The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Stephen Hicks： Philosophy and Postmodernism

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00:00:57.540 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious

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00:01:47.140 Welcome to Season 2, Episode 7 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.

00:02:01.180 I'm Michaela Peterson, Jordan's daughter and collaborator, CEO of his business, and general

00:02:06.880 all-around good person.

00:02:09.000 Today we're presenting Dad's Conversation with Stephen Hicks, recorded on March 27th, 2019.

00:02:14.580 Today, the intro will just be done by me, and possibly next week's episode's intro as

00:02:20.660 well.

00:02:21.340 Who knows how long this will continue?

00:02:23.560 Maybe forever.

00:02:24.800 I do like talking, so I'm okay with that.

00:02:27.140 Hopefully you guys are too.

00:02:29.160 Stephen R.C.

00:02:30.220 Hicks is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Illinois, USA, Executive Director

00:02:36.080 of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and Senior Scholar at the Atlas Society.

00:02:40.740 He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Guelph and his PhD in

00:02:45.900 philosophy from Indiana University.

00:02:48.720 He has published four books translated into 16 different languages, including Explaining

00:02:53.900 Postmodernism, Skepticism and Socialism, From Rousseau to Foucault, Nietzsche and the Nazis, 0.72

00:03:00.540 The Art of Reasoning, Readings for Logical Analysis, and, most recently, Entrepreneurial Living,

00:03:06.600 co-edited with Jennifer Horrell.

00:03:08.480 He has published an academic journal such as Business Ethics Quarterly, Teaching Philosophy,

00:03:14.000 and Review of Metaphysics, as well as other publications such as The Wall Street Journal,

00:03:18.280 Cato Unbound, and The Baltimore Sun.

00:03:20.540 In 2010, he won his university's Excellence in Teaching Award.

00:03:24.380 He's done a lot.

00:03:25.420 He's an impressive individual.

00:03:27.240 Hopefully you guys enjoy the podcast and perhaps even learn something.

00:03:31.820 When we return, Dad's conversation with Stephen Hicks.

00:03:38.480 Please welcome my father, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.

00:03:44.140 Stephen R.C. Hicks is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Illinois, USA,

00:03:50.100 Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship,

00:03:53.500 and Senior Scholar at the Atlas Society.

00:03:56.580 He received his Bachelor's and Master's degree from the University of Guelph in Canada

00:04:02.680 and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Indiana University, Bloomington, USA.

00:04:08.740 He's published four books, translated into 16 different languages.

00:04:12.980 In 2004, and expanded in 2011, he published Explaining Postmodernism, Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.

00:04:24.420 In 2010, Nietzsche and the Nazis.

00:04:28.800 In 1994, with a second edition in 1998, he published The Art of Reasoning,

00:04:34.160 Readings for Logical Analysis, co-edited with David Kelly.

00:04:37.820 And in 2016, Entrepreneurial Living, co-edited with Jennifer Harrell.

00:04:44.940 He's published in academic journals such as Business Ethics Quarterly, Teaching Philosophy, and Review of Metaphysics,

00:04:52.100 as well as other publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Cato Unbound, and the Baltimore Sun.

00:04:58.760 In 2010, he won his university's Excellence in Teaching Award.

00:05:04.440 Dr. Hicks has been Visiting Professor of Business Ethics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.,

00:05:12.560 a Visiting Fellow at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center in Bowling Green, Ohio,

00:05:17.740 Senior Fellow at the Objectivist Center in New York,

00:05:21.140 and Visiting Professor at the University of Casimir the Great, Poland.

00:05:25.900 So, welcome today, and thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me again.

00:05:31.240 Well, thanks for having me back.

00:05:33.220 Yeah, well, it's a real pleasure.

00:05:35.620 I thought we might start by talking about explaining postmodernism again, your 2011 book,

00:05:43.420 Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault,

00:05:46.120 because I know that it's been perhaps more controversial of late than it was when you originally published it.

00:05:54.600 And I'm curious about the sales and the academic and the public reaction.

00:06:01.460 Right.

00:06:02.140 Well, sales have been strong.

00:06:03.720 The book was originally published in 2004 and sold steadily for the first decade or so,

00:06:08.540 which is quite gratifying for an academic book.

00:06:11.740 And then, starting about three years ago, in part because postmodernism started to spill out of the strictly academic intellectual world

00:06:21.000 into the broader cultural world, sales picked up again.

00:06:24.640 And so, there's been a two-front set of discussions, one at the intellectual level

00:06:29.480 and one at the more public-thinking public level as well.

00:06:34.720 Gratifyingly, lots of translations.

00:06:36.880 I think there will be three more translations added this year,

00:06:39.900 Arabic, Hebrew, and Estonian are in the works.

00:06:44.220 So, all together, I'm pleased with that.

00:06:48.340 The reactions are quite polarized, in part because reactions to postmodernism itself are polarized.

00:06:53.920 It's an extreme movement, as good, deep thinking should be,

00:06:59.100 even if I disagree fundamentally with postmodernism.

00:07:01.820 It is a well-articulated, negative outlook on most of life's philosophical questions.

00:07:08.400 And so, we should expect that any movement that pushes buttons fundamentally like that should get some extreme reactions.

00:07:17.960 And the same thing holds for me when I push back against, in my book,

00:07:22.420 some of these strong, to my mind, ultimately nihilistic claims that postmodernism ends up making.

00:07:28.780 I also get the negative pushback.

00:07:31.340 The pushback kind of comes in two forms.

00:07:33.640 I've found from the professional reviews.

00:07:35.900 There have been eight, to my knowledge, by professional philosophers in the philosophy journals.

00:07:41.560 And they are generally strong to very strongly positive.

00:07:46.220 The normal scholarly quibbles arise.

00:07:49.100 When I get pushback from, or sorry, reviews from academics outside of the philosophy,

00:07:55.420 they tend to be more polarized.

00:07:57.160 Some strongly in favor, but then particularly people in history, in sociology, in rhetoric studies,

00:08:05.480 in literature, places where there are stronger contingents of postmodern thinkers,

00:08:10.820 I tend to get strongly negative responses.

00:08:14.340 And those responses are also mirrored in the general thinking public

00:08:17.960 when they respond and write back and write reviews.

00:08:22.940 Well, maybe it would be useful to bring people up to date for you to give us a brief overview

00:08:29.900 of your view of postmodernism, like a definition.

00:08:33.560 It's one of those tricky terms like existentialism or phenomenology that are bandied about by people,

00:08:40.980 educated people on a fairly regular basis,

00:08:43.060 but where the definition itself is slippery and difficult to pin down.

00:08:48.960 So maybe you could talk a little bit about how you view postmodernism

00:08:53.260 and also what argument you made with regards to the history of its development.

00:08:59.580 Right.

00:09:00.040 Well, it makes sense that it's slippery, in part because postmodernism philosophically

00:09:05.000 avoids categorizations, avoids broad sweeping statements, although they do make some.

00:09:10.720 So anytime you try to make a precise, broad sweeping claim about what this postmodernism amounts to,

00:09:18.200 you will get pushback on that.

00:09:19.940 But there is a broadly unifying set of themes to postmodernism.

00:09:25.220 If you start by breaking the term down, it's postmodernism.

00:09:28.780 So first you have to say, what is modernism such that postmodernism is reacting against it

00:09:34.660 or saying that we need to go beyond.

00:09:37.120 And modernism is used variously in different fields.

00:09:40.000 There's modernism in art, in literature.

00:09:42.480 I'm using a philosophical and historical understanding of postmodernism,

00:09:47.480 and that's how it's mostly used now.

00:09:50.460 That is to say, we look at the modern world.

00:09:53.400 So that essentially is the last 400 to 500 years of history,

00:09:57.620 at least in the Western tradition.

00:09:59.820 So what's going on in the world 500 years ago

00:10:04.000 is a revolutionary transformation of Western society.

00:10:09.280 We have Columbus crossing the ocean, and so we're entering into a new era of globalization.

00:10:16.260 The Renaissance is in full swing, and its impact, late 1400s, early 1500s, is now being felt all over Europe.

00:10:25.260 There is the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, so religious life in the West is being dramatically transformed.

00:10:34.320 You see the beginnings of science with thinkers like Copernicus and Vesalius in anatomy.

00:10:41.580 And so scientific method is being developed, and all of the things that we now recognize as the scientific disciplines are being founded.

00:10:48.200 So that's the modern world, starting 400 or 500 years ago.

00:10:53.840 Philosophically, we start looking at the analyses that are being offered by thinkers like Francis Bacon,

00:11:00.580 Rene Descartes, and others, and we see that they are putting thought on a different foundation from that that had gone on earlier.

00:11:09.200 Yeah, well, it seems that what happened with the modernists, maybe if we tried to sum it up,

00:11:17.160 is that there seemed to be this emerging consensus that the world was rationally intelligible.

00:11:24.960 Yes.

00:11:25.280 And that human beings could explore both physically and mentally, and also come to predict and control the transformations of the material world.

00:11:36.600 I mean, it seems to me that that's the fundamental element of, let's say, the scientific, and therefore also the modernist perspective.

00:11:43.640 But also, I think that what went along with that was the idea that progress, genuine progress in knowledge was possible.

00:11:53.700 And along with that, the benefits of progress, both conceptually and technologically.

00:12:00.500 And I mean, it seems to me to be fair to point out that that movement bore substantive fruit.

00:12:09.020 I mean, you could argue about the misery that the modernist movement caused along the way, say, with regards to the advancement of military technology and so forth.

00:12:19.120 But it seems indisputable to me that the average human being is far better off now than he or she was, well, certainly 200 years ago and absolutely 500 years ago.

00:12:30.960 Right. So, this revolution in thought with the subsequent developments in science and technology, we certainly can judge philosophies by their fruits.

00:12:40.120 And so, we can then say, yeah, absolutely, we're living longer, we're living healthier, we're living a pain-free life, we're able to enjoy more art, more leisure, and so forth.

00:12:53.180 So, all of the things that, and again, this is a value judgment, if you think those are all good things, then we're doing a whole lot better as a result of that philosophy.

00:13:01.640 Now, the other side, though, I want to emphasize here is that you emphasize that the world is rationally intelligible, that along with modernism came the claim that it was rationally intelligible to each individual,

00:13:17.000 rather than there being an elect number of people who have special cognitive insights into the mysteries of the universe or that there are certain authoritative institutions that are controlled by elites and only they are the ones who have cognitive and, therefore, social authority to make various pronouncements.

00:13:35.420 Part and parcel of the rise of modernism is a broadly universalizing of that, that each individual is born with a rational capacity, and that with proper training, education, literacy, and so forth, they can come to understand the world for themselves, they can be self-responsible, they can take charge of their lives.

00:13:54.780 And as a result of that, we should have an extension of rights that used to be prerogatives only of the few, an expansion of freedom, you can do whatever you want with your life, broadly speaking.

00:14:07.780 And so, what we then see is that it's not only a religious elite or a political elite that is empowered, but rather every human being, and then we can see systematically over the course of the next century,

00:14:20.260 it gets extended to not only males who own property, but to all males, and then to women, and then to people of other ethnicities and other races.

00:14:29.660 Yes, well, it's interesting because...

00:14:31.420 So, we have this notion of universal rights and universal self-responsibility, universal freedom, that I think also is part and parcel of the modern movement.

00:14:40.620 Well, the thing about science that makes it so peculiar, I think, is that science is actually a technology that enables people who are bright, but not that bright, let's say, to genuinely produce advances in knowledge because of the method, right?

00:15:01.140 I mean, if you're a careful scientist, look, when we studied what predicted academic achievement, for example, both in graduate school and among faculty members, creativity didn't even enter the equation.

00:15:16.720 Intelligence did, and so did conscientiousness.

00:15:19.080 But I think it's partly because with the scientific method, you can actually break down your knowledge-seeking into a set of implementable technological steps, and that enables it to be implemented on an incredibly broad scale.

00:15:35.000 And even if a lot of it is error-ridden, which is obviously the case, and to a scandalous degree, to somewhat lately, it still means that as hundreds of thousands of us, and increasingly now millions of us, grind away slowly at this careful technology of knowledge acquisition, that overall, we do seem to be able to predict and to control the world better.

