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

In 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 Ghost of the Nephew: Napoleon iii in “The Demons” by F. M. Dostoevsky

The article contains an analysis of one of the references to Emperor Napoleon iii in the preparatory materials of F. M. Dostoevsky for The Demons. In addition, the hypothesis of Louis Bonaparte as one of the prototypes of Peter Verkhovensky is considered. This assumption is based on the material of Dostoevsky’s notebooks and has already been expressed by V. A. Tunimanov and A. Pekurovskaya, although it has not yet received complete development. The article shows what are the details of Napoleon iii’s biography, what are the elements of his political tactics and individual myth that could be known to Dostoevsky and used by him in creating such a character as younger Verkhovensky. In line with the “black legend” about Louis Bonaparte, Verkhovensky relies on people who are deprived of a stable social position. He goes for a hoax willingly and hopes that demoralization and panic in society will allow him to come to power. Just as Napoleon iii stands hostage for the myth of his great uncle, Verkhovensky is slavishly dependent on his “idol,” his “Ivan Tsarevitch”—Stavrogin. Both pairs can be considered from the point of view of the phenomenon of mimetic desire as it was described by R. Girard. The article also shows how historical and literary prototypes of the same character interact with each other, revealing certain functional features of the new hero. In this case, the relationship between the figures of Napoleon iii and Gogol’s Khlestakov in the general design of the image of Verkhovensky is briefly addressed.

Acquisitive Desire in Early Childhood: Rethinking Rivalry in the Playroom

What if we could observe the normal operation of mimetic desire in a rivalry-free environment? What would object relationships look like? Would acquisitive desire make an appearance without the encouragement of the model-obstacle dynamic? Montessori’s teacher training method offers a rigorous approach to removing rivalry from the student-teacher relationship. It is designed and functions to prevent the model-obstacle phenomenon from occurring. Therefore it provides us with a laboratory for observing mimetic desire in as close to a pre-lapsarian state as we can approximate this side of the gates of Eden.

Mimetic Desire and Ressentiment in the Case of the Japan–South Korea Trade Dispute

The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanatory account of the role of emotions in the trade dispute between Japan and South Korea which started in July 2019. Building on an integrated approach to the study of emotions in international relations, it argues that the collective experience of emotions in situations of conflict has to be understood in relation to the moralities assumed by the parties involved. It proposes a theoretical framework combining the concepts of mimetic desire and ressentiment coined by René Girard and Friedrich Nietzsche, respectively, in order to problematize the dialectic of power-justice underlying the processes of legitimation and self-justification by the two countries. In this sense, the strong emotional reactivity between both elites and people in South Korea and Japan can be attributed to the contradictions between the desires for superiority and equality channelled by nation-state-centred narratives. It concludes that ending the cycle of emotional reactivity requires both parties to move toward commitments to justice and empathy at the domestic and international levels.

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

A Girardian Approach to LaVeyan Satanism: Theological Perspectives

This article addresses some convergences in Rene Girard and Anton LaVey’s understandings of Satan. Rene Girard understood Satan as the representation of both mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism, both of which have detrimental influences on human culture. In that sense, in continuation with Christian orthodoxy, Girard did not find any positive aspect in Satanism. By contrast, Anton LaVey had a more positive approach to Satan. LaVey was an unsophisticated Nietzschean, who nevertheless understood well that the German philosopher’s views were not dissimilar to what Satan represents. Rene Girard’s understanding of who (or what) Satan is, makes this clearer.

Making a People: Turkey’s “Democracy Watches” and Gezi-Envy

This article investigates a surplus quality that a “politics out of doors” embodies. It argues that forms of mass appearance and protest manifest an aesthetic and affective making of a people—a people that enjoys its togetherness through visualized, vocalized, and performative expressions of its presence. Generating and generated by a collective desire, this figure of a people exceeds “the people” understood as a legally authorizing and legitimating entity. I contend that the excess of desire can make popular protest a source of “envy” for political authorities even at the height of their electoral power. In conversation with Melanie Klein and Joan Copjec’s accounts of “envy” and René Girard’s formulation of “mimetic desire,” I analyze the Turkish regime’s orchestration of the 2016 “Democracy Watches” as an attempt to create, harness, and appropriate a counter-equivalent desire to the 2013 antigovernment Gezi protests. In so doing, I reconceptualize peoplehood as the synergetic enjoyment of assembled collectivities.

‘Menzogna romantica’ e ‘sortilegio romanzesco’

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.