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[Music]
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foreign
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[Music]
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what's up guys Michael here to talk
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about
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Jordan Peterson well there is much that
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could be said about this increasingly
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teary-eyed man I have one purpose and
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one purpose only to check out some of
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Peterson's lectures where he talks about
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post-modern philosophy in particular I
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want to see if I can figure out why he
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thinks that post-modern philosophy as
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embodied by French philosophers like
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Jacques deridan Michelle Foucault is one
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of the most imminent threats to
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contemporary human culture sounds scary
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I know but before we get into it a few
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notes to help guide us on our journey
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and if you're really anti you know just
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give forward a minute and I'll start
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watching Clips first I'm only going to
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watch Clips where Peterson is talking
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about philosophy and philosophers this
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guy says a lot of stuff and lots of
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people on YouTube have made videos
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saying stuff about the stuff he says so
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check those out if you want but today
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I'm staying in my Lane second he talks a
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lot about post-modernism which is a
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super broad category used to describe
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everything from architecture to visual
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art to beer but thankfully he makes it
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clear that he's referring to a certain
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strand of post-war French philosophy
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usually referred to as
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post-structuralism or deconstruction
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embodied in the work of Michelle
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Foucault and Jacques Daria and while
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Peterson makes them sound like active
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threats to the safety of your family
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fouca has been dead since 1984. um Daria
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went to be with baby Jesus in 2004. um
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so they're not going to get you now I'll
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talk about it more once we get going but
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the important thing to know is that both
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deridan Foucault took a critical
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approach to the history of Western
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philosophy and for Foucault Western
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Civilization more generally and to
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different extents both were interested
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in looking at the way in which platonic
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idealism I.E the philosophy of Plato and
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Christian metaphysics led to a
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hierarchical tendency in philosophy
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which basically means one in which truth
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is a vertical Journey from the stuff we
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see in front of us to the actual truth
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that exists at some higher plane whether
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it's a realm of perfect forms for Plato
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or you know for Christian theology God's
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house of great ideas and building on
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this they were both interested in how
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idealist and Christian logic were used
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to make absolute claims on things like
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truth and Power by both thinkers and
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political actors third as we'll see
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Peterson describes lots of very
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dangerous ideas and cultural Trends to
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the work of these philosophers and
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spoiler alert but I think at best he's
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just often at worst he seems to have
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genuinely not read these guys so you
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might be asking why even spend your time
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on this well for one people listen to
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Peterson and it's important that folks
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know when he's wrong about Big Ideas and
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more importantly I think it's important