00:16:01.620 And then that started to become question.

00:16:04.220 You know, one of the things that seemed to characterize postmodernism, one definition that I've read is skepticism of metanarratives.

00:16:12.220 Right.

00:16:12.780 And that's, sorry, that's from Jean-Francois Lyotard, right?

00:16:16.220 And he is the one credited with labeling postmodernism philosophically, right, so, and defining it as a skepticism toward metanarratives.

00:16:26.300 Now, what that means, there's a couple of things built into that.

00:16:29.220 One is, of course, the skepticism, and philosophy, for the last century and a half or so, has entered an increasingly skeptical mode.

00:16:39.280 So, that pushes back against the very broad claims that the early modernists are making, that the power of reason is great, it is highly competent, and that essentially we can figure out all of the important truths of the world.

00:16:53.960 We can come up with a big story that explains everything, ultimately.

00:16:57.680 Not necessarily that any one individual will contain all of that knowledge in his or her mind, but certainly, communally, we'll have a huge amount of knowledge.

00:17:08.020 We will slowly, as you're putting it together, piece together a big-picture story about the way the world works.

00:17:14.300 And then, in principle, there's nothing about the universe that we can't figure out.

00:17:18.720 There are just things that we haven't been able to figure out yet.

00:17:21.580 So, the skepticism that Lyotard and the others are talking about is a skepticism about that grand set of claims, right?

00:17:28.980 A meta-narrative, a narrative that encompasses everything.

00:17:33.840 Instead, we're left with smaller narratives.

00:17:37.180 And then, as the movement develops, we should be skeptical even about the truth status or the knowledge status of those smaller narratives.

00:17:46.900 So, what becomes important in the postmodern tradition is a skepticism about our ability to know the world in milder form, as much as the modern thinkers thought we could, and in stronger postmodern form at all.

00:18:07.000 That maybe there is no such thing as truth, no such thing as knowledge.

00:18:10.380 Instead, all we have is opinions and beliefs that are subjectively held, but don't have any objectives.

00:18:16.900 Well, it's like the postmodernists that were influenced by Saussure, for example.

00:18:23.380 They seem to be convinced, in some strange way, of something that disturbed me when I first really discovered dictionaries when I was a kid.

00:18:33.800 You know, I'd look up a word in a dictionary, and of course, it would just refer to another word in the dictionary, and that would refer to another word in the dictionary.

00:18:41.880 And there didn't seem to be, in some sense, any definition outside of the dictionary.

00:18:47.160 And the French intellectuals that were so influential in the postmodern world seemed to think of meaning in exactly that way.

00:18:55.600 They understand that linguistic meaning is necessarily embedded in a larger linguistic context, so that each word is dependent on each phrase, and each phrase is dependent on each sentence.

00:19:09.400 And so, there's a contextual dependency of meaning on linguistic framing.

00:19:16.120 But they seem to me to, and this is one of the major problems, I think, of postmodernism in university, is that they seem to deny or ignore the existence of any world whatsoever outside of linguistic construction.

00:19:33.400 And that's something that strikes me as extraordinarily curious.

00:19:38.200 Like, it's a real denial of nature, in my estimation, but also something tremendously dangerous, because while assuming that you think that physics and biology and chemistry actually have any sort of genuine reality, it denies the existence of a substrate of existence that the purely linguistic relates to.

00:20:02.260 I mean, I always think of words as being, they're not so much descriptions, they're tools that you use to, and that's a Wittgensteinian idea, is that words are really tools that you use to operate on the world with.

00:20:18.920 And the consequences of those operations are actually manifest in the world of sensation and perception and emotion and motivation and embodiment, rather than purely on a linguistic level.

00:20:30.800 And so, I also don't really understand how it could be that our intellectuals could come to the conclusion that our, and this seems like a primarily French idea, that our ideas are primarily constructed linguistically.

00:20:44.960 I mean, how do animals exist under those circumstances?

00:20:49.200 Now, that strong form of linguistic skepticism that you're articulating is most pronounced in Jacques Derrida, and he does view himself as a post-structuralist, and that's a linguistic version of post-modernism.

00:21:06.100 But the challenge here is that our view is that consciousness is a relational phenomenon, right?

00:21:14.900 It's responsive to an external world, and that should be the fundamental realist commitment that we make.

00:21:21.560 The problem that the post-structuralists are coming up with by the time we get to Derrida, I should say the idea that there isn't any sort of ontological substrate matching onto, not all of the post-modernists will buy into that as strongly as Derrida does.

00:21:36.840 They might say, well, there's something out there, but we just can't know what the relationship is between our concepts and our words and an external reality.

00:21:45.820 So, the point, though, is that the words that we use are abstractions, and they do come along fairly far or high up in our cognitive development.

00:21:55.080 And if you want to argue that consciousness is a response to reality or that consciousness is a relational phenomenon, as I do, to maintain that objective relational commitment there, what you then have to do is take up all of the skeptical arguments that want to put consciousness out of relationship or to say that there's no way to bridge this gap between the subject and the object.

00:22:20.700 Once you start going down that road, if you want to say, for example, that perception is fraught with illusions or hallucinations or that we can't tell the difference between a veridical perception when our sensory organs are in contact with reality and a hallucination, well, then you have a gap between our conscious apparatus and reality.

00:22:44.120 If you then want to go on and argue, as empiricists do, that our concepts and the words that we assign to the concepts are based on empirical observations or perceptual observations, but you now believe that those perceptual observations are subjective and out of relation with objective reality, then you're going to say these abstract concepts and words are also out of relation with reality.

00:23:11.400 And then what gives them, and then what gives them their meaning if you can't establish a connection between the words and reality, then you're into the dictionary, you're saying, well, what gives the words their meaning is their sideways or network connections to other words, and then a generation or two later, you're into Derrida's university, where he says language is all of reality.

00:23:32.380 That's also where the postmodernists claim about the primacy of power seem to sneak in.

00:23:39.780 It's like if the words are only related to one another in terms of their verbal relationship, well, they don't seem to have any motive force.

00:23:49.580 And as soon as you enter a landscape of linguistic consideration that has no motive force, then there's nothing to do.

00:23:57.480 And so this seems to me to account for, like I've been criticized very often for, let's say, conflating postmodernism and Marxism.

00:24:07.220 But it seems to me that the Marxists or that the postmodernists have had to default to what are essentially Marxist preconceptions to add any motive to their thinking.

00:24:17.660 And what they've done is to say that, well, words are related to one another, and that's how they derive their fundamental meaning.

00:24:23.980 And they're not really connected to the world in any real way, except insofar as they privilege one group or another or one person or another in terms of power and status, which they also seem to regard to self.

00:24:37.080 Exactly. So to go back to your dictionary analysis, the next step then would be to say, if words are in these linguistic relationships to other words, and we can find out what they are in dictionaries, well, who writes the dictionaries?

00:24:49.540 And then at that point, you're not asking an epistemological question anymore, you are asking a social and psychological question.

00:24:58.680 So who are the authors of the dictionary? What authorizes rather than with the power to decide what words mean?

00:25:07.400 At that point, we step directly out of narrow epistemological arguments into social and psychological arguments about linguistic communities.

00:25:17.880 Okay, well, so that's a peculiarity too, though, because, well, look, if the words only have meaning in relationship to one another, and there's this gap between the words and empirical reality, which, by the way, I don't think anybody disputes.

00:25:32.060 I mean, that's why we need five senses. That's why we need to communicate with each other. That's why we need the scientific method, right?

00:25:39.000 It's because it's difficult to establish a useful one-to-one relationship between words and reality.

00:25:46.300 But if words serve power, then it seems to me that what the postmodernists have done is taken biological motivation, let's call it the motivation for power at least, and sneaked it through the back door and reconnected the world of linguistic abstraction to the world of reality, but saying, well, look, the only connection is one of power.

00:26:15.320 And then they leave why it is that people want power.

00:26:19.160 Like, the idea that people want power, first of all, is a complicated idea, because you have to define power and you have to define want, and those aren't trivial issues by any stretch of the imagination.

00:26:31.260 And so you sneak it in the back door, and then that seems to undermine the general postmodernist claim.

00:26:40.040 It's like if the words are only embedded in a network of meaning that's related to other words, then it isn't a fair move ontologically or epistemologically to reinsert power striving, like a Nietzschean power striving, or even an Adlerian power striving, as the fundamental and, what would you call it, sort of sui generis motivation.

00:27:10.040 That characterizes human beings.

00:27:12.040 So I also don't understand how they get away with that, except that it seems to be like a mask for the continuation of a Marxist move under a new guise.

00:27:22.360 Well, I have no problem with seeing power as a positive.

00:27:26.840 Coming back just in a moment to all of the suspicions that you're announcing about inappropriate understandings of the relationship of power, I do think we should be able to say our cognitive capacities are a power that we have, and they are a tool.

00:27:47.000 And the whole point of using that tool is to increase our power in the world to achieve our goals.

00:27:52.840 What the postmoderns are doing is undercutting the two things that make that understanding of power legitimate.

00:28:01.860 One is to say that when I am making a cognitive claim, I am successfully saying something about the world so that we can use the words knowledge and truth.

00:28:14.220 So if I want to act on the basis of my beliefs, that those beliefs do map onto world as it really is.

00:28:22.900 But if you are skeptical about any sort of a knowledge claim or any sort of a truth claim, then you're just going to say, no, no.

00:28:29.160 Well, your claims merely are subjective beliefs that are peculiar to you or peculiar to your group, and they don't have any special cognitive status whatsoever.

00:28:41.440 And in that case, if you want to act on or use those beliefs to empower you, well, then you are in an out-of-reality connection.

00:28:51.000 Now, the other thing, though, is we want to say that power should be a tool that we use for good, for advancing genuine values in the world.

00:29:00.660 But another part of the postmodern skepticism is to say that we cannot ground any values objectively.

00:29:08.140 Instead, values are merely subjective preferences, either individually or group-oriented.

00:29:14.340 And so in that case, if you have your value framework, then we're into the problem of relativism.

00:29:18.720 And I have my value framework.

00:29:20.780 Neither of us is able to adduce any facts that give an objective grounding to those values or to argue that those values should be universally embraced.

00:29:29.640 Then we're just left with, you have a certain amount of power to advance your interests.

00:29:34.900 I have a certain amount of power to advance my interests.

00:29:37.800 And it's a naked power struggle in the suspicious way that you're worried about.

00:29:42.360 And that is, we come back to this issue of how Marxist or not the postmoderns are.

00:29:48.240 But you're right that at least the great-grandfather move was made by the Marxists in one generation and the Nietzscheans in the next generation to strip power down to that amoral ontological status that you are worried about.

00:30:04.960 But what's the motivation for it?

00:30:07.140 It's like, if there isn't a reality that's outside the linguistic, then why is it that, well, first of all, what is power in the political sense?

00:30:17.880 Yeah, I think there are two kinds of motivations.

00:30:19.480 One of the things we know is that there are people who just like power.

00:30:24.100 They want to control other people.

00:30:26.480 They have their agendas.

00:30:27.800 Now, we can talk about the sociological and the psychological foundations of that.

00:30:31.940 But that is an ongoing fact about society.

00:30:35.100 Some people just want power.

00:30:37.160 And they will then rationalize their use of power over other people by a variety of means.

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00:35:01.980 Well, if you think of the way some lawyers argue in a courtroom,

00:35:08.520 they will use all sorts of rhetorical power plays.

00:35:13.280 They will make fallacious arguments.

00:35:15.140 If they can get away with it, they will browbeat witnesses and make up facts and so forth.

00:35:20.040 Now, they are not really skeptical.

00:35:22.440 They believe that there's an external world and so forth.

00:35:24.780 They just believe that life is a power struggle and any tactic is fair in order to achieve their ends.

00:35:31.780 So they're not postmodernist lawyers.

00:35:33.900 They're just old-fashioned power-seeking lawyers and so forth.

00:35:37.440 Now, that is one motivation.

