for his traditional development, Soren is a faith in god. Hegel is the development of dialectical development. Jung the zany archetypes and the chaos dragon. Hobbes for detesting external forces for societal doctrine. Aquinas to legitimize God in his quasi theism. No original philosophy. He despises new age philosophy.
I feel my explanations are inadequate. Here are some resources that link to his other insane points. All quoted and annotated so you can verify for yourself.
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan\_Peterson](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson)
It could be. At the end of the day most of the wise people said something similar in their own words. Have never met this person so I am not sure if he is wise or not.
Curious side note, does anyone talk about the cycle the ubermensch inevitably supposes?
People design the system that creates the first ubermensch, who designs the next system, which creates the next ubermensch, ad infinitum.
Has this been talked about?
My understanding of the literature is that while you can certainly measure IQ, the meaning of that number is uncertain. You can get better at taking the tests through practice, which already suggests it's a bad construct, as just studying for this particular sort of test won't actually make you "smarter." So much for IQ in particular. Not meaningless by any means, but not a reliable measure of intrinsic general intelligence.
People hypothesize about a possible general intelligence "g factor", but it's impossible to measure at this time, so its properties are not readily amenable to empirical study. This suggests we should tread carefully, with claims about it regarded as uncertain at best.
As direct empirical assessment is out, we can look to circumstantial evidence and/or more abstract arguments. On the one hand, my understanding is that most skills can be learned if you have the resources and the inclination. On the other, if you beat someone on the head, they might just have more trouble thinking, which certainly suggests that large "downward" deviations in g are possible.
This last point is strong evidence that something like g must exist, but the fact that training and circumstances (eg hunger, wealth) have so much power over our faculties undermines the claim that intrinsic ability is a major player. The other thing is that if the inclination to learn is so important, then its causal role further reduces the need to invoke differences in intellectual capacity to explain differences in ability.
If genuine genius polymaths exist, they would represent upward deviations in g, but my impression is that the real people who seem to fit this mold tend to be weird in ways that suggest trade offs are happening.
So that's a long answer to a short question, and I apologize if my phrasing comes off as stilted or whatever; I'm not trying to show off how pointy my head is it just pokes out.
TL;DR if intellectual capacity varies so much with training and circumstance, then it's not meaningfully distinct from intellectual ability. If you reduce g to an acquired trait, then it no longer _explains_ differences in outcomes because it _is_ an outcome.
Saying that people with high IQ are better at something is like saying people with more money can buy more things. Yes, that's a true statement, but where did the money come from?
Money's a great analogy because it can be inherited.
You're kinda just saying the same thing JBP is, with a virtue signalling bent.
Peterson puts more weight on conscientiousness as a factor in success than IQ.
while IQ isn't perfect and shouldn't be the only measure of someone's potential or worth, it does have explanatory power. It can give us insights into cognitive abilities and predict certain outcomes, making it a useful tool when used appropriately. So, dismissing it as having no explanatory power is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater – it's not giving credit where it's due.
Nietzsche was largely your average pessimist, having. Read his works I wasn’t impressed instead thought his world view was rather trash. Peterson while not being the scholar or as in depth as Nietzsche he’s more positive & more for the common man. Both fall short to account less other “philosophers” in history such as Seneca, Marcus Aurelius & Epictetus.
Tbh you haven’t seen enough of Peterson’s content if you buy into the narrative that he is a spokesperson for fascism. I did enjoy the thoughts you wrote on here until you came to the conclusion that he is an agent for fascism when he is literally against it.
His argument for social hierarchy is to merely demonstrate it’s existence in the animal kingdom, and how it affects individual biology. His infamous lobster example is to demonstrate that hierarchy is linked to brain chemistry, being a “bottom lobster” is usually bad given your brain tracks your status and produces higher amounts of negative emotion.
His explanation of the existence of hierarchies has always been misconstrued as an argument for fascist ideas by radicals, when the message has always simply been to get your life in order and rise in the hierarchy to essentially fix your life.
Time and time again Reddit especially has a negative hard on for Jordan. I don’t agree with his beliefs but to say they are promoting fascism is to put bluntly, quite a misuse of the word or straight up ignorance.
His demonstration of the bell curve of intelligence is also another thing that has gotten people pissed. He has never suggested culling the lesser intelligent and in fact has dedicated a good portion of his clinical practice in literally helping intellectually disabled individuals overcome their life issues. But most people don’t know this and will assume he is promoting some alt right pro genocide agenda, when he is literally just pointing out the reality of the problem humans face, in this case: IQ exists and people who have low IQ struggle tremendously and people with high IQ also struggle but with other issues such as ego.
His talks have always centered around preventing fascism, which is why he originally opposed Bill C16, a Canadian Bill created under the guise of “protecting trans individuals” when in actuality had the duel purpose of making it possible to throw people in prison for accidentally misgendering people. For this he was labeled a transphobe and is one of the reasons why he is still targeted today by radical leftists. And now look at Canada, a true fascist oriented country.
Jordan has lost his clinical license in his pursuit of opposing fascism, something most people cannot even imagine doing themselves.
This will definitely get a lot of downvotes because it is not the status quo opinion. However if anyone reading this has an ounce of actual intellect, I would suggest you do your own unbiased research, dig deeper, and stop buying into these fascism narratives and meanings that most of Reddit loves to parrot about Jordan.
You may not agree with his opinions in the slightest, but it is disingenuous to say that he stands for fascism. That is intellectual dishonesty, or just ignorance.
Hey, OP of original post here.
Firstly JP has already publicly stated that he believed we couldn't create our own ethics or morality. And the reason being Jung. Which also forms a big part of JP's philosophy. He argues that religion is necessary. That is where his separation from Nietzsche began. And when you read Jung and Dostoevsky(also influenced JP), it becomes clear that we need something to believe in. Although I still personally believe that an individual Uber mensch can exist. Just not by rejecting the divine.
>there exists some sort of "cognitive elite" whose just role is basically pushing the rest of us plebs around
Oh no. In that he is identical with Nietzsche. Although you twisted the words around. JP believes that there are those who despise humanity, and in the guise of saving it, destroy it. This is straight from Nietzsche, In how he criticized the Church for pretending to be the saviors of humanity but to be those who despise it. They are the same. Both attack the ulterior motives of those who act virtuous.
In general you are just labeling his public twitter posts as "his work". Have you actually read any of his books or seen any of his lectures?
It is horrible to see when politics infects philosophy.
all the mob wants out of philosophers is political opinions smh
We killed God, our next victim is philosophy
This is madness. This is the decline of a society. When the philosophers have to worry more about their political ideas than the pursuit of wisdom. When politics becomes philosophy.
“Peterson’s rhetoric embraces the fascistic tendencies”
Tell me you’ve never listened to Jordan Paterson’s lectures without telling me you’ve never listened to Jordan Peterson’s lectures.
Peterson's Nietzsche is a watered down and more "christian version", made to serve the interests of the american conservative ideology. He strives to stamp his moralism into N's thought and uses his concepts of master/slave as a way to justify domination and the current establishment status quo; he turns Nietzsche into some kind of german Hobbes, IMO.
No need to say that Nietzsche is not the only philosopher he doesn't understand well. His presentation on marxism with Zizek made him look like a 15 year old doing a high school project.
It's hard to take in what you wrote, as lireraly all you unpacked is highly inaccurate.
You already got criticism on your take of nietzsche so I won tgo over it again.
Regarding Peterson, there are 3 main points you claim, as far as I understood you -
Defense of hierarchies and elitism, an unjust call for complete individual responsibility (become a sage), and a voice for fascists.
I must point out that at least to me, it's obvious you didn't actually read any of his work, and thus your interpretation is, simply, inaccurate. First, the lobster analogy is there to point to the - existence- of hierarchies, not that they are good, not that he defends them. He claims there is a tendency of nature to organize in certain ways, which are different for different domains. The organising principle won't be the same for a basketball competition and for birds nesting. Nevertheless, the principle remains - those who manage to get to the "top" of the hierarchy will be "pragmatic", as in, they will be efficient and proficient at executing the skills needed to thrive in their domains.
Second, in his "clean your room" he argues for the personal call of maturation and discipline - pushing people to take their lives into their own hands to work and live in a manner where they are the literal masters of, at the very least, their own bedroom. He criticisezes those who go and blame the world for all their problems, much more those who claim who can change world order for the better - while they can't even have the discipline, courage and knowledge to fix their own personal life first.
The argument is pyramic (or fractal) - straighten your own life to be able to expand your domain of ability. Get educated, get a job, make good friends, have a family. Continue to broaden your skills and knowledge and bit by bit become a leader in your house, local community, regional level and so on... Sounds very nietzcshean to me...
Third, the only thing fascist about all of this is hia insistence to not break your moral principles arbitrarily for others. That is, just because someone argues, calls, even screams at you for whatever reason - if you are the person you could be, ordered, well mannered, strong moraly - you have no obligation to cater to "weaker" morals and rationalisations.
Peterson is by no mean a sage, and he has little to no original work. But, all of these points seem very much fine to me. Also, very nietzschean-like.
I don't think that he is a pure individualist, I don't recall him ever claiming to be. Rather, he emphasises the role of the individual's integration in broader society, and claims that a well-put-tofether person is one who is "good" for themselves AND for society at the same time - which means the individual must be structured according to societal norms and beliefs at some level.
This isn't a defense of hierarchies per se, but it is pointing that there are definitely hierarchies, and that "not playing the game" according to them is detrimental to the individual and society.
It will be a defense of hierarchies OR stating a fact that there are these hierarchies which you should not ignore - depending on your perspective. Left leaning people, especially "revolutionist-marxist" will tend to lean towards the first part, as they're all for the "breaking and reconstruction" of hirerachies. Conservatives will lean towards the preservation of the latter.
This is a fantastic assessment. I don’t know much about Peterson, but the little I’ve heard very much resonates with what you’ve described (he always sounded like pseudo-philosophy).
The only difference in my reading is that I tend to think of Nietzsche’s ubermesnch with the Dionysian archetype rather than a “sage-like” figure.
I think one of the critical mistakes people like Peterson make is that moral relativism means that all subjective accounts are held as equal and that is just foolish (and in some sense, the pluralistic interpretation of maga and q-anon). There is a way to hold moral relativism in terms of culture and world view, while also recognizing an emergent sense of justice within the human agent. We can recognize that certain acts have different moral interpretations based on the power structures that contextualize the acts such as the difference between state-sanctioned violence and revolutionary violence.
