A Critique of Jordan Peterson

“Why does Peterson get this so wrong? He simply doesn’t care to present a more complex narrative that would problematize his cute and hyperbolic story about the left.”

Since his 2016 statements in opposition to Canada’s Bill C-16, Jordan Peterson has rocketed to international fame and infamy. On the right, he has been the subject of laudatory and even hagiographic praise in the pages of the National Post and the National Review. Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire has published a string of articles praising Peterson and dismissing his critics for publishing “dishonest, malicious crap” about him. All this furor led The New York Times to christen Peterson as the most “influential public intellectual in the world.”

On the left, criticism has been equally scathing. Tabatha Southey of Macleans characterized Peterson as “the stupid man’s smart person.” The same The New York Times that acknowledged his influence called Peterson the “custodian of patriarchy.” The prestigious New York Review of Books ran an article by Pankaj Mishra discussing the eerie proximity of many of Peterson’s opinions to those of fascists and right–wing mystics. And so on.

Maps of Meaning and Twelve Rules for Life

I find many of these often hyperbolic observations, both laudatory and damning, to be disproportionate to the actual content of Peterson’s academic work and lectures. Overall, he is a reasonably good academic when he writes and speaks about subjects he’s familiar with. I think one’s tolerance for his actual arguments depends a great deal on one’s acceptance of the primarily Jungian theoretical framework he relies on. Peterson is concerned to show that the archetypal images and narratives which emerge from our unconscious mythological, literary, and religious heritage contain psychological wisdom and clues into how human beings establish meaning in our lives. I’ve always found Jung quite interesting, if occasionally grandiose, so I appreciate some of what Peterson says.