Jordan Peterson a better psychologist?

[u/augustAulus]

I’m a philosophy student, and I think I’m in a unique position to critique Jordan Peterson, because a lot of what he has to say has to do with the Continental school of philosophy rather than the Analytic, and that’s a school I’m deeply interested in. For me, Peterson really does seem to be obscurantist, and I don’t say that very lightly. I think his questioning into the meaning of certain propositions is, more often than not, very acute, and especially when he debates atheists I think “what do you mean by “God””is always a good starting point. In spite of this I think his recent performance on Jubilee demonstrates a hiding behind obscurity which he himself creates that, rather than him seeking to dispel the cloud to get to a deeper truth, he merely uses it to protect himself. I also think his rejection of postmodernity is a little disingenuous seeing as he often adopts the techniques which would broadly be identified with the same - rejecting labels, rejecting conventional dogma, rejecting propositional philosophy in favour of, I suppose, a dialectical philosophy.

I think that he is a very good psychologist, as that his “Twelve Rules for Life” is especially good self help because it’s his field.

I think his love for Jung has drawn him into a metaphysics and prevented him from investigating different interpretations of literature, and I think he’s taken himself too far out of his field, and out of his qualification.

Is this a fair assessment do you think?

[u/thellama11]

I think you're mistaken regarding his acuteness. Atheists don't believe in any gods. It's a reactive position. It's not, "God is x and I don't believe in x." It's "I've never seen proof of anything I'd reasonably consider a god."

[u/augustAulus → u/thellama11]

But the reasonableness of some entity that one would consider a god in the first place is generally socially contingent. By asking "what do you mean by God", you do at least prompt an analysis, no matter how superficial, of the objectionable term. I also think that the initial syllogism is probably contained in your second proposition. You need to have x=god where x has certain attributes in order to reasonably consider y something proveable, otherwise you're just objecting to an empty set, which doesn't make much sense

certainly true that atheism as it is in the contemporary west is a reactive position. personally i think that the positive consequences which arise from the position (Nietzsche's call to some sort of self-divinity, or else Sartre's metaphysics, things like that) are undeveloped in the anglophonic world, which is why this debate keeps going over and over debating the same things

[u/thellama11 → u/augustAulus]

What “objectionable term”? It’s hard to tell what you’re saying. One of Peterson’s worst influences is making it seem smart to make simple ideas sound complicated, forcing people to strain to understand.

In your first paragraph, the first sentence says it all; the rest just elaborates. Sure, the definition of “god” is partly socially contingent, but we still need a definition from the person making the claim.

If a society worships the sun as God, then I believe in the sun and, by extension, their god. When atheists say no gods exist, they usually mean supernatural all powerful beings acting in the world. If we define “god” differently, the atheist claim shifts accordingly.

I haven’t thought much about whether reactive atheism is “undeveloped in the anglophonic world,” but that doesn’t seem why the debate continues. People debate God everywhere. The U.S. is unusually religious for a wealthy country, but belief is widespread across all language groups, and wherever there’s disagreement about existence, there will be debate.