ISSN 1751-8229

Volume Thirteen, Number Two

 
 
 

Žižek and Peterson: Demonstrating the

Importance of Higher Order Dialogue

Cadell Last, Independent Scholar

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.
1. Introduction

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher who has become an intellectual and

cultural sensation over the past few decades. His work is widely read and
interpreted in many different disciplines, primarily situated within the
humanities (e.g. philosophy, cultural theory, anthropology), but also in popular
culture at large. Throughout his career he has brought academic attention to
the structural importance of Hegelian philosophy and Freudo-Lacanian
psychoanalysis for cultural theory (Žižek 2012, 2014); and popular attention to
the importance of understanding the nature of ideology and rethinking the
underlying presuppositions of communist theory (Žižek 2010, 2016). This has
led to the production of wide ranging academic interpretation on the meaning
of the ‘Žižekian’ moment in philosophy (Myers 2003, Pound 2008, Johnston
2018).

Jordan Peterson, on the other hand, is a Canadian clinical psychologist who

has risen to global fame over the past few years. His scientific work has been
influential in the development of personal and social psychology (DeYoung et
al. 2005, Hirsh et al. 2012), and his popular work has been situated within
crucial cultural antagonisms of our era (Peterson 1999, 2018). Throughout
his career he has helped establish the “Big Five” personality metric (DeYoung
et al. 2007), identified crucial markers associated with high creative
achievement (Carson et al. 2003), and attempted to outline the importance of
the link between responsibility and meaning (Peterson 1999). In recent years
his political stances on the importance of free speech on academic campuses
have led to international debate on issues of gender, sexuality, identity and
progressive politics.

Over the past year Žižek and Peterson have engaged indirectly in theoretical
critiques of each other (via blog articles and social media comments). Žižek
often notes Peterson’s tendency to reify gender and class differences in social
structure with ideological presuppositions derived from evolutionary and
cognitive science; and Peterson has noted Žižek’s tendency to support
political-economic theory (Marxist, communist theory) which has led to
historical catastrophes. However, the point of this work is to put these two

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figures into a closer connection in order to facilitate the emergence of a higher
order dialogue capable of holding a new difference (which we may even say
was “performed” in their public debate/dialogue/discussion). Thus the central
idea or motivation of this work is that the perceived theoretical antagonism
between Žižek and Peterson can be utilized in a productive way to understand
the difference as such.

2. Pre-Public Dialogue

Here in order to structure this analysis we presuppose the “difference as

such” as “the real” in the form of an “unsymbolizable X” which prefigures and
prestructures all figures of historical consciousness subject to the vicissitudes
of the symbolic order (“speaking beings”). As Žižek has noted, this may be a
useful way to view sociopolitical antagonism in a general form. For example,
when we analyze the modernist political field dividing the “Left” and the
“Right”, it is not something that can be symbolized (formalized) from a
“neutral-objective” position. The whole field can only be viewed as an
“anamorphic distortion” from one of the two positions which are already in-
themselves divided by the unsymbolizable difference as such (“X”) (which is
“real”) (Žižek 2012, p. 613):

“The difference between Left and Right is not only the difference
between the two terms within a shared field, it is “real” since a neutral
description of it is not possible - the difference between Left and Right
appears differently if perceived from the Left or from the Right: for the
first, it signals the antagonism which cuts across the entire social field
(the antagonism concealed by the Right), while the Right perceives
itself as a force of moderation, social stability, and organic unity, with
the Left reduced to the position of an intruder disturbing the organic
stability of the social body - for the Right, the Left is as such “extreme”.”

To further demonstrate this difference as real we can utilize an often quoted

example deployed by Žižek in relation to Claude Levi-Strauss’s Structural

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Anthropology on political division in tribal society (Žižek 2011, Lecture 6 (Part
2)):

“[Levi-Strauss] asked members of the village to draw the village, each

group divided a totally different disposition of houses, one group made
a more organic (fascist), another group divided by a half (communist)[.]
[...] Where is the real here? The real is not the way the houses really
were (this is just reality); the real is each of the half members of the
tribe projected into their visions, how the houses should be, to
introduce a partial stability. What is real is not the reality, but the
traumatic social antagonism.”

In this sense Žižek’s insistence that Peterson reifies social order through a
certain scientific frame reflects Žižek’s own position within a progressive field
which sees things as fundamentally within an asymmetrical division (“Right”
obfuscating class antagonism identified by the “Left”, “Man” (conservative-
traditional culture) obfuscating sexual difference identified by the “Woman”
(progressive-feminist culture)). On the other hand, Peterson’s insistence that
Žižek dangerously points us into a direction of communist revolution reflects
Peterson’s own position within a conservative field which sees things as
fundamentally within a more organic unity (“Right” and “Left” have their natural
positions within a well functioning political totality, “Man” and “Woman” have
their natural positions within a well functioning familial totality). While both
thinkers as well as their followers could more or less agree with the
positioning of these symbolic orientations, the “real” question is what to do, or
how to put to use, the “real” of the difference?

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Figure 1: Social antagonism as real

Fig. 1: the above representation attempts to precisely capture the conceptual difference
between “reality” (often colloquially referred to as “external objective phenomena”) and the
“real” (here referred to as the difference constituting a social antagonism). The blue frame
represents the way the conservative or fascist frame perceives society (as a harmonious
totality) and the red line represents the way the progressive or communist frame perceives
society (as a divisive cut). The interaction between these two frames is determined by the
“real” as an impossibility to reconcile the problems of social organization. For example, the
conservative frame wants to keep society together (to conserve what has been built),
whereas the progressive frame wants to improve society (to progress beyond a certain
inequality, e.g. between men and women, or between rich and poor).

We can start by claiming that the “real” between Žižek and Peterson is some
traumatic social antagonism which causes us to view their difference in a way
that may not be the most productive for philosophical reflection. Indeed, this
difference, ultimately, may only be possible to read through the lens of sexual
and political difference within one’s own intimate geometry (Last 2018). In
other words, when it comes to the sexual and political field objectivity is
inherently “partial” or “partisan”, with some positions “dissimulating” conflict
and others “revealing” conflict (Zupančič 2017, p. 4)

The point moving forward in this article is to propose some structural contours
of discourse that may be productive for a new philosophical reflection on this
difference. This would not eliminate or erase the “real” (replacing it with a
“clear total narrative”) but, perhaps, allow us to see this same real from a
space capable of more mature disagreement and, potentially, a generative
novelty in our collective understandings of sexuality and politics. In other
words, although Žižek and Peterson have differences, these differences could

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be framed within broad theoretical similarities revealing the form of new
perspectives for theory. The structural contours for this frame could be
classified in the following way:

• (1) The emphasis on the importance of rethinking Christian

metaphysics
• (2) the emphasis on the importance of overcoming postmodern
deconstructive philosophy as structuring the metaphysics of humanities
programs, and
• (3) the emphasis on psychoanalysis as a fundamental discovery of the
nature of the human mind that needs to be properly integrated into the
future sciences of mind in order to help us understand the nature of
dreams and drives

Here it is argued that the following structural contours are divided between
Žižek and Peterson in the following “partial” objectivity:

• (1) Žižek’s relation to Christianity is structured by dialectical

materialism (movement of reason); Peterson’s relation to Christiaity is
structured with psychological realism (suprasensible meaning)
• (2) Žižek’s relation to Postmodernism is a negation in the form of an
affirmation of phallogocentrism (real of the symbolic order); Peterson’s
relation to Postmodernism is in a negation in the form of a critique of
Neo-Marxism (revitalization of Marxist dialectics of
bourgeoisie/proletariat)
• (3) Žižek’s psychoanalytic theory is informed by the Lacanian Real as a
gap-lack internal to the symbolic order; Peterson’s psychoanalytic
theory is informed by the Jungian presupposition of an eternal
collective unconscious

From this perspective, it is hoped, that despite their very real differences, we
may see a new way to put these thinkers into conversation.

