Jordan Peterson: Anti-Stoic

Psychology professor Jordan Peterson is the author of a best-selling book of life advice and has received a tremendous amount of media attention for his views on what he (sometimes) calls an “obvious” crisis of masculinity.

In a recent interview with Nellie Bowles of The New York Times, Peterson addressed the mass-murder van attack in Toronto by a self-described “involuntary celibate,” or “incel,” as they call themselves in online discussion groups.

Here was Peterson’s take on the killer:

He was angry at God because women were rejecting him.

The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges.

Half the men fail. And no one cares about the men who fail.

I assume that by “enforced monogamy” Peterson does not mean changes in government policy that result in “incels” having the women they want (an idea taken up seriously in the Times just a few days earlier). Surely Peterson is invoking the notion of non-monogamous behavior being effectively curbed by social but non-governmental constraints. In either case, the idea is that this would leave more women for men, and "half" would not "fail."

Peterson’s is one of the most anti-Stoic accounts of life I can imagine. This seems particularly interesting at a time when Stoicism, the insights of which are reflected in effective therapeutic approaches like Cognitive Behavior Therapy, is also gaining a lot of popular support outside of academia.

Rather than making excuses for the desire to cause harm to others, as if that is a reasonable strategy to obtain what is needed, or somehow natural, the Stoics would analyze and reject the desire. Any such desire is immoral and unnecessary and the Stoics identify its source: a take on life where you deserve what you want. They would point out how irrational it is to aim for anything other than being a good person. They reason with us until we realize that we are really promised nothing and that no one else can provide us with happiness. The pity and entitlement that “incels” feel for themselves is, the Stoics have long explained, exactly what we would expect to lie behind murderous rage.

The idea that having (in whatever sense) a woman would correct such a mistaken outlook is completely implausible, according to a Stoic, and ignores the very features of moral agency that ethics depends upon. Worldwide, domestic violence against women is incredibly common, why would we imagine someone who blames the rest of us for his situation is not going to, if "given" one, take that unworkable philosophy out on his “wife"?

Peterson borrows some Stoic bromides (clean your room, do not criticize others until your own house is in order) but, just as he abandons the idea that humans can be happy, he seems to have rejected, as well, what it means to be ethical.

It is a shame that Epictetus is not here to give lectures on YouTube.