The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?

~Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Religion has long played an important role in framing our sense of both who we are and the societies to which we belong. This has had a tremendous impact on world politics, for better and for worse at various times. But since the inauguration of what is loosely called modernity, many have expected the private importance of religion and its political influence to gradually diminish. In the Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes famously dismissed appealing to the “thin spirits” of religion as a support for various political positions. Voltaire and other Enlightenment philosophes ridiculed the mythologies and privileges associated with the Catholic Church and its traditionalist hierarchies. Immanuel Kant famously claimed that pure reason can never provide concrete proof of the existence of God. Karl Marx infamously waved religion away as the “opiate of the masses” which would disappear with the rise of a communist society. These myriad developments infamously led Friedrich Nietzsche—following in the footsteps of the atheist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer—to declare that God was dead, and that we had entered into a new and uncertain secular age.

Nietzsche predicted that this age would see the emergence of new and potentially radical ideologies, many of which would shake the foundations of the global order. But since then, many have argued that secularism, far from leading to great turmoil, will gradually lead to a more peaceful and interconnected globe. New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris claimed that religion had always been a divisive force, and that its inevitable decline would abet the emergence of a more humanistic world. In his recently published posthumous book, Stephen Hawking claimed one final time that there is no God, and that science and reason will and must take the place of faith in our examinations of the world. But in a strange twist God continuously seems to (appropriately enough) resurrect himself. While there is indeed declining levels of support for traditional religions, the world as a whole does not appear to be moving in a more atheistic direction. As a consequence, religion continues to play an important role in the private life of billions and in their political sensibilities.

In this brief essay, I do not intend to evaluate this phenomena in any significant depth. I am adopting a stance of methodological agnosticism on both the ontological question of God’s existence, and the meta-ethical question about what God’s existence or non-existence might imply for our normative beliefs. I have in the past addressed this meta-ethical question from a secular standpoint in some detail, and the interested reader may turn there. This essay will also not evaluate the more social and political questions about the impact of religion in domestic and global politics. While fascinating and worthwhile, there is no space to develop such an analysis here. Instead, I will focus on the way God plays a role in framing the moral and political outlooks of two well-known thinkers: Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Žižek.

My choice of comparators was determined by three factors. The first is that Peterson and Žižek are both well-known public intellectuals. Much might be gained by critically comparing their work, since their positions are likely to be known to a relatively wide literate audience. Sadly, we may never get to see the debate between the two that was promised, which might have gone a long way to informing this article’s observations. The second is that Peterson and Žižek, despite stark disagreements, actually have more in common philosophically and politically than one might suspect at a glance. Both draw philosophically on a broadly psychoanalytic framework; with Peterson leaning heavily on Carl Jung and Žižek claiming to be an occasionally heretical follower of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Moreover, both Peterson and Žižek are politically highly critical of postmodern philosophy and identity politics; albeit for very different reasons.

But, thirdly, both Peterson and Žižek have shown a consistent interest in religious issues and, in particular, the revitalizing aspects of Christian theology and politics. This interest is present in both of Peterson’s major books, and certainly came through in his interesting series of debates with the atheist Sam Harris. In Žižek’s case, his engagement with Christian thinking comes through most prominently in works such as The Monstrosity of Christ and The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For.

These factors make a comparison between their respective positions potentially fruitful and edifying. While naturally Peterson and Žižek understand God and the Christian legacy in profoundly different ways, I will conclude this essay with some thoughts as to why both have taken a considerable interest in it. This in turn might help us examine the broader question of why religion remains such a potent force in the world today, despite the predictions and efforts of many.

Jordan Peterson, God, and Politics

Jordan Peterson has been both widely praised and criticized for his analysis of Christian teaching and his appeals to God. The criticisms come both from those who have strong religious beliefs and argue that Peterson is insufficiently faithful and from those who believe a serious minded intellectual should not entertain fanciful religious notions.