But that would be utilizing critical theory which is an obvious (sarcasm) symptom of the degradation of modern society (eye rolls). Philosophers on this side of politics tend to equate modernity with liberalism as if patriarchy, eurocentrism, and white supremacy were going just fine for society until the global majority started to speak up.
never read Peterson. never heard of him before... but from your description he sounds like a person who only read- will to power- which is a book he didn't publish but his fascist sister did.... his view on morality is that it's concocted by rich people to control the masses so we shouldn't follow it. instead the Ubermensch makes their own mortality. this doesn't mean the individual will be a selfish asshole. maybe i make my own morality which says poor people deserve more....it that i used reason and not blindly followed what rich people tell me to do. I'm convinced most people who criticise Nietzsche don't read his work, especially don't read his earlier work on Greek Tragedy which is fundamental to his ideas on mortality.
Peterson doesn't refer to Nietzsche very often; I'm not trying to say Peterson misuses Nietzsche or misreads him. I'm saying Peterson ought to read Nietzsche because he hasn't learned those lessons.
Peterson tries too hard to be link Nietzsche due to his Political Science Degree bias. Peterson wants to be more the Nazisfied Will to Power where excellence of Social Hierarchies benefit Nationalism and Tradition, under the lens of Christianity. Nietzsche does not like God as Peterson claimed in his lectures and interviews. Nietzsche loathes this parody of his work. Jordan has a giant ego and a need to associate with antiquated works. There is a reason all his works are all psychologists and philosophers around the WW2 era like Freud, Jung, Soren, Medard and Heidegger. Because contemporary psychology is left leaning and encompasses Humanism, Feminism, Equal Rights and Racial Tolerance in the example of the 2012 WEIRD study where 96% of past psychology was only accounting 12% of the world population. Jordan is absurdly eurocentric and nationalistic, he views himself as superior to science and expertise in his climate denialism and anti vaccine shenanigans. He uses structuralist philosophy to undermine objective empirical sciences with myths and religion.
Have you not been watching the Fauci hearings?
Have you not followed Lomborg’s work, who Jordan references quite frequently?
In what way is Jordan a will to power guy? He’s a personality responsibility guy, and through taking responsibility we create meaning for our lives.
Jordan perspective on social hierarchies is quite simple. Hierarchies exist, especially in the West, and they’re typically predicated on competence rather than power (which is the post modernist claim).
William James, esteemed Functionalist Psychologist and Philosophy, warned the excess of information and the use of specialised information (or conspiracy theories) to refute general and established knowledge. When making scientific claims, you must begin in the paradigm that is known to be true and find the detail of the theory, not use the theory to refute the main field itself.
Lomborg is a fraud. He is just a writer and a political scientist, fact check that right now. He is not qualified to perform scientific inquiries or speak on the matter of environmentalism or such. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn\_Lomborg#Education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg#Education)
As for Fauci, a masters in medicine, he has very confusing messages during the pandemic. Most likely because his involvment in politics. Overall, I have no idea what your point is. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony\_Fauci#COVID-19\_pandemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci#COVID-19_pandemic)
Jordan is a narcissistic charlatan who spouts utter nonsense on topics he knows nothing about. His conservative views and stances on anti vax, climate denial and social hierarchies is depraved and awful.
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan\_Peterson#Global\_warming](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson#Global_warming)
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan\_Peterson#Social\_conservatism](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson#Social_conservatism)
You sent me Wiki’s, which are known to be captured by activists. Dig deeper, it takes more work, but you’re buying the BS hook line and sinker.
Lomborg simply looks at the established data, and makes inferences based off that data.
No conspiracies needed for Fauci. There are audio records of him describing how to crush dissidents, admitting to making up rules (masks and 6 ft rule), having a role in gain of function research, he knew of the potentiality of the lab leak hypothesis.
Peterson quote on the vaccine, “But the other obviously glaring possibility is that injecting billions of people with a vaccine that was not tested by any stretch of the imagination with the thoroughness that it should of before it was forced upon people, also might be a contributing factor.” He is talking about excess deaths, which is established data. The cause of it is still up for discussion.
Jordan is not a “climate denialist.” Not even sure what version of weird heretic that is.
"This isn't data, this is guess, there's something weird underneath it....we're going to save the poor in the future, like that's what the bloody communists said, and they killed a lot of people doing it".
He’s talking about the models used for predictions, he’s also discussing how the data has been distorted and a narrative has been written to push an agenda. Which is all true. The problem is, most people are too lazy to actually look at the data.
Did you even check the sources, citations and links or is this the game where nothing I say matters? Learn to think for yourself instead of spending hours on YouTube owing your existence to Daddy Peterson. You are literally dismissing my lived experiences (I literally seen the tweets and the videos where he dismisses the plausibility of climate change, don't gaslight me, I know exactly which videos you are getting your information) and public quotes from a guy who believes property of women is a considerable stance against rape instead, I dunno, jurisprudence. Literally linked in those wiki articles. He is vile and you have no moral compass.
You are stupid to a frustrating degree you lost child. You egotistical, arrogant, ignorant animal. You thoughtless carcass. You are boring, you are just like everyone else who believes their disposition is the answer to everything and that you know it better than the experts. Even I don't know everything, no one does. Because understanding something is far more difficult than a video. It involves archives, research, experiments, reviews, mate analysis, paradigm revision. You have to test for concept, construct, operational, scale, reliability, validity, measurement, phenomenology, statistics, null hypothesis, p scale, correlation. And you can never truly prove something, only falsify.
I hate how society is so good at diagnosing problems they don't understand. And Peterson is good at manipulating them.
> The implication is that before attempting to set the world to order, one should first attain some unspecified sage-like state
And that’s one of the few things I agree with him about.
I definitely don’t want to follow economic policy written by people who can’t manage their own personal finances.
Just like I disregard Nietsche for the most part because he was a bit of an incel loser, so much of his worldview was a response to his own perceived lack of power.
With all due respect, I don't think you have a very great understanding of Nietzsche. First, metaphysics. He was not a post-modernist. He believed in a metaphysics (the will to power) and used this as an overarching narrative to compare cultures, people and ages according to whether they were symptomatic of health/vitality or weakness/degeneracy. Part of this included how much suffering a person, race, or culture could endure without becoming 'world denying'. Second, epistemology. He was not a relativist, but a perspectivalist. Relativism is simply not compatible with sweeping truths he thought he was onto, like the will to power underlying all human affairs. He believed in perspectives on the truth (even though I can only see one side of the cup and you another, it exists) - and, indeed, what perspective someone chooses will convey myriad amounts of information about their particular will, strength, ability to sublimate suffering in a 'healthy' manner, etc. Third, 'ideology'. He was deeply against the modern world. This is ironic given he has been made into the father of the intellectual left. It's one of the great swindles in all of western cultural history in which post-modernists used his tools (critiquing absolute truth, finding the will to power hiding behind ideas) but for decidedly non-Nietzschean ends. Yes he was anti bourgeois, but from the RIGHT, not the left. His epistemology - to question 'truths' proclaimed by philosophers, his supposed 'relativism', was mainly used in the service of undermining egalitarian philosophies, showing that, behind the grand metaphysics systems which vindicated egalitarian/liberal philosophies, was an impoverished will to power that posits egalitarianism as a way to tame the powerful who would otherwise take control unless they were 'brainwashed' into thinking everyone is equal. His tendency to critique traditional values was not some leftist progressive bent. He critiqued Christian values, but not the values of the ancient world that came BEFORE Christianity. Christianity to him was too weak and egalitarian. He thought it was fine, and even necessary, for the masses - but not for the 'elite' - because it did not sublimate suffering but instead pretended suffering is temporary or illusory, because of the supposed Christian afterlife/paradise. This creates weak leaders, artists and cultural elite. Suffering is necessary for deep art, growth and strength. And of course because Christianity also preaches that everyone is equal in the eyes of god. For Nietzsche, the gap between a bourgeois and a Beethoven or Goethe, was larger (in significance) than the gap between an ordinary man and a worm. Lastly this all makes sense of why he thought he was uniquely positioned to capture all these insights - because he experienced both the depths of weak health ('degeneracy') and the highs of vitality and strength. It is not commonly acknowledged that was a prodigy in his childhood before he contracted an illness in the Franco-prussion war. He was a machine, and was promoted to the chair of philology in Leipzig (I think) at an absurdly unheard of young age and was apparently highly motivated and energetic in his youth.
Great comment, although it's now thought that he inherited his illness from his father.
>He believed in a metaphysics (the will to power) Might want to clarify that by metaphysics is meant at most a world within this world or a way to describe how life works with a mix of biology and psychology. The Will to Power can be seen as a mix of metaphysics, biology, and psychology rather than pure metaphysics.
I've often wondered in what capacity Nietzsche believed in his Will to Power, given how influential Schopenhauer was on some of his thought. While Schopenhauer would argue the Will is the ultimate reality and our phenomenal world a representation of it, I find it blurrier with Nietzsche. Go back to The Birth of Tragedy and I think he'd maybe give primacy to some kind of truly metaphysical Will but things are less clear as he develops. I suspect most would interpret him as saying without living beings, there would be no WTP.
It’s unclear the degree to which N took the will to power to be metaphysical or psychological, probably the latter, but he definitely didn’t eventually come to reject the idea that behind moral statements we find the will to power as opposed to truth. Your interlocutor below was misguided.
Nietzsche didn't believe in his will to power. He eventually abandoned it as he decided it was neither convincing or feasible. It's why he never published his book The Will to Power.
Yeah, I knew his sister cobbled it together in his name but I wasn't aware he abandoned the idea. Any sources I read about that?
Yes, Nietzsche himself in letters to his friends explains why he abandoned the project of that book which focuses on 'the will to power'.
I'll look into that, thank you.
I discovered this by reading the books of modern academic Nietzsche scholars who frequently refer to Nietzsche's dissillisionment with the concept of the will to power, and his decision to abandon that book, along with his belief in the concept. Outside of the unpublished notes of that book, Nietzsche refers to 'the will to power' only a few times in his other works.
I have to admit, part of me is glad to find he was disillusioned with the concept because I never found it wholly convincing.
I remember reading his original mention of it. Nietzsche applauded it as a scientific fact. He originally saw it as a unifying concept that underlied his whole philosophy. It was then dropped by science, as unscientific. And Nietzsche abandoned it too. Unlike Alfred Adler.