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2.1 Christianity

Let us start with a crucial theoretical similarity between Žižek and Peterson:
their emphasis on Christianity and the Christian tradition as necessary to re-
interpret for the future of philosophy and society.

Žižek’s approach to Christianity is structured by dialectical materialism

(motion of historical reason). He uses dialectical materialism to invoke a
negation of the contemporary Western spiritual trend of becoming enamoured
with “Western Buddhism”, other eastern spiritual traditions, and also anti-
institutional Christian gnosticism. Such a tendency reflects our contemporary
cultural hysteria regarding social structures and patriarchal hierarchies which
are perceived to thwart or block the realization of subjective-spiritual freedom.
His reason for negating this spiritual trend is because it is precisely the
inclusion of the dimension of institutionalization that enables the
establishment of new rules and regulations (or Law) that develop the
collective spiritual body of historicity proper. In the absence of such rules and
regulations there is no ‘phenomenology of history’ in the Hegelian sense
because our wild untamable spiritual excess is never disciplined and
educated for real work (Žižek 2012, p. 338).

Thus, Žižek’s fundamental claim is that when religion or spirituality regresses

to the level of individual spirituality focusing on “inner experiences” we miss
the fact that we have yet to deal with the core problem of how to structure
civilization around social antagonism (spiritual “social contract”) given that this
collective excess of spirituality is irreducible to the existence of spirit-in-the-
world as such. In that sense the modern tendency to individual spirituality is a
failure to confront the “real” of social antagonism, and an immature “recoil”
into abyssal interiority which imagines-idealizes the antagonism away.
Consequently, in this dualism between institutional religion and individual
spirituality, Žižek looks for a synthesis between the two forms. Take, for
example, this quote which clearly criticizes the gnostic “mystical” tradition over
the critical importance of formal institutionalization (ibid, p. 81-82):

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 “The point which the self-erasing mysticism of ecstatic love cannot
properly grasp: when mystics talk about the “Night of the World”, they
directly identify with this Night (the withdrawal from external reality into
the void of pure innerness) with the divine Beatitude, with the self-
erasing immersion into Divinity; for Christianity, in contrast, the
unbearable and unsurpassable tension remains.”

What Žižek interprets as immanent in this “unbearable” and “unsurpassable”

tension is the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. According to Žižek, institutional
Christianity (with all of its rules and regulations) paradoxically identified and
actualized around this tension itself with the metaphysics of the death of God
(Jesus on the Cross). The individual is a void located at the very “X” (cross,
mark) which we experience as our suffering and in our separation from the
absent “Father” (God). We may say that this is the location of Zizek’s
“theological atheism” or “materialist spirituality”.

However, the “concrete object” (universal) of this theological atheism is not an

actual substantial other worldly Father but the community of Love which he
sees as the “materialist level” of the Holy Spirit. In the community of Love we
have achieved a synthesis between individual spirituality and institutional
religion because we are not merely affirming an abyssal interiority (“Western
Buddhism”) or negating dogmatic religious authority (“New Atheists”), but
attempting to understand the crucial dialectical necessity of social communal
bonding that can hold spiritual excess (freedom of our Love).

Towards the actualization of this synthetic spiritual community of Love Žižek

emphasizes the radical ontological nature of Absolute Love as something that
must be externalized (against abyssal interiority) but at the same time
something which must be externalized without any a priori guarantee from a
“big Other” (i.e. subject “supposed to know” “the way”). Here the big Other is
a type of twisted mortification (death interior to life) which functions as a
transcendental screen or frame obfuscating the real of social antagonism.
One may think of radical belief in the idea of a fully substantial God, an
idealized Marriage, or a utopian vision of the State, as one of the many

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manifestations of this (imaginary) transcendental guarantee that would protect
us from the “Real”. According to Žižek, Absolute Love is only truly
experienced in relation to the core of internal desire coming from within that
holds onto its highest expression in the world even when everything in the
external environment is lost, and everything is a tragedy (antagonistic).

The first connection we can make between Žižek’s Christianity and Peterson’s
Christianity is that Peterson also starts with the importance of the “death of
God” and the social antagonism which challenges phenomenal historicity
proper. However, Peterson’s work in relation to Christianity is much more
informed by the importance of “psychological realism” in the sense of the
psychological “significance” of “Biblical Stories” (for example) for the human
mind in history as an “archetypal reality” (reflecting his Jungian psychoanalytic
stance). In Peterson’s view if we discard with these stories as an archetypal
reality then we discard with the fundamental substructure of our culture and
lose all collective meaning responsible for the motor-organization of society.

From these presuppositions Peterson is convinced that a crucial historical

moment for Western culture can be identified with the Nietzschean critique of
Christian institutional structure and his assertion that “God is Dead”. For
Nietzsche, “God is Dead” is not the “Dawkins” form of critique of Christianity in
the sense of ‘God as delusional fantasy that we should discard with’ (2006);
but rather something like: ‘we can no longer seriously believe in the
metaphysical structure of our culture and the remaining void is an impossible
problem for the future requiring the emergence of super-human
consciousness’ (on the level of ‘transvaluation of values’).

Peterson himself seems to attempt to embody-enact such a motion towards

attempt to straighten out his own internal contradictions and becoming a
higher-order Christ-like archetype. Thus, the importance of such a break, for
Peterson, can be understood in the idea that one should accept the
monstrous archetype of Christ which reflects the most intense possible
realization in the overcoming of death for immortal resurrection. This
recommendation of a “personal responsibility” for the “death of God” would be

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over an approach to Christianity which blindly gives oneself to the institutional
structure of the Church. By giving oneself to the institutional structure of the
Church over and above embodying-enacting the archetypal reality reflected in
Christian doctrine one risks embodying-enacting an extreme contradiction
where one’s actual embodied-enacted state is a poor reflection of higher
ideals.

In other words, what Peterson finds in Nietzsche is the idea that the true
message of Christianity is the radical becoming of the individual in the form of
the “Overman” or “Superman”, and that such a becoming should be
confronted fearlessly without any recourse to the “big Other” (we may say) of
the Church structure. In this formula the Church in its traditional guise would
hide from us the void or abyss at the core of our being, and also the source of
our radical potential becoming as responsible individuals (Peterson 2017a):

“For all intents and purposes I believe the Logos [symbolic order] is
divine, of ultimate transcendent value, it is associated with death and
rebirth, because the Logos dismantles you and rebuilds you
(sometimes it is a sacrifice, sometimes it is a big part of you,
sometimes it is such a big part of you that you die, instead of being re-
born). What is the ultimate extent of that? That is a good question.
What happens to the world around you as you increasingly embody the
Logos? We do not know. We do not know what the ultimate level is.
The hypothesis is that there were one or two individuals that managed
that and in their management of that they transcended death itself. [...]
Was the resurrection [of Jesus] real? Well his spirit lives on, that is
certainly the case. A spirit is a pattern of being and we know that
patterns can be transmitted across multiple substrates. Christ’s spirit
lives on, it has had a massive effect across time. Did his body
resurrect? I do not know. I do not know what happens to a person
when they bring their self completely into alignment. We do not
understand the world very well. We do not understand how the world
could be mastered if it was mastered completely. We do not know
what transformations that might make possible.”

