scholarly journals Beyond Contagion of Violence: Passionate Love and Empathy in the Thought of René Girard and Max Scheler

Human Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogumił Strączek
Keyword(s):  
Max Scheler ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Passionate Love ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard ◽  
The World ◽  
Fundamental Insight

AbstractIn his last book René Girard depicts apocalypse as disclosure of mimetic violence that is world-ending. He claims that in times of violent pandemic we are not called to fight for this world, but follow Christ in his withdrawal from the world. However, such an assertion creates serious theoretical and practical issues for the effort to heal interhuman relations from the virus of mimetic hostility. I argue for the importance of restoring a foundational distinction between passionate love and acquisitive mimetic desire from the forgotten regions of Girard’s oeuvre. With Max Scheler’s interpretation of Stendhal’s concept of l’amour passion, I explore in each thinker a fundamental insight about possibilities of transforming violent contagion through empathy and loving commitment to the world. I conclude that respective “passive” and “active” approaches to the contagion of mimetic rivalry and violence are necessary and equally valuable.

The Sacred and the Myth: Havel’s Greengrocer, Twenty Years Later

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-293
Author(s):  
Marci Shore
Keyword(s):  
Literary Critic ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Vaclav Havel ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard ◽  
Cultural Order ◽  
Ontological Reality

This essay juxtaposes two thinkers: the French literary critic and philosopher René Girard (1923–2015) and the Czech playwright, essayist, and dissident Václav Havel (1936–2011). In particular, the text examines Havel’s 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless through the lens of Girard’s structuralist model of mimetic desire, violent sacrifice, and a cultural order sustained by prohibition, ritual, and myth. Arguing against the French structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), Girard insisted on a reality behind the text: myths disclosed real victims. Girard and Havel shared a merciless anti-populism: society was guilty. They shared something else as well: in an age of a loss of faith in Marxism and all grand narratives, and of skepticism about the possibility of any stable meaning, subjectivity, and truth, Havel and Girard insisted on the ontological reality of both truth and lies, and on the ontological reality of the distinction between them.

scholarly journals A dessacralização da violência contra as mulheres no altar do patriarcado: reflexões a partir dos conceitos desejo mimético e bode expiatório em René Girard

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Abdruschin Schaeffer Rocha ◽  
Claudete Beise Ulrich
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Theological Education ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
The Bible ◽  
René Girard ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Present Text

O presente texto reflete sobre a dessacralização da violência contra as mulheres no altar do patriarcado a partir dos conceitos desejo mimético e bode expiatório, expressos no pensamento de René Girard, na relação entre religião e violência. Ele não tratou, especificamente, em seus textos sobre a violência de gênero. No entanto, os conceitos por ele refletidos sobre desejo mimético e bode expiatório podem ser referenciais para entender a sacralização da violência contra as mulheres na sociedade patriarcal e machista brasileira. Uma forma de superar a perspectiva de bode expiatório, a partir do cristianismo, pode ser a releitura bíblica a partir das vítimas, das mulheres violentadas, buscando desconstruir o sistema religioso, machista e patriarcal. Neste sentido, a educação teológica, com referenciais analíticos de gênero na interseção com etnia/raça, classe social, geração e perspectiva feminista, torna-se fundamental no processo de desconstrução de leituras, discursos, práticas religiosas patriarcais, machistas violentas que promovem o desejo concorrente e a criação de bodes expiatórios.The present text reflects on the unsacralization of violence against women on the altar of patriarchy, based on the concepts mimetic desire and scapegoat, expressed in the thought of René Girard, in the relationship between religion and violence. He did not specifically address his writings on gender violence. However, the concepts he reflects on mimetic desire and scapegoat may be benchmarks for understanding the sacralization of violence against women in Brazilian patriarchal and macho society. One way to overcome the scapegoat perspective, starting with Christianity, may be to read the Bible from the victims perspective, from women who have been violated, seeking to deconstruct the religious, macho and patriarchal system. In this sense, theological education, with analytical gender references at the intersection with ethnicity/race, social class, generation and feminist perspective, becomes fundamental in the process of deconstruction of readings, discourses, patriarchal religious practices, violent sexists that promote desire competitor and the creation of scapegoats.

scholarly journals Begæret, volden og offeret

1985 ◽  
Author(s):  
Finn Frandsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
Main Element ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard ◽  
Single Person ◽  
Cultural Order ◽  
Generative Mechanism

The French critic and anthropologist René Girard is one of the most original and controversial thinkers of today. This article contains an introduction to his theory of the unanimous victimage as the generative mechanism of all religious and social institutions. The main element in this mechanism is the mimetic desire, i.e. a desire which depends on a mediator and whose dynamics is rooted in a dispute object. Every human society has originally known a state of crisis caused by mimetic rivalry and contagious, reciprocal violence. The function of the victimage mechanism is to stop the crisis, to institute a cultural order based on differences and hierarchy, and to reconcile the members of the community by expelling and sacrificing one single person considered to be the cause of the evil. The purpose of prohibitions, rituals and myths is afterwards to maintain and renew this reconciling “scapegoat effect”. The introduction also includes two shorter chapters on René Girard’s interpretation of the Oedipus myth and his non-sacrificial reading of the evangelic text.

