Is Jordan Peterson Doomed by Liberalism Itself?

“The publication of Peterson’s latest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life is an opportunity to reflect on the impact this man has had on the cultural debate…”

In these chaotic and confusing times, people are looking for figures to make sense of the increasingly senseless world they inhabit. Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson is a prime example, offering apparent wisdom for the anxious. The publication of Peterson’s latest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, is an opportunity to reflect on the impact this man has had on the cultural debate, and what if anything he has done, or can do, about the direction of our culture. There is a strong argument that Peterson has no answer to the problems tearing through our societies, except more of the same status-quo liberalism, rooted in a bankrupt humanism.

Peterson, in his faith in dialogue and rational discourse to sort through problems of existence and our living together, represents the last gasp in the life of the failed idea of humanism. The goal of humanism, a way of thinking that emerged in the Renaissance, was founding an earthly order in which freedom and happiness reigned, entirely human in origin and end. Humanism was (and still is) about removing the inner and outer natural constraints on man’s reason, desires, will, and potential so that he should shape the world according to his wants and needs. The ideal of humanism since the Renaissance has been “we become what we will.”

Attendant to this, Peterson shares the Enlightenment commitment to science as the highest good of human achievement (and as the only legitimate explanation for the world), as well as the means for unlocking who we really are. Even though he acknowledges religion and the deep roots of religious myth, he does so in terms of scientistic utility, reducing the possibility of divine truth to evolutionary adaptions for individual and group survival. This is highly problematic to his efforts, as will become clear later on.