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This emphasis on the transformations of the Logos (Symbolic Order) as of
transcendent value (Holy Spirit) in relation to the externalized world (Natural
World) can be connected to how Žižek deploys the necessity of a synthesis
between interior spirituality (e.g. Western Buddhism) and institutional critique
(e.g. New Atheists). Indeed, like Nietzsche, Peterson does not simply
deconstruct Christianity as an anachronistic historical relic and cognitive
delusion as most Western critics do today (“Western Buddhists”, “New
Atheists”). Instead he recognizes that there is an incredible historical
importance to the nature of Christianity and its narratives, symbolism and
archetypes. These narratives, symbolisms and archetypes, according to
Peterson, were primarily responsible for training the Western mind on one
transcendental object (God), and that this was a necessary training for what
became modern science. Thus far from conceiving religion as the enemy of
modern science, Peterson conceives religion as a necessary precursor
establishing institutional rules and regulations that persist in the scientific
tradition vis-a-vis the one transcendental object (Nature) (Peterson 2017b):

“The scientific revolution never would have gotten off the ground if it
were not for Catholics: the European mind had to train itself to interpret
everything that was known within a single coherent framework, focus
on the truth and the spirit of the truth, which was essential for switching
critique to understand the natural world as an object. The ritual lasts
longer than the reason for its establishment.”

In that sense, for Peterson, there was the contingent notion of God itself
which was the integration of an Idea necessary to prepare the mind for an
application to the Natural World in-itself. In Hegelian terms, this could be
seen as the Idea or Notion being externalized into Natural otherness in order
to (ultimately) better understand itself in the logical necessity of this process.
We could connect this to the idea that in the very difficult attempts of the
Freudo-Lacanian tradition to articulate psychoanalysis as a science, there is
always a tendency to view psychoanalysis as not a science (like the “brain-

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cognitive sciences”) but as depending on science for its own emergence
(critical denunciation of religion, mystical illusions, etc.).

In other words, in the same way that Peterson views monotheistic Religion as
a necessary precursor to natural Science (training the mind on one integrated
coherent framework), we could make a similar gesture to the relation between
natural Science and Psychoanalysis: the emergence of natural Science is a
necessary stage to eventually lead to the emergence of a form of knowing
capable of approaching the psychical drives of subjectivity in-itself (each
psychical agent is capable of driving with (embodying, repeating) its own-most
impossibility). Thus psychoanalysis becomes more of a real-lived practice
with the lab being the entirety of the becoming of the psychical-linguistic field
and its vicissitudes.

Of course, as mentioned, Peterson’s approach to Religion can be found on a

strange retroactive revisiting of the “psychical significance” of “biblical
stories”. Peterson believes that when we apply the tools and perspectives of
psychoanalysis to The Bible (and to religious thought in general) there is an
emergent significance in the meta-level pattern of the stories written by
ancient peoples (a symbolic truth about the real of their past) which can
potentially help or aid us in dealing with our own suffering and lack. Indeed,
Peterson believes that this emergent significance has to do with the fact that
our world, including nature, society and mind, are far too complex for us to
make sense of it ‘All’ (this is an impossibility). Thus, the only way we have
been able to make sense of it ‘All’ is to repetitively tell stories about being
itself (and the paradoxes-contradictions of its inherent impossibilities) which
allow us to gradually come to understand ourselves clearer.

In this way, Peterson believes that when we turn our back on religious stories
(‘they are just illusions of mystic pre-modern peoples’), we become
unconsciously susceptible to ideological pathologies (desires constituting the
age of neoliberal capitalism, for example). This is because we are
fundamentally narrative creatures that need a coherent story in order to act

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sensibly, meaningfully and ethically in the world and religious stories provided
such a narrative framework for historical subjectivity (Peterson 2017b):

“The Bible exists in the space between the dream and articulated
knowledge. And that is why we should bother reading those stories.
Without the corner stone that the book provides we are lost,
susceptible, to psychic pathologies. People who are adamant anti-
religious thinkers seem to believe that if we abandon our immersement
in the underlying dream then we would all of a sudden become rational
like Descartes and Bacon, intelligent clear thinking scientific people,
but I do not think there is any evidence for that. I think we would
become so irrational, so rapidly, that the weirdest mysteries of
Catholicism would become rational by contrast, and I think that is
already happening.”

In other words, we could say, if one of the principal discoveries of the Freudo-
Lacanian tradition is the emergence of an impossible relation inherent to
subjectivity (analyzed in the nature of the unconscious), then Peterson is
claiming that such an impossible relation is precisely what constitutes the
narratives of biblical stories, and that the logical patterns of such stories can
help us to cope with our own holes (sufferings, lacks). This is anyway how we
could interpret the meaning of the “self-authoring” program. In articulating a
self-narrative against positive and negative points of impossibility (heaven and
hell, respectively), the “self” gains a coherent and meaningful consistency
across time that can help straighten itself out against pathological capture
from ideology. To say this in another way, it could be that through repetitive
“self-authoring” against points of impossibility, one comes face-to-face with
one’s own impenetrably mysterious cogito, or the unconscious itself.

In this sense Peterson’s philosophical deployment of “Religion” is in a sense

very close to trying to transform the gap or hole in materialist Science itself
into a proper psychoanalysis of the subject where we can read and interpret
the materiality of meaning and objection (resistance) to our desires. Indeed,
Peterson’s philosophy starts with the presupposition that everything we

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experience is the most real thing there is, that our experience is fundamentally
shaped by a horizon of meaning, and that we can detect this meaning in the
things that shine forth on our subjective horizon (Peterson 2017b):

“Objective reality is not how we experience reality. What matters is

that things have meaning, even scientists do not think scientifically.
How we think is in terms of the meaning of things, the significance of
objects, the flow of time.”

To ground this “Science” he proposes two axioms that we may find useful:

“The world is not made out of objects, the world is made out of what
objects”;

“The world is not made out of matter; it is made out of what matters.”

In the Žižekian sense we may say that this is the same as identifying the
centrality of the objet petit a, and the way in which it constitutes the horizon of
meaning for subjectivity in a partial object. This is the location where a partial
object comes to fill an impossible void as real that is subjectivity, the
“unbearable” and “unsurpassable” tension that remains even after one has
experienced the inner Beauty in a withdrawn state from the world.

2.2 Post-Modernism

The second connection I would suggest is productive to explore between

Žižek and Peterson is their mutual rejection of the postmodern horizon. The
postmodern horizon is usually analytically structured by deconstruction of a
priori norms, values, traditions, and reductions of social system dynamics to
power games. In this way the postmodern horizon removes any sense of a
common phenomenal horizon and a common narrative articulation of the
historical human condition. In other words, postmodernism suggests that
most forms of modernism are naive in positing common norms, values and
traditions that could be structured within a grand historical narrative uniting all
of our action and dreams (e.g. “Religions” like Christianity or Islam; “Sciences”

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like physics or evolution; or “Nations” like United States or Great Britain).
From the postmodern perspective what replaces naive modernist visions
totalizing our action is a multiplicity of individuated psyches free to posit other
non-totalizable frames of reference.

