Has Jordan Peterson lost his spark?

For the poor souls who paid to live-stream the Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Žižek debate, the $15 ticket price must now seem like an act of grand larceny. In what was rather cringingly billed as the ‘debate of the century’—premature in 2019, if nothing else—the psychologist and bestselling author of 12 Rules for Lifeshared a stage in Toronto with the world’s most idiosyncratic philosopher and critic. The topic was ‘Happiness: Capitalism vs. Marxism’.

Of course, neither Peterson nor Žižek are strangers to crowds. Since rising to fame by opposing what he calls ‘compelled speech’, Peterson has become something of an icon for young conservatives, and a kind of paternal figure, offering practical wisdom to his legion of devoted followers. For David Brooks, he is ‘the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now.’

Žižek, by comparison, is an old hand in the ideas business. For three decades he’s been writing two or three books a year and giving talks in five languages, all of them coloured by his eccentric style and sense of humour.