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to ask why would he vilify a couple of
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dead French philosophers now after
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watching 20 or so hours of his lectures
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on the topic I'm honestly not totally
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sure and you know I'm hesitant to
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speculate about his inner intentions but
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his anger towards these philosophers and
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their ideas seem to come from him
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feeling as if they are calling his
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subject identity and position into
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question put a little differently it
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seems like the work of Foucault and
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derida when properly understood might
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call some of Peterson's own assumptions
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about truth culture and Society into
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question which is you know the point of
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philosophy finally Peterson jumps around
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a lot in his lectures so it's hard to
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not cover lots of ground when trying to
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get to the bottom of these critiques he
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has of philosophy so if there's anything
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that doesn't quite make sense or if you
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guys have more questions or comments
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please drop them them in the comments
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right here and I'll try my best to get
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back to you so let's get into it in this
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philosopher reacts to Jordan Peterson on
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post-modernism but before we get into it
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now back to the show okay here's a video
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where Peterson talks about
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post-modernism and cultural Marxism from
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what looks like a very lovely cabin by
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the way so let's let's start that
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there's a postmodern philosophy
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which we'll talk about a bit that really
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came into its Vogue in the 1970s after
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Classic Marxism especially of the
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economic type had been so thoroughly
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discredited that no one but an absolute
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reprobate could could uh could support
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it publicly anymore even the French
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intellectuals had to admit that
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communism was a bad deal by the by the
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end of the 1960s okay so that right
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there it's worth noting when he says
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that anyone who could support Marxism
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was a reprobate and the French
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intellectuals didn't I mean that's just
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historically wrong so um Louis altaze
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was a super influential professor in
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Paris um was around at the time of
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someone like Jacques derida and was a
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Marxist wrote a lot of books on Marx and
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a lot of his students people like ETI
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and balibar Jacques Ron Sierra Alon baju
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all who are still working
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um are all to very success Marxist
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philosophers who were all studying
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teaching writing speaking in France in
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Paris in the 60s and 70s
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um none of whom were shy about their
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engagement with the Marxist tradition so
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that's just kind of not true
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even the French intellectuals like
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Sartre Jean-Paul Sartre the famous
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philosopher had to admit by the end of
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the 1960s that the the stalinist
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Communist maoist experiment and all of
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its variants not just those particular
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dictators but all of its variants was an
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absolute catastrophic failure
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okay so he says something about sart
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here which is both true and not true
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um sart absolutely was critical of some
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of the violent political catastrophes
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that took place under the name of
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Communism in Europe at the same time
