Is Jordan Peterson a post-modernist?

Is Jordan Peterson a post-modernist?
He states that he acts as if God exists, arguing that identifying the religious sentiment as a mere made-up narrative is perfectly reasonable, and that in fact one should choose this path in pragmatical manner, for this lifestyle is apparently beneficial for most human beings.

Now, although his prescriptive statements are conservative, his epistemological framework is both nihilist and postmodernist. Not only Peterson is aware of what narratives actually are, but he also factors in phisiological factors such mental health, how balanced lifestyle actually is and so on. This is an extremely cynic and nihilist viewpoint on discourse and humanity at large, which overcoming is still motivated by inherently egoistic reasons, based on benefits and life improvements.

So... is he actually a postmodernist?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=1V4FLUOlMks
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

>Now, although his prescriptive statements are conservative, his epistemological framework is both nihilist and postmodernist. Not only Peterson is aware of what narratives actually are, but he also factors in phisiological factors such mental health, how balanced lifestyle actually is and so on. This is an extremely cynic and nihilist viewpoint on discourse and humanity at large, which overcoming is still motivated by inherently egoistic reasons, based on benefits and life improvements.

This is literally incoherent. I actually can't even tell what you're trying to say and you appear to have put minimal effort into crafting your post.

You obsess over this man. However, you are also a man. So... are you actually a faggot?

He's just not prepared to throw out the Bible like many scholars are today. He simply thinks it's worth reading and analyzing because, with something that's been edited for so long, it can't all be wrong. If it makes him post modernist to admit that it's reasonable to question the existence of god, then we're probably all post modernists.

I've checked, there's nothing wrong with it. What are you not understanding?

You checked what?

Read Jung.

It's my first post about him, I usually filter his threads out.

>He's just not prepared to throw out the Bible like many scholars are today. He simply thinks it's worth reading and analyzing because, with something that's been edited for so long, it can't all be wrong.
This has nothing to do with what I've said: my point is that this choice is rooted in the research for well-being. At all moments Peterson is fully aware that religion is merely a narrative, and that he is not choosing to believe in God out of sheer faith, instead he does it for necessity (he is very explicit about how intimately linked is his mental health with his religiosity).
And, as I've said earlier, not only he is aware of the volatility of narratives (and he reduces everything to narratives), but he is also very conscious of what are the mental processes that go into the creation of an idea, and how these mental process can be influenced by behaviours and routines. In this sense he is basically a complete materialist.

I've checked on the passage you've quoted. I don't think it is incoherent, chances are that you are simply not familiar with the concepts I'm referring to.

>At all moments Peterson is fully aware that religion is merely a narrative
Not correct. Peterson would argue that there may be nothing more true than religion and that you dispense with that idea at your peril.

Either you should read some evopsych or as said earlier dive deep into Jungian archetype because your conceptualization of him is a complete strawman.

>I've checked on the passage you've quoted. I don't think it is incoherent, chances are that you are simply not familiar with the concepts I'm referring to.

I'm extremely well-read and familiar with virtually everything.
What you wrote is so garbled that I'm refraining from commenting on it because like I said it's virtually incoherent.
What's going to happen in this thread is you're going to get a bunch of eager-to-signal 20-year-olds who will see a few meme words you used in your opening and play off them without actually addressing you nor each other.

I'm convinced of the other way around: you're not really understanding what are his epistemological foundations (God), and out of which reasons and istincts he reaches it.
For example
>Peterson would argue that there may be nothing more true than religion
Would be better phrased as
>Peterson would argue that religion is necessary to reach truth
In this case religion becomes a tool which influences the mind and the body of the host, actively (and as I've said earlier, Peterson always factors psychological and phisiological effects when he does philosophy).
Also you're advice (reading Jung and evopsych) does not fit, since this literature only concerns the superficial aspects of Peterson philosophy (the prescriptive ones). Since we're talking about JP's epistemology, you should have mentioned Nietzsche.

