The world probably doesn’t need much more said about Jordan Peterson for a while, but having read his 12 Rules of Life: An Antidote to Chaos from lobster to pen of light I feel a bit entitled. So here’s a brief review.
It is a truly weird book. Enough so that evaluating it is a little hard—it’s not obvious what kind of book it is trying to be, and so it’s hard to find a basis for judgment. It attempts—maybe—to synthesize an astonishing range of material, and kinds of material. Much of what Peterson draws on is interesting and he often explains his sources well. But it is fair to wonder if it’s really possible to reconcile the empirically grounded psychology he appeals to with the rather more, let’s say speculative, depth psychology he is also fond of. Never mind the dragons and chaos and biblical stories and fairy tales. Peterson is awful on feminism but good on embodied cognition. His child rearing advice is sensible and his accounts of his daughter’s struggle with rheumatoid arthritis moving, but one has to wonder how much Heidegger he’s actually read and he understands little of Daoism. On the other hand, his biblical exegesis is suggestive and insightful and his accounts of treating patients in his clinical practice fascinating. And so it goes for 300 or so meandering pages.
In the end it has to be recognized that many readers find something of great personal importance in this book, and it’s worth considering why. In this respect Peterson reminds me of another rigorously trained practitioner of the healing arts who dabbles in a personally charted intersection of science, philosophy, and religion. Substitute Hinduism for Jungian psychoanalysis and subtract the politics and you get…Deepak Chopra.