00:35:38.740 It comes up in religious circles.

00:35:40.240 It comes up in political circles.

00:35:41.520 It comes up in the schoolyard and so on.

00:35:44.400 But the other one, and the one that I think that we are worried about, though,

00:35:47.560 is that those who get to that view about the amoral, ontological substrate being power

00:35:55.920 are those people who are smart and who do some thinking about philosophy,

00:36:02.360 thinking about politics, and so forth, and they argue themselves into that position

00:36:06.580 because they find the power of those skeptical arguments to be convincing rationally to them.

00:36:13.740 So even though this is not a paradoxical formulation, even though they are rational individuals,

00:36:19.660 they are following the logic of certain skeptical arguments to its conclusion,

00:36:24.560 and the legitimate conclusion of those arguments is that amoral power rules the universe.

00:36:30.700 Okay, so let's examine that for a moment.

00:36:33.620 I mean, this is another thing that strikes me as specious, to say the least.

00:36:41.460 I mean, first of all, I'm very skeptical of people who try to reduce all complex phenomena

00:36:48.920 to a single explanatory mechanism.

00:36:52.280 You know, I mean, if you look at, and because I do look at things biologically,

00:36:56.060 it's obvious that human beings have a multitude of primordial motivational systems,

00:37:02.100 and that we share them, and that we share them with animals.

00:37:04.600 There's pain, and there's fear, and there's incentive reward, and there's rage, and there's play,

00:37:11.820 and there's hunger, and there's lust, and that's a handful, and there's more than that.

00:37:17.500 And these are very, and you know, those motivations get integrated across time into hyper motivations,

00:37:25.640 let's say.

00:37:26.200 That would be something akin to an integrated narrative, one that is manifested interpersonally,

00:37:33.500 but also played out socially, and higher order values emerge from that.

00:37:39.620 You take a claim like the postmodernists make that, well, first of all, they accept the idea that

00:37:45.440 there's almost nothing but hierarchy, and that people's fundamental motivations is to climb up the hierarchy,

00:37:50.680 even though they're very, my experience has been, for example, whenever I talk about hierarchy,

00:37:56.480 the postmodernist types go after me, hammer and tongs, because I'm making the claim that hierarchy is

00:38:03.800 a natural phenomenon, not necessarily a beneficial one, but an inevitable one in some sense,

00:38:09.680 with its pros and cons, but they accept that uncritically when they presume that power is the fundamental drive.

00:38:16.480 And then the other problem is, and this is an even more serious one as far as I'm concerned,

00:38:22.780 is that the evidence that the most effective way for human beings to occupy positions of authority,

00:38:34.240 let's say, and competence in human dominance hierarchies isn't through the naked expression of power.

00:38:41.340 That's actually unbelievably unstable.

00:38:43.400 You know, even Frantz de Waal, when he was studying chimpanzees, you know,

00:38:48.160 the female chimpanzees are more empathetic than the male chimpanzees.

00:38:53.000 But of all the chimpanzees, the alpha males are the most empathic.

00:38:58.780 They're the ones that engage in the most reciprocal interactions with the members of the troop.

00:39:05.820 And there's evidence accruing from all sorts of areas, including developmental psychology,

00:39:11.540 the developmental psychology of Piaget, for example, that suggests that, like,

00:39:16.980 something like cooperative game playing aimed towards a particular important end

00:39:23.940 is a much more stable means for establishing hierarchical relationships between people than power.

00:39:31.180 Power only rules in tyrannies. 0.94

00:39:36.360 And I guess maybe that's part of the reason that the postmodernists also insist that the Western hierarchy

00:39:42.040 is fundamentally an oppressive patriarchy, because that justifies their claim that power is the primary motivator and mover of the world.

00:39:51.460 But I just don't see how that's a tenable position.

00:39:55.480 Yeah.

00:39:56.340 Well, I think ontologically, it's fair to say that most postmoderns buy into the notion that power is fundamental.

00:40:05.140 There's not anything that can be reduced to that.

00:40:07.880 But my reading of them is that that is not the entire philosophical story,

00:40:12.320 because power just is a tool, a means to an end.

00:40:16.600 And that still leaves open the question of what ends to which one is going to use that power.

00:40:23.340 And here, I think the postmoderns are rightly diverse in their views.

00:40:29.240 There is a strong streak of them.

00:40:31.500 And this is something that goes back to Marxism in general or broadly socialism in general,

00:40:37.160 that will say, yes, we all want power, but we recognize that power is unequally distributed in the world.

00:40:46.660 And that connects to your points about hierarchy.

00:40:50.140 But what is your value reaction to that unequal distribution of power in the world?

00:40:57.260 Now, there are the Nietzscheans who will react to say, well, the unequal distribution of power is fine,

00:41:04.000 and our sympathies are with those who have more power because we want them to advance the human species by some evolutionary mechanism.

00:41:13.340 But that is a subjective value preference that they are adding to previous facts.

00:41:18.920 That power is fundamental.

00:41:20.660 That power is unequally distributed.

00:41:23.200 Now we're adding my sympathies are with those who have more power.

00:41:26.840 The socialist or more narrowly Marxist response to those to say, power is fundamental, power is unequally distributed,

00:41:37.080 but our empathy is with those who are on the losing side of history, so to speak, or a various sorts of social forces.

00:41:45.380 And so what that then means for them is that they will accept that power is operating in a hierarchical context,

00:41:51.840 but that they want to use whatever power they have to more equally redistribute the power in an egalitarian fashion.

00:42:04.080 Right, so then they also smuggle it.

00:42:05.880 So what we need to talk about is going to be, though, that third component about what your value reaction is to what you take to be the metaphysical substrate.

00:42:15.160 Right, okay.

00:42:15.660 But then there's another form of real-world smuggling that goes along with that, which is both ontological and ethical.

00:42:25.300 And the ontological smuggling would be, well, there are definitely power structures and that people compete for power.

00:42:32.020 So that's claim number one, which seems to be extra linguistic.

00:42:36.120 And claim number two is that the proper moral stance of a human being is empathy.

00:42:44.180 So there's a claim that something like empathy exists, and that empathy should be reserved for people who are on the lower end of the hierarchical distribution.

00:42:53.920 That's right.

00:42:54.860 Okay, and postmoderns like Foucault make that very clear.

00:43:00.200 Richard Rorty, even more clearly, makes that claim.

00:43:05.960 Jacques Derrida is a very interesting case because most of his work is not overtly social, ethical, or political.

00:43:13.140 But at various points, particularly toward the end of his life, he says, you know, my entire sympathies are with the oppressed.

00:43:21.060 And he talks about reinvigorating a certain kind of, or in the spirit of Marxism, something or other.

00:43:26.560 But from his perspective, he recognizes that he has no philosophical resources to justify that value claim.

00:43:34.520 And he doesn't want to say that it's just a personal subjective preference that he has.

00:43:39.220 So he does appeal to a kind of Kantian regulative idea, or in more old-fashioned way, that it's a kind of platonic form that we need to appeal to if we're going to justify it in some way.

00:43:52.440 So it's kind of interesting that, recognizing exactly the problem that you're pointing out, where do we get that empathy claim from and justify that?

00:44:02.800 The postmoderns recognize the predicament, and some of them are trying to point to extralinguistic sources for it.

00:44:09.860 Well, that opens a big can of worms if your initial claim is that there's no such thing as an extralinguistic source.

00:44:17.460 You know, because you let one extralinguistic source in, especially something as complicated as the interplay between, say, power, hierarchy, and empathy.

00:44:26.660 I mean, those are major motivational forces.

00:44:30.700 And then, if you're willing to admit to the existence of those major motivational forces, well, it's hard to exclude pain.

00:44:41.020 It's hard to exclude anxiety.

00:44:43.160 It's hard to exclude, well, something even more basic as hunger.

00:44:47.820 It's hard to exclude the proclivity for cooperation and play.

00:44:53.300 It's like all of biology, it seems to me, sneaks back into the postmodern project as soon as those initial extralinguistic realities are allowed.

00:45:05.180 Well, absolutely.

00:45:05.840 But that's what we're finding.

00:45:07.160 You know, a lot of our debates are right now about psychology and biology, is that a certain number of psychologists and biologists are pushing back and saying, oh, there is a reality here.

00:45:15.300 But we're getting great resistance from the postmodern second and third generation to having to do so.

00:45:22.100 Okay, so now, you said the philosophers that have reviewed your book have been basically positive.

00:45:29.660 And so, why are you receiving positive feedback from, what is it about philosophy and about philosophers or about your work that's eliciting a positive response from them?

00:45:44.060 Yeah.

00:45:44.360 Well, my book is primarily an intellectual history.

00:45:48.460 You know, to some extent, I am polemical and pushing back against postmodernism.

00:45:53.140 So, people understand that I'm taking a stance as well.

00:45:56.520 But the primary purpose of the book is to do a solid intellectual history.

00:46:00.020 Where does this confusing, sprawling, but nonetheless very vigorous and powerful movement come from?

00:46:06.280 And it doesn't come out of thin air, but rather there's a lot of deep thinking that's behind it.

00:46:12.020 So, what I'm doing is I'm tracing what I see as the important intellectual movements of the last two centuries.

00:46:18.320 So, I'm starting with Kant and Rousseau, but I'm talking about Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the others.

00:46:23.740 So, all of those figures are difficult, complex, and important in their own right.

00:46:32.160 And there are scholarly debate about, say, how skeptical or not Kant is, whether there's an element of liberalism or not in Nietzsche, Heidegger's connection to the Nazis, and so forth.

00:46:43.480 So, there is a range of scholarly movement.

00:46:46.000 And most of these major intellectuals have two or three major schools of interpretation attached to them.

00:46:54.420 And so, the pushback that I am getting on Kant or on Nietzsche or Heidegger or whatever will be from those who are in a different school of interpretation with respect to them.

00:47:05.680 But typically, among the philosopher, it's a respectful engagement because they will recognize that there is a very good argument that can be made for interpreting the philosopher the other way.

00:47:17.180 And typically, then, what I'm doing is emphasizing the skeptical elements or the ultimately negative and nihilistic elements that get sifted out and woven together into ultimately the postmodern framework.

00:47:32.120 And along the way, the philosophers who want to argue, well, you know, this particular thinker is not that bad or he would not buy into the whole project.

00:47:41.940 Those are the ones who will criticize me on various things.

00:47:44.720 What I typically find, though, outside of philosophical circles, though, is, and this is not a criticism of these individuals, since we can't know everything, is that they will know something about Nietzsche or Heidegger or Kant, but they're not up on the scholarly literature.

00:48:02.280 You know, they've read one book or one article about that person that was written from a certain perspective.

00:48:06.780 So, if I make the argument for the other perspective on that thinker, it's new to them, and it seems outrageous to them, and so they will react negatively to it.

00:48:17.380 So, something like that.

00:48:19.040 So, now, you wrote this book back in 2004, so you were a pretty early observer of the vital importance, I suppose, of the postmodernist debate.

00:48:32.800 I mean, there had certainly been a rise in political correctness in the early 90s, and that seemed to disappear by the mid-90s.

00:48:41.600 But 2004 is, I would say, five or six or maybe even eight years previous to this new burgeoning of political polarization and the debate between the politically correct types, let's say, and those who take a more biological perspective.

00:49:03.480 It's like, what clued you into the fact that this was an issue of potentially fundamental importance?

00:49:11.880 Well, yeah, thanks.

00:49:15.160 I think it does a testament to the power of philosophy, the power of ideas, the power of logic, that when you identify abstract principles and their adoption, and you have a good sense of logic, you can make predictions about how they're going to play out when they are applied in real life.

00:49:33.580 This is one of my major career beliefs, that philosophy is not disembodied, abstract, head in the clouds, but no matter how abstract and speculative various philosophical positions seem to be, when they are believed and acted upon, they make a real-life difference.

00:49:56.560 So, in part, that's what I actually wrote the first draft of the book 20 years ago this year, in 1999, I had a sabbatical, and so I had an outline of the book written in 1999, and then by the middle part of the year 2000, I had fully written the book.

