Žižek and Peterson: Demonstrating the Importance of Higher Order Dialogue

Abstract

Slavoj Žižek is one of the most influential philosophers of our current age.  His work as a whole largely draws from Platonic, Cartesian, Hegelian and Lacanian thought, and has been applied to the analysis of empirical sciences, political-economic theory, as well as contemporary spirituality and theology.  Jordan Peterson is a well respected clinical psychologist and has recently become one of the most influential public intellectuals of our current age.  His work as a whole largely draws from Christian, Nietzschean, Jungian and Piagettian thought, and has been antagonistically situated in contemporary debates on the nature of gender identity, sexual expression, communist ideology, and the importance of responsibility for a meaningful life.  During Peterson’s rise to global fame these two thinkers have often been symbolically positioned by those familiar with their work as figures in an oppositional determination (A=B): Žižek standing for the future of the progressive left and revolutionary communist values (A), and Peterson standing for the future of the conservative right and traditional patriarchal values (B).  In this work it is argued that the difference internal to this antagonistic positioning can be put to a productive utility.  Towards this end I first attempt to use Christianity, Postmodernism and Psychoanalysis as thematic structures to focus on their core differences.  Secondly, I attempt to summarize the major points of agreement that emerged from their public debate/dialogue/discussion.  These two goals are established to demonstrate the importance of higher order dialogue capable of reconciling opposed figures of consciousness.  Such reconciliation would not represent a synthesis to erase all differences, but rather a reconciliation that would open new spaces of productive discourse capable of approaching the nature of psychology and society.