The Deepening Impasse of Modernity – by Stephen Gardner
University of Tulsa Philosophy Professor Stephen Gardner writes about René Girard’s book Battling to the End. Battling to the End is about Girard’s view on war and how he believes Mimetic Theory plays an explanatory role in human violence. Girard introduces readers to von Clausewitz, an eighteenth-century Prussian military officer and strategist, and reflects on […]
Desired Possessions: Karl Polanyi, Rene Girard, and the Critique of the Market – by Mark Anspach
The market illusion—the idea of an “invisible hand”—perpetuates the idea of “market motives,” or purely economic motives. These do not exist. Social relationships are embedded deeply in the market, and there is no desire that is not social. As Mark Anspach observes, “faith in the naturalness and inevitability of the “economic motive” absolves those who […]
What has Deviated Transcendency: Woolf’s “The Waves” as a Textbook Case – by Simon de Keukelaere’s
From the article, drawing heavily on Max Scheler: “Humankind––according to mimetic theory––is not (as Marx thought) homo economicus but rather homo religious. Mensonge Romantique et Vérité Romanesque, Girard’s first essay (1961), evocatively opens with a saying by Max Scheler: “L’homme possède ou un Dieu ou une idole” (Man has either a God or an idol). […]
The Evangelical Subversion of Myth – by René Girard
Girard begins this subversive exploration of the evangelical (Gospel) subversion of myth by quoting Sigmund Freud in his famous work, Totem and Taboo. Freud recognizes that long before he intuited the violent origins of human culture, the Gospels had already revealed them. “In the Christian doctrine,” he writes, “men were acknowledging in the most undisguised […]