00:50:14.820 But it didn't come out until 2004, because I had some challenges with getting it published.

00:50:21.260 But I think what has happened in the last five years or so is that we're now into second- or third-generation postmodernism, depending on how you count things.

00:50:31.000 And what has happened is the first generation of postmodernism were very successful inside academic circles at educating large numbers of students, getting a significant number of them through graduate school, and then to themselves becoming professors and public intellectuals.

00:50:50.000 And things reached a critical mass, I would say, starting six or seven years ago.

00:50:55.740 And so then we started to notice it significantly, starting to transform the internal dynamics of the university.

00:51:03.600 But we also now have a critical mass of activists who are now graduated.

00:51:08.120 Maybe they didn't graduate with PhDs.

00:51:10.040 They got bachelor's degrees or master's degrees.

00:51:12.160 But they've gone into activist organizations, and they are trying to and successfully shifting the terms of the debate outside of the academic world.

00:51:24.320 And so the broader public starts to notice things.

00:51:28.120 And then that's where we are right now with the culture war manifesting itself on two major fronts, the academic world and the broader cultural space.

00:51:38.580 Right.

00:51:39.200 Well, so what are your concerns about that?

00:51:41.860 Like when you look out at the world, you're obviously concerned enough about postmodernist thinking to devote a substantial proportion of your academic career to it, and then to put yourself on the line to some degree as well.

00:51:55.960 I mean, what is it about the postmodernist view that, well, let's ask this question two ways.

00:52:03.560 What do you think the advantages, if any, are to the postmodernist view or the inevitability of it?

00:52:13.640 And what do you think the dangers and disadvantages are?

00:52:18.240 Well, that's two big questions.

00:52:20.900 First, why I'm worried about it.

00:52:23.680 And there's a question about what degree of worry one should have.

00:52:29.220 Interestingly, in my home discipline of philosophy, postmodernism is not that strong.

00:52:36.280 I think part of philosophy flirted with postmodernism for a while.

00:52:43.540 I think philosophy did generate all of the arguments, or at least all the major arguments that postmoderns use.

00:52:48.740 But philosophy does have built into its DNA, so to speak, a very healthy respect for argumentation and a liking for new arguments.

00:53:01.020 So what has happened mostly in the philosophy profession is a serious development and engagement with all of these negative, skeptical arguments and so on.

00:53:09.920 But then a realization that a lot of them don't work in various ways, and then people moving off in other directions.

00:53:17.120 Or once we start seeing the same arguments being recycled and retreading, a certain amount of boredom occurs with it because smart, active-minded people like new things.

00:53:28.440 And so someone comes along with a new positive argument or a new positive program, and philosophers get excited about that.

00:53:35.160 And so postmodernism is a little bit passe in those disciplines.

00:53:40.740 But I am worried about it because philosophy demographically is a tiny proportion of the overall academy, and the postmodern arguments have been picked up by the larger and more influential academic disciplines, such as psychology, right?

00:53:57.140 You know this one as well, English literature, to some extent in the law schools, in the field of history, sociology, is very polluted.

00:54:05.140 And then the big rise of all of the various special studies programs, you know, gender studies, race studies, ethnicity studies, and so on.

00:54:13.260 You find a much higher percentage of postmodernism there.

00:54:16.160 Now, I have not seen good journalistic sociology about higher academics, whether it's 8% or 40% of people who are postmodern or not.

00:54:28.340 But there clearly is an uptick, a statistically significant increase in the number of people who are adopting postmodern viewpoints and then educating the next generation of students.

00:54:41.380 Yes, well, and they're certainly dominant among the activist types. 1.00

00:54:44.680 Yeah, absolutely.

00:54:46.300 Yes, that's right.

00:54:47.500 So, this is a non-philosophical issue.

00:54:51.320 This is a journalistic or a demographical issue about measuring to what extent it's a rising movement, how widespread it is, and so on.

00:54:59.480 And my concern professionally is with the arguments that generate postmodernism and refuting those.

00:55:05.300 Now, why this is important is, well, you know, I'm a professor, so I'm always dealing with young people who are at the early stages of their careers.

00:55:14.680 And in my view, the most important thing that we all need as human beings, we're thoughtful people, we want to be passionately engaged with the world, we want our lives to be meaningful, is we do need a philosophy of life that's going to set us up for

00:55:29.420 So, in my view, I'm basically an optimist, we do need, as young people, with our whole lives ahead, to have some sense that my life is going to be meaningful, it's going to be significant, that there are important values that I can strive for.

00:55:51.920 So, you know, the romantic in me wants to say, my life can and should be this great adventure.

00:55:59.600 And having that fundamental commitment and helping students sort out what are the genuine values that are worth pursuing in life, that has to be instilled in young people.

00:56:11.680 Otherwise, they will just drift through life, and then they will get to their older years and realize that their life has further away.

00:56:19.200 Yes, okay.

00:56:19.920 So that's an interesting, now that's a very interesting observation, because, you know, I've been trying to account, at least in part for, well, let's say, the surprising and surreal popularity of my public lectures.

00:56:36.560 So, I've spoken at about 150 cities now, to about 300,000 people, and, you know, I lay out a fairly straightforward case, I would say, that's very much analogous to the case that you just described.

00:56:53.120 And that is that, well, we look for some unassailable truths.

00:57:00.340 And for me, there are two unassailable pessimistic truths.

00:57:04.980 And one is that a substantial proportion of life is going to be suffering, because we're finite.

00:57:11.800 And even if things are going well for you now, you're subject to illness, mental and physical.

00:57:17.460 You're subject to the decimation of your dreams.

00:57:20.060 You're going to lose the people that you love.

00:57:22.420 The world that you know is going to change in ways that you find disconcerting and unfortunate.

00:57:28.020 And so, suffering's built in.

00:57:29.820 And then, the interrupting at that point.

00:57:33.900 The phrase unassailable truth, what we should be doing, though, in education is saying that there are no unassailable truths.

00:57:45.200 That part of a good education is any previous generation's truth should be assailed, at least intellectually, by the students. 0.96

00:57:52.380 They should challenge, question, and look at those truths, what the best arguments can be amounted against them,

00:57:57.800 and then make their own judgments about whether they agree that this truth is, in fact, a truth or whether it needs to be rejected and moved on.

00:58:07.180 So, the great danger, I think, of postmodernism, though, is its skeptical stance toward the idea of there being truth at all.

00:58:17.140 And then, in its activist manifestation, when the professors are functioning as,

00:58:22.320 I just have my subjective preferences, and I have power in the classroom,

00:58:26.900 and my view as a professor, or my practice, rather, as a professor,

00:58:30.600 is simply to indoctrinate students in my subjective preferences.

00:58:35.680 In that case, what you are doing is not only giving students a very cynical, negative, ultimately,

00:58:42.320 as an empty view of the world,

00:58:44.680 but you are not at all training them in the ability to think for themselves,

00:58:49.060 to compare competing viewpoints, and make their own judgment.

00:58:52.340 So, that's the danger.

00:58:54.040 Right, right.

00:58:54.580 Well, I guess I should reconsider my use of the word unassailable.

00:59:02.420 I'm thinking more, I was thinking more, I suppose, clinically, in some sense,

00:59:07.360 in that my experience has been that you don't have to scratch very deeply beneath the surface of people's lives

00:59:13.700 until you find massive sorrows that they're dealing with.

00:59:18.720 And so...

00:59:19.960 I know you're not saying this, but from the student's perspective,

00:59:22.980 it can't be that Professor Peterson, with all of his years of experience and wisdom,

00:59:28.200 has announced that this is a truth, therefore, it's a truth.

00:59:31.140 They have to go through the process that you went through.

00:59:33.900 Hopefully, you can accelerate that process for them, but they have to go through that process.

00:59:40.160 Yeah, well, and I mean, I do that in the lectures by telling stories, too,

00:59:43.660 and illustrating the fact that, you know, the limitations that are placed on us that produce suffering.

00:59:52.820 And I invite people, I would say, to draw their own conclusions about how they regard that reality in their own lives.

01:00:00.620 And the second proposition, let's say, is that the suffering is often made worse by malevolence.

01:00:08.780 And that can be, well, the sort of, what would you say, impersonal malevolence of nature,

01:00:15.700 or the more personal malevolence of society or the individual.

01:00:19.320 And so, we're faced with that set of problems, that vulnerability that's characteristic of existence.

01:00:26.740 And then, that vulnerability, because it constitutes a real set of problems, calls to us to generate solutions.

01:00:35.100 And it's in that attempt to generate solutions that that adventure that you described earlier seems to me to manifest itself.

01:00:45.160 And so, it seems reasonable to me to suggest to young people that they do have a destiny that gives their life significant individual import.

01:00:57.360 And that is to take arms up against the inequities of existence at whatever levels they can,

01:01:06.140 and to act forthrightly and courageously to minimize unnecessary suffering and to constrain malevolence.

01:01:12.420 And that it is also actually of vital importance that they do that,

01:01:17.760 because their failure to do so is more damaging than they think.

01:01:27.180 Their nihilism and cynicism that might entice them into nihilistic and destructive acts themselves actively is more destructive than they think.

01:01:39.420 And their capacity to do positive things in the world on a large scale individually and in their family and in their community is much larger than they think.

01:01:51.320 And it's very difficult for me to see how young people can be left uninformed of that as at least a potential reality without falling down the rabbit hole of nihilism and cynicism and subjectivism and relativism that seems to me to be at least one of the primary dangers of postmodernism.

01:02:16.360 Yes.

01:02:16.800 Yes.

01:02:17.500 Yeah, I think 100% on the latter part of what you were saying, I think it should be an open question initially.

01:02:24.560 Yes, there is suffering in the world.

01:02:26.360 Yes, there is malevolence in the world.

01:02:29.960 But we should also be open to the fact that there is pleasure, there is beauty, there is romance, there is adventure, there is genuine love in the world.

01:02:42.400 And what proportions of benevolence versus malevolence, happiness versus suffering is possible and natural to human beings, that should be part of the conversation early on.

01:02:58.500 That's a conversation about the potency of your tools.

01:03:02.400 I'm sorry?

01:03:02.800 That's a conversation about the potency of your tools.

01:03:06.120 Like, you could admit that these fundamental limitations exist, but you don't have to draw the conclusion that they're constraining in any finally hopeless manner.

01:03:20.520 Well, it's not just about the tools, it's also about the nature of reality that we are confronting.

01:03:25.720 There are, of course, people who are Pollyannists who have this view that the world is on our side, there's a benevolent God, or the forces of the universe are lined up, such that I lead a charmed life and everything will go well for me.

01:03:39.960 There are people at the other end of the spectrum who argue the opposite, the fates are against me, the gods hate me no matter what I do, the forces that govern the universe will just grind me down.

01:03:52.340 That's got nothing to do with my tool set, initially, so to speak.

01:03:56.480 That's a metaphysical claim about the nature of the universe.

01:03:59.100 Now, when we do turn to the tool set, whatever your position is along the spectrum of benevolence to malevolence, there is the question about how much power I have to craft my own tools, to forge myself into the kind of being that can take on life's challenges.

01:04:18.540 And here, I think postmodernism is dangerous in two important respects.

01:04:22.500 In my view, the most important development of education, schooling, parenting, and so on, is giving students and young people the critical thinking, the rational power to be able to understand the world, to be able to conceptualize it, to know how to do the experiments, to analyze the results, to sort out good truth claims from bullshit, and so on.

01:04:51.000 And so all of that cognitive development that can only come from a commitment to the idea that the evidence matters, that doing the experiments matters, that being excruciatingly honest with respect to the power of the arguments for and against positions that one might want to argue or adopt, that that's absolutely important.

01:05:12.260 The development of a student's rational, logical, critical capacity is fundamentally important, and postmodernism is an assault on that.

01:05:20.840 And what that means is that in practice, students do not develop that most important life skill.

01:05:25.980 And so we put them out into the world without the tools that they need.

01:05:30.720 And I think they are then more likely to feel disempowered.

01:05:34.240 They're more likely to feel overwhelmed.

01:05:36.480 And then we get the angry, despairing activist type of person that we see in larger numbers now.

