§72 Bluffing human sciences

One of the aspects of the ‘intellectual dark web’ form of ‘public intellectualism’ (Weiss 2018) is the similarity to ancient gladiator games. In this vein, one of the enemies Jordan Peterson has named is the ‘radical left’ in the humanities and the social sciences:

“My problem with the [radical] left at the moment is that they are hyper-dominant in academia and that is not good.” (British GQ 2018)

It is clear that Peterson does not fully appreciate wholly that which goes after — ‘social constructionism’, Neo Marxian scholarship, French thinkers such as Derrida, ‘post-modern’ social theory (see notably chapter 11 in his book (Peterson 2018). However, Jordan Peterson is ultimately right about the alarming inadequacies of the social sciences and the humanities.

Peterson would do well in consulting George Steiner’s piercing diagnosis of the humane letters, the Literae humaniores , whose “condition”, he said:

“is not resplendent. A fair number of undergraduates, in self-entitled universities, which are actually vocational or trade schools promoted to a fake rank verge on sub-literacy. ”

Steiner attributes this dire state to a hypocrisy in the human sciences:

“to the accelerating extension of university entry into every order of society. Yes, human potentialities are indeed widespread. … [However] …the faculties of the human mind are not infinitely elastic. Talent, let alone genius, in the arts is enigmatically rare and unpredictable. So it is in the gymnastics of the brain. The number of women and men qualified to respond to a chorus in Aeschylus, to categorical proof in Kant, to Duino Elegies in Rilke …is not…limitlessly large. The sciences have no hypocrisy about this. We do! We humanists lie to ourselves continually. The sciences say ‘Sorry — you can’t do an equation of the fifth degree — Goodbye. Become a banker.’… They don’t bluff Today the humanities flinch from any rigour in recruitment, from any acknowledgement that the enrolments in many spheres of social and literary studies are bloated and vulgarized to a destructive measure…’ (Steiner 2013: 02.00–02.52). (02.00–02.52)

Call their bluff, Peterson!

/Fred Weibull

References

British GQ. 2018. Jordan Peterson: “There Was Plenty of Motivation to Take Me out. It Just Didn’t Work” | British GQ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZYQpge1W5s.

Peterson, Jordan B. 2018. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Random House Canada.

Steiner, George. 2013. Universitas? Tilburg: Nexus Instituut.

Weiss, Bari. 2018. “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web.” The New York Times, May 8, 2018, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html

Originally published at anowmedia.com on November 9, 2018.