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this did not lead to a disavow of
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Marxism you know starting with sart's
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work search for a method he said a huge
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part of his project was trying to find a
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sort of philosophical synthesis and
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existentialism and Marxism he does that
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um up through his work the critique of
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dialectical reason and it remains an
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interest of his so I think that Peterson
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right here is confusing you know
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philosophers being critical of existing
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political events with those philosophers
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then disavowing the writings of Karl
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Marx which are two different things okay
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um jumping had a little bit Peterson is
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still talking about his sort of like
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intellectual history of what
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post-modernism is they started to pit
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the oppressor the oppressed against the
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oppressor and that opened up the avenue
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to identifying any number of groups as
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oppressed and oppressor and to continue
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the same narrative under a different
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name it was no longer specifically about
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economics it was about power and
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everything to the postmodernist is about
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power and that's actually why they're so
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dangerous because if you're
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engaged in a discussion with someone who
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believes in nothing but Power
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all they are motivated to do is to
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accrue all the power to them because
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what else is there okay so he says that
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everything for the most modernist is
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about power and that they want to
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acquire power
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well if we think about people like
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Jacques derida and Michelle Foucault the
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only two names that Peterson will use
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when saying who the postmodern
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philosophers are the acquisition of
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power was not a concern for them
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um to various extents the analysis of
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the way that power functions and has
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functioned in society was important for
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them but deridan particular
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I mean he talks about power but his his
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primary method deconstruction is not a
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method of gaining power if anything it's
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a method of undermining claims to
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consistent knowledge or problematizing
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sort of trends of acquiring knowledge in
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Western philosophy if you look at
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Foucault's work when he's doing these
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genealogical histories
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he's not trying to figure out how to get
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power he's looking at how power has been
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used and abused and modified throughout
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history so it's kind of like saying that
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if I write a book about the history of
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sharks that I would like to be a shark
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myself right I could write about sharks
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and not want to be a shark or you know
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if I write Gilmore Girls fan fiction I
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wish that I was actress Alexis Bledel no
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I'm just writing Gilmore Girls fan
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fiction I don't want to be a Gilmore
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Girl basically that there's no
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discussion there's no Meeting of Minds
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and consensus there's power
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and so since the 1970s under the guise
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of post-modernism we've seen the rapid
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expansion of identity politics
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throughout the universities it's came
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it's come to dominate all of the
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humanities which are which are dead as
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far as I can tell and a huge proportion