01:05:43.220 Okay, so if the postmodernists are concerned ethically with the reestablishment of genuine power at the bottom of the power hierarchies,

01:05:59.100 why do you think it's the case, if it is the case, and many commentators have made this case, Jonathan Haidt among them,

01:06:07.920 that the doctrines that the postmodernists tend to be teaching young people seem to be so absolutely infantilizing and undermining,

01:06:20.040 rather than strengthening and increasing resilience?

01:06:27.460 I mean, is it that they're not interested at the individual level?

01:06:32.640 I mean, because it seems so paradoxical that these things are happening simultaneously.

01:06:37.580 Yeah.

01:06:37.940 A couple of things on that.

01:06:39.260 One is that in addition to developing a person's rational capacity, we do need to develop their emotional capacity.

01:06:47.220 Life is a capacity for a great adventure, for great positivity.

01:06:50.980 But as you emphasize, there is also going to be a significant amount of pain and suffering.

01:06:56.580 And so what we need to do is develop our emotional capacity for handling all of that.

01:07:02.500 Resilience is an important part of that.

01:07:05.160 One unfortunate part of the postmodern package, though, is that they are focusing on a very narrow range of emotions,

01:07:12.900 typically negative emotions, and they don't see those emotions as having any connection to rationality

01:07:19.200 or any connection to a response to an actual objective reality out there.

01:07:23.940 So the emotional life of human beings is both cramped and a mystery if you take the postmodern framework seriously.

01:07:34.280 And so I think what happens then is when those postmoderns become teachers or professors or in a position of authority,

01:07:42.740 it's a large amount of emotional communication that is going on,

01:07:48.380 but it's going to be a negative, rage-focused, despair-focused, cynical, jaded-focused kind of emotionalism.

01:07:56.420 And to the extent that students pick up on that, they're going to be turned off,

01:08:00.980 or if they have some predisposition toward that, they just get sucked into that emotional universe.

01:08:06.880 I want to speak to Jonathan Haidt's point that you're raising.

01:08:11.540 Yeah, let me just say, one thing that is striking to me is I find it interesting among our public intellectuals

01:08:17.800 that three of the most prominent people in the public intellectual sphere are yourself,

01:08:24.600 Jonathan Haidt and Steven Pinker, and all three of you are professionally psychologists.

01:08:32.160 I don't think that that is accidental because what all three of you are doing in different ways

01:08:39.700 is noticing that philosophy, of course, is a very abstract set of arguments and principles,

01:08:45.420 but all of those do need to be operationalized in actual living, breathing human beings.

01:08:51.860 And when you see how they are actually operationalized in human beings,

01:08:56.240 a large part of what you're doing is psychology.

01:08:59.300 So I think it's not accidental that psychologists are of significant importance in the public intellectual space right now.

01:09:09.120 So to speak to Jonathan Haidt's point, I think what he is pointing out is that we are now into a second

01:09:17.780 and third generation of post-moderns, and there's a devolution in the intellectual quality of the movement.

01:09:28.040 And that makes sense because if your first-generation movement is quite skeptical and relativistic,

01:09:33.480 but nonetheless very educated as Rourke, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, especially in my view, were.

01:09:42.760 But the end conclusion of their position is that we don't need to take rationality, logic,

01:09:50.760 the quest for objectivity too seriously.

01:09:53.360 What will happen in the next generation then will be a whole generation of people with PhDs

01:10:01.760 who don't take logic, rationality, and the quest for objectivity very seriously.

01:10:06.480 Instead, they will be not developing those skill sets at a very high level.

01:10:12.800 So there will be a devolution.

01:10:14.280 They will be more emphasizing emotionalism.

01:10:17.000 They will be more emphasizing activism.

01:10:19.120 And then in the third generation, it will be a further devolution.

01:10:24.280 So where do you see that going?

01:10:28.340 Like, is that a self-defeating?

01:10:31.580 Is it something that will end of its own accord or?

01:10:34.980 I think it is self-defeating intellectually.

01:10:37.820 And one of the things that people who are intellectuals who have been following the arguments for a while

01:10:43.360 notice is this is just a recycling of arguments that I heard five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

01:10:50.920 And so it becomes self-defeating in the sense that it fails to attract the ongoing interest of the smart, very active-minded people.

01:10:59.600 I think also that this is something built into human nature.

01:11:02.300 And this is my great optimism with young people when they come to university, however underprepared and damaged they might be by their primary and high school education.

01:11:15.600 They are nonetheless, particularly, I think, in North America still optimistic, gung-ho.

01:11:21.640 They believe that they can make something of their lives.

01:11:24.420 And when they start going into classes where the professors in word and action and just in their physical bearing are communicating,

01:11:33.780 rather, messages of defeatism and cynicism, students who are psychologically healthy will just avoid those classes.

01:11:42.840 They will go into fields that hold some promise of positivity for them.

01:11:48.240 There will be a terror in entrepreneurial fields.

01:11:50.220 The terror is that they may avoid university altogether.

01:11:54.540 Yeah, absolutely.

01:11:55.400 Sure.

01:11:55.860 Yeah.

01:11:56.040 So what's the point of going to wallowing about what a victim you are or what a bad person you are because you have white skin or you're a male or whatever for four years? 0.65

01:12:07.000 I'm going to quit university and get on with living.

01:12:10.720 I do think there also will be corrective mechanisms in place.

01:12:16.300 To some extent, universities are driven by dollars.

01:12:19.400 And who is writing the big checks?

01:12:23.140 If it's million-dollar donors, when some terrible manifestation of political correctness happens at their institution, they won't write the million-dollar check the next year.

01:12:33.000 That will get noticed and that will be communicated in various ways.

01:12:36.920 So, you know, the universities have their problems, but I am ultimately optimistic that they will be able to heal themselves.

01:12:45.520 There are market mechanisms in place to…

01:12:49.600 So what kind of time span?

01:12:51.800 Okay, that's interesting.

01:12:52.760 Well, it's interesting that, I mean, I waver between optimism and pessimism because I feel that the strata of postmodernists is relatively young and relatively entrenched and protected by tenure.

01:13:08.800 And, of course, I think tenure is a good idea.

01:13:12.360 But that…

01:13:13.320 And that they're also unbelievably good at fomenting activism.

01:13:17.900 I mean, I think the political surveys indicate that only about 4% of the general population hold views that might be regarded as radical Marxist slash postmodernists.

01:13:30.200 It's a tiny minority, like, it's bigger than that in universities, but they swing beyond their weight.

01:13:37.740 They hit past their weight.

01:13:40.760 And it's also, I think, because, you know, serious academics, this is my impression, is that serious academics really ignored the second-rate postmodern disciplines for decades,

01:13:54.500 feeling that the arguments that they were making were weak enough so that they didn't even require a strong rebuttal.

01:14:04.360 I mean, even when Steven Pinker wrote his book, The Blank Slate, you know, I read that book and I thought that it was an interesting book,

01:14:14.920 but I thought, Jesus, Dr. Pinker, no one's believed that people are blank slates for, like, 30 years.

01:14:23.140 That's so far out of date that it seems, as a biological psychologist, it just seemed to me to be absurd that that case had to be even made.

01:14:31.480 But, I mean, he was obviously right about that, and I was obviously very wrong about that.

01:14:37.200 Yeah.

01:14:37.760 Predictions are hard to make.

01:14:41.980 And I think it goes back to we need better journalism about the demographics of higher education and what's going on there.

01:14:49.780 So, is it 4 percent, is it 12 percent, is it 25 percent?

01:14:55.320 Then this issue you're raising about punching above their weight, that does seem to be true, but how much above their weight are they punching?

01:15:03.640 Is the major problem in the classrooms, or is it a matter of, you know, as we know, most academics don't like Mickey work.

01:15:12.120 Yeah, yeah.

01:15:12.780 But a significant number of, so the first-rate people are doing their real academic work, and they're trying to avoid committee work.

01:15:20.280 But the second- and third-raders, they don't mind committee work, and they see it as a vehicle to power within the university for them.

01:15:27.340 So, if the postmoderns are, as we like to think, second- or third-rate, that's a little bit unfair.

01:15:33.200 Not all of them are, but a higher percentage of them doing the important committee work, then they have a certain amount of power there.

01:15:40.860 An overlooked part of the university demographics, from my perspective, is student life, where the residents, the people who look after the residence hall and the entertainment

01:15:54.640 and deciding what student clubs are authorized or not, there's been a significant infiltration of postmodernism in that area.

01:16:04.200 That's not on the academic side or only in indirect, but if you look at orientation programs, and again, we need better journalism here,

01:16:12.720 but you find a significant number of them are devoting the whole orientation week when the first-year students are coming in to lectures on privilege and privilege,

01:16:24.640 oppression, and whatever the buzzwords are. That also is an important issue as well.

01:16:31.080 Right. There was an article written in the Chronicle of Higher Education excoriating faculties of education

01:16:37.580 for producing precisely the kinds of internal university activists that are pushing exactly that kind of agenda.

01:16:46.040 That was very interesting to see.

01:16:47.440 Yeah, faculties of education. I do some work in philosophy of education.

01:16:50.980 They are all over the map, but there has been a significant postmodern shift with postmodernism being the reigning philosophy of education.

01:17:01.800 And then, of course, that has impact not just in higher education because that's training the next generation of teachers.

01:17:08.700 One of my younger colleagues, a man named Andrew Colgan, recent PhD from Western, University of Western Ontario,

01:17:18.560 in his dissertation was documenting the significant demographic shift among Ontario high school teachers

01:17:26.420 toward basically buying into a postmodern framework.

01:17:30.820 And that's going to be a very important generational shift for Ontario.

01:17:34.460 So what makes you, like you talked about market forces and the corrective ability and we spoke before we started this podcast about

01:17:46.280 speaking about optimistic and positive elements and movements.

01:17:53.100 I mean, so, well, I have two questions for you, at least, before we conclude.

01:17:58.760 And one is, you seem optimistic and positive.

01:18:03.400 And so what do you see as the root out of this?

01:18:06.960 And what will replace it?

01:18:09.420 And like, what's the time span?

01:18:13.440 Yes.

01:18:14.260 Well, I think one thing that we are noticing is an increasing number of first rate people

01:18:19.160 who are now engaging the debate within higher education.

01:18:23.180 So you can mention someone like, you know, Stephen Pinker, who's not just doing academic psychology now.

01:18:29.540 Instead, he's devoting resources to defending in a public intellectual sphere, the Enlightenment Project.

01:18:36.160 Jonathan Haidt, also an excellent psychologist doing clinical work as well,

01:18:41.980 but nonetheless is formative in creating the heterodox academy, bringing together academics from a wide variety of political spectrum positions,

01:18:53.580 but nonetheless all agreeing that academic freedom, free speech, and so forth are important.

01:18:58.960 The work that you're doing, stepping out onto the public stage as well.

01:19:04.160 So there is a major uptick in very good academics taking postmodernism and its offshoots seriously and pushing back,

01:19:14.900 and I think that augurs well.

01:19:17.120 I think there also is a financial clout.

01:19:21.060 I think young students, when they come in, they do take a postmodernism course, but they don't go back for more.

01:19:30.200 Or they plug into the student grapevine, and they learn which courses to avoid.

01:19:36.580 And in many cases, the postmodern activist-type professors, they are really ghettoized in marginal departments.

01:19:44.820 They might be outsized in their voice, but they're not attracting a huge number of students.

01:19:49.500 And in my view, the students that they are attracting are ones who are already predisposed to that.

01:19:55.660 They're not necessarily converted into marginal.

01:19:57.180 It seems to me that the least invasive way of dealing with postmodernism,

01:20:03.480 if it does have the negative attributes that we've been discussing,

01:20:08.060 is actually something like a market solution,

01:20:11.960 which is to inform young people as to its essential nature,

01:20:17.260 and to help convince them that there are viable alternatives,

01:20:22.020 like viable philosophical alternatives, viable political alternatives,

01:20:26.000 courses they could be taking that would enrich their lives instead of enhancing their sense of victimization.