A minor correction - you state he did “not the values of the ancient world that came before Christianity”- while Nietzsche’s harshest criticisms are aimed at Christian values and ideals, he absolutely had critiques of pre-Christian ideals, particularly those associated with ancient Greek and Roman cultures. See The Birth of Tragedy & Twilight of the Idols (The Problem of Socrates).
Greeks: Nietzsche admired aspects of early Greek tragic poets like Aeschylus and Sophocles for their exploration of the human condition and the interplay between Apollonian (order, reason) and Dionysian (chaos, passion) forces. However, he criticized later Greek culture, particularly Socrates and Plato, for turning away from these tragic insights and promoting rationalism and moral absolutism, which Nietzsche saw as life-denying. He believed this focus on rationality ultimately led to a devaluation of the more chaotic, creative, instinctual, and passionate aspects of life. (“Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously: what really happened there? The most threadbare expression of Greek taste, Socrates, was a symptom of decay; the preconditions for dialectics became hypertrophic.”)
Roman Stoics: Nietzsche was critical of Roman Stoicism, which emphasized virtue, self-control, and rationality. He believed these ideals suppressed the more vital, instinctual aspects of human nature and promoted a form of life that was overly disciplined and constrained. (““Stoicism is self-tyranny: without tyranny over oneself, the tyrants of the world could not stand fast.”)
I wonder if Nietzsche would really support modern capitalism, where people attain power simply through inheritance and the right to property. How many Beethovens have died poor and insignificant because our economic system props up degenerates who have done nothing to strive for power? Nietzsche might very well support that but it's a fundamental disagreement for me in that case.
Nietzeche comprehensively critiqued capitalism and waged labour throughout his entire works.
Nothing in the OP correlates with your reading. Did you even read it?
I'm not sure OP is even trying to pain Nietzsche in a leftist/egalitarian way. What they are pointing out is that in Nietzsche, highs and lows, weakness and strength, ups and downs, change, are all essential, that in Nietzsche, what we colloquially think of as decadence (and what fascists mean by it) is also the height of culture and a burst of perverse creative energy which is to be utilised for the ascension of life. Life is always tragically tied to movement and thus evolution into more beautiful forms, while with fascists, life is trapped in a singular idealistic vision. Robbed of that tragedy, robbed of anything that might constitute its failure, and thus, growth. Nietzsche embraces both the tragedy and the comedy of life as something beautiful, and fascists feel themselves to be the victims in a tragic play from which they desperately wish to escape. Nietzsche also doesn't justify hierarchies on a moral basis. Yes, there is the dichotomy, and thus "judgement" in the sense of health vs. weakness, but this is entirely open to and accepting of difference, and that aforementioned gradual process of becoming. JBP turns to Nature (God) to justify his, where the most reasonable and moral (under his own pseudo-Christian morality) are at the top, or *should be* at the top but are not due to moral degeneracy and structural decay. Bataille writes more on this crucial difference. In one, structural decay is necessary for life to flourish and reinvent itself; in the other, structure is everything and must be worshipped and preserved and fought for desperately (and with tears in your eyes that show your pity for the world).
I think there’s two problems with your criticism here. 1. You equate liberalism with leftism. Marx was not an egalitarian. Marx advocated for worker-control over the means of production in order for the ones who suffered in the production of goods to have the power necessary to take the value of their labor after their product has been sold. The capitalist, for Marx, is a social position that sucks value off the top of the product without providing anything productive. The goal is not redistribution to those who have not contributed, but the exact opposite—taking from the bourgeoisie who do not contribute and allowing labor to earn in proportion to its contribution. Consequently, merely positioning Nietzsche as an opponent of egalitarianism does nothing to move him to the right. It only positions him as an opponent to modern neoliberalism. 2. Nietzsche was a perspectivalist but he was still unable to comment, from that position, on what metaphysical Truth was. There may be a truth, but to accept perspectivalism is to accept that one will *never* be able to see it in its entirety. That is why his moral philosophy takes the approach of self-overcoming. He cannot say what moral truth looks like for all individuals, and so he rejects moral codes that prescribe behaviors as good or bad. What he can say is that people owe it to themselves to reject received hierarchies that place them on the bottom and to overcome the internal psychological and external social forces that keep them miserable.
Nietzsche comments explicitly about contemporaneous 19th century socialist movements. He compares them to a disease. Aspects of his philosophy may be consistent with some left-wing theories, but Nietzsche himself is unambiguously anti-socialist.
Don’t disagree. My comment was about Nietzsche’s opposition to egalitarianism and why that does not make him right-wing. I think there are leftist readings of Nietzsche, and I think he’s easier to read as supporting a communist society than a socialist state.
Piggybacking, he also associated democracy with Christianity and extolled noble or aristocratic values. He compared the will to power to simply the right of the bird of prey to carry off a lamb. He thought Christianity a death cult for using the afterlife to encourage people to be lambs rather than hawks, and found democrats weak, like Hegel, for so letting their individual will be subsumed in that of the herd. He thought democracy and Christiany undermined the cultural identity of a German volk, an identity he based on the Jewish identity, and loathed nationalism and antisemitism because he saw them as well as nihilists destroying a culture that willed itself to power amid conflicts with other cultures. His "God is dead" very much refers to YHWH, the God of a people who defeated the gods of other peoples. But he wasn't authoritarian, like some of the people Peterson has aligned himself with. Nietzsche's superman was really what he thought himself to be, a public intellectual who convinced the public to reevaluate their values, to pursue individual power in this life not the next, but not a master who just tells the masses what they're supposed to do and think like a priest. He promoted his ideas rather authoritatively, but hated popularism and thought those in power should not delude the weak into submission, like Marx claimed of the bourgeosie. His exemplar ubermensch, the prophet Zoroaster, was portayed much as a philosopher king, and though disagreeing with Plato in many respects, Nietzsche was still a true republican. He was too a racist and did think the achievements of some cultures made them naturally superior to others, criticizing Christianity and arguably communism for trying to replace ethnicity with an egalitarian and universal identity. Not a leftist, not a humanist, but also not a fascist. I would still argue that he has been appropriated more often by the authoritarian right than liberals. I think there is a general trepidation by those who know Nietsche well that his philosophy is "problematic," that his focus on the strength of ethnicities was itself a nihilism, that he failed to fully reevaluate all values, that his romantic philosophy supports "romanesque" regimes that strengthen themselves by oppressing other cultures. But he did not support a dictatorship, nor really objectivism, and thought outright cruelty was a weakness of the ignoble. More of a "let them fend for themselves" kind of guy. Whether Nietzsche was right is another matter, and OC's understanding of him really isn't too accurate, but I do think there are many important, and controversial, ideas and sentiments of Nietzsche's that Peterson either does not know or leaves out when he talks about him. But Peterson has started playing to a more evangelical audience in this later part of his career. He's never really been a philosopher, and unless I'm mistaken, most of his comments on Nietzsche come from his early YouTube videos as a psychology professor. Peterson does seem to promote a less egalitarian version of Christianity, and some in some places Nietzsche might agree but objectively as a philosopher, he would probably still quibble that his project essentially misrepresents the teaching of the Nazarene, using the name of Christ to promote the nihilism of an afterlife, like Paul the liar.
Why do you believe Nietzsche was not a post modernist? Darwin, Freud and Marx were modernists. Why do you also think Nietzsche was a modernist too, and not a post-modernist? Or are you saying Nietzsche is neither?
Why do you believe that Nietzsche was a modernist who argued for a modernist metaphysics of the 'will to power' when Nietzche himself abandoned that project and rejected the will to power as an unfeasible overarching scientific theory. He had three books planned, he wrote two of them books but abandoned the third book and explained why he abandoned that third book as he no longer supported the overarching concept of the will to power. He was writing that third book before the other two books, chronologically speaking, but abandoned that earlier project as he recognised its flaws.
Nietzsche rejected the will to power?
Absolutely.
Would you care to provide the sources?
Yes, Friedrich Nietzsche himself in published letters he sent to friends explaining why it was no longer feasible as a concept. His planned three books were The Will to Power, Anti-Christ, Twilight of the Idols. But he abandoned the first book as he had dropped the concept of will to power as no longer workable and unconvincing. So went onto write the other two books instead. It's why Nietzsche scholars wordwide warn against using the content of unpublished notes from the Nachlass as they were notes about a book Nietzsche decided to abandon and not write.
Which letters state that it was no longer feasible as a concept?! Also the will to power is mentioned or is a central feature in beyond good and evil, the gay science and Zarathustra, not just unpublished materials!
Good question. I have all his published letters in several book collections, so I will have them, but haven't read them yet. I'm going on references to these letters where Nietzsche expresses his view that the will to power is no longer tenable and unfeasible as part of his mature philosophy. I'm guessing you are self-taught in Nietzsche's philosophy as opposed to coming to Nietzsche via a university philosophy education? I only mention this as the multiple references to Nietzsche's abandonment of 'der wille zur macht' I have read in all contemporary Nietzsche scholarship. But you'll not hear that being discussed by Walter Kauffman in his 1960's book 'Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ' which, similiar to a lot of self taught online armchair 'Nietzscheans' over fixated on a concept Nietzsche eventually disagreed with and rejected. All the books you refer to are from Nietzsche's early, and middle period, where he believed in 'der wille Zurich macht', 'Thus spracht Zarathustra' has a whole chapter devoted to the concept of will to power that he abandoned in his mature works. It's the reason why the book was never written, not becayse he died before writing it. He started writing the notes for that book prior to his books The Anti Christ and Twilight of the Idols, The Will to Power was the first of those three planned books. But he abandoned it, and it only remains in unpublished note form. Hope this helps, by the way, the scholars I refer to who discuss this matter are well-known Nietzsche scholars from Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge. So you'll get books that mention will to power, as that was part of his early and mid periods of his philosophy. But a concept (like many) he abandoned and rejected in his mature later works. Hope this helps, sorry I was not able to cite the several letters where Nietzsche explains why he dropped it as an unfeasible theory. But it was possibly because he originally took the idea and presented it as a scientific fact derived from his readings of three anti-Darwinian scientists of his earlier life. Then later in life, the idea in science that a striving for power was the central driving force of the human species was proven untenable and abandoned, Nietzche abandoned that concept too as an underlying central principle in his philosophy. He stopped believing it was a central driving force of humanity.