Žižek has always engaged with this horizon and its paradoxically totalizing
and powerful instantiation in academia in a type of antagonistic form (2017):

“It is very fashionable for [academics] to paint us [me and my friends

as] some kind of an eccentric phallic dogmatic power discourse.”

What Žižek would emphasize against (or opposite of) this world of free
multiplicity outside of any totalizable frame or narrative is the Lacanian Real
and the way in which it overdetermines the undeconstructible movement of
the signifier. In this analytic structure all symbolic orders (pre-modern,
modern or postmodern) are effects of the Real. The Real is not external
reality but a type of anti-ideal or non-ideal tension or antagonism internal to
the symbolic order.

Here we are offered to think the idea that the movement of the signifier is a
type of excess which strives for totalization in-itself (e.g. the ‘All’ of Religion,
Science, Nation) and the Real is a type of lack which prevents the desired
closure of the signifier (rendering the Real, ‘non-All’). In this structure Žižek
claims to move beyond the horizon of deconstruction and social power games
by articulating the psychoanalytic drive as an eppur si muove (“and yet it
moves”), a movement which ‘enjoys’ itself for itself, independent of any
external reality. Thus even if you “deconstructed” the whole symbolic edifice
of Religion, Science and Nation, this ‘Signifier All’ would continue to move (as
happens in postmodern academic departments, for example). Interestingly,
the ontological consequences of such a movement are instantiated in a
properly dialectical understanding of the movement of the Holy Spirit by
merging an ‘atheist’ reading of Christianity with the symbolic structure
identified by Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis (Žižek 2012, p. 4-5):

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 “Eppur si muove should thus be read in contrast to many versions of
the extinction/overcoming of the drive, [...] even after we reach the end
of this critical overcoming of desire-will-subjectivity, something
continues to move. What survives death is the Holy Spirit sustained by
an obscene “partial object” that stands for the indestructible drive.”

Žižek explicitly states that the Real of this drive (“an obscene “partial object””)
is beyond both the scientific noumenal Real (some impossible external natural
outside) and the Foucauldian power regime Real (some impossible external
social outside), and thus transcends both of them. This is a Real that
represents an impossible otherness within our self (like the nature of a dream
while we are sleeping; or the nature of the way our dreams come to
overdetermine engagement with “reality”). One may say (connecting with the
reflections above) that it is the Real of an absence that causes as an effect
the presence of a psychical drive aiming for Relation (Unity) with “It” (das
Ding). The existence of this Real is, for Žižek, proof that we cannot simply
deconstruct all of human history and construct it in a radically other form, or
reduce all of social life to power games, since all human history and all social
life are always-already being mediated by ‘It’ (the Real).

In this way Žižek’s philosophy (always about the mysteries of desire) suggests
that the true focus of our academic attention should be on the nature of love,
attachment, and even addiction (as opposed to brute reductions of everything
to power games and hierarchies of patriarchal exploitation). Thus, on an even
more important level, Žižek attempts to reverse the claims of postmodernism
today which suggest we live in a cynical, nihilistic and post-ideological era,
and that only in the past we lived in an authentic world governed by true
belief. In contrast to this Žižek believes that it is the ancients who did not
believe too strongly, keeping belief at a distance, and it is the postmodern
peoples who in fact believe stronger than even the ancients (2015):

“The first myth to be abandoned I think is the idea that we live in a

cynical era where nobody believes, no values, and so on, and that
there was some more traditional time where we still believed in religion

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 or some substantial notion of belief. I think it is today that we believe
more than ever, and the ultimate form of belief is deconstructionism
[which always erects a fearful distance between the way we identify
things with words]. Why this fear? [...] We believe in it.”

In this mode the idea that we should deconstruct Religion, Science, Nations;
and the idea that all such forms of society are mechanisms of social power;
could be ways for us to repress in our self-consciousness that we believe in
these structures more than ever, and that we need our social webs more than
ever. Thus, the person who would want to “deconstruct” “Christianity,
“Physics” or the “United States” (as white heteronormative patriarchal social
power games, for example) may in fact love and need these structures more
than anyone. In that sense deconstruction could be read as the ego’s failure
to come to grips with the pressure of the Real, which demands a type of
sacrifice, since the ego is located on the register of the Imaginary in relation to
it.

A more sophisticated “Žižekian” interpretation of “Christianity”, “Physics”, and

“United States” (for example), may thus be to locate the “kernel of the Real” in
these structures, which may be identified by identifying the “obscene partial
object” sustaining their symbolic motion. In the case of Christianity we may
point to the partial object of the “crucified body of Jesus” (signifying our
finitude and mortality), in the case of Physics we may point to the partial
object of the “quantum particle” (signifying the probabilistic void of identity),
and in the case of United States we may point to the partial object of the
“Constitution” (signifying the divinity of the individual citizen over state
power). In each case the “partial object” (crucifixion, quantum particle,
constitution) stimulate the motion of psychical drives which sustain the
instantiation of these historical discourses. If they are to be replaced, then
one must do the hard work of figuring out why psychical drives “love” their
attachment to such objects and what could be gained by replacing them with
a different object.

  17  
Of course, it is much easier to understand Peterson’s rejection of
postmodernism considering that he has in some sense structured his entire
public persona around a negation of postmodernism. He believes that the
humanities have become dominated by adherence to (now dead) “French
intellectuals” (Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze etc.) who aimed to
undermine the hegemonic order of our civilization. He supports this
argument, as already discussed, with the idea that these thinkers introduce a
metaphysics of social power where all “absolute truths” are replaced with
relativity to various discursively mediated power regimes. The “crucifixion”,
“particles” and “constitutions” are not “truths” (about our being, nature and
politics) but “power games”. Thus all historical forms can be deconstructed
because their only function is to uphold pathological and oppressive power
structures.

For Peterson this is a disaster because we are unknowingly blowing out the
metaphysical substructure of our culture which is not only tyrannical and
oppressive (one side of archetypal civilization reality), but also wise and
enabling (the opposite side of archetypal civilization reality). Thus, for
Peterson, we should not deconstruct our civilization but attempt to live so that
we deserve the civilization that we are lucky enough to have. In other words,
as an emotional response to our current civilization, we should as a rule tend
to gratefulness instead of bitterness, and we should learn the art of discerning
the positive benefits of structure and order instead of assuming that all
structure and order is a threat to freedom. The basic idea is that young naive
progressive intellectuals (often operating on Marxist-feminist presuppositions)
may be totally wrong to demand the dissolution of the basic foundations of our
civilization (e.g. belief in monotheism, objective reality, nation states). In the
process of this deconstruction we may lose everything that we have fought so
hard to build and maintain over the past few centuries and millennia.

Peterson also critiques the postmodern idea that the world is subject to infinite
interpretations and that means that our grand narratives about reality are just
social constructions that have no inherent meaning for history. Peterson often
uses an evolutionary logic useful for those working in artificial intelligence and

  18  
cognitive science to counter this point by emphasizing that although the world
is technically subject to infinite interpretation (i.e. the Moon could be a
physical external object or an indigenous spirit force or a reptile alien
spaceship), only a finite number of interpretations are viable for certain
desired actions. In other words, there is a fundamental practical and ethical
constraint on interpretation if you want to survive and live a fully self-
actualized existence, and if you care about other people living a fully self-
actualized existence (Peterson 2017c):

“There are many constraints on interpretation: Constraint number 1 --

Interpretation should be aimed to avoid suffering and death (unless you
are suicidal). Constraints number 2 -- There is a necessity of
cooperating and competing with others which also constrains your
interpretation of the world. You also have to cooperate and compete
with the same people across time, which is an extraordinarily important
constraint. Constraight number 3 -- We have aims in mind (things that
we want more than other things) and so we aim at those, and then
constrain our interpretation so that the probability that what we want to
happen will improve. All of these constraints operate simultaneously.”

