Jordan Peterson’s dangerous rhetorical sleight of hand

Jordan Peterson address the ARC conference in Sydney. Picture: Chris Pavlich/The Australian

Jordan Peterson’s latest message to his followers is a masterclass in rhetorical sleight of hand.

Peterson delivered a keynote address at this week’s ARC conference in Sydney, which was also broadcast on Sky News Australia. His speech repeatedly invokes terms like “voluntary” and “responsibility” while praising free enterprise and individual initiative.

Yet beneath this liberal vernacular lies a vision that should trouble anyone committed to liberalism, including those attending the ARC conference.

Like many critics of liberalism before him, Peterson appears to see individual freedom primarily as a problem to be solved rather than a value to be protected.

Take his central claim. Our salvation, he tells us, lies not in individual liberty but in discovering our place within what he calls “harmony.” This harmony subordinates individual identity to a hierarchical structure. It runs from family through community to state, all under some undefined “transcendent unity.”

While this might sound appealing to those yearning for order and meaning, it invokes a form of social engineering that places collective goals above individual freedom. His hierarchy offers a solution but at the cost of the very freedom that enables genuine human flourishing.

Indeed, Peterson dismisses what he calls “fractionated individual liberalism” as a failed experiment leading to “nihilism.”

But this characterisation fundamentally misunderstands classical liberalism. The liberal tradition does not atomise individuals – it creates the framework for voluntary association through property rights, the rule of law and limited government.

This mischaracterisation of liberalism is not merely academic. It allows Peterson to present a false choice between atomised individualism and his prescribed hierarchical order. This false dichotomy ignores liberalism’s rich tradition of voluntary community-building and social co-operation.

Peterson’s vision becomes more concerning when he discusses responsibility. He emphasises that responsibility must be “voluntary.” Yet he simultaneously insists there is “nothing better to do than to adopt the path of maximal responsibility.” This path, he declares, is “proper.”

Thus, Peterson presents this course not as one path among many but as the universal solution to life’s challenges. In doing so, he transforms classical liberalism’s emphasis on personal responsibility. What should be freely chosen becomes an obligation to conform to his prescribed social order. One might reasonably ask: how voluntary is a choice when we are told no legitimate alternatives exist?

Most troubling is Peterson’s conception of society. He argues that “people who attempt to find their redeeming identity in their own fragmented individuality will fail” and insists that we find our purpose only through “sacrifice of narrow self-interests” to family, community and ultimately the state. This amounts to a direct assault on individual autonomy – the cornerstone of classical liberalism.

When Peterson proclaims that “there’s nothing naive about that, there’s nothing jingoistic, there’s nothing propagandistic,” we must ask why he feels the need for such assurance. The reason is clear enough. His vision of individuals finding meaning only through submission to a hierarchical social order is precisely what classical liberals have long resisted.

Peterson declares, “We’re not built for comfort and pleasure. We’re built for adventure.” But pay attention to his definition of adventure. He is not talking about individuals freely choosing their own paths. Instead, “adventure” means subordinating individual choices to what he calls “heroic, romantic invention” in service of collective goals. It is a clever rhetorical move that makes submission to collective authority sound exciting rather than restrictive. This reframing of submission as adventure provides the emotional fuel for Peterson’s broader attack on individual autonomy.

Peterson’s praise for free enterprise also sits uneasily with his broader vision. He rightly celebrates the role of markets in creating prosperity. Yet his hierarchical framework suggests something different. According to Peterson, economic freedom, like other individual liberties, should ultimately serve collective goals determined by his preferred social order.

None of this is to deny Peterson’s insights about personal responsibility. Nor the importance of meaning in human life. His message clearly resonates with many people seeking purpose in an increasingly rootless world.

But his solution – a vision of hierarchical order justified through a blend of evolutionary claims, religious imagery, and appeals to transcendent meaning – raises more questions than it answers. It risks replacing liberal principles of individual rights and voluntary co-operation with a prescription for collective control cloaked in spiritual language.

Classical liberals should engage seriously with Peterson’s critique of modern atomisation and meaninglessness. These are real challenges. But the solution lies in reinvigorating liberal principles of individual rights, voluntary association and limited government – not in Peterson’s vision of hierarchical integration under “transcendent unity.”

The enduring success of liberal democracy depends on maintaining the delicate balance between individual liberty and social cohesion. Peterson’s rhetoric may be seductive, but his “better story” threatens to upset this balance in favour of collective authority cloaked in the language of voluntarism.

As history shows – whether in the Soviet Union, East Germany, Korea, or elsewhere – subordinating individual liberty to collective entities, however well-intentioned, leads not to adventure but to stagnation. The twentieth century provides ample evidence of the human cost when individual rights are sacrificed to collective visions, no matter how noble their stated aims.

Classical liberals would do better to tell their own story: one of prosperity and human flourishing through genuine voluntary co-operation and the protection of individual rights.

Roger Partridge is Chairman and co-founder of The NZ Initiative