Transcribed from Jordan
Peterson’s dialogue with Dennis Prager,
on Prager U, May
23, 2019.
35.00-42.20
This
segment speaks about the
postmodernist collectivist
stranglehold on universities,
and its doctrine
denying the reality of the individual.
Jordan
Peterson:
I think that universities
do more harm than good now,
and I’m very loath to say that, you know, because I’ve been part
of the academy for thirty years and taught at great institutions.
But
the
postmodern collectivist doctrine is
so
psychologically and politically toxic
that
I think that academia now does more harm than good.
And
it is not only what it teaches which is the ideology, this ungrateful
ideology, which denies
the existence of the individual.
One
of the things I might tell you, just so you know this, is that, you
know, you hear that there are debates
about free speech on campus,
about who should talk and who shouldn’t, and people think that
that’s what the debate is about, about who should talk and who
shouldn’t, but that’s not what the debate is about. You’re
not even scraping the surface of the debate if that’s what you
think it’s about.
The
debate on campus is about whether or not a human being has the
capacity to communicate intelligibly as an individual or not, and the
answer for
the
postmodernist collective types is that there is no such thing as an
individual.
And
therefore the very notion of free speech is absurd,
because free speech is predicated on the idea that each of us have
something to say that’s ours, that’s a consequence of our unique
individuality, not our group identity, or the multiplicity of our
group identities, but something, that’s something that we have that
speaks from our spirit that can speak to the spirit of another and
produce a negotiated peace, and that’s what’s being debated.
The
war that’s going on philosophically or theologically in the
campuses is far deeper than you think. The
entire notion of the reality of the individual, which is, I think,
also the entire notion of the idea that human beings are made in the
image of God most fundamentally. That is what’s being attacked.
It
wasn’t for nothing that Derrida called western culture,
phallogocentric, phallus for masculine and logos for logos, for truth
and courage, and centric for centric. That was a criticism from his
perspective, the idea of the sovereignty of the individual.
If
you don’t have the idea of the sovereignty of the individual
‘cause there is no individual, there’s
no free speech.
All you are is an avatar of your group interests and if I’m not in
your group it’s not in my interest to let you speak. There’s
nothing that we have to say to one other. There’s
nothing but power.
It’s a Hobbesian nightmare of group
against group,
and that’s
the postmodern doctrine.
And
so, it’s, to call it appalling is to barely scrape the surface.
It’s an assault, it
is truly an assault on the most fundamental principles by which the
West is governed.
It’s not surface level philosophy. It goes all the way to the
bottom and this is partly why I have been concentrating on religious
themes in my lectures, let’s say, because the argument goes all the
way down to first principles.
Is
there, is the
idea of the sovereignty of the individual
correct? The Western answer is, it’s the great discovery of the
West, the Western answer is, that’s
the most fundamental truth.
That is exactly what is under assault at the universities. The reason
that the collectivist types hate me is because I’ve got their
number. I know what they’re up to.
And
I think further that they do not wish to shoulder the unbearable
responsibility of being a sovereign individual, so not only is it –
and that accounts for the cowardice, and that accounts for the
attempt to weaken the spirit of the people that they’re teaching by
overprotecting them -- they’re not willing to take on the
responsibility, and the fault has to lie elsewhere.
And
I think that’s a good judge of someone, someone’s character in
general. It’s like, well the world is in a messy state, let’s
say, and the question is, “Whose fault is it?” And the answer is:
yours. That’s the right answer.
It’s
not the patriarchy, it’s not some identifiable group, it’s not
some structure that’s gone wrong, even though those things can go
wrong.
And
that’s the other fundamental truth of the West,
is that,
things
would be a lot better if you were a lot better.
And
you have to decide if you’re willing to accept that, and you have
every reason not to. It’s a terrible thought.
You
know, it was Solzhenitsyn,
I think—this is a paraphrase but I think it’s close enough—he
said that one
person who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny,
and when I first read that I thought that can’t possibly be true,
and as I understood I thought that can’t possibly not be true
because the only thing that can break the spine of a tyranny is the
truth, and the only person that, and the only way that the truth can
be told is that some individual tells it, and so it’s
necessarily the case that tyranny is broken by the truth of the
individual.
But
then the question is,
well is
it gonna be you that’s going to do that?
It’s no trivial thing. You know, people come and tell me, very
frequently, and they write me, and they say well, you know, I agree
with what you say and this terrible thing is happening in my
workplace and, you know, I don’t know what to do about it, and I
don’t want you to make my story public, and because of the
potential for repercussion.
And
I think, yeah, well I understand your position. It’s no joke to,
it’s
no joke to stand up when the amateur totalitarians are knocking on
your office door, but if you don’t, then sooner than you think, it
will be the professional totalitarians,
and then you will be in the sort of trouble that unless you’ve
tried to imagine it, you can’t possibly imagine it. So.