This logical progression of overlapping constraints on interpretation is

essential and important to also understand the meaning of the Lacanian Real
as an absence. In very specific and precise technical terms absence and
constraint can be seen as similar notions (and both poorly understood by the
natural sciences) (Deacon 2011). The fact that our interpretations of the
world must (1) avoid suffering and death, must (2) help us compete and
cooperate with others, and must (3) help us achieve our aims means that we
have a delimiting sense of what interpretations will be viable across time, and
what interpretations will lead to unnecessary suffering, death, conflict, war,
and ultimately lead us away from where we want to be in terms of desire (hell
instead of heaven).

All of these points by Peterson ultimately amount to how we should approach

notions of viable interpretations of our ethical acts which are the ground of

  19  
historical consciousness. Peterson is correct to suggest that the postmodern
scholars have failed to provide us with a clear answer to this serious historical
problem. To be specific, Peterson makes these theoretical moves by relying
on the philosophical turn from Kant to Piaget, a turn which emphasizes that
Kant’s ethical maxim of “the categorical imperative” (“Act only according to
that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a
universal law”) needs to be extended indefinitely across time and in as many
games as possible. The major difference here between Peterson and Žižek,
is that Žižek would attempt a similar move with the shift from Kant to Lacan,
where Lacan was interested in how our (“obscene”) unconscious desires may
interfere with the instantiation of such an ethics (the infamous “Kant avec
Sade”) (Lacan 2005). In this difference as real, can we see where Lacan and
Piaget may disagree on the ethical dimension of our actions in relation to
desire? Such a question may be central to thinking our way out of the
postmodern horizon.

Finally, Peterson emphasizes that because you actually cannot live a life
under a postmodern worldview, postmodernists end up using an old grand
narrative structure (Marxist dialectics) to ground a foundation of their
worldview: identity politics (Fraser 1998). In this structure the Master-Slave
structure of the Marxist dialectics organized around the rich (bourgeoisie) and
the poor (proletariat) is retooled by an intersectional gender, sexuality, and
race matrix of analysis where everything can be situated as a zero-sum
competition between identity groups (like Women against Men; or Black
people against White people). In such a structure unnecessary antagonism
and tension rises because people start to think that there is no chance to
actually collaborate fairly across time with different kinds of people. For
example, Women and Men feel they cannot cooperate with each other
because their desires are “zero-sum” oppositions (Matriarchy versus
Patriarchy, for example); or Black and White people feel they cannot
cooperate with each other because their desires are “zero-sum” oppositions
(race based ethno-states for example).

  20  
Here we should emphasize that such a claim is grounded in an important
“twist” in the postmodern intellectual game. The intellectual founders of what
has become postmodernism in the anglophone world never supported or
instantiated an ideology that resembles “intersectionality” (although the
groundwork of such an idea may be implicit). This explicit articulation of
intersectionality emerges in the late 1980s and 1990s due to a certain logical
exhaustion of deconstruction: when you have ripped the symbolic architecture
out of our culture what do you do? Do you simply return to the world and
continue playing the games that you have “deconstructed”? Or do you
instead posit that all such games are “pathological tools of oppression”
instantiated by a certain identity networks (straight white men)? Of course,
the latter has been the option that has actualized the motion of
postmodernists. In this situation we may say that the “obscene partial object”
of the postmodern edifice may in fact be the “figure” of the “straight white
man” who everywhere represents an “impossible phallic domination” against
all “subaltern” identity categories (Crenshaw 1989).

2.3 Psychoanalysis

The third connection I would emphasize between Žižek and Peterson is

related to their mutual reliance on psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic
tradition in informing contemporary cognitive (“brain”) sciences. Žižek relies
heavily on psychoanalysis and specifically the Freudo-Lacanian tradition
(2012). In this tradition Žižek emphasizes that psychoanalysis is a crucial
break from traditional morality and thus a crucial break from traditional beliefs
about what constitutes a good individual and a good social life. In this he
attempts to build on Lacanian ethics with the maxim that “the only thing of
which one can be guilty is having given ground relative to one’s desire”. In
this maxim Žižek does not mean a reduction of desire to liberal hedonism (of
giving into simple pleasures), individualist immoralism (doing what you want
independent of others feelings), or western buddhism (of happiness as telos);
but instead, of really freeing yourself from the constraints of any social moral
force that would seek to pre-figure a dream that motivates your action, or the
big Other. In that sense his move to Lacanian ethics is deeply connected to

  21  
the notion of the big Other as an invisible and unnecessary constraint
presupposed by most humans.

In other words, the central aim of Žižek’s most sophisticated philosophical

works is to operate within the “double move” of first removing desire from the
totalizing form of the big Other (“there is no Other”), and then secondarily
moving desire towards the core of “the Real” (which is “for consciousness”)
(“there is a non-Other”). Such a “Real” is of course much different from
scientific reality which is presupposed to exist independent of subjectivity or
consciousness. For science subjectivity or consciousness is a glitch or a bug
in the system of explanations referring to external objective reality. This is
why scientists attempt to engage in a passionless analysis where abstract
reason can discern universal properties of being (e.g. general relativity,
evolutionary theory, neuroscientific connectivism). However, Žižek may
suggest that all such notions are forms or figures of the big Other, and that all
such forms or figures mask the underlying Real which has no specific identity,
but rather exists as the space where something new can emerge from a
consciousness which gives itself (sacrifices itself) to the Real.

The second reason why Žižek relies on psychoanalysis, following from the
first, is to articulate a new vision of what is “most real” or “the Real”. In this
view Žižek repetitively makes the argument that the Real is not external reality
or some pre-symbolic substance; but rather a gap/rupture internal or extimate
to the symbolic order itself: the Real is what prevents the symbolic order from
closing in and completing itself. In other words, the Real is what prevents the
symbolic order from realizing itself (Žižek 2012, p. 480):

“[The] Lacanian Real is not a pre-symbolic substance; rather it

emerges through the redoubling of the symbolic, through the passage
from alienation to separation.”

Crucially, this is a Real which is not recognized by the cognitive sciences.

The cognitive sciences do not base themselves on a Real of “separation”
internal to the symbolic mechanisms of desire (where a “non-division” or “non-

  22  
Other” appears to the subject). The cognitive sciences base themselves on a
“reality” of neurological processes (“connectivism”). The difference is
essential if we want to approach the realm of subjectivity in-itself in the 21st
century (Last 2019). To give a specific example, if one is “high” on some
addictive substance, or “lost” in the depths of a dream, or experiencing some
“transcendental” “psychedelic” states of consciousness, or “mad” in the
context of sexual-romantic love or infatuation, the “neurological connections”
which are “mediating” this state on a reductionist materialist sense, are in
some sense “beyond the point”. The point of these states can only be read
from a Real from a perspective that is “for consciousness”. This is the “core
of the Real” or the “non-Other”.