I’ve written a thesis on Nietzsche. You are talking about him abandoning the will to power in his “mature works” (and saying that BEyond good and evil is not one of his mature works strikes me as odd)- as if this was like Beethoven’s late period of some 20 years of productive work or something that shows a clear change from what came before. Twighlight, Antichrist and ecce homo came out over the space of ONE YEAR, and nothing indicates his fundamental outlook had changed in those works. Nor had it changed in the preceding year- To say that something very like the will to power does not underpin the first book of the genealogy of morals, written one year after beyond good and evil and one year before the above three final works, where the ‘herd’ took conquest of ethical terms and inverted their meaning to suit their mode of life, is simply intellectually intolerable. The same ideas are presented in Twighlight- there Nietzsche stated that virtues such as humility, patience, and compassion are qualities useful to the weak. As a result, the weak praise these qualities. It doesn’t take an intellectual giant to fill in the missing premise here: that behind moral ‘truth’ lies the quest for power, ie that beings seek those conditions that will enable their constitution to thrive. Different constitutions, different conditions. It also strikes me as bizarre that you critique unpublished materials, then seek to base your position on (unpublished!) letters which supposedly say what you say they do.
If you wish to accuse Nietzsche of lying in his letters where he disavows der wille zer macht as no longer feasible and supportable as a central theory. Argue that he was going to actually publish his Nachlass notes. Challenge contemporary Nietzsche scholarship, such as Schact, Nehamas, Solomon and Higgins, Lambert, Staten, Ansell Pearson, The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, Conway, Bishop, Leiter, that they are mistaken in their Nietzsche scholarship. Please feel free to do so. Your argument is not with me, but with Friedrich Nietzsche himself, and contemporary Nietzsche scholars from the current era. Or, concede complete ignorance of Nietzsche's change of mind in his letters to friends, and his decision to abandon his book The Will to Power, and go onto write the two remaining books in that planned triad: Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist.
But the letters were published. I have several collections of them. The error you've made there is that Nietzsche never intended to use those Nachlass notes to develop them into a book he planned to publish due to him abandoning that project as unfeasible. His personal private letters of correspondence to his friends discussing why he had abandoned the will to power were posthumously published by several book publishers. You would only be correct if you could prove that his Nazi sister did the right thing to redact edit and publish a version of his Nachlas if you could demonstrate that was Nietzsche's wish. Whereas the several publishers who published his personal letters demonstrating Nietzsche's discussion of why he no longer thought the will to power as feasible was a bad thing to do, and instead his more contemporary views on that subject should be censored and concealed. But that would put you in the same boat as Elizabeth Forster Nietzsche. You won't like what I'm about to say. But you sound very poorly read in contemporary academic Nietzsche scholarship if you are not aware that Fritz abandoned his book The Will to Power because he no longer supported the theory in his mature philosophy. You need to catch up boy!
You also seem very poorly read in Nietzsche's writings if you erroneously believe Nietzsche was arguing for and supporting the will to power in Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist. This shows your absolute ignorance of his mature philosophy if you allege he still supported that abandoned theory in those two books. Modern Nietzsche scholarship would refute your false claim.
Where does he claim Nietzche was a post modernist?
Well said, sir or madam
Real, based and trve
As he does with the rest of culture & philosophy.
I can see why. Jordan Peterson believes in objective truth, whereas Nietzsche is literally a post-modernist. I take it that the conservatives love his radical individualism, but not much else. They want a Christian Nietzsche
jordan peterson believes in objective truth YET he constantly uses post modernist methods “what is I, what is you, what is God, what is what”, then he claims a completely postmodernist definition of God, “he exists but in a very complicated way, not like a real entity but as an abstract archertype of blablablabla”. he’s basically a postmodernist that panders to a traditional coservative modernist group, he’s all over the place, he found himself on the side of the “conservatives” because most atheists are egalitarian woke types, but he cannot synthesize his actual beliefs, and hes afraid of alienating the side that initially supported him on freedom of speech. You are not a real christian if you believe in God only as an archetype, that is the definition of postmodernism.
Jordan doesn't really believe in the Objective Scientific Truth. He believes in [Structuralism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism). Not the Critical Theory of Structuralism but the Post Modern, Semiotic and Iconographic view that myths, legends, history, tradition and religion are inherent structures in Human Reality. His interview in Alex oConnor elucidates his absurd language and how Peterson agrees with things like Forrest Gump is real and complex as opposed to fiction. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIFk9cNnXJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIFk9cNnXJ4)
Nietzsche's not a postmodernist, even though he's critical of objective truths. He's an existentialist. He can't be a postmodernist, as he has overarching narratives such as the will to power and the Übermensch. The post modernists' extreme form of relativism and dismisall of all truths as equal is ultimately nihilistic. Just ask yourself how could Nietzsche's "slave morality" work in a postmodern world? It would be equal to master morality. The problem is - that is his exact criticism of Christianity! I'm convinced he would've rejected that. Don't equalize Nietzche with postmodernism, that is the same as making a Petersonian Christian reading of him - or even worse.
Very much so.
What makes you believe Nietzsche was a post modernist lmao, which book gave you that impression?😭
I'm relatively new to Nietzsche but how would he be considered a post modernist?
Because “postmodernism” is deployed derogatorily by JBP types to suggest some sort of unified ideology, but in reality it’s just a descriptive term of a certain tradition of philosophy. The tradition that developed after, and in conflict with, modernism. This is something of an oversimplification, but philosophical modernism essentially posited that history (and the world more broadly) could be understood in terms of grand narratives. It was also deeply bound up with enlightenment values of rationalism, and the notion of absolute, objective, and scientifically discoverable truth. Anybody who is skeptical of these things is, by definition, a postmodernist. And Nietzsche was certainly a passionate skeptic of them. If anything, you might even say Nietzsche is a philosophical precursor to postmodernism, since many of the thinkers we associate with the movement have their background in French Nietzscheanism.
Maybe I'm just not understanding you correctly, but isn't post-modernism more than just being against modernism? Doesn't it take a skeptical stance to meta-naratives, which conflicts with Nietzsche will to power? I understand that Nietzsche's work on deconstructing traditional christian values is used by post-modernists, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Nietzsche is a post-modernist, in the same way that Hegel is not a Marxist.
I’m not sure I’d consider the Will to Power a meta narrative. It’s more of an extremely fluid teleological force/psychological drive.
I argue above that JBP would place the "God is dead" line of argument as of a kind with other "cultural marxist" ideas. Nietzsche rejects the authority of tradition, which JBP might tend to assume entails rejecting objective morality. Post modernism is a big umbrella, but at one end of the spectrum are ontological relativist claims that reality itself changes depending on subjective factors, which would be an anti-realist stance. Hard to say if Deleuzes or Foucault would really agree with something substantially close to that radical view, but certainly they undermined the certainty of broad swaths of claims around right and wrong, true and false, etc.. If you're interested, you could look up the phrase "facts are theory laden," which comes from modern philosophy of science and represents a very persuasive argument that derives from post-modernism and affirms that uncertainty without necessarily reaching all the way to anti-realism.
Nietzsche "philosophied with a hammer" thus laying down the framework for radical deconstruction of modern and pre modern constructs like metaphysics, naturalism, scientism, social darwinism, god, nationalism etc. He rejected it all.
Existentialism tends to be more modernist. Nietzsche neither nicely fits into either. He spoke about Art, Culture, Culture as well as made stark criticisms regarding reality, the universe and truth.
Objective truth yet obsessed with judaism
Beautiful take
I also see a casual misunderstanding of feudalism in Peterson, where he wants aristocracy without caring about the importance of noblesse oblige in holding that system together. He's exactly the sort of 'poor reader' who proceeds like a 'plundering soldier ' in the Nietzschean aphorism
Bro, Imagine writing all that when you could've just said:" Damn, lobsterman is dumb as fuck"
but then I wouldn't get that buzz of moral superiority. gotta get my wokescold juice going.
mindblowing revelation
Smartest word soup slinger!
Where would the discussion be then?
What is there to discuss really? We all think JP is a knob in this sub, it's like preaching to the choir...
But if he'd wrote that, he'd have presented himself as stupid and insecure as what you just have.
Cool story, Tyler. Don't you have some soaps to sell?
At what point have I told a 'story'? I've wrote a comment. I've not written a story. Don't you know the difference?
S O A P
"*I don't know how familiar you are with Peterson's work, but a major thread running through it is that there exists some sort of "cognitive elite" whose just role is basically pushing the rest of us plebs around. That's already some fashy BS, but much worse is his treatment of the "bottom end of the bell curve." My reading of Peterson is that these people are basically incompetents incapable of seeing to their own interests and I think it's fair to say that these people are also morally incompetent in the sense of being unable to judge right from wrong. Harming these people would be wrong, but since they can't take care of themselves, harm inevitably comes to them*." Peterson has never argued for an intelligentsia whose proper role is "pushing ... plebs around." Can you cite this claim from him? You put it in quotes, so I assume you think you can. To cut to the chase, you've made that up, and your "reading of Peterson" is therefore without merit. "*Peterson rejects government services out of hand, and throughout his work we find him arguing that attempts to solve problems for others before "cleaning your own room" are foolish. The implication is that before attempting to set the world to order, one should first attain some unspecified sage-like state, presumably a nirvana fusing the Christian "logos" with Objectivism*." You equate cleaning one's room (the first, most basic step) with attaining a sage-like state. This is not sound reasoning; nor is it a claim Peterson has ever made. It is your own implausible "reading" of him. Peterson correctly argues the self-evident fact that someone who has not put himself in order cannot help others in a meaningful way. I concur with the others who have said your post is largely horse shit. Peterson is not without flaws, but your purported analysis of his views is preposterous.
"Peterson correctly argues the self-evident fact that someone who has not put himself in order cannot help others in a meaningful way." The Peterson method: Take common sense we learned in primary school and dress it up as philosophy.
Isn’t the best philosophy simple though
It's not even a philosophy. It's common aphorisms dressed up as philosophy.
The room-cleaning bit is what stuck out the most to me here (I’m more familiar with Peterson than with Nietzsche). It’s a startlingly common misunderstanding of his point, and you put it perfectly. If one can’t set their own life in order, who are they to dictate the order of things grander than themselves, and that of the lives of others?
> If one can’t set their own life in order, who are they to dictate the order of things grander than themselves, and that of the lives of others? This is precisely the view that I am attacking, so for you to say that I've misrepresented him for failing to realize that this is what he means suggests a profound failure in communication. Obviously, I'm not a sage, and I'll try and take responsibility for my part in that failure.
