On the Problem of Abstractions

A prominent public intellectual, who happens to be a fellow countryman, has pursued a line of reasoning that I find – truthfully – rather problematic. Jordan B. Peterson has often defended various works of both mythology and fiction on the grounds that they (when “great”) reveal truths that are more ‘real’ than ‘life’ itself. An example of this is that he argues that the character of Raskolnikov in Fyordor Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment is the embodiment of an evil residing in the heart of every Russian in the nineteenth century, and – in this sense – the story of Raskolnikov therefore reveals a truth that is more ‘real’ and revelatory than anything that occurred in actual Russian history. Putting aside my objections based on an alternative notion of poesis than his view implies, Peterson’s claims nevertheless betray what I take to be a profound confusion: what he is describing as ‘real’ is effectively a specific disposition (or ‘spiritual state,’ if you will) that has been abstracted from the greater whole of our experience in its totality. As despicable and profound as the provided image of evil might be, it does not deal with the contingent aspects of all human life; such a malevolent disposition in certain people would, indeed, have little to no effect upon the world. Moreover, to reduce the ‘reality’ of evil to this dispositional state is to disregard the varying degrees of depravity that the outward expression of such a disposition might generate; for example, this puts someone like Raskolnikov (who commits a single murder) and any of the terrible figures of the twentieth century (who effectively exterminated millions) on the same level of evil – and I think this is foolish.

This is not, however, a new way of thinking. There has been a long tradition of thinking that abstracted, ideal concepts that one might derive are more real than those instances from which the ideals were abstracted; this is a lineage going back to at least Plato, though it also has taken on aggressive forms in contemporary thought like that of the natural sciences and the advent of scientistic philosophies. Let me give an example of each. In the Platonic sense, there might be the essence of a ‘tree’ which is how we grasp the meaning of that word at all; he believes that this essence is an insight into the ‘form’ of what a tree is and this is more real than the particular, limited instantiation of any given tree. Likewise, modern sciences typically formulate generalizable propositions about the functioning of some phenomenon (like gravity), and this formula used to represent any variety of phenomena is taken to be ‘reality’ from a scientific perspective. In both cases, however, I would argue that these abstracted generalizations cease to have any meaning in the absence of their particulars, and indeed they explain very little in the absence of a more specific world that can specify and ground their abstract derivations.

Peterson’s ‘psychological’ abstractions are hardly any different, and these abstract dispositions that he argues are ‘more real’ than anything particular and actual is hardly persuasive. The reality of those very dispositions is dependent upon a complex and varied selection of human circumstances, and to know the evil of a disposition will require that it be perceived within a specific contingent context. (This is indeed betrayed by the very examples he invokes: they require some specific literary world and action, but its constructed nature as a poetic image makes its ‘reality’ rather awkward. Myths, no less, have this kind of one-sidedness, though they may say something substantial by recourse to a tradition of practical interpretation.) I will grant that Peterson is talking about something ‘real’ in the sense that it can be thought and perceived in some manner (no less than Plato’s ‘form’ of a tree), but its ‘reality’ is not more solid than that of a specific historical circumstance in which that psychological disposition may or may not be actualized. The abstracted notion may provide some clarity in being isolated and inspected as such without the baggage of a particular context, but such a disposition can have no meaning or affectivity without a specific circumstance in which it becomes incarnated.

Now, of course, I will grant that there may be some sort of moral or ‘psychological’ utility in having these abstract images before the ‘mind’s eye,’ so to speak, insofar as this might help us to consider the sort of thinking we employ that leads to a lesser world. No doubt, Dostoyevsky’s character of Raskolnikov does go down a dark path in trying to convince himself to murder the miserable woman, Alyona Ivanovna, who ostensibly makes life worse for everyone around her; moreover, this sort of rationalization is made tangible and seemingly possible through the lucidity of Dostoyevsky’s portrayal of Raskolnikov’s internal monologue about the issue. Nevertheless, few people are presented in our daily lives with such a specified situation, which makes us wonder why people might act in a similar manner despite experiencing entirely other circumstances (thus, evil seems hardly exhausted and the ‘reality’ of the text is rather ambiguous). I might even conjecture that some people could think that Raskolnikov’s subsequent guilt was merely due to his culture and habitual morality that had a hold of him for much longer than the rationalizations about the murder ever did. What if the text took place in twenty-second century Dubai? Would Raskolnikov (evidently under a different name) be wracked with the same sort of guilt?

Coming away from acknowledgements of a partial utility to such abstractions on those limited grounds, my objection here is predominantly to the idea that this is ‘more real’ than life. In my view, this aspect of Peterson’s claim is extending into philosophical as opposed to moral or psychological territory. This sort of thinking is precisely backwards; Peterson, like others, is propping up what is – by definition – an abstraction as having a greater reality than the world from which it was abstracted. The issue, however, is that such abstract notions are by necessity only known and encountered through the mediation of a richer and larger world of experience. No matter what idea is being distinguished, abstracted, and inspected, speculatively isolating upon it may seem to give us a greater grasp of that thing and allow it to have a primacy that undergirds any given experience that we have; when concepts endure this sort of scrutiny, they seem to gain a greater durability and stability than does any specific definition of a particular instance of a given concept – but I think this is simply a mistake in understanding. Let me give some examples to try and help ground this somewhat lofty objection.