Third the reason why Žižek relies on psychoanalysis is that he sees in it the
knowledge we need to articulate a force beyond the Buddhist negation of
desire. Of course, Buddhist philosophy sees only illusion in desire and for
Žižek this fails to capture the way in which the Real and illusion overlap with
each other (the second move where the fantasy is “traversed” in relation to
the big Other and becomes instantiated in a “true” form). In other words, for
Žižek, it is not reality versus fiction; but the Real that emerges internal to
fiction. For example, even if one “deconstructs” “Santa Claus” as an
impossible imaginary figure; or “God” as an impossible imaginary figure (a
“delusion”) (Dawkins 2006), the human mind does not merely interact with
“flat reality” devoid of fantasy and fiction. Instead the human mind continues
to interact with reality through a fantasy frame of some form (consider the way
someone like Elon Musk interacts with reality through the scientifically
legitimized fantasy of colonizing Mars; or the way Ray Kurzweil interacts with
reality through the scientifically legitimized fantasy of merging with artificial
intelligence and other super technologies). Žižek often plays on this
relationship between fiction and reality and the virtuality that continues to
move independent of any negation of desire (ibid, p. 131):

“And therein lies the difference between Buddhism and psychoanalysis

reduced to its formal minimum: for Buddhism, after Enlightenment (or
“traversing the fantasy”) the Wheel no longer turns, the subject de-

  23  
 subjectivizes itself and finds peace; for psychoanalysis on the other
hand, the wheel continues to turn, and this continued turning of the
wheel is the drive.”

For Peterson, likewise, he finds psychoanalysis as fundamental to our

knowledge of the mind. To be specific in his lectures on Freud he states that
modern psychology is fundamentally unfair to Freud by only focusing on his
mistakes and not properly recognizing the way in which he fundamentally
structured our contemporary models for the mind. Furthermore, Peterson
believes that even when Freud was wrong he was wrong in an interesting and
productive way which makes him all the more valuable to read. In that sense,
Peterson himself is a believer (to some degree) in a (Lacanian) “return to
Freud”. The point of the Lacanian “return to Freud” is not to “repeat Freud”
exactly, but to find the “truth in Freud” which “Freud himself was unaware”.
That is why you will find a totally new symbolic architecture in Lacan inspired
by metaphors derived from structural linguistics.

In any case, Peterson gives massive credit to Freud on the discovery of the
unconscious which questions or challenges the basic Cartesian axiom (a
cognitive foundation for science) of “I think therefore I am”. What this axiom
presupposes is that you can have a complete awareness of your mind and a
complete control over your mind. What the Freudian revolution suggests is
that the abstract rational cogito is in fact a small tip of a much larger
unconscious reality that has its own logic, but it is a logic that is constantly
informed by positive and negative emotional valences (i.e. suffering, desire,
etc.). Thus, the ultimate reality for Peterson is not the self-certain rational
cogito but rather the cognitive relation to emotional states that are beyond its
control. This is why Peterson emphasizes so strongly the Freudian idea that
our minds have an autonomous unconscious dimension:

“It was a Freudian idea that people are made out of sub-personalities,
and those sub-personalities are alive. There are “many active
consciousnesses”. Psychologists have still not come to terms with the
fact that these “unconsciousnesses” are living things; [psychologists]

  24  
 describe the cognitive unconscious with machine-like metaphors which
are not reasonable. The sub-components that make up people are
much more intelligently viewed as personalities; they are uni-
dimensional personalities in some sense, so that if you’re angry, you
are nothing but angry; or if your afraid or hungry, you are nothing but
afraid or hungry. Moreover, Freud was the first to synthesize a
coherent theory of the multiplicity of personality that was not
immediately accessible to your awareness. You can formulate ideas,
you can act out things, for [emotional] reasons that you don’t
understand.”

Thus, with the Freudian unconscious as the ontological ground of analysis,

Peterson seeks to understand how 20th century politics led us into
nightmarish territory with the most intense levels of suffering imaginable (i.e.
Fascist and Communist catastrophes). The only reasonable alternative to this
direction would be to try to understand our emotional underground so that we
could potentially navigate our society in the opposite direction, even if that
opposite direction is difficult to think (it is harder to think what utopia would
actually look like, then what dystopia did look like). Perhaps here we could
interject the Lacanian modification to Descartes axiom: “I think where I am
not”. The axiom of “I think where I am not” is a significant modification of the
cognitive foundations of the sciences informed by the psychoanalytic
discovery of the unconscious which affirms the fact that, not only are we not
fully transparent to our self (rational cogito), but this lack of transparency is an
irreducible feature of our cognitive system. We may even say that if we were
fully transparent to our self, then (what we call) the world would cease to
exist.

However, and finally, we must identify perhaps the most important or crucial
difference between Peterson and Žižek. This is in regards to the way in which
Peterson emphasizes the psychoanalytic transition from Freud to Jung very
heavily (over Žižek’s emphasis on Lacan). What productive analysis can be
derived from this difference? We may say that the main differences between
Freud and Jung is that Jung emphasized the collective unconscious as a seat

  25  
of universal primordial images: the archetypes. For Jung, these archetypes
represent a hyper reality where all religious symbolism in our historical reality
can be explained. For Freud, in contrast, the place of Jung’s archetypal
images was the place of a gap or a void in being which had no a priori
transcendental container within which we could find a reservoir of religious
images. The idea that such a reservoir of religious “transcendental” images
exists was, for Freud, a way for Jung to cope with the deadlocks of sexual
libidinal energy. For Jung, in contrast, Freud’s theories of the unconscious
were too much emphasizing the central reality of sexuality in structuring the
deadlocks of identity. Thus, Jung continued to develop the theory of
archetypes, namely, that they are not the fruit of individual experiences, but
rather are universal to all human beings, as a type of neo-Platonic “world
soul”.

Žižek, as mentioned, fundamentally disagrees with this interpretation of

psychoanalysis because he does not believe the truth of the unconscious can
be “reified” in “eternal substance” (collective unconscious), but rather is
something that “emerges” contingently from historically engaged actors (from
a void, ex nihilo, as Lacan always emphasized). In other words, where
Peterson reifies eternal substance in archetypes (divine masculine and
feminine, for example), Žižek is fully committed to the “abyssal void” of our
actions. This is the meaning of “there is no big Other” and also “there is a
non-Other”. “There is no big Other” represents the void at the core of our
being (not the archetypes), and “there is a non-Other” represents the potential
“productivity” of this void (that something new can emerge). The Lacanian
unconscious (versus the Jungian unconscious) is this a place of the radically
other.

In summary, Žižek and Peterson both have lots of points of convergence and
divergence vis-a-vis Christainity, Postmodernism and Psychoanalysis. The
convergences do not eliminate difference, and the divergences do not
necessitate useless antagonism. If I were to synthesize a symbolic locus for
future research on these convergence and divergences I would offer the
following formalization. In regards Christianity, Žižek utilizes dialectical

  26  
materialism, whereas Peterson utilizes a form of psychological realism; in
regards Postmodernism, Žižek would affirm a form of phallogocentrism,
whereas Peterson would negate or critique Neo-Marxism; and in regards
Psychoanalysis, Žižek starts and ends with the Lacanian Real, whereas
Peterson would start and end with Jungian Archetypes. These differences, I
argue, can be productively mobilized for a new understanding of all of these
intellectual fields.

3. Post-Public Dialogue

Although the aforementioned intellectual points of convergence/divergence

still stand, the actual meeting point for the first dialogue between Žižek and
Peterson did not revolve directly around Christianity, Postmodernism and
Psychoanalysis, although all such forms of knowledge played a key role in
structuring discourse. As is well known, instead of such a debate, we were
treated to a discourse that focused on “Happiness” and its relationship to
Marxism and Capitalism. I think this central focus gave clear sense of what
could be expected from their discourse, and also, potentially, what was at
stake in their dialogue.