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of the social scientists sciences and
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we've been publicly funding extremely
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radical post-modern leftist thinkers who
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are hell-bent on demolishing the
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fundamental substructure of Western
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civilization and that's no that's no
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paranoid delusion that's that's that's
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their self-admitted goal yeah I don't
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know maybe it's different in Canada but
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in my experiences of being a Humanities
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academic post-modernism it's kind of out
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of fashion by the time I even started
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grad school but maybe it came back
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around like how kids are wearing baggy
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pants again and I've identified not only
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me obviously but one of the main players
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in this entire drama is a French
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philosopher named Jacques derrada who
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was who I think most transiently
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formulated the anti-western philosophy
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that is being pursued so assiduously by
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the radical
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so this is this one's hard because
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I don't know what it means first of all
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to say that darita
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um had this trenchant formation of an
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anti-western philosophy now darita was
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critical of elements of Western Society
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the same way that any philosopher would
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be because
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a part of doing philosophy is looking
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back historically on the tradition and
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critically modifying previous
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assumptions so when Descartes uh he of
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of I think therefore I am Fame
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develops this form of rationalism part
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of that involves criticizing previous
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assumptions about Western subjectivity
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some of those which go back to Plato or
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Aristotle now that doesn't make
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Descartes you know this trenchant
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violent
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um you know enemy of Western philosophy
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it simply means that he's engaging with
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that tradition right he's
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re-articulating classical philosophical
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questions in his own
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um era which is a big part of what
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philosophy does and derida's Method
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called deconstruction aims for a type of
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internal critique he's looking for sort
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of critique that is internal to text
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themselves
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but he's not someone who's just pointing
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his finger at Western society and saying
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bad and I also don't think the degree to
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which it's already infiltrated our
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culture can be overstated
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I mean the the people who hold this
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Doctrine this radical post-modern
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communitarian doctrine that that makes
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racial Identity or sexual identity or
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gender identity or some kind of group
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identity Paramount they've got control
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over most
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low to mid-level bureaucratic structures
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and and many governments as well but but
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even in the United States where you know
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a lot of the governmental institutions
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have swung back to the Republican side
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the postmodernist types have infiltrated
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bureaucratic organizations at the mid to
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upper level okay this seems pretty
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Bonkers to me because the argument would
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be that bureaucracies and governments in
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our world are being controlled by people
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who are followers of philosophers like
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terira and Foucault and while that might
