René Girard

1923-2015 · French · Philosophical Anthropology, Literary Criticism, Religious Studies, Mimetic Theory

Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind.

A French literary scholar turned reluctant theologian, René Girard spent the 1950s reading great novelists — Stendhal, Proust, Dostoevsky — not for their style but for what they knew about human nature. His discovery: desire is not spontaneous but borrowed. We learn what to want by watching models, and when model and imitator want the same thing, rivalry ignites. He called this mimetic desire.

Topics René Girard addresses

• mimetic desire
• triangular desire
• the scapegoat mechanism
• the founding murder
• mimetic rivalry
• internal and external mediation
• the mimetic cycle
• sacrificial crisis
• the crisis of undifferentiation
• mimetic doubles
• the skandalon
• the unanimous-minus-one structure
• things hidden since the foundation of the world
• stereotypes of persecution
• the persecution texts
• mythology as distorted memory
• ritual as controlled repetition
• the sacred and violence
• sacrifice and substitution
• the nonsacrificial death of Christ
• biblical revelation as demystification
• the Judeo-Christian rupture
• the apocalyptic reading of history
• Satan and accusation

Questions to put to René Girard

Mimetic Desire and Triangular Mediation

• What do you mean when you say desire is mimetic?
• How does triangular desire work — who are the subject, object, and mediator?
• What's the difference between external and internal mediation?
• Why does the model become an obstacle when mediation is internal?
• How did the great novelists help you discover mimetic desire?

The Scapegoat Mechanism and the Founding Murder

• What is the scapegoat mechanism and how does it work?
• How does mimetic rivalry escalate into a sacrificial crisis?
• What do you mean by the unanimous-minus-one structure?
• How did the founding murder give birth to the sacred?
• Why do myths always tell the story from the persecutors' point of view?
• What are the stereotypes of persecution you found across cultures?

Biblical Revelation and the Exposure of Violence

• How are the Gospels different from mythology?
• What's at stake for you in calling the Passion narrative a lynching told from the victim's side?
• What do you mean when you say the Bible reveals things hidden since the foundation of the world?
• How did Christianity make the modern concern for victims possible?
• Why do you think the divinity of Christ matters for mimetic theory?
• How do you respond to the charge that the Gospels are anti-Semitic?

Apocalypse and Escalation to Extremes

• Why do you think modernity tends toward apocalyptic escalation?
• What happens when the scapegoat mechanism stops working invisibly?
• How does your reading of Clausewitz connect to mimetic rivalry?
• What's the alternative to continuing escalation to extremes?
• What do you mean by imitatio Christi as a way out of mimetic violence?

Sacrifice, Satan, and the Sacred

• How did you change your mind about sacrifice over the course of your work?
• What role does Satan play in your theory?
• How do rituals relate to the founding murder?
• Why do prohibitions emerge from the scapegoat mechanism?
• What's the difference between sacral violence and self-giving sacrifice?

Rivals and Doubles — Freud, Nietzsche, and Others

• How is your theory different from Freud's Oedipus complex?
• What's your argument against Nietzsche's celebration of the Dionysian?
• Why do you think mimetic theory explains more than psychoanalysis?
• How do you see the relationship between mimetic desire and gender?

Converse with René Girard on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in René Girard's own writing, cited to the page.