01:20:31.980 And it seems like the safest route rather than political intervention

01:20:36.140 or some kind of attempt to radically change the structure of the universities,

01:20:41.580 which seems to me to be more dangerous than useful.

01:20:44.840 And I'm very gung-ho on the Internet.

01:20:49.420 The Internet, of course, is just a tool. 0.98

01:20:51.180 It can be used for good or ill, and there's a lot of crap, as we all know, on the Internet.

01:20:56.200 But it also is the case that young, open-minded, hungry students,

01:21:00.960 when they are at a university and they're not getting the education that they want,

01:21:05.300 they now have access to all sorts of viewpoints, and they are actively exploring them.

01:21:10.300 And I'm sure you get hundreds of contacts.

01:21:12.720 I get lots of contacts from students from all over the world who come to me through the Internet.

01:21:19.320 And I know that that's a worldwide phenomenon.

01:21:22.240 I also do think that there's lots of very interesting entrepreneurial experimentation going on in higher education.

01:21:30.100 Some of it's driven by the cost demographics, you know, people asking the reasonable question,

01:21:35.420 is it really worth a quarter million dollars to get a good higher education at a traditional bricks-and-border university,

01:21:43.340 or should I spend just $100,000 and maybe get only a 75% quality education at an online institution or some other vehicle?

01:21:54.100 So there's lots of experimentations that are going on there.

01:21:56.780 And, of course, the technology is just getting better and better.

01:22:00.280 So I think instead of the only avenue being taking the universities on head-on from the inside,

01:22:06.320 that battle has to be fought, and some of us are doing it.

01:22:09.460 But there will be a significant number of people who will just avoid the universities altogether,

01:22:13.340 and there will be new institutions that are created, and that will be a market solution.

01:22:16.900 Do you know that about 75% of the cumulative student debt in the United States is held by women?

01:22:26.780 I did not know that. 0.93

01:22:29.500 And that a disproportionate number of those women are black. 1.00

01:22:33.660 So it turns out that it's so perverse, that the statistics are so perverse. 0.96

01:22:39.380 And part of the explanation for that, it's not the total explanation,

01:22:44.720 is that these women were enticed or chose to enter disciplines where the probability of making enough money over a reasonable span of your life, 0.99

01:23:00.800 especially given the high interest rates that are associated with student debt, is extraordinarily low.

01:23:06.100 So that's another strange reaction.

01:23:09.980 That's a perverse, unintended consequence.

01:23:11.680 I was not aware of that statistic.

01:23:13.040 I was aware that this matches with my experience, that about 60% of our university graduates are women, 0.68

01:23:20.360 compared to only about 40% males.

01:23:23.080 So there's a demographic shift there.

01:23:25.380 But I was not aware of the racial component of that.

01:23:29.120 Yeah, so that's a very interesting, unintended consequence.

01:23:33.100 It's really, well, it's brutal, you know, because these poor women are laboring under these debt loads 1.00

01:23:37.620 that it looks like they're never going to be able to clear.

01:23:40.980 Okay, so that's optimism.

01:23:42.760 It's long-term optimism.

01:23:44.520 But it's optimism.

01:23:45.400 And so that's good to hear.

01:23:48.620 Can I ask you a little bit about what your private, what your life has been like, let's say,

01:23:55.780 over the last couple of years, as you've used social media more,

01:24:01.620 and as your work has become much more disseminated and discussed publicly?

01:24:08.340 What's been the pluses and the minuses for you, and what's changed for you?

01:24:12.760 Yeah, overall, pluses outweigh the minuses, definitely.

01:24:18.520 The main minus has been that it's cut a lot into my writing time.

01:24:23.940 In some ways, majorly, I'm a stereotypical nerd.

01:24:28.360 My ideal day is to go to the library with my computer and read and write with a stack of books.

01:24:35.200 And I envision my professor's life as being dominated by that.

01:24:40.140 But certainly for the last couple of years, my writing and thinking time has been lessened. 0.96

01:24:46.440 The other major negative just has been the crap you have to put up with people who are on various hobby horses 0.89

01:24:54.840 who disagree with you but who don't have social skills or to know how to have a fruitful discussion. 0.98

01:25:01.980 So they send you ad hominem emails and just resort to insults because you disagree with them.

01:25:09.760 So there's been a certain steady stream of that.

01:25:12.500 But part of my learning curve has been just to be able to ignore that or filter that out

01:25:17.860 and focus on the positive responses and the critical responses that are raising good questions.

01:25:24.280 I did want to mention, if I can plug, I have an open college podcast series,

01:25:30.540 and I've got two podcasts in the work where I'm taking up the serious and in some cases good criticisms

01:25:37.440 that have been raised of my work.

01:25:39.740 Oh, good.

01:25:40.340 I'm working on those as well.

01:25:43.340 And that's just part of the ongoing fun scholarly back and forth that should be going on.

01:25:50.280 And while I am down on postmodernism, I should say that I do think it's an important part of any person's education

01:25:59.240 to at least for some time consider the most skeptical and nihilistic arguments that are out there,

01:26:06.400 that postmodernism should have a seat at the table in any person's education.

01:26:11.880 And so it really should be a three- or four-way debate that's going on there,

01:26:16.140 and students need to process those arguments for themselves.

01:26:21.060 The other pluses are that I do enjoy travel.

01:26:25.180 So in addition to my normal academic conferencing and academic lectures,

01:26:30.840 I've been giving some public intellectual lectures

01:26:33.140 and interacting with the general thinking public, and that's been a lot of fun.

01:26:38.060 It's actually been very encouraging to realize how many smart, knowledgeable people there are

01:26:44.360 out there in the world living full lives, doing very interesting things,

01:26:50.620 but they also have an interest in intellectual matters,

01:26:53.280 and you can have a very fond conversation with them about Nietzsche or Marx

01:26:58.060 or the current state of higher education.

01:27:00.740 So I found that the tourism part that comes with the travel and just interacting with people

01:27:06.120 that I never would have interacted to be very pleasurable.

01:27:09.000 The other big plus has been, since I am a professor,

01:27:14.340 I just love young students in their first, second year of university

01:27:18.480 when they realize how big the intellectual world is

01:27:22.560 and how exciting it can be that when they come alive intellectually,

01:27:25.560 and then having a lot more students from around the world who will email me

01:27:30.900 or Facebook me with very interesting questions,

01:27:34.060 or they have their own podcast, and when I can,

01:27:38.320 I'll have a 45- or 50-minute conversation with them on their podcast.

01:27:42.840 So just interacting with a lot more students from other parts of the world

01:27:48.780 than I otherwise would have.

01:27:50.740 So overall, the pluses have been great.

01:27:53.200 The thing is about the public exposure and the social media exposure

01:27:57.980 that's so interesting is that the people who come to listen to you

01:28:04.020 only come because they want to listen to you.

01:28:07.840 It's a real pure form of the university, you know,

01:28:12.100 because there's no compulsion as there is with, say,

01:28:15.400 mandatory classes and grades and so on in universities.

01:28:18.560 And there is this tremendous public hunger for philosophical discourse

01:28:23.540 that's really been completely, in some sense, undiscovered up until now,

01:28:28.940 and it's massive.

01:28:30.920 That's right.

01:28:31.600 And that's why I think optimistically I am,

01:28:34.940 or ultimately I am optimistic,

01:28:36.500 because I think it is built into human nature

01:28:39.540 to want to be vigorous, to engage with the world,

01:28:43.120 and since we're such a smart species,

01:28:44.700 to engage with the world intellectually.

01:28:46.560 So young people in their teens,

01:28:49.140 when they are becoming more fully aware of themselves

01:28:53.840 as independent of their parents

01:28:55.980 and that their whole life is ahead

01:28:57.480 and they're preparing for life,

01:28:58.640 they do have this hunger,

01:29:00.500 and it's beautiful to see it activated.

01:29:04.380 Yeah, well, obviously,

01:29:06.480 all the controversy that's surrounded your work

01:29:09.060 hasn't soured you in the least on the intellectual enterprise.

01:29:13.620 It sounds like quite the contrary.

01:29:16.440 Well, what are you working on now?

01:29:18.240 Like what, I know you're having a hard time writing,

01:29:21.000 but like if over the next five years,

01:29:23.460 let's say you've got ambitions,

01:29:26.280 what would you like to see happen?

01:29:27.540 I've condoed in my schedule

01:29:28.200 starting the end of this academic year,

01:29:30.700 mid-May,

01:29:32.200 a significant amount more of writing time.

01:29:34.480 And so I'm making progress

01:29:37.140 and I'm optimistic that

01:29:38.240 by the end of this calendar year,

01:29:39.960 I'll be almost done this next book.

01:29:42.660 What I'm doing is focusing on the positive.

01:29:46.140 The postmodernism book is negative.

01:29:48.600 The Nietzsche and the Nazis book is negative,

01:29:50.340 going into some dark philosophical

01:29:52.020 and political territory.

01:29:54.420 But to put it positively,

01:29:57.480 what are the positive philosophical issues

01:30:00.940 and positions that need to be developed

01:30:02.880 to reinvigorate the Enlightenment,

01:30:06.420 to correct its deficiencies,

01:30:08.960 to make people realize

01:30:11.400 that the postmodern arguments are powerful,

01:30:15.320 but they're powerfully based on some

01:30:17.560 often easy philosophical issues

01:30:20.620 or mistakes to make.

01:30:22.500 Very subtle.

01:30:23.440 So my value added is as a philosopher,

01:30:26.360 the way I'm going to in part package this

01:30:28.900 is to say that we do have huge debates

01:30:32.140 along any number of dimensions

01:30:34.160 about politics and so on.

01:30:36.480 But in fact,

01:30:37.040 most of our debates about politics

01:30:38.600 are not at all about politics.

01:30:40.740 They are about underlying philosophical issues.

01:30:45.100 So, you know, for example,

01:30:46.600 we're having debates right now

01:30:48.320 about the proper political status

01:30:51.340 of, say, transgender individuals.

01:30:54.720 But we're spending very little time

01:30:56.780 actually talking about the politics of it

01:30:58.560 instead we are having arguments

01:31:00.020 about human nature

01:31:01.280 and to what extent things are fixed causally

01:31:05.760 and to what extent things

01:31:06.920 are a matter of human volition,

01:31:09.140 what things are subjective,

01:31:10.820 what things are objective, and so on.

01:31:13.060 And so, really,

01:31:14.640 we are having philosophical arguments,

01:31:17.280 hopefully philosophical arguments,

01:31:18.640 that should be informed by biology.

01:31:21.020 But even that is itself

01:31:22.640 a philosophical debate

01:31:23.660 because some people want to say

01:31:25.240 we should approach this

01:31:26.320 as a scientific method type of question,

01:31:29.500 look at the facts,

01:31:30.240 look at the experiments,

01:31:31.040 and others have a more free-floating

01:31:33.280 ideological commitment,

01:31:34.600 that is to say,

01:31:35.800 they're operating on a different epistemology.

01:31:38.540 So really what we're doing

01:31:39.580 is we're having debates

01:31:41.260 about epistemology and human nature,

01:31:44.160 not really debates about politics.

01:31:46.660 Right.

01:31:46.840 Politics is just a manifestation of that.

01:31:50.080 So then my hopeful professional value added

01:31:54.820 is to bring clarity

01:31:56.600 and some fresh perspectives

01:31:58.540 on those philosophical debates.

01:32:02.540 Well, it's interesting because...

01:32:03.840 Sorry, I'll just say one more thing.

01:32:06.080 It has played philosophy

01:32:07.040 as a whole number of false alternatives

01:32:11.040 that have been entrenched

01:32:12.240 in the discipline for generations.

01:32:15.460 And in many cases,

01:32:17.000 if you can notice

01:32:18.840 two apparently opposed arguments

01:32:21.460 but realize they have a shared premise,

01:32:24.500 and in often cases,

01:32:25.540 that shared premise is implicit,

01:32:28.220 then asking what the alternatives

01:32:30.280 to that implicit premise would be

01:32:32.680 once you make it explicit

01:32:33.760 can be very illuminating.

01:32:35.520 So I'm working that territory a lot.

