Happiness is watching a brawl between iconoclastic philosophers

By N.B.

THE COMBATANTS are world famous, with legions of supporters. The venue, on April 19th, is Toronto’s Sony Centre, which seats over 3,000 people. Tickets sell on eBay for more than $300. But it is not a boxing match or a rap battle—it is a debate between a Lacanian psychoanalyst and a Jungian clinical psychologist. The theme? What produces more happiness, Marxism or capitalism?

The debaters have become popular and subversive figures in recent years within their ideological subcultures. Slavoj Zizek, the Lacanian (who is Slovenian), has spent decades frequenting the opinion pages of newspapers and the left-wing corners of YouTube with his Marxist critiques of popular culture.

Jordan Peterson, the Jungian (who is Canadian), shot to fame in 2016 with a viral YouTube video of him lecturing on why he refused to address students by their preferred gender pronouns. (Spoiler alert: his freedom of speech trumped their interest to be referred to in a specific way, he argued.) He’s since been a galvanising hero to right-leaning young men, with his politically incorrect YouTube videos, outspoken television appearances and a best-selling self-help book called “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos”.

The media relishes referring to Mr Zizek as “the most dangerous philosopher in the West”. Mr Peterson has been put forward as “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world” in no less than the pages of the New York Times. Both are known to shock first and ask questions later, a habit that rarely goes unrewarded in an algorithmic public sphere that buries nuance under controversy.

Both men have made their way into The Economist’s Open Future coverage too. Last May Mr Peterson couldn’t name a single feminist he admired, in a podcast interview. Meanwhile Mr Zizek stated in an interview in October that “populism is simply a new way to imagine capitalism without its harder edges”.

The debate matters because liberal values that were once widely accepted are now discredited in the eyes of millions of young people who feel stung by economic inequality, excluded by a distant elite or fear that diversity happens at their expense. Messrs Peterson and Zizek are eyeing up the intellectual territory in the vacuum left behind. The ideas which flourish now could define the next era of political ideology.

Liberal values that were once widely accepted are now discredited in the eyes of millions of young people

Their disagreement emerged early last year when Mr Zizek wrote an op-ed entitled “Why do people find Jordan Peterson so convincing? Because the left doesn’t have its own house in order.” Mr Zizek argued that Mr Peterson’s popularity proved that the right needed to exaggerate the threat to freedom of speech from the politically-correct left in order to hide the inconsistencies and inadequacies of its own ideology. Mr Peterson challenged him on Twitter to debate, and the philosopher-fight was on.

The two thinkers have many ideas in common. Both Mr Peterson and Mr Zizek agree that the modern left’s preoccupation with identity politics and political correctness has alienated it among the working class. Both agree that political correctness has gone too far. But Mr Zizek believes that an exaggerated focus on freedom of speech on university campuses exposes a weakness in conservative thought: that it is a worldview that can only be sustained by stoking fears that society is being undermined by malign forces.

It will be fascinating to see how Mr Peterson responds. His most dedicated readers are probably surprised that the debate is on happiness, since Mr Peterson has repeatedly challenged those who promote happiness as a priority. In his book, “12 Rules for Life”, he writes: “If happiness is the purpose of life, what happens when you’re unhappy? Then you’re a failure. And perhaps a suicidal failure. Happiness is like cotton candy. It’s just not going to do the job.”

Mr Zizek, for his part, has been equally critical of the search for serotonin. In 2014 he told the Guardian newspaper that “Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don’t know what we really want.” He concluded: “Happiness is a category of slaves”.

“Happiness is like cotton candy. It’s just not going to do the job.”

The vague nature of the debate raises questions about its intellectual significance. After all, it involves two pop-star pundits with a penchant for self-promotion. The debate could have been held for free and in public at almost any university in the world.

Still others are surprised the event is even happening. Douglas Lain, the publisher of Zero Books, a left-wing imprint, believes that by putting Mr Zizek on an equal footing, Mr Peterson lends credibility to Marxist ideas.

“The left worries about legitimising people like Peterson, but in the current moment I think Peterson is in the position to grant some leftists popular legitimacy,” says Mr Lain. “Zizek wins simply by appearing on stage with Peterson.” That is likely to make Mr Zizek smile, even if he does not think happiness is all that important.

As for who will win, that is hard to predict. Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, the opposite is true.