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be cool if it were the case I don't see
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a lot of evidence of that but if you do
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know who these deconstructionist and
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fucodians are that are running the
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government please shout them out in the
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comments if you're dealing with with
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systemic problems of poverty for example
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or trying to determine how to how to
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produce more opportunity for everyone to
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benefit from everyone's abilities you
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have to use a hell of a lot more than
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compassion to get there and to so to
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think of of community in the positive
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sense as being driven by nothing but
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empathy which is really one of the
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central arguments of the of the
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post-modern types at least that's what's
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driving some of their argumentation is
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it's an absurd proposition
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so it's not so much that they confuse
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the two things is that they fail to
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differentiate the concepts to begin with
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it it's very very difficult to build
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functional structures that help people
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thrive individually and socially over
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long periods of time okay so this idea
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that
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post-modern philosophers are driven by
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empathy that it's absurd to be driven by
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empathy first thing you don't see a lot
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of discussion of empathy again in people
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like deridan Foucault what I do think is
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interesting is Daria has this notion of
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unconditional hospitality and that
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doesn't just mean like unlimited
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breadsticks or something for him it
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means that we let others in no matter
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what we don't exclude everyone is a
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friend and not enemy even when that
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becomes dangerous because of course
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unconditional hospitality is dangerous
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imagine if you just like left your door
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open at all times of day and said come
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on in that would be dangerous but this
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is a way of thinking about what real
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Justice and real democracy looks like so
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you could say that maybe that's driven
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by a type of empathy I I would struggle
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to see why that empathy is bad but of
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course what derida is doing is thinking
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through kind of the problem or the
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Paradox of Justice the Paradox of
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unconditional hospitality and and
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getting us to think about that
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impossibility and what that means so
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but maybe empathy is bad I don't know
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maybe maybe I'm not gonna be empathetic
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anymore I think I think no I think
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that's what I'm gonna do now I'm no
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longer going to be empathetic dareda
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described wet the West as male dominated
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which I think is a is a is something to
00:16:20
take serious issue with as as a blatant
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claim it's not differentiated enough or
00:16:25
sophisticated enough and he also said it
00:16:27
was logos Centric and that partly means
00:16:30
logic but there's a deeper meaning to
00:16:32
logos because logos is also the second
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person of the Christian Trinity and Dara
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knew that perfectly well okay so here
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Peterson's playing a bit fast and loose
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when he is talking about derida thinking
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that society's male dominated he's
00:16:44
referring to his critique of foul
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logocentrism and he brings up the logo
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centrism here logocentrism is a critique
00:16:51
of a hierarchy of knowledge like what we
00:16:52
get in Plato where ideas matter more
00:16:55
than like representations of those ideas
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or images we see of them now the fallow
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centers in part this comes or starts
00:17:02
