The book's central idea is that "suffering is built into the structure of being" and, although it can be unbearable, people have a choice either to withdraw, which is a "suicidal gesture", or to face and transcend it.

[6][22] To promote the book, Peterson went on a world tour, initially from January 14, 2018, to February 17, 2018, including events in England, Canada, and the United States.

[50] In the UK the book enjoyed five weeks at the top of The Sunday Times's bestsellers list for general hardcover (February 18 – March 25,[51][52][53][54][55] again on April 15),[56] selling over 120,000 copies by September 16.

[citation needed] Melanie Reid, for The Times, said the book is "aimed at teenagers, millennials and young parents...If you peel back the verbiage, the cerebral preening, you are left with a hardline self-help manual of self-reliance, good behaviour, self-betterment and individualism that probably reflects [Peterson's] childhood in rural Canada in the 1960s.

"[85] Bryan Appleyard, also in The Times, describes it as "a less dense and more practical version of Maps of Meaning...a baggy, aggressive, in-your-face, get-real book that, ultimately, is an attempt to lead us back to what Peterson sees as the true, the beautiful and the good – i.e., God.

"[86] Hari Kunzru of The Guardian said it collates advice from Peterson's clinical practice with anecdotes, accounts of his academic work as a psychologist and "a lot of intellectual history of the 'great books' variety", but the essays are explained in an overcomplicated style.

[6] For The Scotsman, Bill Jamieson praised it as "richly illustrated and packed with excellent advice on how we can restore meaning and a sense of progression to our everyday lives", describing it as "verbal waterboarding for supporters of big government".

[15] Joe Humphreys of The Irish Times argued people should not be stopped "from reading what is a veritable powerhouse of a book: wise, provocative, humorous and also maddeningly contradictory...".

[89] Glenn Ellmers in Claremont Review of Books wrote that Peterson "does not shrink from telling readers that life means pain and suffering.

[90] In a review for the same magazine, Bishop Robert Barron praised the archetypal reading of the story about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden with Jesus representing "gardener" and the psychological exploration of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and The Gulag Archipelago, but did not support its "gnosticizing tendency to read Biblical religion purely psychologically and philosophically and not at all historically", or the idea that "God ... [is] simply a principle or an abstraction".

It is "valuable for the beleaguered young men in our society, who need a mentor to tell them to stand up straight and act like heroes", Barron wrote.

[92] Ron Dart, for The British Columbia Review, considered the book "an attempt to articulate a more meaningful order for freedom as an antidote to the erratic ... chaos of our age", but although "necessary" with exemplary advice for men and women it is "hardly a sufficient text for the tougher questions that beset us on our all too human journey and should be read as such.

[95] In The Spectator, Peter Hitchens wrote that he did not like the "conversational and accessible" style and amount of "recapitulation", but believed it had "moving moments", "good advice" with a message "aimed at people who have grown up in the post-Christian West" with special appeal to young men.

[96] Park MacDougald of New York shared a similar view, writing that on paper Peterson lacks the "coherence, emotional depth" of his lectures but "still, he produces nuggets of real insight.

[102] In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guy Stevenson wrote that Peterson's work is ignored by serious academics, in part because of his inflated claims targeting a conspiracy of "postmodern neo-Marxists", but that his level of celebrity had not been seen for a public intellectual since Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s.

He called 12 Rules aggressive and overeager to blame problems on "bogeymen", and recommended as an alternative the work of John Gray, who has addressed the same issues.

[77] Kelefa Sanneh of The New Yorker noted: some of his critics might be surprised to find much of the advice he offers unobjectionable, if old-fashioned: he wants young men to be better fathers, better husbands, better community members.

In this way, he might be seen as an heir to older gurus of manhood like Elbert Hubbard, who in 1899 published a stern and wildly popular homily called A Message to Garcia ... At times, Peterson emphasizes his interest in empirical knowledge and scientific research—although these tend to be the least convincing parts of 12 Rules for Life.

[8] In September 2018, Peterson threatened to sue Cornell University philosopher Kate Manne for defamation after she called his work misogynistic in an interview with Vox.

[106][107][108] In a critique often shared by prominent intellectual Noam Chomsky,[109] Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs called Peterson a "charlatan" who gives "the most elementary fatherly life-advice" while adding "convolutions to disguise the simplicity of his mind.

The author argues that a major sociocultural transformation occurred from this ancient adaptive complex with the onset of agriculture giving rise to modern patrilineal and hierarchical cultures.

This view contrasts with Peterson's, which postulates modern social and economic structures are an outgrowth of the hierarchical impulses of our premammalian, mammalian and primate ancestors.