>I'm extremely well-read and familiar with virtually everything.
Not him but God, you're pathetic.

>I'm extremely well-read and familiar with virtually everything.

And that's how you don't understand Peterson because he always rely on Jung to deal with the problems described by Nietzsche.

Jordan Peterson couldn't define post-modernism if you gave him all the ad revenue from every small nazi youtube channel which calls him the messiah. He's not post-modernist. He's another Milo Y shill.

That's what Jung is though, he too believes psychology is the only thing that exists in the world.

The "edited Bible" is a myth. There is no ancient text that is more reliable than the New Testament. We have over 20,000 New Testament manuscripts from before the printing press. And there was no central authority dictating the transmission. There are no variants that affect doctrine. Almost all variants are due to word order (Greek being far more flexible than English), lack of spelling standards (no dictionaries) and scribal errors. There is no reason to read the New Testament and doubt that it is a reliable representation of what the original authors wrote. Unless you want to apply that same doubt to every other Greco-Roman author tenfold.

>plebs get mad at factual statements because of their own insecurity and resentment

Maybe you should have spent your time productively instead of insulting people online.

Yeah, I've said that
>Also you're advice (reading Jung and evopsych) does not fit, since this literature only concerns the superficial aspects of Peterson philosophy (the prescriptive ones).
The point is that Nietzsche's skepticism, his starting point, is the same skepticism that Peterson adopts before looking for a solution. Once you strip Peterson of his beliefs, which, just like Nietzsche did, he is willing to consider arbitrary (without ever denying their great benefits on the human psyche and body), this is what remains: an essentially nihilist, relativist, materialist man. This is the basis of his philosophy, everything else is just superficial, for he could have just chosen another path towards well-being other than religion, yet, even if this happened, the epistemological framework from which he started would remain the same.

You must admit that that is a ridicolous sentence, and that you deserve to be mocked for it.

Wait. Someone who is willing to accept on faith what will happen as the best outcome as long as you speak the Truth as clearly as possible (i.e. the Logos) is "an essentially nihilist, relativist, materialist man."?

Peterson's highest value is "speak the Truth" then "pay attention". I don't see how that is nihilistic, relativistic or materialistic.

Is he right when he says that basically all of psychology is based around the IQ? And that denying the value of IQ is denying psychology?

Speaking the truth is a necessity, he costantly talks about how lying turns you either in a disfunctional mess or downright crazy.
And even then, Peterson never said that there is a thing sich as Truth (with a capital t), rather he thinks that one can avoid saying what they know to be false, but when it comes to the actual search for truth, it's all guessing in Peterson's opinion, in fact most of the times he will value ideas on the basis of their actual consequences, rather than the structure of the idea itself (this is one of his main points against Marxism).
Paying attention is obviously a very pragmatic advice, motivated by the fact that this is the most effective way to absorb new informations and points of views.

>he mad

Keep hatin brah cuz I'm lovin it.
youtube.com/watch?v=1V4FLUOlMks

He said that IQ is most validated psychometric we have. We have one hundred years of scientific literature on that.

And he said multiple times that you need to accept "speaking the Truth" on faith (in the Kierkegaardian term) because you can't prove it.
So if your point is that Peterson rejects metaphysics, yes mostly. Although he opens the door for psychedelics, consciousness, dreams, archetypes and religious stories.
If you're point is that Peterson rejects that there are no ultimate value, no. There is no highest value than Truth because it is as close to Reality as possible. Now maybe you want to define that using postmodern terms, but that's stretching the framework so hard that you might rather get rid of it and say that he is an orthodox Christian that refuses to be called so.

>And he said multiple times that you need to accept "speaking the Truth" on faith (in the Kierkegaardian term) because you can't prove it.
So if your point is that Peterson rejects metaphysics, yes mostly. Although he opens the door for psychedelics, consciousness, dreams, archetypes and religious stories.
Which he also deal in the context of psychology, a very pragmatic one, but yeah, I think we're now on the same wave.