The first thing to note about the structure of this dialogue is that the concept of
happiness for both Žižek and Peterson appears to be a central negativity. In
other words, neither thinker believes happiness should be the aim or telos of a
human being or a human existence (although it may be a by-product of other
aims). Žižek is on the record stating that happiness is a “conformist
category”, and Peterson is on record criticizing the positive emotion
movement as ill-informed to an “embarrassing” degree.

The reasons for the dismissal of happiness as an ultimate value in-itself is

derived from both of the intellectuals engagement with deeply historical and
deely psychoanalytic thinkers. Žižek is influenced by Hegel’s insistence that
only the “blank pages” of history are happy, and Lacan’s insistence that the
end of analysis is focused on uncomfortable truth, and not ego-happiness.
Peterson is influenced by Dostoevsky’s insistence that a happy human would

  27  
self-sabotage their own state, and Nietzsche’s insistence that a true human
life is focused on self-power and not self-happiness.

Thus if we could unify Žižek and Peterson theoretically it would be in relation

to the fact that both thinkers accept the basic Freudian break identified as the
“beyond” of the pleasure principle. For Freud a human life was first regulated
by the pleasure principle but secondarily came to integrate its own
unconscious underground, which was related to the truth of the id, and not the
pleasure of the ego. Accepting this basic lesson leads to the life of the drives
which ride tension and antagonism in the same way that the desires of the
ego aim for harmony and happiness. In this way accepting the life of the
drives makes one’s life more difficult, but simultaneously, more meaningful.

Now their dialogue on “Happiness and Marxism” opens the possibility for new
high level theory. In this section of the paper I want to structure the way in
which we can think new high level theory through the lens of four different
major categories. These four different major categories include:

1. End of Neoliberal Pleasure Principle

2. Affirmation of Intense Psychical Vicissitudes
3. New Discourse on Individual-Collective
4. Integration of Historical Darkness

Neoliberalism is not just a problem for reasons of economics, but also for
reasons of simple pleasure. In the age of neoliberalism we instantiate ethical
axioms that revolve around the pleasure principle, leading us to a society of
immediate gratification and low self-constraint.

Affirming psychical vicissitudes is necessary because we are entering new

psychical territory in our world. This psychical territory cannot be navigated
with only positive emotions, but must dialectically balance positive and
negative emotions. Negative emotions are necessary and must be integrated
to reach new levels of self-consciousness.

  28  
Discourse on the individual and the collective needs to be transformed
because the old political dialogue between rights and responsibilities,
progressivism and conservatism, is totally dysfunctional and broken. Both
rights and responsibilities are necessary for a functioning society, what those
basic rights and responsibilities are is not clear. This could be in part because
of globalization, corporatization, automation and any other number of forces
that have dramatically transformed the world we live in today.

Finally, integration of historical darkness or shadows is something we must

reconcile inside our own hearts. Human beings are capable of the worst
atrocities conceivable. There is evil that runs along each of our hearts. If this
is left unacknowledged and unreflected upon we run the risk of replicating the
worst disasters that structured the 20th century.

Now I think that throughout the dialogue between Žižek and Peterson there
was a broad consensus on these major themes and I think going into depth
with this consensus can help our culture to articulate a new horizon for our
historical becoming.

3.1 End of the Neoliberal Pleasure Principle

In our current society we are all the time aligning our self-action and goals in
life with simple pleasures. Whether it is the “Tinderization” of our dating lives
(so-called “hook-up culture’), the abundance of low quality food and drink, the
comforts of ubiquitous mindless entertainment, or any other forms of
immediate gratification that comes without work, we are immersing our self in
little “bubbles of happiness”.

Of course, these “bubbles of happiness” come at a huge cost. The first cost is
enslavement to actual work functions that merely serve the excesses of
capitalist reproduction at the expense of real humanist value. The second
cost is an inability to really appreciate the meaning that comes from self-
posited struggle and challenge.

  29  
To this point both Žižek and Peterson agree that a truly meaningful life can
only come if one determines one self in relationship to a “Cause” above
pleasure. In this model pleasure or happiness will come as a by-product, but
not as directly aiming for this as a central goal. When one determines one
self in relationship to a higher “Cause” above pleasure one is willingly
assuming a responsibility for a tension or challenge that will prove difficult and
possibly even painful. However, this difficult and painful path is the only path
of meaning, and real self-definition.

To connect to this point such a pathway is a form of self-responsibility that

allows us to overcome internal and unconscious pathological prohibitions. In
the old traditional world we had “Master Figures” (embodying the moral
superego) to tell us what to do in relation to a “Cause” which transcended
pleasure. Now such “Master Figures” (embodying the moral superego) are
negated. However, this negation did not open up a world of free subject’s
enjoying their simply pleasures (as presupposed by 1960s counter-culture),
but instead a world of self-enslaved subject’s who become frozen or static in
relation to internal and unconscious pathological prohibitions coming only
from their own head. Such a world can only be transcended through self-
responsibility (not more rights), from becoming aligned with the inhuman
Master (Death).

In the end what is at stake by ending the neoliberal pleasure principle is not
only the negation of simple pleasures and alignment with capitalist exchange,
but also an opening into real love. Real love is not contained by a little safe
bubble of pleasure. Real love is uncontainable, real love is radical, real love
is riding the crazy ups and downs that come with deep passionate
commitment to something greater than one self. From this perspective we
should see the end of the neoliberal pleasure principle as connected to the
terrifying opening into the abyss of love where the absolute is self-evident.

  30  
3.2 Affirm Intense Psychical Vicissitudes

We may then say that the neoliberal pleasure principle is a shield (possibly
self-imposed) guarding us from the immanent real of an intense,
unpredictable, and chaotic becoming. Human beings in the end are free
(despite all of the academic papers that would posture in the negative).
However, this freedom, as known by some of the greatest 19th and 20th
century philosophers, is not a romantic freedom where we get whatever we
want. Our freedom is in the real of a terror or fear. The human subject is so
radically free that we often do whatever we can to hide this fact from our self.
What will we do with our freedom? It is a burden that we must carry into the
future we have no choice but to be free.

The key to understanding this immanent terrifying freedom is by reflecting on

the strange nature of our “instincts”. In the biological world organisms are
regulated by instincts (genetic programmings from natural selection).
However, in the human world, all of our primordial instincts become
retroactively channelled through the symbolic order of our language and thus
“gain” a strange and paradoxical metaphysical dimension. Whether it is
related to eating, sex, home building, sleeping, or socializing, humans do not
simply engage in such acts through the lens of genetic programming, but
rather through the lens of a unconscious irrational passion. We develop
complex rituals for our eating, sex, home-making, sleeping, social life, and
true freedom is not deconstructing this dimension, but developing a full
responsibility and ownership of this dimension.

The big problem we may seem to have here is in relation to happiness. In all
of our traditional rituals there was an explicit grounding of these forms in
divinity. Divinity was often conceived (at least in the West) as a singular
unified all-knowing entity. Now that we no longer have such a belief we
deconstruct the metaphysics of our basic instinctual drives without knowing
that they continue to move independent of our self-conscious negation.
Towards addressing this problem we are separated, fundamentally. We are
not on some climb back up to a unified God, we are separated, and so is God.

