Jordan Peterson’s conversation with Graham Linehan and Andrew Doyle highlights how empathy has become the dominant moral test in gender identity debates. Linehan’s defence of truth and Doyle’s critique of comedy censorship show the cost of resisting this “consensus of virtue.” Drawing on Carl Jung’s insights in The Red Book and Answer to Job, this blog argues that virtue is hierarchical and conflict between values is unavoidable. Absolutising empathy represses truth, breeds shadow, and undermines cultural balance.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Jordan Peterson, Graham Linehan and Andrew Doyle reflected on how cultural debates about gender identity have become defined by moral absolutism. Each described how the language of virtue is now dominated by a narrow emphasis on empathy, and how those who question prevailing norms are treated as if they are morally deficient. This pattern can be understood through Carl Jung’s insights into the dangers of one-sided virtue, the necessity of moral hierarchy, and the inevitability of conflict between competing values.
The Tyranny of Empathy
Peterson’s central claim is that empathy has been elevated to the status of the supreme virtue in public discourse, thereby excluding any consideration of other virtues or models of assessing competing virtues. Those who question policy or language shifts in the name of empathy, typically related to the assumed minority status of people who express forms of gender identity incongruence, are accused of lacking empathy entirely, making them de facto bigots. According to Peterson, this is enacted as a form of authoritarian moral condemnation.
While empathy is undeniably valuable, Peterson argues that it is dangerously one-dimensional when treated as the whole of moral life. Jung anticipated this problem: he warned that striving for the good and the beautiful always summons their opposites, the evil and the ugly. Virtues cannot exist in isolation; they come in polarities. To enthrone empathy is to repress truth, scepticism, and discernment, which then return as collective shadow. As Jung notes
So a man who really tries to be virtuous, having named his virtues that is, is always heading for tremendous moral difficulties, the so-called conflict of conscience, where the two goods clash. Then he does not know whether he should be more compassionate or more just or more respectable or more moral,-or should he be more human? The more he has all these marvellous virtues and the more he believes in them, the more he gets into a hell of a conflict between them; he will create one collision after the other between his own virtues (Jung, 1989, p. 434).
Graham Linehan: Truth Versus Empathy
Linehan’s personal account illustrates the cost of resisting the consensus of virtue. His insistence on biological truth in discussions of sex and gender led to professional ostracism and reputational collapse. He was not accused of breaking laws, but of breaking with the cultural hierarchy that places empathy above all else. In Jungian terms, Linehan chose one virtue—truth—above another—empathy. Such choices are unavoidable, but they generate conflict. Jung stressed that virtue is hierarchical: one must decide in each situation which value is paramount, knowing that this decision will bring sacrifice and moral tension. Linehan’s suffering is an example of how society projects its shadow onto those who refuse to accept a single dominant virtue. As Jung notes
A battle between good and evil is easily won. You can slay the devil by the aid of all sorts of helpful ideas and institutions, public support. Everybody will shake your hand and congratulate you on having slain the dragon. But to slay another virtue is harder: there you gain no recognition. The just will say you are just, but others will say you have not been compassionate; and others will say, yes, you have been frank and honest yet you were not generous or compassionate. For if you are honest and believe in honesty you will speak the truth, and you will make a hell of a mistake: you will be cruel, tactless, unjust and you can have every vice under the sun. Just because you believe in that one virtue, you will have offended against all others (Jung, 1989, p. 435).
Andrew Doyle: The Consensus of Virtue in Comedy
Doyle observed how the consensus of empathy has reshaped the world of comedy and media. Jokes that might once have been judged by wit are now policed according to whether they conform to the ethic of empathy. Through his satirical character Titania McGrath, Doyle highlighted the absurdity of this inflated virtue ethic, where humour and critique are suppressed in the name of compassion. Jung noted that the psyche becomes sterile when it absolutises one pole of virtue, unable to tolerate paradox or ambiguity. Doyle’s perspective shows how cultural imagination narrows when empathy is enthroned at the expense of truth and freedom. As Jung notes
“To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the ‘thorn in the flesh’ is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent” (Jung, 1968, p. 159).
Jung’s Hierarchy of Virtues
In The Red Book, Jung describes how striving for one-sided virtue inevitably collapses into its opposite, warning that “if you strive for the good and the beautiful, you also seize the evil and the ugly.”1 In Answer to Job, he portrays Yahweh as trapped by his own domination of power without reflective justice, illustrating the danger of neglecting competing virtues.2 For Jung, virtue is never flat or absolute but hierarchical and situational. Choices must be made between empathy and truth, justice and mercy, compassion and prudence. Each choice entails moral cost. Linehan’s defence of truth and Doyle’s defence of humour show that individuation requires confronting these conflicts rather than denying them.
The Danger of Consensus of Virtue
When society enshrines a single virtue as absolute, it becomes coercive. Empathy, as the consensus virtue, now serves as a moral cudgel, silencing dissent and projecting shadow onto those who resist. This produces censorship, moral panic, and collective neurosis. Jung’s warning is clear: one-sided virtue leads not to harmony, but to inflation and collapse. A culture that represses truth in the name of empathy is heading toward fragmentation, because it has denied the dialectic of virtues on which moral life depends.
Towards a Dialectic of Virtues
The testimony of Peterson, Linehan, and Doyle points towards a deeper lesson. Individuation, both personal and cultural, requires holding the tension of opposites. Virtues must be placed in hierarchy situationally, with full awareness of the conflict and the wounds it produces. There is no moral life without sacrifice. Empathy must be balanced with truth, compassion with justice, freedom with responsibility. A mature society does not enthrone one virtue but allows them to contest and check each other. Only in this dialectic can culture move beyond repression and shadow into something more whole.
The experiences recounted in this conversation expose the fragility of a culture that clings to a single moral compass. Peterson’s critique of empathy’s absolutisation, Linehan’s defence of truth, and Doyle’s satire of cultural consensus all converge with Jung’s insight: virtue is hierarchical, choices entail conflict, and absolutising one-sided values breeds collective shadow. The task ahead is not to abolish empathy, but to place it alongside truth and justice in a living hierarchy of virtues. Only then can cultural life escape the tyranny of consensus and move towards individuation, where the paradox of conflicting virtues becomes the ground of genuine moral growth.
Endnotes
- Carl Jung, The Red Book, “Scrutinies,” on the inevitability of opposites and the danger of one-sided virtue.
- Carl Jung, Answer to Job, on Yahweh’s lack of reflexive justice and the destructive outcome of one-sided moral dominance.
- Jung, C. G. (1968). Psychology and Alchemy (Second ed.). London: Routledge.
- Jung, C. (1989). Nietzsche’s Zarathustra Part One – notes of the seminar given in 1934 – 1939 (J. L. Jarrett, Ed. Vol. 1). Routledge.
Leave a Reply