Professors Žižek and Professor Peterson will meet later this month for a public debate. It is interesting for everyone intending to follow it how their philosophies overlap. Their ideas focus on ideologies and using work of V for Vendetta, especially how it has been depicted in the movie versus the original graphic novel, I’ll show where they connect and get apart. Hopefully this helps create a picture of what interesting discussion can be had in their upcoming debate. I’ve chosen V for Vendetta because Žižek himself likes to call it out in his lectures, and because there is a big difference how it has been portrayed in the movie versus the graphic novel.

Žižek is famously a communist. That irks many and is one of the reasons he picked up Peterson’s interest. But he is also a major philosopher with nuanced thoughts. It is worth exploring what exactly he means by being a communist. He is led by certain skepticism of capitalism, its internal contradictions as observed by Marx will supposedly lead to its eventual downfall. Interestingly, in his own words, there are no viable political alternatives to capitalism today. Žižek has spent much of his time talking to various proto-revolutionary movements seeing whether there is any thought given to alternatives, be it SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain or Occupy Wall-Street in USA. His conclusion was negative and he calls himself hopeless communist in one of his latest books. To further on the point of antagonisms inside our current system, he points out the capitalism might no longer need to be tied to democracy and the liberal order we have in west, as observed in countries like China and India in capitalism with “Asian values”. Žižek’s sees this as a major threat to freedom. A quick introduction to these ideas can be seen in this video. At the same time, he embraces the contradiction of supporting radical violence in pursuit of revolution. The pursuit of radical change coming from the left and replacing capitalism with efficient bureaucracy while retaining individual freedoms is his version of communism. Žižek is honest in saying he does not know how to achieve it and says that “Don’t get caught into this pseudo-activist pressure — do something, let’s do it and so on. No. The time is to think.”

Žižek’s version of communism is concerned with question of freedom. In his popular writings he deconstructs mainstream culture and points out structural oppressions. In his own words: “True freedom means looking into and questioning the presuppositions of everything that is given to us by our hegemonic ideology. And by ideology, I don’t mean here some explicit teaching, but simply the way in our daily lives we experience reality. To question everything, including the notion of freedom itself”. Admittedly, this is worse in non-democratic countries but there he says at least no one thinks he is free. He sees our issues today to be problems of commons. He does name three — intellectual property, climate change and bio-engineering.

Both Peterson and Žižek devote their careers to studies of ideologies and how to fight against them. Žižek likes to use movie version of V for Vendetta in his lectures to make a point on this. It describes how a main character named V inspires a revolution against fascist regime. The movie ends by him detonating the House of Parliament and dying in the process. But he does inspire a people’s movement to take over power wearing V’s signature anonymous mask, symbolizing success of his revolution. It also implies the crowd put aside their individual differences and adopted the revolutionary ideas. At least for the moment, this had become more important than their individual identity which they’ve pushed back on to transform the society. Žižek likes to make a joke saying that “I am prepared to sell my mother to slavery to see a sequel, V for Vendetta part 2, depicting the day after. Now that people took power what will they do?”. It is not enough to overthrow a tyranny, you have to replace it with a new structure. Žižek have picked it up because it allows him to make a straightforward point how our understanding of revolution is ideological in nature. The challenge, he believes, is not convincing people of a necessity of the change nor that violence is needed. It is simply how will we reorganize society once people take the power. He believes now more than ever is time to think before we act.

However, in an interesting twist of fate, the joke is on Žižek. The original graphic novel version has two more parts. Žižek claims that state power is purely symbolic and has no normative force outside of collective behavior, however the novel does not bother with proposing new social structure to change this normative power. Instead, it drills down to individual lives as cause of society ills and a cause for inability to see a way out of them. It describes leaders of fascist government, most of them male, all lacking a meaningful human connection in their life, striving and failing to find a connection between masculine and feminine. Their desire is objectified to pronounce it replaced the true thing. None of them leads a happy life. All will eventually die. The female counterpart to V, Evey, plays much larger role in the story. V saves her from gang rape and helps her to grow. V is incapable of fully connecting to her himself. Evey takes over V’s role after his death. She tries to raise her male counterpart with whom she could transform the world. The couple represents renewed intimacy between masculine and feminine, a balance between forces, new beginning in new Adam and Eve. The novel put this in stark contrast to portrayal of all protagonists and how failed their lives were.

The novel’s treatment of the subject is in a way reminiscent of Dr. Peterson’s lectures. Collectivist philosophy fails on large scale precisely because it corrupts individual morality. Regimes succeed or fail to do atrocities depending on whether there are enough people willing to oppose them. In Hannah Arendt’s treatment of trial of Nazi holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann (Eichmann in Jerusalem), she says: “In refusing to be a person, Eichmann utterly surrendered the single most defining human quality: that of being able to think. And consequently, he was no longer able to make moral judgements”. To re-iterate, both the ability to think and to make moral judgements are individual responsibilities. His failing to do so and adopting the official line, led him to help orchestrate the Holocaust.

Peterson thinks that ability to recognize how to act in the world, instead of straight description of physical reality is behind stories in major religious texts (he specifically focuses on Judeo-Christian canon). That the suffering and competition are part of nature, the later in form of hierarchies which are irremovable. “These stories are an expression of how it is that we must live. In order to live … to avoid hell”. Hell can be imagined as Nazi Germany, Soviet Union or Maoist China. In this, Peterson connects morality with society’s well-being. He makes a strong case for moral virtue in his book 12 rules for life. Whatever the issue in one’s life, it can be improved by taking responsibility for it. Once can start as small as “Clean up your room” He claims things rapidly improve, people only need very little encouragement, and has thousands of anecdotes of people reading his book to confirm this. Moreover, blaming unfair circumstances and corrupt system, although possibly technically correct, will make things unnecessary worse. It makes us bitter and spiteful. Willing to take up revenge on Being itself. He believes this is for example motivation behind the Columbine shooting attack. “If you descend into hell deep enough, you’ll get to a place where all of your thoughts are murderous.”

Peterson’s book 12 rules for life is often considered self-help for expressing an individualistic view of the morality and acting in the world. A mere self-help here is a derogatory term meaning to oppose it to a true philosophy. This objection usually comes from left side of the political spectrum and it is easy to see his project is different from Žižek’s. Where Žižek analysis society and tries to identify path forward, Peterson “merely” helps one lead a better life. At the first glance advice like restoring one’s relationship to their father are banal compared to importance of threats we are facing and the fate of whole society and planet. To illustrate that point, Žižek himself has said he had opened Peterson’s book in a bookstore only to had closed it in disgust “In a bookstore I opened for a little bit this 12 rules for life. Fascism is ok, racism is ok, but my God all those wise advices, like when you see a dog, caress him or whatever, all of that. That’s too much for me.” However, Peterson’s core argument is that a group cannot suffer hardships, it is individuals within the group who do. At the same time, people cannot think up better solution, unless we have better people. Peterson’s profound analysis is that society needs a way for individuals to improve themselves during their life, as in the end we are all saved by the individuals, which is why we are all so open to little kids where everyone can see this potential in the purest form.

My hope is that the theme of happiness allows them to sidestep at least some of their misunderstandings and reach this point of vertical scalability of responsibility, i.e. how much can be improved if people are better as opposed to Žižek’s invisible bureaucracy solving thing for them and allowing them to fully focus on their own business. And whether this would corrupt people’s morality as a result.