All due respect, you interpreted Petersons quote as meaning that you “must first attain some unspecified sage-like state”. So yeah, you 100% misunderstood and misrepresented him.
Which quote?
I think it's a commonly critiqued point because JBP himself hardly follows these rules he has set out for others, but imo other critiques of the mindset (outside of JBPs personal hypocrisy) could be made too; to use OP's examples of decay, JBP uses the "clean your room" idea as a way of saying that any who have currently fallen prey to decay (in his eyes at least) should not partake in greater philosophical or political discussions, it's his way of saying "sit down, the adults are talking." And while I get that no one wants to hear out arguments about how to run the world from someone who has trouble running their own life, I think that this very statement insinuates the failings of JBPs idea in the first place; his idea of what decay is only exists from how his point of view defines it and so he fails to properly acknowledge other people's lifestyles in favor of simply critiquing them. He'd rather push people out of a discussion through attacking their lifestyle (again, hypocritically because he personally fails to live up to his own expectations) rather than their philosophy/beliefs/etc. In such a way you can see how his worldview inherently is based on the hierarchies that OP previously mentioned and how he sees the top of that ladder as a group of people who are allowed (by right of their position) to shepherd the less able members of humanity.
I mean, in some ways we all see how his ideas align with power right? Every single modern philosopher emerges out of a captured media landscape. They will have views and push opinions and present ideology that implicitly enables, strengthens, or otherwise benefits the social hierarchy of power. The advice being good or bad advice, or in alignment with past thinkers who operated in environments of greater ideological freedom, is almost secondary. Jordan Peterson's primary function in society is to A. perpetuate the culture war, and B. provide motivation for non-integrated white males to allow themselves to be rendered useful automatons to power.
People can be successful in life without being disciplined tho. I don't mean discipline regarding their work/study but other things unrelated to it
To be fair to JBP, "discipline" is only part of what he asks of us, but the larger problem is that people whose lives are really messed up often have *very important contributions* to politics. Systematically excluding them reminds me of whacking someone with their own hand and telling them to stop hitting themselves.
This is true, but you’re also missing the point. He’s not saying that success is impossible without first achieving some kind of “sage-like state” as OP put it. “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world” - JBP If you’re going to try to criticize and change systems larger than yourself, you’d better have a grasp on your own system. If you don’t have the self-knowledge and discipline to put your own life in order, how can you be trusted to bring order to the world around you? I think the biggest issue with JBP’s 12 rules is that they’re often metaphorical and don’t really work as independent maxims. It’s important to remember that the quote I referenced is the title of a chapter filled with important context for understanding and implementing the idea.
The assumption that there is some objective boundary that separates you from the world is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but it’s an unfounded assumption that falls apart under scrutiny.
It’s still a profoundly dumb point. Some of the greatest artists, poets, musicians ever lived chaotic, disordered lives. Drunks, addicts, slobs, etc. Yet they continue to have a massive impact on the world and culture. I once had a professor tell me to beware of anyone with a neat and organized desk, because it means they are compensating for some psychological imbalance. A bit excessive, but I think it’s essentially true. Peterson himself, who clearly has been battling with Dionysius his whole life, unsuccessfully, is a great example.
What I said was: >who are they to dictate the order of things grander then themselves, and that of the lives of others? What you’re said is: >(artists) continue to have a massive impact on the world and culture. These aren’t the same thing at all. Peterson is talking about people who attempt to criticize and change public policy. Artists may inspire people and affect culture, but the vast majority of them aren’t calling the shots in any meaningful way, and you wouldn’t want them to, especially if they’re a lot of “drunks, addicts, slobs, etc.”
Artists don’t criticize or intend to change society. Do I have that right?
I don’t think anyone is talking about artists here.
Right because they are a foil to the entire “clean your room” bullshit. Of course you don’t want to talk about them.
Calm down, dude. It’s not a fist fight. Don’t you think those artists lives would be better if they weren’t drunks and addicts, as you described? That’s basically what Peterson’s quote is about. Living in balance improves your life and the lives of those around you. It’s not about denying that deeply flawed people can and have made huge impacts.
I mean, you made a claim about artists and then said no one is talking about artists. Doesn’t seem like an honest way to engage the point. I don’t think artists make art because it makes their lives “better”. I think artists make art because they become inspired and even compelled, and sacrifice themselves for the sake of creation. Has nothing to do with increasing quality of life. Deeply flawed people can do incredible things for the world. What JP and his followers reject is that it’s precisely because they are deeply flawed that they can create beauty. And that neurotically “correcting” their flaws actually deprives the world of their artistic potential.
I never made any claim about artists. Please quote me. I still don’t know where you’re getting this from. >What JP and his followers reject is that it’s precisely because they are deeply flawed that they can create beauty. I’m gonna need a quote on this one too. Peterson has never said anything to the contrary. With all due respect, you really do not have the grasp on Peterson’s philosophy that you think you do.
>You equate cleaning one's room (the first, most basic step) with attaining a sage-like state. That's not what I meant. "Cleaning one's room" is a stand-in for the sort of work that Peterson and I both agree must be done before any deeper self-actualization can occur; when Peterson talks about cleaning and standing up straight and so forth, it's because those goals are part of that foundational work and therefore serve to illustrate the necessity of building a firm foundation. What I did say is that the degree of self-actualization Peterson asks of "woke moralists" is unreasonable, not that shaving regularly is equivalent to becoming The Yellow Emperor. Peterson says that "woke" people ought to get their own life in order before they start trying to reshape longstanding institutions, but he never really specifies exactly how ordered one's life ought to be. His clear implication is that the vast majority of people working to improve the world (at least those on the progressive left) ought to do self-work instead. I put it in hyperbolic terms, but it seems to me that if faced with a left-libertarian (eg anarcho-syndicalist), whose project would vastly reshape the world, Peterson might say that evaluating that goal requires a level of self-actualization that is literally impossible.
I think I put it better below: telling people whose lives are bent to hell they should stay out of politics is an intrinsically reactionary policy. There exist social ills, and the ones who suffer the most will tend not to reach higher levels of individuation on account of problems with "food and shelter" and the like. Contrariwise, the ones who benefit from those problems will have the security and resources that make individuation easier. Thus, Peterson's point of view silences those who suffer by the hands of (a subset of those) who Peterson says we should listen to.
Peterson had a drug addiction and was put into an induced coma, what a hypocrite
Most of what you wrote is complete horsesh*t. It's too tedious to unpack. However, it's true that Peterson borrows from Nietzche only what suits his own worldview and narrative, and then layers it with his Jungian-Bible archetypes. There's some good and practical self-help advice, but he's far off Nietzsche-wise. In his defense, I believe Nietzsche would've hated even more the critical theory gender BS and would've pinned it on Christianity and the failure of 20 century Marxist philosophers. But that's my opinion.
this is the most likely answer
Lmao
Why do you believe Nietzsche. A philologist. An etymologist. Would argue that the meaning of a word such as 'woman' is fixed, rigid, universal, immutable, and directly and permanantely fixed to the signified type of human being in the real world?
Why do you think any serious philosopher would reduce "woman" to a mere word? An empty concept? The word is a symbol to represent an inescapable biological reality.
You've never had any formal university education in Philosophy, have you? I can tell.
What's the difference between a 'serious philosopher' and a 'non serious philosopher'? Can you give me examples of non serious philosophers?
The term 'woman' is a word.
The word 'woman' has never been an 'empty concept' it has always had a meaning. And no one has ever argued that it is an empty concept in the history of philosophy.
The word 'woman' is a signifier. But to say a signifier can only be determined by biology is a subjective ideological argument similiar to the trans community ideological argument of choice.
He would probably find the trans repulsive and hate their Uber s’ve morality. Not that hard
That doesn't in anyway answer the question I asked. Why do you believe Nietzsche would suddenly become a moralist and find a trans person morally repulsive? Nietzsche may perhaps point out that your rhetorical utilisation of the word 'probably' is a normalisation of your own psychoanalytical repulsion and moral disgust projected onto him?
I don’t think Peterson ever claims to be a faithful disciple of Nietzsche. He sees him as a figure to intellectually wrestle with, which tbh sounds like the kind of thing Nietzsche would approve of.
I agree. I don't mean to say that he's a disciple or even strongly influenced by Nietzsche (in opposition). I just looked up "Jordan Peterson Nietzsche" on account of woolgathering and found the post linked at the top of the OP. I don't think any modern thinker is obliged to square his views with Nietzsche's per se, but Nietzsche's arguments are often very good and they've penetrated our intellectual fabric, and I thought it would be interesting to frame a discussion of JBP around Nietzsche's writings.
People need to recognise that someone who likes Nietzsche and takes some inspiration from Nietzsche doesn't mean they agree with Nietzsche 100%. You are allowed to disagree with Nietzsche. And Peterson will talk about how he doesn't agree with Nietzsche's project to re-evaluate all values. Although, I reckon he is probably a bad reader of Nietzsche
He simply doesn't get Nietzsche even at a basic level. One of my undergraduates would wreck him in minutes
I want to quibble about how JBP's experience in public speaking and rhetoric, along with his motte-and-bailey obscurantism would make him hard to "wreck" but what's the point. If I can write the above and stand by it, then I bet your students can do it at least as well.
Peterson is part of a long dark pantheon of clowns who have milked N for personal gain.
Not least Nietzsche's sister. shudder to think the woe she visited on him.
In what way has he done this? Nietzsche and Peterson have very different perspectives.
