Agnes Callard: preference

Transcript context

…On aspiration, what do you think of Jordan Peterson? I had this odd feeling. He only became known to me quite recently, in the past couple of weeks. I was listening to him talk, and I was thinking he sounds a little bit like Socrates, but not Socrates. I was like, “Who is that? Who is he reminding me of?” And it’s Xenophon’s Socrates. I think he’s the best instance of the self-help genre that I’ve ever encountered, in the sense that he has these morals that he puts forward, like tell the truth, keep your room clean, pull yourself together, go for the highest good. Those are good morals. My 14-year-old knew about Jordan Peterson before I did and listens to him. Listening to him, I was like, “I’m very happy my son is listening to this. This is good for him. This is at least a little bit of the internet that I don’t have to try to pull him away from.” I think it’s characteristic, something like that genre of self-help, that it is part of a larger story and isn’t the whole story in the way that philosophy aims to be. Peterson is pulling against certain cultural trends, and his morals are very good in that context. They pull you away when the culture is pulling you too much in one direction. He pulls you in the other direction. That’s sort of the work that he’s doing. That’s really valuable, but in another culture, it would be really pernicious because he’s not giving you the whole story. He’s only giving a part of the story, so that’s how I experience him. Given what you understand about aspiration, why are so many young American men apparently not even interested in looking for work?…

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