Jordan Peterson on Nietzsche and Dostoevsky | Lex Fridman Podcast Clips

Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: • Jordan Peterson: Life,...
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GUEST BIO:
Jordan Peterson is a psychologist, lecturer, podcast host, and author.
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[@spazemunky]

You two should do a monthly show

[@brennenspice6098]

Please god, get Lex away from Peterson...

[@amineHighTube]

Oh hell no 🤣

[@boxer_puncher]

They should do Jujutsu. I'd die to see Jordan in side headlock:)))

[@clips7701]

@@brennenspice6098 why??

[@chaitanyavelamala7268]

Dostoyevsky & neitzche Definitely signing up for that course

[@tremzy9743]

Too many are fond of a second-hand, beggar-like pursuit of knowledge with outstretched and shameless hands. It is a weakness, a vice, no? Peterson is a dancer, around and past all the matters that weigh the most. Rather clever and beautiful, therefore, all the more alluring.

[@chaitanyavelamala7268]

@@tremzy9743 weakness ? Yes. I need a teacher to guide me. I read around 500 books in 10 years but they never really tranformed me (Ex : sydney sheldon) could also be because of them being fictional or thriller in nature mostly. Now I read dostoyevsky & neitzche paralelly and completely blown away & that changed me a lot. Completed 30 books from JP's great books list in one year & I find myself changing rapidly with every single book so much that I laugh at how stupid I was just a year ago which did not happen for a decade although i was reading more books than now. One book of dostoyevsky may be equal to 50 books of what i was reading in gaining the same amount of knowledge. I am hungry for knowledge more than ever & *the reason is his guidance* So I consider myself a fool willing to learn but are you a genius who does not need guidance ? If yes you would probably not have had the time to comment something like this

[@tremzy9743]

@@chaitanyavelamala7268 "Another ruse and self-defence consists in reacting as rarely as possible and withdrawing from situations and conditions in which one would be condemned to hang one’s ‘freedom’, one’s initiative out to dry, so to speak, and become a mere reagent. Let me take as an analogy one’s dealings with books. The scholar, who basically just ‘skims’ books-on a moderate day the classicist gets through roughly 200-ends up completely losing the ability to think for himself. If he does not skim, he does not think. He responds to a stimulus (-an idea he has read) when he thinks-he ends up just reacting. The scholar expends all his strength in saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’, in critiquing what has already been thought-he himself no longer thinks..." (Nietzsche, Friedrich; Duncan Large. Ecce Homo (Oxford World's Classics) (p. 31).) Am I wasting my time? Depends, maybe someone reads this quote, maybe someone understands where I'm coming from and the importance of whats known as self-reliance.

[@chaitanyavelamala7268]

@@tremzy9743 I did not understand but will wait here for those who do & may be they can explain me in a lucid way. You might possess great knowledge but if not many understand ýou, you might not feel yourself to be a part of this society

[@tremzy9743]

@@chaitanyavelamala7268 Don't read Nietzsche or Emerson how you would read peterson, you require a basis from which you can spring forth new ideas and questions. Why is this question framed this way? Why does he mention these things? Where is he heading with this? What values and perspectives operate here? In the thinker, philosopher or artist, nothing is impersonal. The hard thing is that, Nietzsche never wrote for a man like Peterson, he has much to say on the regression, the priest with his doctrines and morals. You subject yourself to anothers perspective and interpretation - not your own. He may turn gold to coal and you'll still be happy over it, you know no better.

[@RichardThePear]

I declare that this is good.

[@nanashi7779]

Bold claim. What is it to be good?

[@patrickhassing120]

The best thing I’ve taken from JP is reading Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn. They are absolutely pivotal in my life in ways I couldn’t have understood before reading them. The discussion on Ivan and Alyosha is interesting and I do think JP is onto something. One reason I include in why Ivan is more developed than Alyosha is because the spirit of Ivan shows up in many of his works- Dostoyevsky spent decades developing this character. Ivan is built from Nikolai Stavrogin and Raskolnikov. I see them as the “conscious transgressor” archetype. This character arch is the most interesting of Dostoyevsky’s IMO and I don’t think Alyosha or Prince Mushkin can even exist as characters without them. Alyosha seems to be a response to what is becoming of the modern man.

[@Akshat-zw9gr]

Absolutely right, the only thing I disagree with Peterson on is religion

[@MasayaShida]

Thanks for sharing. Being from a former communist country this is all very interesting to me.