>If you're point is that Peterson rejects that there are no ultimate value, no. There is no highest value than Truth because it is as close to Reality as possible. Now maybe you want to define that using postmodern terms, but that's stretching the framework so hard that you might rather get rid of it and say that he is an orthodox Christian that refuses to be called so.

if he rejects metaphysics, them he rejects also ultimate values, or at the very least the possibility for humans to a) prove their existence and b) reach them. Then again, as I've said earlier there should be a difference between the descriptive Peterson (the psychologist, the cynic, the materialist) and the prescriptive Peterson (virtuos, striving for meaning, deeply religious, empathetic): in his descriptive philosophy there is no place for ultimate values, in his prescriptive one instead ultimate values are the only goal (the distinction is necessary because his prescriptive philosophy is, self-admittedtly, and arbitrary consequence, based on his intuition, of his descriptive philosophy, which requires to be overcome in order to avoid existential paralysis).

I would be careful of trying to pigeonhole Peterson because he doesn't have stable philosophical views and is not a philosopher. He does, however, fall on the existentialist and pragmatist side of things.

Also, he's not really an egoist, although he espouses a sort of enlightened self-interest view based on Jung's idea that your mind isn't really confined to your body insofar as you are highly connected to what's around you.

I'm not talking about egotism in a naive way, I'm fulky aware that it can be perfectly compatible with altruism and genuine care for one's own society (if not humanity at large).
I framed it as an egoist choice because not doing so would be damaging for Peterson himself and his mental health. To him living a mediocre life filled with lies is pure torment. He is very explicit about it, so much that many of the advices he gives to his audiences focus exactly on this point.

#
>I'm extremely well-read and familiar with virtually everything.

Define postmodernism or provide a good reference on it please. Of all the "postmodernist" writers I've failed to get through any of their shit at any significant length because they're all boring as fuck to me. It always comes across as saying a lot of nothing or just rehashing, in an extremely stupid and shallow way, very tiny fractions of what Nietzsche said.

If we were to rephrase this in a way I'm more apt to follow, I'd rather just go back to Nietzsche. In the Antichrist:

>At the bottom of Christianity there are several subtleties that belong to the Orient. In the first place, it knows that it is of very little consequence whether a thing be true or not, so long as it is believed to be true. Truth and faith: here we have two wholly distinct worlds of ideas, almost two diametrically opposite worlds—the road to the one and the road to the other lie miles apart. To understand that fact thoroughly—this is almost enough, in the Orient, to make one a sage. The Brahmins knew it, Plato knew it, every student of the esoteric knows it. When, for example, a man gets any pleasure out of the notion that he has been saved from sin, it is not necessary for him to be actually sinful, but merely to feel sinful. But when faith is thus exalted above everything else, it necessarily follows that reason, knowledge and patient inquiry have to be discredited: the road to the truth becomes a forbidden road.—Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be.

Here we have what I think is somewhat related to what you're criticizing in Peterson. You are calling him a nihilist because he treats the Bible as myth, or a set of human-made symbols and allegories to be understood spiritually in relation to its time and to the human (which Peterson does indeed fit rigidly into the box of "psychology" at times) rather than as an account of historical events. If you think that's nihilism, fine, can't really argue with you on that. We have one of the greatest philosophers in all of history (Nietzsche) who more or less approached it in the same manner (in a deeper manner of course, since he was more than just a psychologist, he was a philosopher) and with more than sufficient reason to think so. Christians stay blind to everything that came before the Bible, and that is why they see it as a historical account. Do any amount of study of the Greeks or of pagan thought in general, any at all, and you will pretty fucking quickly see how interpreting the Bible as a historical account is not only silly but devaluing. Yes, devaluing! As far as modern thinkers are concerned (Nietzsche and his descendants), people who are more adeptly aware of pagan thought and its significance, interpreting ancient texts as historical is a reduction of their profundity, not an enhancement. You ignore its spiritual roots and literary influences when you interpret it in that sense.