from Freud Freud thought that the
00:17:04
literal biological penis played a role
00:17:06
in the development of the unconscious
00:17:07
now Jacques Lacon a French
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psychoanalytic theorist a contemporary
00:17:12
of daradas in Paris critiqued Freud's
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literalization of the phallus and
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instead he talked about the phallus as a
00:17:18
signifier not an actual biological penis
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right so the phallus and this is
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according to Adrian Johnston's reading
00:17:26
of lacan
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um has a structural function it doesn't
00:17:30
talk about the literal penis and it's
00:17:33
the structural function whatever a child
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hypothesizes the paternal figure
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possesses making in the focus of the
00:17:38
maternal figures desire okay so when
00:17:41
we're talking about phallic desire it's
00:17:43
a desire for power a desire to be the
00:17:46
big other a desire to be like God so
00:17:48
what is phallogocentrism then well it's
00:17:51
a critique of the dominance of a
00:17:53
hierarchical form of knowledge in
00:17:55
Western philosophy and it's a critique
00:17:57
of the idea or the the structure of
00:18:00
phallic desire in Western society which
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doesn't mean desire for penises it means
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a desire for a certain type of
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hierarchical
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um power power of the big other the
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power of God whatever it might be
00:18:12
um so I think that's where Peterson
00:18:14
misunderstands what's happening and what
00:18:15
leads him to then say that Daria simply
00:18:19
says like the West is male dominated but
00:18:22
also I don't know Google like how many
00:18:24
presidents are men or or how many
00:18:27
leaders of large corporations are men
00:18:29
like I mean like obviously that's not
00:18:31
what dared I was talking about but it's
00:18:32
like pretty true that most political
00:18:34
leaders and Business Leaders are are men
00:18:37
so there you go the the logo Centric
00:18:40
idea is
00:18:41
his criticism of the idea of the
00:18:44
logocentric society is a deep criticism
00:18:46
of the idea that the individual as a
00:18:49
speaking Force as a communicative force
00:18:52
is the appropriate
00:18:54
highest value upon which a culture
00:18:57
should be built he took that apart and
00:18:59
criticized it and and so that's that's a
00:19:02
deeper criticism I would say even in
00:19:04
Marx's criticism which was mostly about
00:19:06
unequal power relationships darede went
00:19:08
deeper than that and the the
00:19:10
post-modernists that occupy the
00:19:11
universities are anti-individual right
00:19:13
down to the right down to the Bedrock
00:19:16
and so that's partly why they push
00:19:18
collectivism to such a degree they don't
00:19:20
give a damn who you are they care what
00:19:21
your group identity is and that's that
00:19:23
okay so what Peterson is talking about
00:19:27
here is dairy dog's critique of
00:19:29
logocentrism now he seems to think it's
00:19:31
a critique of the speaking individual
00:19:34
being but again it's not really a social
00:19:36
critique it's a philosophical critique
00:19:38
and the idea again is that logocentrism
00:19:41
is a critique of hierarchical ways of
00:19:43
thinking about knowledge largely going
00:19:45
back to Plato So Daryl's not saying
00:19:48
logic doesn't exist he's not saying that
00:19:50
truth doesn't exist he's saying that the
00:19:53
idea that language is the primary way
00:19:55
that we access direct truth and in
00:19:57
particular that there is this absolute
00:19:59
truth that we can access in this like
00:20:01
mathematical way
00:20:03
um is untrue right and we see that in
00:20:06
Plato and Descartes and others okay so
00:20:09
there's so much going on in this video
00:20:11
um I guess you can watch the whole thing
00:20:13
yourself if you want I wouldn't really
00:20:16
recommend it but I want to look at one
00:20:18
last thing he says about post-modernism
00:20:20
and philosophy and books here's how you
00:20:23
interpret a book if you're a
00:20:25
post-modernist like a fiction book you
00:20:27
don't read the book and try to
00:20:28
understand what utility might be
00:20:32
extracted out of it to guide you in your
00:20:35
life
00:20:36
that's the old system the new system is
00:20:39
you read the book and you analyze it in
00:20:42
terms of whose
00:20:44
societal position of power it justifies
00:20:48
so you look for who the supremacist is
00:20:50
in the text could be it could be the
00:20:54
author it could be the characters it
00:20:55
doesn't matter you read the text as if
00:20:57
all it does is reflect
00:21:00
on the current corrupt power structure
00:21:02
that obtains in current society and
00:21:04
that's that's that's the beginnings of
00:21:07
literary criticism under the social
00:21:08
justice regime okay this is a weird one
00:21:12
um at least in terms of philosophy I
00:21:13
think it's very weird to say that the
00:21:15
point of reading a text philosophically
00:21:17
is the extraction of utility to see how
00:21:19
it can guide your life of course there's
00:21:20
works of moral philosophy that do just
00:21:23
that but when he says that
00:21:24
post-modernists analyze books in terms
00:21:27
of whose societal position of power
00:21:28
justifies or whatever it's not really it
00:21:31
so deridot did think that critique was
00:21:35
internal to the text that it's all in
00:21:37
the text itself but what deconstruction
00:21:40
is is a method of approaching a text to
00:21:43
see how it self deconstructs to see
00:21:46
where that sort of Auto deconstruction
00:21:47
is operating which means that when I
00:21:49
approach a text I'm reading it against
00:21:51
itself what I'm not doing is taking an
00:21:55
external intellectual framework and
00:21:57
laying it over the text and using that
00:21:59
to analyze which seems to be what
00:22:00
Peterson is saying here instead I'm
00:22:03
analyzing the text on its own terms but
00:22:06
kind of looking for those spaces those
00:22:08
inconsistencies those paradoxes in the
00:22:11
text itself it's a very difficult way of
00:22:13
approaching text and I would never say
00:22:15
it's not but what Peterson is saying
00:22:18
here is super reductive to um diridian
00:22:20
deconstruction and how it's applied to
00:22:22
literary Theory okay um I want to look a