01:32:37.960 Well, it's interesting, you know,

01:32:39.500 that maybe one of the consequences

01:32:41.180 is that out of the,

01:32:44.080 let's call it,

01:32:46.160 rather murky darkness

01:32:47.500 of moral relativism

01:32:49.060 and post-modernism

01:32:51.020 and the claim that power

01:32:53.040 is the fundamental motivation

01:32:54.540 of human beings.

01:32:55.460 I mean, these are very pessimistic

01:32:58.300 philosophical statements

01:32:59.820 taken almost to,

01:33:02.500 almost you would think

01:33:03.840 to their logical extreme

01:33:05.380 that maybe what will happen

01:33:07.520 is that out of that

01:33:08.820 will come something like

01:33:10.200 a philosophy

01:33:11.940 that's genuinely optimistic

01:33:15.020 without being naive.

01:33:17.840 Yeah, exactly.

01:33:18.540 That's nicely put.

01:33:20.140 I'm reminded of a line

01:33:21.880 from the Roman poet Horace

01:33:25.040 who was reflecting on

01:33:26.460 some of the skeptical

01:33:27.340 and nihilistic trends

01:33:29.080 of his time

01:33:29.900 where they were, in effect,

01:33:31.940 denying the natural world,

01:33:33.300 denying and so forth.

01:33:34.820 And the line is,

01:33:37.940 though you drive nature out

01:33:40.000 with a pitchfork,

01:33:41.380 ever she will return.

01:33:43.240 Right.

01:33:43.740 So, the optimistic return

01:33:45.040 is what we're working on now.

01:33:47.500 Right.

01:33:47.880 Well, and there does seem to be,

01:33:49.420 I would say,

01:33:50.300 a tremendous hunger for that.

01:33:51.840 You know,

01:33:52.000 one of the things

01:33:52.580 I've been struck by,

01:33:54.140 and I'm sure you see this

01:33:55.320 in your teaching,

01:33:56.160 is that it's amazing.

01:33:59.020 You know,

01:34:00.640 I usually begin my lectures

01:34:02.480 on a fairly pessimistic note,

01:34:05.280 you know,

01:34:05.720 detailing out the problems

01:34:07.320 of human nature

01:34:08.900 and society

01:34:10.280 and, to some degree,

01:34:11.440 the natural world.

01:34:12.840 Trying to make a vicious case

01:34:14.580 for the,

01:34:15.620 for the,

01:34:17.240 in some sense,

01:34:18.340 the atrocity of life.

01:34:20.200 And,

01:34:21.160 it means that

01:34:22.900 there's nothing hidden,

01:34:24.440 in some sense,

01:34:25.140 when the argument begins.

01:34:26.300 And then,

01:34:27.160 I try to make a case

01:34:28.620 that despite that,

01:34:30.360 you know,

01:34:30.720 we have within us

01:34:31.980 the capacity

01:34:32.720 to transcend that.

01:34:34.580 And that that capacity

01:34:35.740 to transcend

01:34:36.720 that,

01:34:38.800 the atrocity of life,

01:34:40.500 is actually more powerful.

01:34:42.500 And that,

01:34:43.400 you can derive

01:34:44.160 an optimism

01:34:44.940 out of the pessimism,

01:34:47.380 out of the pessimism

01:34:48.420 that's even more optimistic

01:34:50.260 because of the depth

01:34:51.720 of the pessimism.

01:34:53.340 You know,

01:34:53.740 like,

01:34:53.940 and you can tell students,

01:34:54.980 look, you guys,

01:34:55.520 you've got real problems

01:34:56.460 to deal with.

01:34:57.300 It's,

01:34:57.600 it's no wonder

01:34:58.320 that you're suffering

01:35:00.020 from the existential

01:35:01.240 dilemmas

01:35:02.720 that you're suffering from.

01:35:03.840 They're real.

01:35:05.080 But that doesn't mean

01:35:06.180 that there isn't

01:35:06.980 a set of viable solutions

01:35:09.800 and maybe a fairly large

01:35:11.220 set of viable solutions

01:35:12.440 that can be,

01:35:13.840 that you can learn

01:35:14.680 and that you can practice

01:35:15.760 and that you can engage in

01:35:17.060 that make a genuine difference

01:35:18.940 to your life

01:35:19.620 and a genuine difference

01:35:20.920 to the life

01:35:21.440 of the people around you

01:35:22.380 and that this is

01:35:23.040 even more real

01:35:24.240 than the reality

01:35:25.760 of the relativism

01:35:27.080 and the nihilism

01:35:29.420 and the pessimism.

01:35:31.240 And people respond,

01:35:33.180 I've been aligning that

01:35:34.460 especially with the idea

01:35:35.500 of responsibility,

01:35:36.940 you know,

01:35:37.220 that it's possible

01:35:39.100 to find

01:35:39.660 the sustaining meaning

01:35:41.420 in your life

01:35:42.020 through the adoption

01:35:42.800 of as substantive

01:35:44.780 a responsibility

01:35:45.640 as you can manage.

01:35:46.700 and it's really

01:35:47.540 quite remarkable

01:35:48.580 how ready people are

01:35:54.780 for that idea.

01:35:56.120 And it really usually

01:35:57.220 reduces the audiences

01:35:58.460 to silence

01:35:59.420 to speak of that.

01:36:01.860 Yeah.

01:36:02.280 Well,

01:36:02.660 that's all of that

01:36:03.680 touching on

01:36:04.360 the profound themes

01:36:05.940 that human beings

01:36:06.820 do need to engage with.

01:36:09.020 My approach

01:36:09.740 is typically different,

01:36:11.040 particularly with my

01:36:11.940 first-year students

01:36:13.340 where my reading

01:36:16.900 of them

01:36:17.340 is a lot of them

01:36:18.280 are coming into

01:36:19.500 university

01:36:20.420 feeling somewhat

01:36:21.460 constrained.

01:36:22.540 Sometimes they're

01:36:23.320 in university

01:36:24.060 because they have

01:36:25.020 to be in university

01:36:26.600 or they have the sense

01:36:27.680 that their lives

01:36:29.120 are largely predetermined

01:36:31.260 or that things

01:36:32.060 have been mapped out

01:36:33.700 either by their parents

01:36:34.820 or expectation

01:36:35.820 of certain social forces

01:36:37.240 or whatever.

01:36:39.200 And getting them

01:36:39.920 to see that the world

01:36:41.200 is a lot more

01:36:42.780 open to them

01:36:44.600 that there are

01:36:44.860 a lot more possibilities

01:36:46.100 and that they have

01:36:47.120 more power

01:36:48.280 to shape their own

01:36:49.760 destinies

01:36:50.620 than they otherwise

01:36:51.760 might have been taught.

01:36:53.280 So,

01:36:54.200 higher education

01:36:55.560 is transformative

01:36:56.500 in the sense

01:36:57.220 of liberating them

01:36:59.540 from constraints

01:37:01.380 that they

01:37:02.280 felt themselves

01:37:04.980 to be put in.

01:37:07.020 And I found

01:37:07.760 that that has been

01:37:08.700 useful

01:37:09.920 in tapping

01:37:10.500 into the hunger

01:37:11.160 that we are both

01:37:11.880 talking about

01:37:12.600 because that

01:37:13.100 can be suppressed

01:37:14.380 once they get

01:37:15.560 a taste of it

01:37:16.380 that in fact

01:37:16.980 they are free agents

01:37:18.500 that the world

01:37:19.060 is a lot more

01:37:20.080 open-ended

01:37:20.680 than other people

01:37:21.860 might have been

01:37:22.380 telling them

01:37:22.940 they start

01:37:25.320 to drink it up.

01:37:26.380 Well,

01:37:26.540 that was the great

01:37:27.220 thing about university

01:37:28.380 for me.

01:37:29.580 You know,

01:37:30.200 I mean,

01:37:30.520 I came from

01:37:31.180 a small town

01:37:31.960 and went to

01:37:33.200 increasingly large

01:37:34.220 universities

01:37:34.820 and every time

01:37:36.140 I made a transition

01:37:37.220 the sense

01:37:38.760 that the world

01:37:39.460 was opening up

01:37:40.320 to me

01:37:40.740 continued to

01:37:41.720 increase

01:37:42.460 and it was

01:37:43.360 unbelievably liberating

01:37:44.860 and life-enhancing.

01:37:46.780 that's what

01:37:47.340 makes post-modernism

01:37:50.660 unsettling

01:37:51.200 because it really

01:37:51.800 is a cramped

01:37:52.740 intellectual vision

01:37:54.040 but it also

01:37:55.220 tends to put

01:37:56.080 people into

01:37:56.800 smaller and

01:37:57.920 smaller

01:37:58.680 categories,

01:38:00.720 right?

01:38:00.980 You're only

01:38:01.800 a member

01:38:02.500 of this group

01:38:03.320 and you're

01:38:04.060 an exemplar

01:38:05.020 of it

01:38:05.680 and your

01:38:06.540 identity

01:38:06.900 has been

01:38:07.340 shaped

01:38:07.700 by forces

01:38:08.380 beyond your

01:38:08.880 control

01:38:09.380 and you

01:38:10.460 can't engage

01:38:11.060 with other

01:38:11.460 cultures

01:38:11.840 and other

01:38:12.120 individuals

01:38:12.620 except on

01:38:13.320 the basis

01:38:14.020 of hostility

01:38:14.680 which just

01:38:15.080 means people

01:38:15.580 retrench.

01:38:16.420 So,

01:38:16.560 it's a very

01:38:16.960 closing-in

01:38:18.060 kind of

01:38:18.820 intellectual

01:38:19.240 movement.

01:38:19.980 So,

01:38:20.400 the optimism

01:38:21.340 and the

01:38:22.120 romance

01:38:22.500 and the

01:38:22.920 adventure

01:38:23.320 and the

01:38:23.640 sense that

01:38:24.180 you can

01:38:25.020 in fact

01:38:25.560 take charge

01:38:26.100 of your

01:38:26.520 own life

01:38:27.340 and make

01:38:27.920 yourself

01:38:28.380 and the

01:38:28.780 world

01:38:29.080 a better

01:38:29.680 place,

01:38:30.840 that's the

01:38:31.960 point that

01:38:32.240 we need

01:38:32.500 to emphasize

01:38:32.960 but of course

01:38:33.500 it can't be

01:38:33.880 a 90-1

01:38:34.520 so we do

01:38:35.240 need better

01:38:35.660 intellectual

01:38:36.060 tools for

01:38:36.820 that.

01:38:37.380 Well,

01:38:37.520 I do

01:38:37.760 think students

01:38:38.540 too,

01:38:38.980 like my,

01:38:39.500 one of the

01:38:39.820 reasons I've

01:38:40.280 always loved

01:38:40.740 teaching undergraduates

01:38:42.060 is because

01:38:42.580 even those

01:38:44.100 who are,

01:38:45.440 who have

01:38:45.880 that brittle

01:38:47.720 and,

01:38:49.400 let's say,

01:38:50.360 thin-skinned

01:38:51.500 cynicism

01:38:52.660 sort of

01:38:53.460 the prematurely

01:38:55.060 intellectually

01:38:56.900 hopeless

01:38:57.660 have

01:38:58.740 underneath

01:38:59.280 that

01:38:59.880 this

01:39:00.360 dynamism

01:39:01.760 of youth

01:39:02.500 that

01:39:02.800 wants

01:39:03.820 exactly

01:39:04.480 to know

01:39:05.600 that that

01:39:06.140 call to

01:39:06.920 adventure

01:39:07.420 exists

01:39:08.060 and

01:39:08.460 that

01:39:09.220 they

01:39:09.400 will

01:39:09.680 respond

01:39:10.460 with

01:39:11.500 unbelievable

01:39:12.640 enthusiasm

01:39:13.620 to any

01:39:15.060 message

01:39:15.540 that,

01:39:16.080 yeah,

01:39:16.860 to any

01:39:17.180 message

01:39:17.580 that puts

01:39:18.180 that idea

01:39:19.720 across in a

01:39:20.500 believable

01:39:20.940 manner and

01:39:21.580 that takes

01:39:22.020 them seriously.