[@patrickhassing120]

@@MasayaShida What in my comment stands out as interesting to you, coming from a communist country? Sorry if the question sounds rude; I intend it with utmost respect and curiosity. I would appreciate your perspective!

[@JamesBond-uz2dm]

Dostoyevsky planned on writing a novel about Alyosha before he died. Sadly, he died, leaving us to wonder how Alyosha would have navigated the world.

[@brennenspice6098]

Peterson in terms of literary reccommendations is really limited, although the writers mentioned are fantastic you can't forget about Joyce, Nabokov, Pushkin, Pynchon etc. Peterson for ideological reasons would not like Pynchon because he writes some of the greatest books ever yet they are also highly postmodern and introduce those aesthetics. To Jordan's surprise if he faced the big fake dragon he built up and read postmodernism even in fiction he would see there lies incredible tools for re-examination of history and structures, but no that's "Marxism". Ugh.

[@HigherPlanes]

I would add this... that we each live in our own unique world, so it becomes doubly important to treat others how you would like to be treated.

[@thebodybuildingkitchen1648]

The part about acting out the proposition that life is good (around 3:50 onward) is very similar to the idea from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character."

[@shivasantosht]

I'm currently reading "Notes from underground" 😳

[@Moedermariia]

Question for comment section: I am very interessed in philosophy and eager to learn. I have been following JP for a while now But I am struggling with the complexities of some of the subjects. Its sometimes hard to learn and read about what Nietzsche wrote for instance. Which book/character do you guys recommend to start with? To understand philosophy in a next level? Thanks!

[@taasinbinhossainalvi9173]

You can read Notes from Underground by Dostoyevsky. Its pretty small and interesting.

[@paulwells411]

Read Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals and The Will to Power. Be aware, Nietzsche's philosophy is almost completely antithetical Jordan Peterson.

[@Moedermariia]

@@taasinbinhossainalvi9173 thanks I bought the book!

[@taasinbinhossainalvi9173]

@@Moedermariia Awesome. Give a review once you finish. :D

[@kevinbeck8836]

I suggest Academy of Ideas or Weltgeist, here on KZbin. They are particularly strong resources on Nietzsche

[@sethbase6960]

Another certified hood classic

[@deelak2329]

"The more you act out the proposition that its good... the better it gets." Is so simple and profound. I have found this to be absolutely true.

[@sunilkumardhatwalia2561]

Belove me brother it is not simple, not in any sense!

[@deelak2329]

@@sunilkumardhatwalia2561 I don't belove you, but I do belove that it is that simple.

[@sunilkumardhatwalia2561]

Haha. Best of luck beloved brother

[@andrei8042]

Please Lex try to challenge your guests more and flatter them less

[@kevinbeck8836]

Very impressed with this comment section right now 👏 Accurate representations of Nietzsche was not what I expected to find here.

[@patrickhassing120]

Oddly, random KZbin comment sections can have the best literature discussions.

[@kevinbeck8836]

@@satireofcircumstance6458 you find this patronizing? Because anyone who is familiar with Nietzsche likely wouldn't

[@rexmundi3108]

I recently saw Peterson described in Rolling Stone as a "pseudo intellectual". I guess their writers are true intellectuals?

[@kevinbeck8836]

takes one to know one

[@Robbie_L]

Check out martyr made podcast episode #20 the underground spirit

[@michaeladam626]

Nothing is the edge of something the void defines form.

[@lowabstractionlevel3910]

I know your comment is old, but I need to say this: fantastic statement sir.

[@tronali5703]

2:29, this is an interesting thing here. Peterson looked into the abyss, and from it he saw only only one path, dedication and full embracing of faith. You could argue this is what Nietzsche worried about for many people that stare into the abyss. They lose the ability to be free-spirits, and is justifying his existence now through moral universality and faith.

[@kevinbeck8836]

he's too cowardly to take Nietzsche's worldview and shrinks back into Christianity 😒 Nietzsche did warn of the abyss, but he NEVER would've supported Christianity. Peterson cant create something new, so he regresses

[@CoreanKat]

@@kevinbeck8836 I find the Christian Path to feel intuitively correct. Not in the literal interpretations but in the foundation it lays out and how warm and embracing it is. I have a lot of issues with religion in general, I feel bad for embracing it but it gives me a kind of warmth and optimism that I haven’t found elsewhere. Perhaps not everyone is built to embrace Nietzche.