00:22:24
little bit at this lecture that Peterson
00:22:26
gave called identity politics and the
00:22:28
Marxist lie of white privilege and again
00:22:31
I think to get ready for this video I
00:22:32
watched 30 or 40 hours of Peterson and
00:22:35
it's been hard to narrow it down so I
00:22:37
want to jump around here a little bit
00:22:39
and really look at some of the stuff he
00:22:41
says about post-modernism and postmodern
00:22:44
philosophy again just a reminder the
00:22:47
only names that I have seen him use when
00:22:49
he talks about who the postmodern
00:22:50
philosophers are are Jacques darita and
00:22:53
Michelle Foucault so if you hear me
00:22:55
talking about them it's because he did
00:22:57
it first and so the world they Envision
00:22:59
as far as I can tell is something like a
00:23:01
it's a sociologically hobbsian nightmare
00:23:05
so Hobbes thought of the philosopher
00:23:07
Thomas Hobbs thought of the natural
00:23:09
state of human beings as every
00:23:11
individual in some sense at the throat
00:23:13
of every other individual
00:23:16
so that the basic state of man mankind
00:23:20
unlike the russoian state of say virgin
00:23:23
innocence and and the Primitive Garden
00:23:26
of paradise was uh an all-out war of
00:23:28
everyone against everyone else and that
00:23:31
that required the imposition of the
00:23:33
social order to keep peace essentially
00:23:35
so it's a it's a very dark view of of
00:23:37
humankind Russo on the other hand would
00:23:40
think of people as intrinsically good in
00:23:42
the social order as intrinsically
00:23:43
tyrannical
00:23:45
you can actually think about Hobbs and
00:23:46
Rousseau in some sense of as as as
00:23:49
opposites that need to be paired
00:23:51
together in order to get a relatively
00:23:53
comprehensive view of human nature well
00:23:55
the postmodern view is like the Hobson
00:23:59
view in some sense except you want to
00:24:01
replace the individual with with with
00:24:03
pyramids of of
00:24:06
social organizations so hierarchies of
00:24:08
social organization that are based on
00:24:10
group identity
00:24:12
and that the landscape in which those
00:24:14
pyramids exist is one of unbroken enmity
00:24:18
and inability to communicate so it's a
00:24:20
very dark view as far as I'm concerned
00:24:22
and I think it's fundamentally wrong
00:24:24
okay so the claim here is that
00:24:27
post-modern philosophers want to replace
00:24:28
the category of the individual and we'll
00:24:31
start there just by saying
00:24:33
no they want to criticize the structure
00:24:37
of individual subjectivity in Western
00:24:38
philosophy and rethink how it interacts
00:24:41
with systems of power and then replace
00:24:43
it with social hierarchies founded on
00:24:44
identities look at the head Joker at the
00:24:48
top of the postmodern hierarchy as
00:24:50
dareda Foucault is often mentioned as
00:24:53
are a number of other people
00:24:55
um
00:24:56
here's some other attributes of
00:24:58
post-modern thinking uh
00:25:00
there's a recognition of the existence
00:25:02
of hierarchy that's for sure
00:25:04
and there's an echo of that idea
00:25:07
the recognition of hierarchy and the
00:25:09
term patriarchy because of course
00:25:10
patriarchy is a recognition of hierarchy
00:25:12
now it's a very particular kind of
00:25:13
recognition but the postmodernists also
00:25:17
tend to Define
00:25:19
hierarchy as a consequence of power
00:25:22
differential but the notion of social
00:25:24
hierarchies is not primary for deridar
00:25:27
Foucault in any prescriptive sense now
00:25:28
dareda is interested in democracy and
00:25:32
it's impossibility but democracy
00:25:34
nonetheless and Foucault isn't really
00:25:37
interested in top-down hierarchical
00:25:40
power he's interested in the way in
00:25:42
which power functions at the term of
00:25:45
networks right so when Foucault does
00:25:48
analysis of how power Works in society
00:25:51
um you know it's a it's a microphysics
00:25:54
of power he wants to look at the way
00:25:56
power is structured in the every day so
00:25:59
for Foucault it's more about a bottom-up
00:26:01
analysis and not a top-down analysis to
00:26:05
see how subjects are constituted by
00:26:09
these networks of power again it's not
00:26:11
saying that the individual subject
00:26:12
doesn't exist but that they are
00:26:13
constituted by networks of power but in
00:26:16
neither case do we see dareda or foucos
00:26:19
saying we need to get rid of individuals
00:26:22
and replace them with hierarchical
00:26:24
networks of power founded on identities
00:26:25
it's just not in the text the hierarchy
00:26:28
is in functioning Western democracies
00:26:30
are fundamentally predicated on Power
00:26:33
and tyranny and then you know I can use
00:26:35
a biological example too which would
00:26:37
Place me outside of the postmodern realm
00:26:39
of argument because the post-modernists
00:26:41
don't believe in biology but but they
00:26:43
act like they do because they all die so
00:26:46
okay
00:26:48
um this is a real wild claim right I
00:26:50
don't know what it means to say that
00:26:52
they don't believe that biology exists
00:26:54
here's what I know I'll give you some
00:26:55
facts
00:26:56
daried I was interested enough to do an
00:26:58
entire seminar
00:27:00
um on biology it was called The V
00:27:02
L'Amour he interacted with molecular
00:27:04
biology and genetics via the work of a
00:27:06
biologist named Francois Jacob so he
00:27:09
believed in biology enough to dedicate a
00:27:11
seminar to it Foucault
00:27:14
um has this notion of biopower we talked
00:27:15
about it in the boys video recently
00:27:17
which presupposes that biology exists
00:27:19
and not only does it exist but Co thinks
00:27:22
it's an utterly important category when
00:27:25
we think about modern society so for
00:27:28
Foucault biopower describes the
00:27:31
regulation and control of human life and
00:27:34
populations he called it the set of
00:27:36
mechanisms through which the basic
00:27:38
biological features of the human species
00:27:40
became the odd object of a political
00:27:42
strategy of a general strategy of power
00:27:44
or in other words I was starting from
00:27:45
the 18th Century Modern Western
00:27:47
societies took on board the fundamental
00:27:49
biological fact that human beings are a
00:27:52
species so um again it was a silly
00:27:55
comment for him to make but it seems
00:27:57
irresponsible to me
00:27:59
if you're going to level critiques
00:28:01
against an intellectual tradition and
00:28:04
then if you were going to identify two
00:28:05
people as your primary targets and a
00:28:07
critique of a tradition to not have a
00:28:10
cursory knowledge of their work is very
00:28:14
frustrating and it makes it really hard
00:28:15
to really interact with this other than
