Commentary
I invited Jordan Peterson to my university in 2013, years before he famously opposed Bill C-16. Peterson was very gracious and delivered an interesting lecture based on his book “Maps of Meaning.” Still, I had secretly hoped he’d address the subject of an earlier lecture titled, “The Necessity of Virtue.”
In that 2010 lecture, Peterson broaches themes I’d been thinking about ever since I was introduced to political philosophy by another brilliant professor, Leon Craig.
Peterson notes, for example, that “virtue … isn’t a field of study, it’s a mode of being upon which all fields of study rest. It’s also a mode of being on which everything you do in your life rests.” To the extent that a person lacks virtue, “they are tortured and tormented and they are unable to find firm ground, and that’s not a biological problem.”…