Mimetic Desire as Illustrated in The Joneses

2018 ◽  
pp. 58-72
Author(s):  
David J. Burns
Keyword(s):  
Basic Needs ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Primary Motivation ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard

Individuals' participation in the marketplace has exceeded all projections. As opposed to a leisure-based utopia that was predicted by many, even with most basic needs being satisfied, most individuals continue to strive to obtain more and more income to participate in the marketplace at progressively higher rates. This chapter examines this seemingly counter-intuitive reality. Specifically, this phenomenon is explored within the theories of Rene Girard, where the concept of mimetic desire is discussed and advanced as a primary motivation behind most present-day consumption. The movie, The Joneses, is the used as an avenue to illustrate the theories of Rene Girard. Several conclusions are drawn.

scholarly journals ‘Menzogna romantica’ e ‘sortilegio romanzesco’

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piermario Vescovo
Keyword(s):  
War Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard ◽  
Post War

This contribution attempts to match the dimensions of the ‘menzogna and sortilegio’ of Elsa Morante’s novel, and above all its construction in relation to the novel of the bourgeois epic of the previous century, those of the ‘mensonge romantique’ and ‘verité romanesque’ of René Girard, and therefore of describe the geometries of mimetic desire that build the plot of this huge debut in European post-war literature.

scholarly journals The influence of J.-P. Sartre’s philosophy on the mimetic theory of R. Girard

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-13
Author(s):  
Maxim V. Gafurov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Mimetic Theory ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Critical View ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Literary Structure ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard

Certainly Sartre had an enormous influence on the subsequent philosophical thought, primarily in France. Rene Girard did not ignore this thinker either. In this article we will look at the influence of Sartre’s philosophy on the formation of Rene Girard’s mimetic theory. Already in his early work, “Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure”, Rene Girard repeatedly refers to the work of Sartre, explaining how his work can be considered in the context of mimetic theory. Further, in an interview with Michel Treger in 1992, Girard controversially proposes to examine the existential-phenomenological constructions of Sartre by means of mimetic theory, putting forward his vision and critical view on overcoming the Cartesian dualism that Girard finds in Sartre’s philosophy. The author of the article considers the convergence of the mimetic theory of R. Girard with some provisions of the work by J.-P. Sartre, turning to one of the main philosophical works of J.-P. Sartre “Being and Nothingness”, which also influenced the early work of R. Girard. It should be noted that J.-P. Sartre does not offer a system describing the mechanisms of mimetic desire. But through the prism of mimetic theory we can see certain philosophical intuitions that reveal to us the nature of mimetic desires in the works of Sartre.

scholarly journals Girard and the Millennials: New Perspectives on Evangelization

Lumen et Vita ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Sutherland, SJ
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Human History ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard ◽  
Secular World ◽  
Scapegoat Mechanism ◽  
The Cross

René Girard in conversation with Charles Taylor can help us to analyze the connection between violence and religion. Girard’s lens of mimetic desire helps to clarify how Jesus was the anti-sacrifice who desired to end the scapegoat mechanism. Taylor provides a lens on the transcendent and its sometimes hidden presence in our secular world. People are constantly feeling the cross pressures between a closed immanent frame and an openness to fulfillment outside of one’s self. Taylor’s analysis becomes concrete in the sociological research regarding Millennials and their ambivalence toward organized religion. Many young adults today are seeking the transcendent but have no idea how to find it. Additionally, they are wary of the divisiveness of religion and many view religion as but another contributor to an already violent world. However, Boeve’s image of theology as interruption gives us a lens with which to see Girard’s narrative as God’s interruption of human history. This interruption demands an equally serious, committed response. Such a demanding and meaningful narrative can be attractive to Millennials who generally view religion as simply one equally meaningless choice among others.

Mimetic Desire in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot with Continual Reference to René Girard

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-95
Author(s):  
Denis Zhernokleyev
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Of Interest ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mimetic Desire ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
René Girard ◽  
Principal Character ◽  
Love Triangle

It is common to see Myshkin, the principal character of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, as a failed lover and a compassionate saintly figure, who gets entangled in a love triangle but cannot embody it. This paper challenges such a view and argues that Myshkin fully incarnates the violent dynamic of desire that governs the novel. With the help of René Girard’s notion of mimetic desire, the paper explores Myshkin’s relationship with Rogozhin as erotic rivalry. Instead of seeing the two characters as autonomous entities, it is suggested that they should be viewed as doubles, as two poles of the same consciousness. On this view, Myshkin’s compassion and Rogozhin’s lust become two different manifestations of the same desire, united by a conflict of interest, which drives the love triangle towards a violent resolution.

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