01:39:22.840 Like,

01:39:23.480 the other

01:39:23.860 thing that

01:39:24.260 struck me

01:39:24.820 too,

01:39:25.220 that it's

01:39:25.700 really saddening,

01:39:27.560 you know,

01:39:27.940 I've talked to

01:39:28.840 hundreds of

01:39:29.320 people

01:39:29.660 after my

01:39:30.980 lectures

01:39:31.320 now and

01:39:31.920 it's

01:39:34.540 almost

01:39:35.860 inconceivable

01:39:38.020 the degree

01:39:39.700 to which

01:39:40.240 people are

01:39:41.140 starving for

01:39:42.400 encouragement,

01:39:43.820 how little

01:39:44.420 they get

01:39:44.900 and how

01:39:45.220 little it

01:39:45.660 takes to

01:39:46.220 make a

01:39:46.860 massive

01:39:47.520 difference

01:39:48.080 in their

01:39:48.400 life,

01:39:48.800 just to

01:39:49.240 say to

01:39:49.660 them,

01:39:49.860 look,

01:39:50.140 you know,

01:39:50.380 you are a

01:39:51.380 sovereign

01:39:51.800 individual

01:39:52.480 of divine

01:39:54.520 value,

01:39:55.320 you're the

01:39:56.560 cornerstone of

01:39:57.600 the community

01:39:58.240 and that's

01:39:59.740 the fundamental

01:40:00.440 presupposition

01:40:01.320 of our

01:40:01.680 society that

01:40:02.320 happens to

01:40:02.900 be true

01:40:03.440 and that

01:40:03.800 you can

01:40:04.760 put your

01:40:05.260 life together

01:40:05.880 with truth

01:40:06.520 and courage

01:40:07.180 and things

01:40:07.860 will work

01:40:08.680 out better

01:40:09.220 and even

01:40:10.060 more importantly

01:40:11.000 than that,

01:40:12.060 whether it

01:40:12.540 works out

01:40:12.960 or not,

01:40:13.440 even more

01:40:13.800 importantly

01:40:14.220 than that,

01:40:15.460 that is the

01:40:16.220 adventure and

01:40:17.040 destiny of

01:40:17.660 your life

01:40:18.080 and it

01:40:18.460 actually

01:40:19.020 matters

01:40:19.820 and people

01:40:21.060 are so

01:40:21.900 dying,

01:40:23.260 they're dying 0.90

01:40:23.960 for that

01:40:24.520 idea.

01:40:26.240 Yeah,

01:40:26.420 that's

01:40:26.680 beautifully

01:40:27.200 put,

01:40:27.700 so thanks

01:40:28.360 for saying

01:40:28.780 that.

01:40:30.460 Well,

01:40:30.980 look,

01:40:31.320 I'd like

01:40:31.800 to know

01:40:32.600 when you

01:40:33.040 put up

01:40:33.460 those

01:40:33.760 podcasts

01:40:34.540 that

01:40:35.040 respond

01:40:36.240 to the

01:40:36.900 criticisms

01:40:37.420 of your

01:40:38.060 book,

01:40:39.440 so if

01:40:40.040 you would

01:40:40.360 be kind

01:40:40.800 enough to

01:40:41.280 let me

01:40:41.640 know that

01:40:42.440 I would

01:40:43.380 love to

01:40:45.880 publicize

01:40:46.500 them,

01:40:46.680 it might

01:40:46.940 be an

01:40:47.260 opportunity

01:40:47.780 again

01:40:48.720 for us

01:40:49.900 to have

01:40:50.240 another

01:40:50.500 conversation

01:40:51.920 about

01:40:53.460 the,

01:40:54.240 because I'm

01:40:54.760 very interested

01:40:55.420 in the

01:40:55.780 criticisms,

01:40:56.480 you know,

01:40:56.640 because I

01:40:57.160 relied on

01:40:57.740 your book

01:40:58.160 a fair

01:40:59.120 bit in

01:40:59.620 my discussion

01:41:00.260 of

01:41:00.480 postmodernism,

01:41:01.960 it's not

01:41:03.680 an area of

01:41:04.400 expertise of

01:41:05.380 mine,

01:41:05.840 you know,

01:41:06.140 I was one

01:41:06.700 of those

01:41:06.980 academics who

01:41:07.700 tended to

01:41:08.260 ignore it,

01:41:09.020 not entirely,

01:41:10.040 but while I was

01:41:10.940 pursuing my own

01:41:11.720 studies,

01:41:12.200 but your book

01:41:12.700 was extremely

01:41:13.280 useful and,

01:41:14.980 you know,

01:41:15.320 it's not

01:41:15.880 necessarily the

01:41:17.080 case that,

01:41:18.140 because I'm

01:41:18.660 not as

01:41:19.480 philosophically

01:41:20.180 versed as I

01:41:20.840 might be,

01:41:21.300 that I

01:41:22.420 can evaluate

01:41:24.340 all the

01:41:24.960 criticisms,

01:41:25.680 and so I

01:41:26.220 would definitely

01:41:26.840 like to

01:41:27.460 know more

01:41:28.320 about that

01:41:28.800 and to

01:41:29.060 know more

01:41:29.400 about your

01:41:29.760 response,

01:41:30.240 so please

01:41:30.660 do let

01:41:31.220 me know.

01:41:32.200 I will

01:41:32.700 let you

01:41:33.140 know when

01:41:33.660 this airs

01:41:34.700 on YouTube

01:41:35.560 and as a

01:41:36.840 podcast.

01:41:37.640 I don't know

01:41:38.440 when that

01:41:38.840 will be,

01:41:39.560 because my

01:41:40.040 scheduling

01:41:40.500 isn't set

01:41:41.460 for the

01:41:42.360 release of

01:41:42.940 such things,

01:41:43.580 but this

01:41:43.980 isn't a

01:41:46.160 discussion that

01:41:46.880 has a,

01:41:48.180 that's time

01:41:48.840 bound in any

01:41:49.660 particular

01:41:50.060 matter,

01:41:50.520 so that

01:41:51.140 shouldn't

01:41:51.420 matter too

01:41:51.940 much,

01:41:52.340 and look,

01:41:53.280 I really

01:41:53.580 appreciate you

01:41:54.300 taking the

01:41:54.800 time to

01:41:55.200 talk to me

01:41:55.680 again.

01:41:56.260 I always

01:41:56.800 find our

01:41:57.220 conversations

01:41:57.880 extremely

01:41:58.440 illuminating.

01:42:00.040 Great.

01:42:00.760 I appreciate

01:42:01.320 the invitation

01:42:02.560 and spending

01:42:03.160 time with you

01:42:03.840 as well.

01:42:04.640 It's good

01:42:04.980 fun.

01:42:06.060 Great.

01:42:06.860 Great.

01:42:07.300 Well,

01:42:08.240 good luck,

01:42:08.980 good luck

01:42:09.400 with your

01:42:09.940 ambitions,

01:42:11.060 and I

01:42:12.300 wish you

01:42:12.820 even more

01:42:14.100 success in

01:42:14.780 the public

01:42:15.160 domain,

01:42:15.660 because I

01:42:16.060 think that

01:42:16.460 what you're

01:42:16.820 doing is

01:42:17.300 extremely

01:42:18.060 helpful and

01:42:19.300 broadly

01:42:20.760 useful.

01:42:21.060 Thank you.

01:42:21.560 You too.

01:42:22.480 Yeah.

01:42:23.900 The regard

01:42:24.820 is mutual,

01:42:25.720 absolutely.

01:42:26.860 All right,

01:42:27.280 well,

01:42:27.720 and hopefully

01:42:28.320 we'll have

01:42:29.440 a chance to

01:42:29.960 meet at

01:42:30.680 some point

01:42:31.160 in the

01:42:31.640 not-too-distant

01:42:33.000 future.

01:42:34.280 Perfect.

01:42:35.720 Very good

01:42:36.340 to see you.

01:42:37.460 You too.

01:42:38.320 All right.

01:42:39.460 Bye for

01:42:40.080 now.

01:42:40.520 Bye-bye.

01:42:41.580 If you

01:42:42.180 found this

01:42:42.560 conversation

01:42:43.060 meaningful,

01:42:43.820 you might

01:42:44.160 think about

01:42:44.560 picking up

01:42:45.020 Dad's

01:42:45.340 books,

01:42:45.840 Maps of

01:42:46.260 Meaning,

01:42:46.680 The Architecture

01:42:47.220 of Belief,

01:42:48.160 or his

01:42:48.660 Newer Best

01:42:49.260 Seller,

01:42:49.740 12 Rules

01:42:50.240 for Life,

01:42:50.920 and Antidote

01:42:51.420 to Chaos,

01:42:52.280 a much

01:42:52.780 easier read.

01:42:53.800 But that's

01:42:54.620 not the

01:42:55.080 quality thing,

01:42:55.940 it's just

01:42:56.300 simpler than

01:42:56.940 Maps of

01:42:57.380 Meaning,

01:42:57.740 because Maps

01:42:58.160 of Meaning

01:42:58.500 is insanely

01:42:59.400 difficult.

01:43:00.620 Both of

01:43:00.960 these works

01:43:01.440 delve much

01:43:02.400 deeper into

01:43:02.920 the topics

01:43:03.380 covered in

01:43:03.940 the Jordan

01:43:04.280 B.

01:43:04.520 Peterson

01:43:04.760 podcast.

01:43:06.000 See

01:43:06.180 jordanbpeterson.com

01:43:07.620 for audio,

01:43:08.600 e-book,

01:43:09.080 and text links,

01:43:10.120 or pick up

01:43:10.580 the books at

01:43:11.020 your favorite

01:43:11.420 bookseller.

01:43:12.500 The next

01:43:12.960 episode is

01:43:14.120 Dad's lecture

01:43:14.860 at the

01:43:15.260 First Ontario

01:43:16.000 Concert Hall

01:43:16.760 in Hamilton,

01:43:17.620 Ontario,

01:43:18.540 recorded on

01:43:19.140 July 20th,

01:43:19.960 2018.

01:43:21.040 Every one of

01:43:21.520 his lectures I hear,

01:43:22.520 I learn something

01:43:23.180 different.

01:43:23.980 It's amazing.

01:43:25.060 I hope you guys

01:43:25.700 enjoy,

01:43:26.240 and I'll talk to

01:43:27.240 you again next

01:43:28.120 week.

01:43:28.840 Follow me on

01:43:29.600 my YouTube

01:43:30.120 channel,

01:43:30.920 Jordan B.

01:43:31.640 Peterson,

01:43:32.320 on Twitter,

01:43:33.280 at Jordan B.

01:43:34.180 Peterson,

01:43:34.960 on Facebook,

01:43:36.160 at Dr. Jordan

01:43:37.120 B.

01:43:37.520 Peterson,

01:43:38.140 and at

01:43:38.500 Instagram,

01:43:39.180 at Jordan.B.

01:43:40.780 Peterson.

01:43:41.580 Details on

01:43:42.400 this show,

01:43:43.480 access to

01:43:44.120 my blog,

01:43:45.180 information about

01:43:46.000 my tour dates

01:43:46.860 and other events,

01:43:48.000 and my list of

01:43:48.680 recommended books

01:43:49.720 can be found on

01:43:50.720 my website,

01:43:51.840 JordanBPeterson.com.

01:43:53.920 My online

01:43:54.560 writing programs,

01:43:55.860 designed to help

01:43:56.540 people straighten

01:43:57.280 out their

01:43:57.720 pasts,

01:43:58.680 understand themselves

01:43:59.640 in the present,

01:44:00.560 and develop a

01:44:01.300 sophisticated vision

01:44:02.320 and strategy for

01:44:03.200 the future,

01:44:03.980 can be found at

01:44:04.780 selfauthoring.com.

01:44:06.820 That's

01:44:07.180 selfauthoring.com.

01:44:08.980 from the

01:44:10.660 Westwood One

01:44:11.500 Podcast Network.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - May 05, 2019

Stephen Hicks： Philosophy and Postmodernism

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Transcript