Returning to Plato’s form of a tree, we might have this idea of a tall plant that tends to grow some sort of vegetation in green. To take a literal dictionary definition: “a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.” There are two obvious problems with this abstract notion. The first is that it employs words and phrases like “typically,” “considerable,” or “some distance.” One could easily imagine that a child growing up in a desert and hearing this definition without ever having seen an actual tree would imagine an object a hundred feet tall and always five meters in diameter; this is perhaps true on some occasions, but the child might be shocked to find a Pagoda Dogwood tree – a species that tends to be quite small. Moreover, the definition evidently relies (in basically every word) on the mind beholding this definition to know a number of other concepts: “woody,” “perennial,” “trunk,” “lateral,” “branches,” “distance,” “ground.” All these words ostensibly could be taken as ‘forms’ themselves. It would therefore seem that forms are actually not ‘real’ in some self-sustaining sense; they are instead abstractions that are able to be better defined and understood through their mutual scaffolding and interdependent relations. If we wished to substitute out ‘tree’ and insert ‘evil’ as the form we are considering – whether as depicted by Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov or any other literary adventure – this problem is no less true. If some other author were to stick the thought patterns of Raskolnikov into a lone schizophrenic on a desert island who “murders” a coconut, this alteration might even transform the situation into something of a dark comedy – abstract derivations simply are not sufficient for thought.

What this implies is that whatever ‘reality’ is, it cannot be a singular concept that resides within our experience. Reality is the totality of such concepts, made more real and intelligible by their mutual support and integration. Thus, a particular depiction of something found in one work of literature or one concept as rendered more clearly in a philosophical text can hardly be said to have a reality that is greater than our experience as a whole, the entirety of what we know and think; perhaps such ideational exploration can provide us with a more thorough and profound insight into the nature of one aspect of our experience, but this may indeed make it unreal insofar as we then try to integrate it with the thoughts that make up the rest (and vast bulk) of our experience. Intriguingly, Plato himself could be interpreted as recognizing this, which makes his ‘Theory of Forms’ as colloquially attributed to him somewhat weaker than it might appear on first glance: Plato’s Republic could be read ultimately as a satire wherein ‘Justice’ as the supreme category takes on too much emphasis and begins to require all kinds of bizarre things like the Necessity of Propagandic Lies, Eugenics Programs, and a Mandatory Caste System that we are often unwilling to follow. Of course, this is just one interpretation of the text, but I think it has some credibility, especially when paired with Plato’s seeming pessimism about Justice ever truly guiding a polity.

As a final gesture of good will in interpreting Peterson, I do believe that his claims about various literary works or mythologies being more ‘real’ than life itself is because he is using those terms in a rather restricted manner that is not obvious based on his statements. First, I believe he merely thinks that these examples can concretize a much greater sense of what something is by having a more profound snapshot of it; indeed, evil is made more clear when reading Dostoyevsky, as the dramatic and detailed narratives clarify the sort of thought underlying many more mundane actions that are not as obviously evil but may still lead to Hell. Second, I think what Peterson means by ‘life’ is a sense of the mundane, simple, undramatic goings-on of a person in a North-American city. Many people (though far from all) today do not witness the sort of evil that human beings are capable of, so reading such great works of literature or various historical texts might give insights into the depths of evil and how it emerges that are relevant even amongst the more balanced and (frankly) easy lives we live nowadays. Having stated this concession, Peterson is still far from clear in his descriptions (I had to perform a rather charitable interpretation here); I think that his vaguer expressions, that may take on near-philosophical implications, can allow people to have too much confidence in the various conceptual definitions that he offers as somehow being ‘more real’ in some kind of bizarre ‘brute’ sense.

My suggestion, then, is not that these conceptually abstracting exercises in understanding various aspects of our experience are in any way illegitimate or wrong. I think they frequently provide much to think about and that these exercises are quite welcome; indeed, thinking through anything may require this as a preliminary step before such isolated notions must then be reintegrated with the greater whole of our thought in a manner that seeks holism and coherence. I simply think that claims about such abstract exercises being more ‘real’ than our experience as a whole is simply erroneous and perhaps dangerous when employed in certain ways. Such rationalizations taken as ‘reality’ can lead to the false view that we are ever done thinking, that we have reached the terminus of what it means to be ‘good’ or ‘just.’ Ironically, especially for Peterson, this is precisely the sort of thinking that can devolve into forms of ideology that take their barren abstractions as solving every problem. I do not wish for Reality to be so cheapened.