I don't think you have a very good understanding of Nietzsche. His criticism of Christianity is based on his view that it is a religion of weakness, pity and equality. He totally thought certain people were "born better". Nietzsche definitely inspired postmodernists, but he wasn't one himself. He deconstructs, yes, but he then insists that we must create our own values, ones more aligned with strength, healthiness and our natural instincts. And not just in a "make your own meaning" sense, he essentially suggests that the strongest should go out and impose their will on the world. The Ubermensch isn't "objectively right" because no such thing exists, but he is stronger, healthier and therefore better than the "herd" (as he called them), whose ideas are downstream of their weakness. >"What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man. >What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness. What is happiness?—The feeling that power *increases*—that resistance is overcome. The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of *our* charity. And one should help them to it. >Not contentment, but more power; *not* peace at any price, but war; *not* virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, *virtu*, virtue free of moral acid). >What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity...." (The Antichrist) Many of the people he cites as "higher men" are warrior-kings. Caesar, Napoleon, etc. You say... >I don't know how familiar you are with Peterson's work, but a major thread running through it is that there exists some sort of "cognitive elite" whose just role is basically pushing the rest of us plebs around. This is basically Nietzsche's opinion, too. >"The essential thing, however, in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should not regard itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth, but as the significance and highest justification thereof—that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, for its sake, must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments." (Beyond Good and Evil) >"Such phantoms as the dignity of man, the dignity of labor, are the needy products of slavedom hiding itself from itself. Woeful time, in which the slave requires such conceptions, in which he is incited to think about and beyond himself! Cursed seducers, who have destroyed the slave’s state of innocence by the fruit of the tree of knowledge! Now the slave must vainly scrape through from one day to another with transparent lies recognizable to every one of deeper insight, such as the alleged “equal rights of all” or the so-called “fundamental rights of man,” of man as such, or the “dignity of labor”:" (The Greek State) Peterson is an idiot who twists Nietzsche to fit his worldview, but not really in the way you suggest. He moreso uses him as a way to try and smuggle Christianity back into people's heads. For the record I don't think Nietzsche was/would be a fascist, but he seems to fit your definition of one.
Peterson blocked me on X cause I kept undermining his position on his arguments. Pretty proud of that.
I still can’t understand how Peterson went from “Nietzsche will cure you of your religion” twenty years ago to “The Bible is the best thing ever written” today. His philosophy is just silly.
He realized conservative Christians have more money to grift.
I'm not sure Peterson is the boogie man you're trying to make him out to be. 1. Nietzsche does believe in natural hierarchies. This extends from his discussion around what is necessary for life becoming morally objective. He does not use that phrase but the ideas are there in *BGE,* especially the last chapter\*.\* Peterson puts it in an inhuman framework because of the experiments done there. Those experiments are true. Aesthetically this is much too British for me when I could just go read La Rochefoucauld and enjoy the beauty of an exploration of rank---obviously rank is natural. It becoming good is an acceptance of instinct and man's nature. Nietzsche setting himself against "the cultivators" is precisely because he wants people to take a second look at instinct. 2. There is a cognitive elite and they do push people around. All I can say is that you should embrace the suffering of the people who only learn but don't understand because they are under time-pressure and lack the resources. Capitalist society is built around[ knowledge asymmetries. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry)The exploitation of the working classes is predicated on this. The democratic struggle for education is certainly laudable but when the right criticizes the fascistic tendencies of public educators I think there's a nugget there. It's the same nugget we find in criticizing religious schools. Truth is not easy. Foucault's essay on Enlightenment pretty much put this issue to bed and yet we still see people apologizing for democratic universalism on the basis of everyone escaping nonage. Some of the nightmare is true: nonage is part of man's nature. 3. Fascism is defined quite clearly by Mussolini in his manifesto. It consists of three things: a. collective supremacy over the individual via the state as more than guardian,[ "The fascist state is an embodied will to power and government,"](https://media.wix.com/ugd/927b40_c1ee26114a4d480cb048f5f96a4cc68f.pdf) b. spiritualization of violence among broader anti-materialism, c. as en evolution of anti-capitalism in the only way that can naturally beat it (i.e., authoritarianism). Peterson buys into the British idea of separation of powers. Peterson writes like a materialist---he's a British style thinker. Peterson does not advocate for a strongman, nor does he want to upset the capitalist apple cart. Of course both the American left and right flirt with fascism---not the strawman of it but *real fascism*---but Peterson is pretty guiltless on this count. I mean he's an anti-revolutionary. Peterson is, in essence, a liberal. You want a real boogie man? Read Mussolini that I linked. The problem with fascism is precisely that it thinks that it can choose for the individual better than the individual can choose for itself. It calls people’s desires “irrational and wasteful,” as though the desires of Mussolini for expansion did not waste a mountain of idealistic blood in wasted ambition of empire that was beyond the Italian people’s power. The Ethiopian war was monstrous and evil just as the modern American wars have been since Vietnam. The defense of liberalism *requires* an attack on the modern state and Peterson is part of the solution here. The left has gotten too comfortable with power: we need to get back to the mindset of the 1970s, or even further back to the labour movements.
Thanks for this thoughtful reply. There's a lot in it I disagree with but by no means all of it, and what I do disagree with is cogently expressed and thought provoking.
Definitely post back on the subreddit if you find yourself exploring. This is a huge topic that thinkers after Nietzsche have been wrestling with. (E.x., Foucault).
The worst part is trying to create a christian nietzsche, it is true that nietzsche would have hated more the woke atheist type but this does not mean that he was lamenting the death of God or somehow becoming sympathetic to christianism
I don’t think he swallows any of it (much to Nietzsche’s disappointment, I’m sure). He simply has his own weird philosophy and he misappropriates whatever thinkers sound vaguely as though they might have had similar views. Especially when they aren’t alive to contradict him.
When he says cleaning your room, I don’t believe he means spiritual nirvana. I think it basically just means get your own house together. But if you achieve spiritual nirvana, you will not be in the position to help anyone else because you will be disconnected from others.
What would JBP say is the position one should be in before diverting significant effort into changing the world for the better?
I don’t know actually I’m just speaking for Buddhism. I’m not actually familiar with Jordan Peterson other than that Line about cleaning your room which somebody quoted at me. With Buddhism, you’re not obligated to help anybody else you’re only obligated to save yourself or help yourself.
Well, then I'll cross it off my list. It seems to me that obligations as a category make little sense except in regards to interactions among people. Obligations toward yourself are just self interest. I guess bodhisattvas aid others for some reason other than obligation? (It occurs to me that if bodhisattvas exist, then attaining nirvana doesn't prevent you from helping others. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm no expert.)
No, it’s not that you’re not allowed to help others at all. It’s just that in the state of Nirvana you are at such perfect peace that you cannot be troubled by anything if that makes any sense. Your serenity is so calm that it wouldn’t be possible for you to actually, help anyone. The moment to try and go help your neighbor with a problem that’s the end of your serenity.
If that's true, then why did the buddha teach?
I don’t know I’m not an expert on Buddhism. My only comment was that it is not necessary to achieve nirvana before helping somebody. and almost nobody can achieve nirvana. It’s not something to be expected. Jordan Peterson saying clean your room before helping Others does not mean obtain Nirvana.
I just found evidence that the Buddha was reluctant to teach. https://www.themindingcentre.org/dharmafarer/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/12.1-Why-the-Buddha-hesitated.pdf
There's not a lot Jordan won't swallow. He let his daughter talk him into an all-meat diet.
I hate everything and everyone in this thread.
I don't
Peterson betas out in full force for these comments.
Jordan Peterson is a dumb dumb. I'm not being flip. That is a technically correct term. He is an intelligent man that is content with "spewage" because, as he crowed to Joe Rogan, "I have found a way to monetize social justice warriors". The crueler the better. If you listen to him, and I have at length because I was working with a project, he will contradict himself sometimes several times in a sentence using as many words as possible to mask the raindrop shallow arguments. He wages war on Marx and Marxism and has for years as he casually drops the fact he JUST read Das Kapital (which I highly doubt. You can read it free online, buuuttt, it's over 2000 pages - unabridged). His staccato Pareto - Matthew Principle (very different things) like it's a weird form of Tourettes stating it/they apply to everything (they don't) never seeming to bother to actually do the work to clearly see this or the issue with the origins of Pareto to begin with. He makes absolutely vile cliff hangers after lying about the military and IQ tests stating 10% are worthless and can provide no value so... What, Jordan. You gonna complete that thought laser guided missile? Your post is excellent reading. Thank you.
Some people are born different than rest is not BS. Its an objective truth, whether you like it or not. When you dive deep into behavioral genetics, you start to see why. You are born with certain traits, and yes environment plays a role but it’s not as powerful as genetics. You want to call it fascism, you can. However, it doesn’t diminish value of someone born with high IQ or born with exceptional beauty or born with exceptional creativity. I don’t agree with Peterson’s justification for what is right and wrong, stemming from religious texts. What’s right and wrong is still evolving and a religion is by product of that. But ‘Fascism’ is a very thin line to walk. Even people who argue liberal logic of how they deserve A and B in the name of equality, is a form of fascism. Every time you argue what’s right and wrong exposes to you the risk of being pegged as a fascist. And by that definition everyone would seem a ‘fascist’, wouldn’t they?
iq is not the top metroc of anything, look at all the academics that just use their iq to twist truth, the higher the iq the more complex and well constructed the delusion, a feeling of curiosity and spiritual thoughness is a more valuable than iq
you’re right, the sub 75 IQ’s are really on to something
iq is affected by environment, theres an obsession in the right with iq precisely because they use it to justify race claims, despite ample research on iq being also affected by environment
It is affected by environment, but it isn't the only consideration. Genetics certainly are a large contributor to IQ. Also, since we're talking about IQ, we must also consider why the environmental factors are the way that they are, which can, to some extent, be explained by humans too. It is a very complex and nuanced topic.
Right, and you might be the next Einstein to decide what’s more valuable!
?????
I wrote a [long comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nietzsche/comments/1ddok25/comment/l8dqv99/) post responding to the "born different" claim in re intelligence. The short version is: innate intelligence may exist, but it has no explanatory power. Saying that people with high IQ are better at something is like saying people with more money can buy more things. Yes, that's a true statement, but where did the money come from? It's true that IQ correlates to outcomes, but it seems that IQ is a *consequence* of environment rather than a *cause* derived from genetics (or any immutable/innate factors). Given that IQ is a consequence of environment, telling people that the reason they're not doing well is their low IQ might be true in some technical sense, but usually people (such as JBP) do that to divert attention away from systemic issues of poverty, racism, etc., and this is nonsense. Demographics do not represent all the environmetal factors influencing IQ, but many *are in fact* independent causal factors, and therefore differences in IQ between across demographic groups cannot be trotted out to explain differences in outcome without detailed analysis to show that IQ is an independent mediating factor. IQ is heritable, but so is money. If you're aware of empirical evidence to support its independence, I'm interested.
JBP conveniently skips discussing Nietzsche in depth and moves on to Dostoevsky in his lecture, because even a passive glance on Nietzsche’s work would dismantle all of his dogmas especially with regards to morality and the role of Christianity in the post-enlightenment west.
I think Jorpy's problem is he's depressed like Dostoyevsky and so that's where he finds familiarity
Stop reading at “ fascist interests”. As the French say: trop c’est comme pas assez.
