I was very put off by the title of Peterson's book, and suspicious of his sudden and ubiquitous presence, and most of all, a bit nauseated by most of his publicity photos, so I had no intention of reading the book, despite the fact that someone I trust in these matters had recommended it. And then, a book club that I am in met on a night that I was out of town, and chose it as our next book.

I don't just love it, but there are some very interesting parts, and some of the things he says are very good. I had a really hard time getting through the intro and, I think, the first step, but it's been better since then.

There are probably ways in which his teaching is compatible with Catholic teaching than not, but his interpretation of the Old Testament is frequently very far off base, e.g. he thinks the Fall was a good thing because before that we were pretty much like animals, and awake.

Anyone who has seen that Newman interview or read the book and thinks he is humourless, must be pretty humourless herself. He has a kind of wicked sense of humour--subtle sometimes. I really enjoyed that interview because he just refused to play the game.

While he is not Christian, he has a great respect for Christianity, and he realizes that having grown up in the West, his presuppositions are all formed by Christianity.

AMDG

That conception of the Fall is fairly common. It makes a certain sense if you can't or don't accept the traditional understanding. I pretty much thought it up for myself a long time ago, before I had encountered it anywhere else.

I certainly didn't find him humorless. I'm trying to remember what was so funny about the lobster bit. I think it was not so much what he said but her attempt to distort it.

He is funny on Twitter. Do you remember that awful song, 'I can help?'? He posted that a while back, with two words, 'toxic masculinity'

Yes, I love the way he delivers lines, its like a comedian.

Most of the theologically conservative grad student types that I know IRL and on social media are fervently anti Peterson because he says theologically illiterate things like ‘God is your highest value’

Grad students are perfectionists!

"I'm listening to Eric Clapton all the time in the car, and (Courtesy of Paul in the 52 Albums series), the Mountain Goats."

I have spent most of the summer listening to the Pretenders all the time. Mainly their newest album, but also their entire back catalog. I now consider myself somewhat of a Chrissie Hynde expert, and was even able to catch them in concert back in July at the Ryman in Nashville.

As far as Jordan Peterson goes .... had not heard of him until I read this blog.

Stu, you need to spend more time on the internet, so you can stay in touch with the latest trends.

That was a good comment, Rob.

AMDG

Richard John Neuhaus used to say that "waiting for an outbreak of civic courage among academics is steady work". One of the novel things about Jordan Peterson is that he lets Fr Neauhaus have a break (if he'd still like one). He first rose to media attention in Canada when he publicly opposed a federal bill making "gender identity and gender expression" protected grounds under the Canadian Human Rights Act. This kind of thing just doesn't happen in Canada. For a while his job at the University of Toronto was up in the air, but that threat seems to have passed, and Peterson is now the most famous U of T professor in the world.

Some people have made extravagant claims for him -- that he's an epochal intellectual figure, for instance. Others -- like David Bentley Hart, if I'm not mistaken -- have called him a hack. The latter is probably closer to the truth, because his intellectual influences are a real mixed bag: Jung, Solzhenitsyn, the Bible, Darwin. But nonetheless there are things about him that I have come to admire. He seems really to care about truth, and he's willing to put his reputation on the line for it. He's also a clinical psychologist, and seems to have a big heart for those who are struggling and confused. More than once I've seen him break down into tears when talking about the troubled young men who, by their own testimony, have benefitted from what he has to say.

I am very curious to see how far this wave carries him. I'd have thought it would have spent itself by now, but apparently not.

Janet--"I tend to defend Peterson to his detractors, and criticize him to his fans." That would be my impulse, too.

About the channel--it's not like that. We don't by any means have a hurricane every year. It would be foolish to do it while one's actually on the way, but otherwise it's not a bad bet. I just wish I had done the first one much earlier in the summer, because it made a big difference.

Yes, though of course that's always subject to change until it actually hits somewhere.

Well now this afternoon a seminarian said out of nowhere, ie in the middle of a seminar on Athanasius’ On the Incarnation of the Word, that Jordan Peterson can tell us something about biblical typology. i talked to him after class and he said That Peterson had helped someone he knew who is going through a very hard time in his life. I said it was a pattern Id seen, that people like Peterson If reading his books with a friend or relative

I forget where I heard or saw DBH's dismissal of Peterson. It might have been an interview somewhere.

If it came down to a death match, I'd side with DBH every time.

Found an interesting review that compares Peterson and C.S. Lewis that says Lewis would have hated Peterson:

Lewis has his demon character Screwtape tell a fellow demon:

"Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man [for Hell], and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours — and the more 'religious' (on those terms) the more securely ours."

