I am procrastinating, so in solidarity with @awg_allan and @TabathaSouthey (among many others), I will be tweeting briefly about this Jordan Peterson nonsense.
To start, I will paraphrase something @AndrayDomise said to me last night: “This is not about free speech.”
To start, I will paraphrase something @AndrayDomise said to me last night: “This is not about free speech.”
Takes like this and TVO’s are so infuriating – they’re coming from a place of ignorance. Peterson is not defending free speech. He’s inventing censorship and ignoring the 200+ years of work that has gone into developing modern censorship.
One of my areas of study is German Idealism, a period that lasts from (about) Kant’s 1st Critique in 1781 to Hegel’s death in 1831. In that period, a ton of very important Western philosophy is written.
In between writing some of the greatest works of modern philosophy, these Germans take the time to argue about what an ideal university might look like and provide official recommendations to the Prussian government on how to organize the soon to be created University of Berlin.
Interesting aside: Wilhelm von Humboldt is not well-known as an Idealist but ends up winning the university debate. It's now the “Humboldt University of Berlin”, a Humboldtian university. On wonders if there’s a correlation between mediocre philosophizing and political success…
While deciding what this university should look like, the topic of dueling comes up. It’s so central to university life that it can’t not. Schleiermacher's argument is literally that at a certain point intellectual debate can only be decided at sword-point. Sound like anyone? 
Now, we started with Kant. Kant’s Conflict of the Faculties starts with a letter to the King’s censoring power, arguing when he should and should not be censored. Censorship is defined as a critique that has violence to back it up.
Debates about dueling are central – it’s one of the reasons Schleiermacher drums Fichte (anti-dueling) out of the university – precisely because debate is impossible without violence to backstop critique. Peterson is repeating that, but just ignoring that we’ve had this argument.
Kant argues that Philosophy should have a censoring power over other departments, ultimately determining who gets degrees and who doesn’t (that’s why it’s a PhD). But the “violence” backing up his censoring power is the domesticated violence of state support.
That is, Kant wants universities to perform a legitimating function as a degree-granting institution, where knowledge is legitimated or censored based on the advice of Philosophy, so that we don’t have – say – charlatans running around selling miracle cures.
The latest Peterson chapter is his plan to root out “postmodern neo-Marxism” and get rid of whole departments. He’s just re-inventing censorship – poorly – and retracing the steps – poorly – that created the system he’s so against.
Universities are legitimating institutions. Not all knowledge can be legitimate. The knowledge that is not legitimated is basically censored. We all know this and have been discussing this for centuries.
Jordan Peterson is just trying to create a shitty version of censorship.
Jordan Peterson is just trying to create a shitty version of censorship.
Sorry for the length of the rant. I’ve been sitting on this for a while. Some background:
