While I am not a Jordan Peterson fan myself (I have many of my own reservations), I must however disagree with some of the criticisms leveled against Peterson, Paul Thagar, in his article "Jordan Peterson's Murky Maps of Meaning" writes:
"Peterson is simply wrong (p. 480) that “all of Western ethics, including those explicitly formalized in Western law, are predicated upon a mythological worldview, which specifically attributes divine status to the individual.” None of the philosophers in my list view human individuals as god-like, and only Kant sees them as transcendent of material reality. Plato and Aristotle originated Western ethics 2500 years ago with a stark divorce between philosophy and religion. Hence normative judgments about right and wrong do not depend at all on myth or religion."
Strictly speaking there is no divorce between religion and philosophy for Plato or Aristotle (given their teleological worldviews), Aristotle's whole philosophy was arguably a response to "earlier thinkers" whom he said over-emphasized the "material element" (aka materialists).
Secondly, Aristotle (arguably the greatest philosopher who ever lived) defended slavery as perfectly rational and consistent with his ethics.
Other practices were also perfectly rational in Pagan ethics, i.e infanticide.(which would only become taboo once Christianity became more widespread in Europe).
One of the earliest critics of slavery was Gregory of Nyssa (335 – c. 395), he did not appeal to secular ethics when attacking slavery:
"He believed that slavery violated mankind's inherent worth, and the nature of humanity to be free; a departure from classical, and Judeo-Christian precedent which he rooted in Genesis, arguing that man was given mastery of animals but not of mankind. Although aspects of the slave system had been criticized by Stoics such as Seneca, this was the first and only sustained critique of the institution of slavery itself made in the ancient world."
Thomas Sowell writes in a review of a book on Wilberforce ("Bury the Chains"):
"The anti-slavery movement was spearheaded by people who would today be called “the religious right” and its organization was created by conservative businessmen. Moreover, what destroyed slavery in the non-Western world was Western imperialism.’ ‘Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today’s intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world."
Philosophical Theist |