[@kevinbeck8836]

@@CoreanKat I respect that

[@Jimmy-iy9pl]

​@@kevinbeck8836Nihilism is dumb and so was Nietzsche. He had his moments of brillian insight, but he was a literal crazy baffoon.

[@colbyjame]

I’ve read a lot of nietzsche do I really have to read Dostoyevsky now?

[@2107camilo]

You should

[@J4ME5_]

if you are into feeling like garbage on purpose, yes.. yes you should.

[@martindang1740]

when nietzsche was delusional and hugged a horse that was beaten...that is also a scene in crime and punishment

[@tronali5703]

Tolstoy to round it out

[@patrickhassing120]

Absolutely yes. It’s totally different than Nietzche. If you’ve read lots of Nietzche then crime and punishment or Demons would probably be very interesting to try out first.

[@liammcphail2990]

Patterson the man my father would love to be 😂😂😂

[@reginaldorodrigues3530]

We are between the Utility monster and the repugnant conclusion these are the big questions.

[@J.A.Seyforth]

Give it all away and it will come back you (Alan Watts)

[@NoName-nq8vc]

Hello lex

[@reginaldorodrigues3530]

What if he(the world) is good in the present but then turns into hell in the future. Is the inverse of Pascal's wager.

[@alexsveles343]

Nietsche read dostoyewski extensively,..Dostoyewski newer read Nietsche, However Nietsche interpretation of Dostoyewski is correct..even tho dostoyewski would not agree since he already said this will lead 5o a bloodbad...As it did in the 20 th century. SO HE WAS CORRECT. WHAT DOSTOYEVSKY CALLED THE TRANSCENDENT MAN...NIE5SCHE CALLED THE UNERMENSCY

[@CrazyLinguiniLegs]

While I value Peterson’s takes on philosophers and writers, be wary of his take on Nietzsche. Peterson would have us believe that Nietzsche lamented the “death of Christianity”, but you can read Nietzsche’s own extensive take on Christianity in many of his works. For example, the closing paragraphs of _The Anti-Christ:_ -Now I have come to the end and I pronounce my judgment. I _condemn_ Christianity, I indict the Christian church on the most terrible charges an accuser has ever had in his mouth. I consider it the greatest corruption conceivable, it had the will to the last possible corruption. The Christian church has not left anything untouched by its corruption, it has made an un-value out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a malice of the soul out of every piece of integrity. And people still dare to tell me about its 'humanitarian' blessings! The idea of _abolishing_ any distress ran counter to the church's deepest sense of its own advantage, - it lived on distress, it _created_ distress in order to eternalize _itself_ . . . The worm of sin, for instance: the church was the first to enrich humanity with _this_ bit of distress! - The 'equality of souls before God', this falseness, this _pretext_ for the rancour of everything low-minded, this explosive concept which finally became a revolution, a modern idea, and the principle of the decline of the whole social order - is _Christian_ dynamite . . . The 'humanitarian' blessings of Christianity! To breed a self-contradiction out of _humanitas,_ an art ofself-violation, a will to lie at any cost, a disgust, a hatred ofall good and honest instincts! - Those would be the blessings ofChristianity as far as I am concerned! - Parasitism as the church's _only_ practice; drinking all the blood, all the love, all the hope out of life with its ideals of anaemia and 'sanctity'; the beyond as the will to negate every reality; the cross as the mark of the most subterranean conspiracy that ever existed, - against health, beauty, against anything well constituted, against courage, spirit, _goodness_ of the soul, _against life itself_ . . . I want to write this eternal indictment of Christianity on every wall, wherever there are walls, - I have letters that can make even blind people see . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct of revenge that does not consider any method to be poisonous, secret, subterranean, _petty_ enough, - I call it the one immortal blot on humanity . . . And time is counted from the _dies nefastus_ [“unlucky day”] when this catastrophe began, - from the first day of Christianity! - _Why not countfrom its last day instead? - From today?_ - Revaluation of all values! . . . Law against Christianity Given on the Day of Salvation, on the first day of the year one (- 30 Sep­tember 1888, according to the false calculation of time) _War to the death against vice: the vice is Christianity_ _First proposition._ - Every type of anti-nature is a vice. The priest is the most vicious type of person: he _teaches_ anti-nature. Priests are not to be reasoned with, they are to be locked up. _Second proposition._ - Any participation in church services is an attack on public morality. One should be harsher with Protestants than with Catholics, harsher with liberal Protestants than with orthodox ones. The criminality of being Christian increases with your proximity to science. The criminal of criminals is consequently the _philosopher._ _Third proposition._ - The execrable location where Christianity brooded over its basilisk eggs should be razed to the ground and, being the _depraved_ spot on earth, it should be the horror of all posterity. Poisonous snakes should be bred on top of it. _Fourth proposition._ - The preacher of chastity is a public incitement to anti-nature. Contempt for sexuality, making it unclean with the concept of 'uncleanliness', these are the real sins against the holy spirit of life. _Fifth proposition._ - Eating at the same table as a priest ostracizes: you are excommunicated from honest society. The priest is _our_ Chandala, - he should be ostracized, starved, driven into every type of desert. _Sixth proposition._ - The 'holy' history should be called by the name it deserves, the accursed history; the words 'God', 'saviour', 'redeemer', 'saint' should be used as terms of abuse, to signify criminals. _Seventh proposition._ - The rest follows from this. - Nietzsche, _The Anti-Christ_