  31  
This could be one of the reasons why happiness or pleasure as a direct goal
does not work, we can only reach true happiness and pleasure indirectly by
affirming a Cause beyond it which necessitates a struggle, a tension (a Fall).

3.3 New Discourse on Individual-Collective

One of the central tensions in all of this mess is failing to articulate a

discourse in regards to the individual and the collective. The premodern world
was grounded in the collective, the modern world is grounded in the individual
(to roughly simplify). Any attempt to develop a large-scale collectivist
ideology, like communism, ended in absolute tragedy. The best solutions to
this tension have tended to be “bottom-up” solutions that emphasize the
individual and then work up from this foundation. However, there are
paradoxes when we operate in this framework because there are serious
collective problems that require real attention and organizing principles.

One “symptom” of this situation is political correctness. In our contemporary

social universe this manifests in our postmodern individualist ideology which
reactively and hyper-moralistically categorizes everything in terms of identity
categories. Of course “white cis males” are the “evil” force in this structure
and various other identities are situated in opposition to this “heteronormative”
category. The ultimate paradox of this structure is that it is often times middle
class or upper middle class western white people who most vocally embody
this perspective on the world. It could be that in a failure to confront serious
collective issues (economics, ecology, etc.), ideology has condensed around
surface level identitarian issues as an impotent reaction.

What seems to be structuring the tension on a more fundamental level is the

battle between “leftist equality” and “rightest hierarchy”. In simplistic terms the
extremist left emphasizes absolute equality where all identity categories need
to be equally represented in all sectors. In simplistic terms the extremist right
emphasizes absolute hierarchies where all traditional orders should be safe-
guarded and protected from de/re-construction. The synthesis of this binary
opposition can be found in a discourse which emphasizes equality of access

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and opportunity; and also a discourse which emphasizes dynamical spatial
hierarchies that emerge from the expression of different potentiality.

What prevents this vision from becoming a reality is the large-scale regulation
of capitalism. Capitalism as a universal international force transforms all
traditional cultures (Protestant or otherwise) and subsumes all activity into a
commodified market activity. This is a tragedy for the hallmarks of leftist
thinking, universal health and education, for example. This is also a tragedy
for large-scale ecological and social problems which have no resolution when
profit is the sole motive for real action. In this sense, solving the problem of a
collectivist narrative which does not infringe individual rights is a problem of
the commons: how to create a common world that is equal access and
opportunity, and also open to expression of radically different potentials, while
at the same time ensuring the activity of our socioeconomic structure does not
destroy our planetary foundations?

3.4 Integrating Historical Darkness-Shadows

In order to approach this problem we have to confront what lies beneath the
narratives we tell our self about what we are and what we do: our actual
action. There is most probably a gap or a distance in the large majority of
people between what we say we do and what we actually do. Or at least
there is a gap or a distance in the narrative we emphasize and choose to
highlight and the uncomfortable real darkness that gets left out of our self-
narratives. In this sense we need to work on a cognitive mapping process
that includes the real of our darkness. Our narratives cannot be masks of the
real, but must be tools to confront the real as a fundamental negativity.
Otherwise the negativity will explode to the surface when certain social
stressors reach a breaking point.

The ultimate philosophical point here is that we should not underestimate the
force of evil. Of course we should strive to the good and we should develop
narratives that help us reach the highest good we can: individual, familial,
community, international and planetary (and across time as well). However,

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evil is a very potent force and always underlying any potential for good action.
In fact, goodness is often a reaction to a horrible evilness. People are usually
not good for goodness in-itself. People are usually good out of a fear of evil
and its ubiquitous threat. Here is the location of politics and religion proper,
the battle to maintain our goodness in the face of an irrational evil power that
structures our species. Here we should definitely be skeptical of good
sounding narratives, and pay close attention to actions.

This brings us to the climax of this network of issues: Marxism. The central
problem with Marxism is its teleological nature. The Marxist knows the
ultimate goal but does not have it and does not know how to reach it even if
s/he thinks that s/he does know how to reach it. This makes the Marxist
doctrine dangerous because the ends (World Communism) will always justify
the means. According to Marxism the history of our species is regulated by
laws that we know and by actions that are self-transparent. Any
psychoanalytically informed thinker knows this to be false. This is why
returning to Hegel over Marx is so important for today. In Hegel’s philosophy
the truth of action is always in its constitutive failure. When we act, we don’t
know what we are doing. History is not teleologically determined. That is,
paradoxically, the meaning of absolute knowing.

Conclusion

To conclude this paper as a whole was an exploration of how we could put the
“Real” of the difference (the gap, the lack) between Žižek and Peterson into
some new productive discourse. The “hypothesis” or simply the idea in the
first part of this work is that Christianity, Postmodernism, and Psychoanalysis,
would be three good places to start to facilitate this new discourse. Both
Žižek and Peterson, it could be argued, are unique in their relations to these
topics in modern academia. Christianity is generally viewed negatively or
critically in contemporary academia; Postmodernism is generally utilized as an
underlying theoretical thought structure in contemporary academia; and
Psychoanalysis is generally seen as an obscure pseudoscience within
contemporary academia. Thus, even though there are important differences

  34  
between Žižek and Peterson’s engagement with these topics, as mentioned,
they are at the same time fundamentally aligned on the idea that these topics
require new academic discourse.

In this sense would it not be most useful to put the “Real” of the difference
between Žižek and Peterson to use instead of creating somewhat
unnecessary ideas that these thinkers are “divided”? Of course, they are
divided in the sense that Žižek is far more “progressive leftist” (viewing the
social whole from the perspective of abyssal antagonism, tension); and
Peterson is far more “conservative rightist” (viewing the social whole from the
perspective of natural cohesion and coherence). However, this is a divide
which has no “neutral” “objective” solution. If we think from the perspective
that “Žižek is correct and Peterson is incorrect” or “Peterson is correct and
Žižek is incorrect” then we massively simplify a much more complex and
nuanced situation which requires higher order discourse.

Thus, in as simple a form as possible, the first part of this paper presents the
idea that there are various important nuances in the differences between
Žižek and Peterson in regards to Christianity, Postmodernism and
Psychoanalysis. In regards Christianity we may say it is in relation to how we
should interpret the institutional future of the Church and the ontology of the
Holy Spirit vis-a-vis individuation (dialectical materialism and psychological
realism); in regards Postmodernism we may say it is in relation to how we
should interpret ethical acts and the problems or paradoxes of desire
(phallogocentrism and neo-Marxism); and in regards to Psychoanalysis we
may say it is in relation to the nature of the unconscious itself and the status
of something and nothing (Lacanian Real or Jungian Archetypes). All of these
problems are absolutely critical to the future of philosophy (as I have
articulated elsewhere in this journal, (Last 2018)). Now the question is
whether or not our culture can start to see the larger benefit in higher order
discourse capable of approaching the Real.

As far as the second half of the paper is concerned we focused on the

consequences of the live debate between Žižek and Peterson as filtered

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through four major themes: end of neoliberal pleasure principle, affirmation of
intense psychical vicissitudes, new discourse on individual-collective, and
integration of historical darkness-shadows. This horizon points towards new
high theory that focuses on going beyond pleasure for a Cause, enjoying the
struggle-tension-vicissitudes of real becoming, thinking the dimension of
common social discourse which synthesizes equality and hierarchy, and
integrating the historical darkness which represents the real negativity of our
existence. This is not necessarily a light and happy horizon. This is not an
easy pill to swallow. But it is a real pill.

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