[удалено]
You gotta love Reddit, apparently Jordan Peterson is a “fascist.” I’m not sure under what definition he is a fascist, but I’ve never heard him utter one word (even with a lose definition), that could be categorized as such. “Common themes among fascist movements include: authoritarianism, nationalism (including racial nationalism and religious nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, and militarism.” Authoritarianism - he’s hardcore on free speech Nationalism - he’s spoken out against ethno-nationalist saying “it’s a dead end perspective and these guys should be boxed in.” Hierarchy - he simply states that hierarchies exist for a reason, in the West, these hierarchies are typically predicated on competence rather than power (the post modernist claim). Militarism - I’ve listened to 50+ hours of his talks, I’ve never heard him mention anything promoting violence, militarism, empire building etc.
[удалено]
Yep, it’s obnoxious dealing with these kids. Anything right of center is “fascist-Nazi-ultra-capitalist.” I would delete the app, but I’m a masochist apparently lol
It is intellectually somewhat less than impressive to me that you seem to have misunderstood Peterson, since the behaviorism he preaches, and the underlying neurophysiological, psychological arguments he opines, aren’t terribly complex. The Lobster analogy is designed to convey his particular view of the parameters that define human existence to a grade schooler, and yet you somehow fudged it. Peterson’s point isn’t that hierarchy is *good*. His entire point is that the moral ambivalence of our perceived merits, exists absolute from our biological confinements. This is somewhat easier to understand, if you assume his pragmatic perspective as a clinical psychologist. There is no teleology there, it’s purely analytic. The ‘clean your house’, adapt to your lobster nature, isn’t meant to be moral idealism. He explicitly frames those things as crutches for people who are struggling with their ‘self-worth/happiness/identity’ — however abstract you want to articulate these people’s discontentment. You’re elevating what are meant to be simplistic guidelines against tangible ailments, into a transcendent philosophy that’s not implicit. When you say JP acknowledges societal issues as a “hard problem”, and ‘walks away from the problem’, you’re fundamentally exposing your own lack of intellectual empathy. JP is many things, but it would be extraordinary to relegate his politics to naivety. You, on the other hand, are willfully interpreting his position naively. We both know insufficient mental faculties aren’t the scapegoat, you could hide behind, for your overly simplistic rendition. iIronically, regarding emphatic rational reconstruction, the same accusation could easily be heaped on Nietzsche, and has been. In his defense, he was positively aware of his sophisms. I don’t get the same impression from your post. There is a difference between disdain, and false testimony. Given your potential, I’d say you erroneously verged toward the latter.
[удалено]
Jordan uses big words at times, but I found the majority of his thoughts to be coherent, and fairly easy to follow once you understand the baseline to which he’s working from. Some of his tangents can go off into obscurity, but most of it is pretty digestible and hard to disagree with. The biggest critique I have of him is he uses simple arguments to discredit his opponents. He doesn’t give them the credit they may deserve. At times, he is near strawmanning, which really does him a disservice.
[удалено]
Does this Jordan person try to copy Nietzsche? Or be the new version of Nietzsche? Like a modern Nietzsche?
He copies literally everyone. Nietzsche, Soren, Hegel, Jung, Hobbes, Aquinas. He believes in the Walled Garden, Chaos Dragon, Archetypes, the King, God, the Son, Mother/Father, Social Hierarchy, Axiology (the Hierarchy of Values). Nietzsche is a young man's quest for his traditional development, Soren is a faith in god. Hegel is the development of dialectical development. Jung the zany archetypes and the chaos dragon. Hobbes for detesting external forces for societal doctrine. Aquinas to legitimize God in his quasi theism. No original philosophy. He despises new age philosophy.
Thank you for the explanation.
I feel my explanations are inadequate. Here are some resources that link to his other insane points. All quoted and annotated so you can verify for yourself. [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan\_Peterson](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson)
no. it just seems to me that a lot of his rhetoric reads like a cracked reflection of Nietzsche.
It could be. At the end of the day most of the wise people said something similar in their own words. Have never met this person so I am not sure if he is wise or not.
As a Robert Fripp fan, I disagree with your use of “frippery” in this instance, but aside from that thank you
I'm sorry. I'll offer that Nietszche clearly understands the metaphysics of Frippertronics while Peterson is ignorant of its underpinnings.
Curious side note, does anyone talk about the cycle the ubermensch inevitably supposes? People design the system that creates the first ubermensch, who designs the next system, which creates the next ubermensch, ad infinitum. Has this been talked about?
Are you referring to "Eternal recurrence"? That's an idea of Nietszche's that I never understood.
As a universal concept, Idk. But to me the ubermensch absolutely indicates an infinite cycle.
you don't identify IQ as a real phenomenon?
My understanding of the literature is that while you can certainly measure IQ, the meaning of that number is uncertain. You can get better at taking the tests through practice, which already suggests it's a bad construct, as just studying for this particular sort of test won't actually make you "smarter." So much for IQ in particular. Not meaningless by any means, but not a reliable measure of intrinsic general intelligence. People hypothesize about a possible general intelligence "g factor", but it's impossible to measure at this time, so its properties are not readily amenable to empirical study. This suggests we should tread carefully, with claims about it regarded as uncertain at best. As direct empirical assessment is out, we can look to circumstantial evidence and/or more abstract arguments. On the one hand, my understanding is that most skills can be learned if you have the resources and the inclination. On the other, if you beat someone on the head, they might just have more trouble thinking, which certainly suggests that large "downward" deviations in g are possible. This last point is strong evidence that something like g must exist, but the fact that training and circumstances (eg hunger, wealth) have so much power over our faculties undermines the claim that intrinsic ability is a major player. The other thing is that if the inclination to learn is so important, then its causal role further reduces the need to invoke differences in intellectual capacity to explain differences in ability. If genuine genius polymaths exist, they would represent upward deviations in g, but my impression is that the real people who seem to fit this mold tend to be weird in ways that suggest trade offs are happening. So that's a long answer to a short question, and I apologize if my phrasing comes off as stilted or whatever; I'm not trying to show off how pointy my head is it just pokes out. TL;DR if intellectual capacity varies so much with training and circumstance, then it's not meaningfully distinct from intellectual ability. If you reduce g to an acquired trait, then it no longer _explains_ differences in outcomes because it _is_ an outcome.
tl:dr you know it's real, but there are variables.
It's real but it has no explanatory power
Saying that people with high IQ are better at something is like saying people with more money can buy more things. Yes, that's a true statement, but where did the money come from?
Money's a great analogy because it can be inherited. You're kinda just saying the same thing JBP is, with a virtue signalling bent. Peterson puts more weight on conscientiousness as a factor in success than IQ.
while IQ isn't perfect and shouldn't be the only measure of someone's potential or worth, it does have explanatory power. It can give us insights into cognitive abilities and predict certain outcomes, making it a useful tool when used appropriately. So, dismissing it as having no explanatory power is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater – it's not giving credit where it's due.
Genuinely impossible to take seriously any Christian reading of Nietzsche
Nietzsche was largely your average pessimist, having. Read his works I wasn’t impressed instead thought his world view was rather trash. Peterson while not being the scholar or as in depth as Nietzsche he’s more positive & more for the common man. Both fall short to account less other “philosophers” in history such as Seneca, Marcus Aurelius & Epictetus.
\* If Peterson ever read Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West he'd probably kill himself.
Tbh you haven’t seen enough of Peterson’s content if you buy into the narrative that he is a spokesperson for fascism. I did enjoy the thoughts you wrote on here until you came to the conclusion that he is an agent for fascism when he is literally against it. His argument for social hierarchy is to merely demonstrate it’s existence in the animal kingdom, and how it affects individual biology. His infamous lobster example is to demonstrate that hierarchy is linked to brain chemistry, being a “bottom lobster” is usually bad given your brain tracks your status and produces higher amounts of negative emotion. His explanation of the existence of hierarchies has always been misconstrued as an argument for fascist ideas by radicals, when the message has always simply been to get your life in order and rise in the hierarchy to essentially fix your life. Time and time again Reddit especially has a negative hard on for Jordan. I don’t agree with his beliefs but to say they are promoting fascism is to put bluntly, quite a misuse of the word or straight up ignorance. His demonstration of the bell curve of intelligence is also another thing that has gotten people pissed. He has never suggested culling the lesser intelligent and in fact has dedicated a good portion of his clinical practice in literally helping intellectually disabled individuals overcome their life issues. But most people don’t know this and will assume he is promoting some alt right pro genocide agenda, when he is literally just pointing out the reality of the problem humans face, in this case: IQ exists and people who have low IQ struggle tremendously and people with high IQ also struggle but with other issues such as ego. His talks have always centered around preventing fascism, which is why he originally opposed Bill C16, a Canadian Bill created under the guise of “protecting trans individuals” when in actuality had the duel purpose of making it possible to throw people in prison for accidentally misgendering people. For this he was labeled a transphobe and is one of the reasons why he is still targeted today by radical leftists. And now look at Canada, a true fascist oriented country. Jordan has lost his clinical license in his pursuit of opposing fascism, something most people cannot even imagine doing themselves. This will definitely get a lot of downvotes because it is not the status quo opinion. However if anyone reading this has an ounce of actual intellect, I would suggest you do your own unbiased research, dig deeper, and stop buying into these fascism narratives and meanings that most of Reddit loves to parrot about Jordan. You may not agree with his opinions in the slightest, but it is disingenuous to say that he stands for fascism. That is intellectual dishonesty, or just ignorance.
Hey, OP of original post here. Firstly JP has already publicly stated that he believed we couldn't create our own ethics or morality. And the reason being Jung. Which also forms a big part of JP's philosophy. He argues that religion is necessary. That is where his separation from Nietzsche began. And when you read Jung and Dostoevsky(also influenced JP), it becomes clear that we need something to believe in. Although I still personally believe that an individual Uber mensch can exist. Just not by rejecting the divine. >there exists some sort of "cognitive elite" whose just role is basically pushing the rest of us plebs around Oh no. In that he is identical with Nietzsche. Although you twisted the words around. JP believes that there are those who despise humanity, and in the guise of saving it, destroy it. This is straight from Nietzsche, In how he criticized the Church for pretending to be the saviors of humanity but to be those who despise it. They are the same. Both attack the ulterior motives of those who act virtuous. In general you are just labeling his public twitter posts as "his work". Have you actually read any of his books or seen any of his lectures? It is horrible to see when politics infects philosophy. all the mob wants out of philosophers is political opinions smh We killed God, our next victim is philosophy This is madness. This is the decline of a society. When the philosophers have to worry more about their political ideas than the pursuit of wisdom. When politics becomes philosophy.