[@tiktokking1546]

Only a superficial reader thinks that the absolute degree from the mean is all that matters. You could exactly say that the inverse applies to the Anti-Zoroaster as much as the Anti-christ.

[@CrazyLinguiniLegs]

@@tiktokking1546 I’m not sure I follow. The thing is that Peterson says he has read Nietzsche deeply, but anyone who reads and ponders Nietzsche deeply (even those who don’t ponder him that deeply) are bound to come to the conclusion that he detested Christianity and positively celebrated its demise. The passage I quoted is just one of many that illustrate Nietzsche’s hatred for Christianity. Given how insistent and glaring Nietzsche was on this point, it is impossible that it slipped past Peterson. That makes me question his ulterior motive for being intentionally misleading about Nietzsche’s attitude towards the demise of Christianity. I’m not sure this is relevant to your comment (maybe I didn’t catch your drift). Please elaborate if you will.

[@nicholasnewman5016]

Peterson says that Nietzsche says "God is dead" not as a celebration but as a warning about the tremendous nihilistic consequences. Which i think is an accurate depiction of Nietzsche. But Peterson conveniently doesn't mention that Nietzsche wants to get past Christianity and Nihilism because it doesn't suit Peterson idea that we should go back to Christianity. I don't think he mischaracterizes Nietzsche, but rather leaves out the fact that Nietzsche did not want to go back to Christianity. I don't think Peterson has said Nietzsche wants us to go back to Christianity. He only uses Nietzsche to support the idea that the end of Christianity will lead to nihilism.

[@tiktokking1546]

@@CrazyLinguiniLegs No, there's a line between Porphyrian or David Straussian realist historical critique, Marxian materialistic critique, and a prophetical critique of which Nietzsche is the third. You are mistaking the first two with the third. The radical foundational critique of Nietzsche is not in the character of an sub-Christian or ultra-Christian framework like the first two which he regarded as dangerous, but more like a finalized version of the prophetical old testament.

[@CrazyLinguiniLegs]

@@nicholasnewman5016 yes, but I’m not sure Nietzsche was even so much _warning_ about nihilism as opposed to simply pointing out that it was an inevitable step towards something else. Again, Peterson would have Nietzsche gravely warning us, whereas Nietzsche was exuberantly declaring that man was finally free from Christianity, which had kept man enslaved for so long.

[@chrispywilliams1992]

i cant get into dostoevsky... i dont get the hype

[@ndb1aydc]

Unfortunate

[@ThisGuy4]

It was all good until the fall of man.

[@intrametaarchi1015]

As if there are no other writers.

[@J4ME5_]

RIGHT? thank you

[@bernardsimsic9334]

why this guy I guess I just don't get it??

[@kevinknight777]

why do you think he shouldn't be?

[@J4ME5_]

I feel the same way..

[@atomicshadowman9143]

Nietzsche only makes sense in the light of homosexual rights.

[@Amsterdamwhatelse]

Dostooooo. The russian soul is different . Z

[@kevinbeck8836]

Peterson's Christian conservativism and his climate change denialism make him supremely distasteful in my eyes. He is an increasingly regressive force in our world

[@ElonMuskrat-my8jy]

🤡