00:28:17
just saying like no you're wrong
00:28:20
um because he's saying things that are
00:28:21
so out of pocket uh but let's let's see
00:28:24
what else he says so you know so much
00:28:26
for the idea that power is the only game
00:28:28
in town then you got to ask the question
00:28:30
is well this is actually a post-modern
00:28:33
question so you know one of the things
00:28:36
dareda said the the main post-modern
00:28:38
Joker is that by categorizing
00:28:41
you you you privilege one concept and
00:28:44
you pre you force other Concepts out to
00:28:46
the margins and so he believed that when
00:28:49
you constructed a hierarchy of power
00:28:51
that the hierarchy of power privileged
00:28:54
certain people and marginalized others
00:28:56
okay I find this really confusing
00:28:58
because Peterson implies that
00:29:00
hierarchies don't fundamentally
00:29:02
privilege some things over other things
00:29:04
um one definition of hierarchy is an
00:29:06
arrangement of items objects names
00:29:08
values categories that are represented
00:29:10
as being above below or at the same
00:29:14
level as one another so like in terms of
00:29:17
things being above or below I don't see
00:29:20
how that doesn't involve privileging
00:29:22
like if I say
00:29:24
um that as a fruit a blueberry is above
00:29:27
an apple I'm hierarchically I'm
00:29:30
hierarchically privileging a blueberry
00:29:31
over an apple I do think that too apples
00:29:33
are I don't like apples they're really
00:29:35
Mealy
00:29:36
and every time I try to like once a year
00:29:38
I'm like I'm gonna eat an apple again
00:29:39
and it's so mealy
00:29:41
um but the hierarchies that Dairy dog
00:29:44
talks about again refer back to that
00:29:46
critique of logocentrism
00:29:48
um and the idea that speech is
00:29:50
hierarchically opposed to writing that
00:29:53
presence is hierarchically opposed a
00:29:56
representation and again this is more to
00:29:58
do with the critique of Plato's idealism
00:30:01
and its Legacy and philosophy
00:30:03
than it is with Dario critiquing some
00:30:06
contemporary social hierarchy
00:30:09
um and I think that that confusion is at
00:30:12
play here um and of course the
00:30:14
implication for Peterson is that deridan
00:30:16
wants to push others out that
00:30:17
marginalization is good
00:30:19
but Dairy dog is all about democracy
00:30:22
um we talked about this before he's all
00:30:23
about unconditional Hospitality now he
00:30:26
does think democracy is paradoxically
00:30:27
tied up with Sovereign power I mean that
00:30:30
there is a paradox implied in how
00:30:32
democracy functions
00:30:33
but this democracy to come that he
00:30:35
speaks of is still something that should
00:30:37
push us towards the future and I think
00:30:39
that it's fair to say deridas
00:30:40
fundamentally Democratic thinker would
00:30:42
love to break it down more but it's
00:30:43
complicated so um go read some dare it
00:30:46
off you want it's it can be fun it's
00:30:47
frustrating but it's fun you have to ask
00:30:49
why it is that you would if you were a
00:30:51
post-modernist
00:30:53
yourself why it is that you would
00:30:55
privilege the idea of power above all
00:30:56
else it's exactly what is it that you're
00:30:58
pushing to the margin
00:31:00
and so that's something that we're going
00:31:02
to talk about now here's one thing you
00:31:04
might push to the margin let's say that
00:31:06
you believe that hierarchies are a
00:31:09
consequence of power
00:31:11
well then you push confidence to the
00:31:13
margin and then applying the post-modern
00:31:15
modernist logic you might say well the
00:31:18
reason you're privileging power is so
00:31:19
that you can produce so that you could
00:31:21
push confidence to the margin okay so
00:31:24
when he says again that Daria wants
00:31:26
power above all else it wants to push
00:31:28
people to the margins I don't see how
00:31:30
that works with dairydas categories of
00:31:33
unconditional hospitality and radical
00:31:35
friendship um this is a quote this is
00:31:37
from darede's book of hospitality he
00:31:40
says absolute Hospitality requires that
00:31:42
I open up my home and then I give not
00:31:44
only to The Foreigner but to the
00:31:46
absolute unknown Anonymous other
00:31:49
so that's what Dairy dog says okay
00:31:52
um that's enough Jordan Peterson for one
00:31:55
day so thank you so much for sticking
00:31:57
with me through that and again if you
00:31:59
have any questions or want further
00:32:00
explanation of anything we got into
00:32:02
please drop those in the comments below
00:32:05
I mean it drop them I'll try to respond
00:32:07
to them okay so what did we learn today
00:32:10
well I think at least two things one is
00:32:12
that both Jacques Dario and Michelle
00:32:14
Foucault wanted to push philosophy
00:32:16
Beyond a traditional platonist or
00:32:19
metaphysical Paradigm in a search for
00:32:21
more just and Democratic forms of
00:32:23
thought and two whatever Peterson thinks
00:32:26
post-modernism is he's absolutely not
00:32:29
talking about deridan Foucault and their
00:32:31
influence or at least that's what he
00:32:33
thinks he's doing
00:32:34
instead he seems to be using
00:32:36
post-modernism as a straw man that gives
00:32:39
him a type of Lefty intellectual
00:32:42
Boogeyman to fight against and while it
00:32:45
might seem easy to Simply dismiss this
00:32:47
as a cynical and willful misreading of a
00:32:50
couple of philosophers the reality might
00:32:53
be more harmful because like it or not
00:32:55
Jordan Peterson is a wildly influential
00:32:58
public intellectual who many people and
00:33:00
especially young dudes on the internet
00:33:02
take as an authority figure on subjects
00:33:05
like psychology ethics and philosophy
00:33:07
and when public intellectuals whose job
00:33:09
it is to convey complicated ideas and
00:33:12
understandable and relatable terms abuse
00:33:14
the trust the public puts in them the
00:33:17
effects can be bad like really bad so
00:33:21
this stuff matters but what do you all
00:33:25
think like I said before let us know in
00:33:27
the comments and as always if there's
00:33:29
any other thinker or movie or TV show
00:33:32
you think warrants a philosophical
00:33:34
reaction please let us know a huge
00:33:37
thanks to all our patrons for your
00:33:38
support and do check out our patreon
00:33:40
page if you haven't in a while we have
00:33:42
some great stuff going on there and the
00:33:43
support means a lot to us
00:33:46
um like this video if you liked it or if
00:33:49
you just want to you know support the
00:33:51
work I did and watching all that Jordan
00:33:52
Peterson mean a lot and thanks as always
00:33:55
for watching it means so much to us I'll
00:33:58
catch you later
00:34:00
[Music]
00:34:01
all right
00:34:03
[Music]