Your post has nothing to do with what I've written, and considers only the prescriptive aspects of Nietzsche and Peterson, which were not the factors analyzed in this thread.
Read the other posts to get a better picture of the debate.

>has nothing to do with what I've written
You wrote:

>Is Jordan Peterson a post-modernist?
Which I asked you to define.

>Not only Peterson is aware of what narratives actually are, but he also factors in phisiological factors such mental health, how balanced lifestyle actually is and so on. This is an extremely cynic and nihilist viewpoint on discourse and humanity at large
Which I addressed albeit somewhat loosely by talking about the philosophy and mythology that Peterson discusses often, which is all highly embedded in the pagan understanding of the blurred line between appearance and reality and the life affirming quality of this notion. Life affirming, not nihilistic. I am pointing out that what you are saying is not a fact and not even where Peterson is coming from, he is better educated than that, or so it seems to me considering he uses stories as a means to put forward his maxims (which expresses his belief that stories are a valid lens of understanding the world in).

You also wrote:
>which overcoming is still motivated by inherently egoistic reasons, based on benefits and life improvements.
which demonstrates how much you've actually read of Nietzsche and of pagan thought. In that world, egoism is natural and fundamental to all thought. Everything we do is egoistic. Which begs the question of how qualified you are of judging Peterson at all.

>Which I asked you to define.

Since we're talkimg about Jordan Peterson, I'm using his definition.

>Which I addressed albeit somewhat loosely by talking about the philosophy and mythology that Peterson discusses often, which is all highly embedded in the pagan understanding of the blurred line between appearance and reality and the life affirming quality of this notion.
There you go with his prescriptive philosophy. Since we are talking about epistemology, what matters is how he arrives at these conclusions, and how he choses them. The fact that he chose this conclusion instead of a slightly different one is epistemologically indifferent, as long as they are both, self-admittedly, arbitrary. The usefulness of an idea has no value as a truth statement.
So there it is. At his core, in his most honest moments, Jordan will accept religion, while being fully aware that this is something he is adding to his experience, which once stripped of the conclusions he chose, reveals itself to be dismissive of metaphysics, inherently materialistic and aware of the mechanicistic functioning of human beings.

As I've said earlier, you're mistaking the surface of his philosophy with its core. For a pagan your inability to read between the lines is dazzlinf (but maybe I'm wromg when I'm implying that you've actually read this thread).

>which demonstrates how much you've actually read of Nietzsche and of pagan thought. In that world, egoism is natural and fundamental to all thought. Everything we do is egoistic. Which begs the question of how qualified you are of judging Peterson at all.
Duh? I have argued this same exact point multiple times in this thread, the only difference is that I've never framed it as a pagan expression, which Peterson in the first place never does: I've framed him as a Nietzscheian.

>Since we're talkimg about Jordan Peterson, I'm using his definition.
From what I've heard him say on the matter, he pins postmodernists for asserting that there is no fundamental law (God) therefore a social-Darwinian type of power struggle is the only premise at work and what directs the world. Peterson seems to touch more on a Logos (which is power driven, but connotatively different) than that type of power doctrine.

>The usefulness of an idea has no value as a truth statement.
“The falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection to a judgment…. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating” (Nietzsche)

From what I have seen Peterson say on the matter of religion, particularly Christianity, he pulls little spiritual (i.e. psychological and moral) fruits off the tree, so to speak, and fits them into his worldview. I think that's a bit different from "accepting religion". I'm betting that he just doesn't let the audience know that aspect of it too deeply because they wouldn't take so kindly to him; my assumption rests on the consideration that he's actually read Nietzsche.

>I've framed him as a Nietzscheian
Nietzsche was more a Greek than a German. You have to maintain the Greeks in your framing of Nietzsche and thus in Peterson, again assuming that he's read him thoroughly.

You should just email him desu