[dragonwriter]

> What exactly about his argument that nihilism is "the easy way out" is problematic?

The fact that it is a polemical characterization and not any kind of argument at all would be the main problem I've seen in his attacks on what he calls “nihilism”.

Another problem is that he seems to use the term “nihilist” about as loosely as the average modern North American right-wing propagandist uses the term “Marxist”, so that it becomes very hard to be clear what he is arguing against specifically, which is a real problem because “nihilist” is already a heavily overloaded term that refers to a lot of different and often conflicting belief systems and affiliations.

Another problem is that to the extent that one can frame his stream of polemic as an argument at all, it's mostly one which implicitly relies on existential or moral nihilism (by presenting meaning or morality as something which is not intrinsic, but where is preferred morality is merely an idea that arose at a particular historical time and place that has certain utility to the holder to both hold and to have others around them hold) to argue against whatever it is that Peterson is calling “nihilism”. In this respect, it seems a poor, sloppy, and less honest echo of Nietzsche, who overtly embraced nihilism, but rejected passive nihilism for a more active and, in his view, productive for the individual form of nihilism.