חדש באתר: NotebookLM עם כל תכני הרב מיכאל אברהם

Q&A: Professor Jordan Peterson

Back to list  |  🌐 עברית  |  ℹ About
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

Professor Jordan Peterson

Question

Hello Rabbi! I wanted to ask whether you are familiar with Peterson’s thought, and if so, what do you think of it?

Answer

Not familiar

Discussion on Answer

Tair (2018-06-18)

Truthfully, I was also wondering whether the Rabbi knows him. He’s a psychology professor with a fascinating philosophical outlook who drives the far left out of its mind. If the Rabbi has some free time, I recommend watching the following interview (on feminism), which got 10 million views within just a few months:

Michi (2018-06-18)

Is there some original and interesting argument there, or is he just expressing what everyone thinks but doesn’t dare say (out of fear of political correctness)?

Tair (2018-06-18)

I don’t know how original the claim is. He simply expresses, in a clear and matter-of-fact way, the very obvious flaws in the outlook of the new feminists, in a way that no one else has managed (in my humble opinion) to do before him.

D. (2018-06-18)

There’s no original argument there (maybe it’s novel for someone who has been exposed all his life only to politically correct ideas, and never imagined that reality might be different).
In any case, this whole video can be summed up in one paragraph that would take half a minute to read instead of 30 minutes of listening.

Tair (2018-06-18)

To D. — it could very well be that you’re right. But in my view, the interest in the video lies in the dynamic between the interviewer and interviewee, not in his arguments. She threw at him stupid, empty questions (in keeping with the best tradition of television nowadays), and he kept his cool, answered her with facts, until she simply fell silent because she had nothing to say. You have to remember that not many people understand that feminism today is based on complete nonsense. On the contrary, it’s mainstream. So any such interview is gold in my eyes.

D. (2018-06-18)

Tair, yes, there is an entertainment effect in the rebelliousness and mockery directed against feminist political correctness on talk shows, but he is of course neither the first nor the second to go in that direction.

Tair (2018-06-18)

D., he’s the first one I’ve seen who does it successfully. If you know of others, I’d be happy if you shared.

D. (2018-06-18)

Tair,
For example, Christina Hoff Sommers.
And of course, if you’re looking for the provocative-entertaining direction that drives the feminist left and the zealots of political correctness crazy on talk shows and various panels, then Milo Yiannopoulos and Ben Shapiro and others.

Tair (2018-06-18)

I hadn’t yet heard of Christina Hoff Sommers. A quick YouTube search shows that she mainly speaks in the company of people who think like she does.
Milo Yiannopoulos isn’t a good speaker in my opinion; he’s just an over-provocative rhetorician. Just like many on the far left.
Ben Shapiro really is excellent, but from what I’ve seen he doesn’t often get interviewed on these topics on hostile TV channels. He mainly appears on Fox News and in front of students.
By the way, this interview is an example of Peterson’s ability to express himself, but he does many other interesting things. He’s one of the prominent opponents of postmodernism, and he has many interesting lectures on the subject.

Michi (2018-06-18)

I listened. He really is a smart man with sound and sharp thinking (what on earth is he doing in psychology?!). There really isn’t any great novelty in what he says; he just sharpens the concepts. By the way, the woman interviewing him seems to me very intelligent and quick-thinking, but she is a wonderful example of a child taken captive in the chains of political correctness. She is simply incapable of understanding his distinctions, despite how clear he is and despite the fact that she really is a smart woman. It’s fascinating to see this blindness in all its glory. She is just intellectually trapped in a limited conceptual net.
This really is an instructive conversation. Even without conceptual and philosophical innovations, it demonstrates very well the postmodern blindness. By the way, it seems to me that there is a lot of overlap between what he says and things I’ve written here in the past in several posts.
Thanks for the reference.

Leave a Reply

Back to top button