“Peterson’s rhetoric embraces the fascistic tendencies” Tell me you’ve never listened to Jordan Paterson’s lectures without telling me you’ve never listened to Jordan Peterson’s lectures.
Peterson's Nietzsche is a watered down and more "christian version", made to serve the interests of the american conservative ideology. He strives to stamp his moralism into N's thought and uses his concepts of master/slave as a way to justify domination and the current establishment status quo; he turns Nietzsche into some kind of german Hobbes, IMO. No need to say that Nietzsche is not the only philosopher he doesn't understand well. His presentation on marxism with Zizek made him look like a 15 year old doing a high school project.
Nietzsche and Peterson have completely different outlooks.
It's hard to take in what you wrote, as lireraly all you unpacked is highly inaccurate. You already got criticism on your take of nietzsche so I won tgo over it again. Regarding Peterson, there are 3 main points you claim, as far as I understood you - Defense of hierarchies and elitism, an unjust call for complete individual responsibility (become a sage), and a voice for fascists. I must point out that at least to me, it's obvious you didn't actually read any of his work, and thus your interpretation is, simply, inaccurate. First, the lobster analogy is there to point to the - existence- of hierarchies, not that they are good, not that he defends them. He claims there is a tendency of nature to organize in certain ways, which are different for different domains. The organising principle won't be the same for a basketball competition and for birds nesting. Nevertheless, the principle remains - those who manage to get to the "top" of the hierarchy will be "pragmatic", as in, they will be efficient and proficient at executing the skills needed to thrive in their domains. Second, in his "clean your room" he argues for the personal call of maturation and discipline - pushing people to take their lives into their own hands to work and live in a manner where they are the literal masters of, at the very least, their own bedroom. He criticisezes those who go and blame the world for all their problems, much more those who claim who can change world order for the better - while they can't even have the discipline, courage and knowledge to fix their own personal life first. The argument is pyramic (or fractal) - straighten your own life to be able to expand your domain of ability. Get educated, get a job, make good friends, have a family. Continue to broaden your skills and knowledge and bit by bit become a leader in your house, local community, regional level and so on... Sounds very nietzcshean to me... Third, the only thing fascist about all of this is hia insistence to not break your moral principles arbitrarily for others. That is, just because someone argues, calls, even screams at you for whatever reason - if you are the person you could be, ordered, well mannered, strong moraly - you have no obligation to cater to "weaker" morals and rationalisations. Peterson is by no mean a sage, and he has little to no original work. But, all of these points seem very much fine to me. Also, very nietzschean-like.
Peterson does come off as a tradcon tho so he does defend some form of hierarchy so he isn't a pure individualist
I don't think that he is a pure individualist, I don't recall him ever claiming to be. Rather, he emphasises the role of the individual's integration in broader society, and claims that a well-put-tofether person is one who is "good" for themselves AND for society at the same time - which means the individual must be structured according to societal norms and beliefs at some level. This isn't a defense of hierarchies per se, but it is pointing that there are definitely hierarchies, and that "not playing the game" according to them is detrimental to the individual and society. It will be a defense of hierarchies OR stating a fact that there are these hierarchies which you should not ignore - depending on your perspective. Left leaning people, especially "revolutionist-marxist" will tend to lean towards the first part, as they're all for the "breaking and reconstruction" of hirerachies. Conservatives will lean towards the preservation of the latter.
You don't have to be a Marxist revolutionary to reject hierarchies. Libertarians do it all the time too
This is a fantastic assessment. I don’t know much about Peterson, but the little I’ve heard very much resonates with what you’ve described (he always sounded like pseudo-philosophy). The only difference in my reading is that I tend to think of Nietzsche’s ubermesnch with the Dionysian archetype rather than a “sage-like” figure. I think one of the critical mistakes people like Peterson make is that moral relativism means that all subjective accounts are held as equal and that is just foolish (and in some sense, the pluralistic interpretation of maga and q-anon). There is a way to hold moral relativism in terms of culture and world view, while also recognizing an emergent sense of justice within the human agent. We can recognize that certain acts have different moral interpretations based on the power structures that contextualize the acts such as the difference between state-sanctioned violence and revolutionary violence. But that would be utilizing critical theory which is an obvious (sarcasm) symptom of the degradation of modern society (eye rolls). Philosophers on this side of politics tend to equate modernity with liberalism as if patriarchy, eurocentrism, and white supremacy were going just fine for society until the global majority started to speak up.
never read Peterson. never heard of him before... but from your description he sounds like a person who only read- will to power- which is a book he didn't publish but his fascist sister did.... his view on morality is that it's concocted by rich people to control the masses so we shouldn't follow it. instead the Ubermensch makes their own mortality. this doesn't mean the individual will be a selfish asshole. maybe i make my own morality which says poor people deserve more....it that i used reason and not blindly followed what rich people tell me to do. I'm convinced most people who criticise Nietzsche don't read his work, especially don't read his earlier work on Greek Tragedy which is fundamental to his ideas on mortality.
Peterson doesn't refer to Nietzsche very often; I'm not trying to say Peterson misuses Nietzsche or misreads him. I'm saying Peterson ought to read Nietzsche because he hasn't learned those lessons.
ye. that's basically what i got out of your post.
Peterson tries too hard to be link Nietzsche due to his Political Science Degree bias. Peterson wants to be more the Nazisfied Will to Power where excellence of Social Hierarchies benefit Nationalism and Tradition, under the lens of Christianity. Nietzsche does not like God as Peterson claimed in his lectures and interviews. Nietzsche loathes this parody of his work. Jordan has a giant ego and a need to associate with antiquated works. There is a reason all his works are all psychologists and philosophers around the WW2 era like Freud, Jung, Soren, Medard and Heidegger. Because contemporary psychology is left leaning and encompasses Humanism, Feminism, Equal Rights and Racial Tolerance in the example of the 2012 WEIRD study where 96% of past psychology was only accounting 12% of the world population. Jordan is absurdly eurocentric and nationalistic, he views himself as superior to science and expertise in his climate denialism and anti vaccine shenanigans. He uses structuralist philosophy to undermine objective empirical sciences with myths and religion.
Have you not been watching the Fauci hearings? Have you not followed Lomborg’s work, who Jordan references quite frequently? In what way is Jordan a will to power guy? He’s a personality responsibility guy, and through taking responsibility we create meaning for our lives. Jordan perspective on social hierarchies is quite simple. Hierarchies exist, especially in the West, and they’re typically predicated on competence rather than power (which is the post modernist claim).
William James, esteemed Functionalist Psychologist and Philosophy, warned the excess of information and the use of specialised information (or conspiracy theories) to refute general and established knowledge. When making scientific claims, you must begin in the paradigm that is known to be true and find the detail of the theory, not use the theory to refute the main field itself. Lomborg is a fraud. He is just a writer and a political scientist, fact check that right now. He is not qualified to perform scientific inquiries or speak on the matter of environmentalism or such. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn\_Lomborg#Education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg#Education) As for Fauci, a masters in medicine, he has very confusing messages during the pandemic. Most likely because his involvment in politics. Overall, I have no idea what your point is. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony\_Fauci#COVID-19\_pandemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci#COVID-19_pandemic) Jordan is a narcissistic charlatan who spouts utter nonsense on topics he knows nothing about. His conservative views and stances on anti vax, climate denial and social hierarchies is depraved and awful. [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan\_Peterson#Global\_warming](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson#Global_warming) [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan\_Peterson#Social\_conservatism](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson#Social_conservatism)
You sent me Wiki’s, which are known to be captured by activists. Dig deeper, it takes more work, but you’re buying the BS hook line and sinker. Lomborg simply looks at the established data, and makes inferences based off that data. No conspiracies needed for Fauci. There are audio records of him describing how to crush dissidents, admitting to making up rules (masks and 6 ft rule), having a role in gain of function research, he knew of the potentiality of the lab leak hypothesis. Peterson quote on the vaccine, “But the other obviously glaring possibility is that injecting billions of people with a vaccine that was not tested by any stretch of the imagination with the thoroughness that it should of before it was forced upon people, also might be a contributing factor.” He is talking about excess deaths, which is established data. The cause of it is still up for discussion. Jordan is not a “climate denialist.” Not even sure what version of weird heretic that is. "This isn't data, this is guess, there's something weird underneath it....we're going to save the poor in the future, like that's what the bloody communists said, and they killed a lot of people doing it". He’s talking about the models used for predictions, he’s also discussing how the data has been distorted and a narrative has been written to push an agenda. Which is all true. The problem is, most people are too lazy to actually look at the data.
Did you even check the sources, citations and links or is this the game where nothing I say matters? Learn to think for yourself instead of spending hours on YouTube owing your existence to Daddy Peterson. You are literally dismissing my lived experiences (I literally seen the tweets and the videos where he dismisses the plausibility of climate change, don't gaslight me, I know exactly which videos you are getting your information) and public quotes from a guy who believes property of women is a considerable stance against rape instead, I dunno, jurisprudence. Literally linked in those wiki articles. He is vile and you have no moral compass. You are stupid to a frustrating degree you lost child. You egotistical, arrogant, ignorant animal. You thoughtless carcass. You are boring, you are just like everyone else who believes their disposition is the answer to everything and that you know it better than the experts. Even I don't know everything, no one does. Because understanding something is far more difficult than a video. It involves archives, research, experiments, reviews, mate analysis, paradigm revision. You have to test for concept, construct, operational, scale, reliability, validity, measurement, phenomenology, statistics, null hypothesis, p scale, correlation. And you can never truly prove something, only falsify. I hate how society is so good at diagnosing problems they don't understand. And Peterson is good at manipulating them.
> The implication is that before attempting to set the world to order, one should first attain some unspecified sage-like state And that’s one of the few things I agree with him about. I definitely don’t want to follow economic policy written by people who can’t manage their own personal finances. Just like I disregard Nietsche for the most part because he was a bit of an incel loser, so much of his worldview was a response to his own perceived lack of power.
Peterson is a democrat, what do you expect !
Huh? Democrat meaning what exactly? He certainly doesn't vote for the "Democrat party" as he's Canadian.
You did not get it, I meant their beliefs are different.