I’m not confident in my interpretation of either Lewis or Peterson, but I think Lewis would think Peterson does this. He makes the world an end and faith a means. His Heaven is a metaphorical Heaven. If you sort yourself out and trust in metaphorical God, you can live a wholesome self-respecting life, make your parents proud, and make the world a better place. Even though Peterson claims “nobody is really an atheist” and mentions Jesus about three times per page, I think C.S. Lewis would consider him every bit as atheist as Richard Dawkins, and the worst sort of false prophet. ...

What about the most classic case of someone seeking meaning – the person who wants meaning for their suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? Peterson talks about this question a lot, but his answers are partial and unsatisfying. Why do bad things happen to good people? “If you work really hard on cultivating yourself, you can have fewer bad things happen to you.” Granted, but why do bad things happen to good people? “If you tried to ignore all bad things and shelter yourself from them, you would be weak and contemptible.” Sure, but why do bad things happen to good people? “Suffering makes us stronger, and then we can use that strength to help others.” But, on the broader scale, why do bad things happen to good people? “The mindset that demands no bad thing ever happen will inevitably lead to totalitarianism.” Okay, but why do bad things happen to good people? “Uh, look, a neo-Marxist transgender lobster! Quick, catch it before it gets away!”

C.S. Lewis sort of has an answer: it’s all part of a mysterious divine plan. And atheists also sort of have an answer: it’s the random sputtering of a purposeless universe. What about Peterson?

I think – and I’m really uncertain here – that he doesn’t think of meaning this way. He thinks of meaning as some function mapping goals (which you already have) to motivation (which you need). Part of you already wants to be successful and happy and virtuous, but you’re not currently doing any of those things. If you understand your role in the great cosmic drama, which is as a hero-figure transforming chaos into order, then you’ll do the things you know are right, be at one with yourself, and be happier, more productive, and less susceptible to totalitarianism.If that’s what you’re going for, then that’s what you’re going for. But a lot of the great Western intellectuals Peterson idolizes spent their lives grappling with the fact that you can’t do exactly the thing Peterson is trying to do. Peterson has no answer to them except to turn the inspiringness up to 11. A commenter writes:

"I think Nietzsche was right – you can’t just take God out of the narrative and pretend the whole moral metastructure still holds. It doesn’t. JP himself somehow manages to say Nietzsche was right, lament the collapse, then proceed to try to salvage the situation with a metaphorical fluff God."

Yes the whole problem is Peterson's tendency to make a religion of psychology

Bloom is a good comparison.

I certainly agree with the critique of the whole religion-as-psychology and psychology-as-religion thing. But that's been going on for generations now, and it's very widespread. I can think offhand of several friends and acquaintances, non-academics, who more or less think that way. So I come back to the notion that it's Peterson's popularity that has some Christians so worked up about it. Well, that and, in the case of Christians with leftish political leanings, their view that he's some kind of evil right-winger.

I agree with Rob's last paragraph.

I don't get annoyed by those ideas or object to them unless they come from professed Christians. In that context they're the very essence of capital-M Modernism and I'll turn my guns on that whenever I meet it.

"I don't get annoyed by those ideas or object to them unless they come from professed Christians. In that context they're the very essence of capital-M Modernism and I'll turn my guns on that whenever I meet it."

Yep.

I had small children and a demanding job when that book came out. I wasn't doing much reading in those days. I still haven't read it even though I bought it a year or two ago. I read the first chapter or so and found it rather on the dry side, got distracted, and haven't gotten back to it. Maybe its moment for me is past.

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind. Came out in the late (?) '80s and was a very big deal at the time, an unexpected amount of attention for a semi-academic book. Subtitled "How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students."

"It is as possible for a man to know something without having been at school as it is to have been at school and to know nothing." - Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (1749)

O Yes, Bellow wrote a very funny novella about a Chicago professor who writes a book like 'Closing' and then dies of AIDS. Its called Ravelstein. You can read it in a day, and its highly entertaining. He's got a wonderful paragraph about intelligent design, where he says the cosmos is not a cardboard box, its a 18th century French desk.

The one thing I loathe about Jordan Peterson is his blaspheming. Other than that, I cannot help liking the guy.

I mean that he says Jesus as a swear word. I hate that.

The current New Criterion has an interesting, balanced piece on JP.

There was also a balanced piece in Commentary. Im pretty sure Ive read more about this guy than by this guy

I read his tweets.

I am moving to the conclusion that Clapton is an Arian demi-urge.

Its a Joke. Arianism is the idea of Jesus as a subordinate deity or 'demi-urge.' Of course Jesus is not that, because he is God! But if there are any Arian demiurges around the place, Clapton is a good contender for being one of them. You remember that people used to write graffiti, 'Clapton is God'

Oh, I see.

I couldn't remember, but a search indicates that I did not. Actually...he's not my favorite, as brilliant as he is. Tune in on Monday for more on that.

"Tune in on Monday..." Never mind, I didn't get to that. Maybe next week. Probably next week.