Satan
Satan is the principle that drives discord, chaos, and confusion among humans. Satan is the embodiment and incarnation of mimetic rivalry and violence, the force behind conflict and conflict that operates through mimetic rivalries and the scapegoating mechanism. Whether you view “Satan” in the traditional, incarnate way like a ‘devil with horns’ or in a spiritual way, as a force of disintegration and distortions, the Satanic principle shares one principle: it always divides and causes confusion, agitation, anxiety, and angst rather than peace. Look out for it.
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is literally the “making sacred” (sacer facere) of a victim of violent unanimity, the victim who is the effective substitute for the violence of all and whose unanimous destruction ensures social concord. The substitution of animals for human victims only replicates the original substitutive mechanism, while clearly reflecting the need for victims whose destruction will not occasion reprisals from those nearest them.
Religion
Religion may have its etymological roots in Latin Religare, to bind up or tie together, as a community is united by its devotion to a divinity which it fails to see as the victim of its unanimous, sacrificial violence. Often described as an ensemble of beliefs and practices that organize a culture, religion consists chiefly of prohibitions regarding objects dangerous to desire, of rituals that carefully reenact violent disorder and perform reverence for sacred origins, and of myths that recount origins while disguising the foundational role of the scapegoat victim.
Apocalyptic
See apocalypse. Apocalyptic events bring about the destruction of the world and of humanity. In Girard’s mimetic theory, apocalyptic things happen as the result of human violence—specifically, the mimetic cycle which starts with Mimetic Desire, gives way to Mimetic Rivalry, leads to collisions, and eventually is resolved through either war (violence) or the scapegoat mechanism (all against one).
Mimetic Theory of René Girard and Asian Culture
The thought of Girard is beginning to infiltrate Asian countries. This is the site of Korean professor Ilkwaen Chung, for example, who have begun to explore the origins of Buddhist through the lens of Girardian theory. He asks many fascination questions like, “Is Buddha a scapegoat?” Professor Chung is perhaps the foremost Girardian scholar in South Korea, and those seeking to understand mimetic theory in Asia should explore this website, even though it doesn’t appear to have been updated in quite a while (since 2017). Visit Mimetic Theory of René Girard and Asian Culture
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future – by Peter Thiel
What do you believe is true that almost nobody else believes is true? This is the question that the contrarian entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel poses at the beginning of his book, Zero to One. It’s a question especially important for startup founders to answer. In this book, Thiel himself answers it in the most compelling of ways—by taking his readers on a journey through his brilliant (and Girardian) mind. Oddly, Thiel never once mentions René Girard by name in this entire book. Yet it is soaked through with mimetic theory. Chapter 3 is where Thiel lays out his “Competition is for Losers” philosophy, which he articulated in an excellent lecture (link above) to students at Stanford. He speaks about the destructive power of rivalry and competition and the importance of striving to be a monopoly business. The business version of the “truth” question that he opens the book with is simply: what valuable company is nobody building? In perhaps the most Girardian chapter in the entire book, the last chapter (titled “The Founder’s Paradox”) explains why so many startup founders fall on an inversed normal distribution curve—in other words, most successful founders fall way outside the “norms” of society—and for this reason they are most easily worshipped and scapegoated. Zero to One is an excellent book for any entrepreneur to read and one of the only practical resources out there for applied mimetic theory. Check out Zero to One on Amazon.
René Girard’s Mimetic Theory – by Wolfgang Palaver
A systematic introduction into the René Girard’s mimetic theory of the French-American literary theorist and philosophical anthropologist René Girard, this essential text explains its three main pillars (mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism, and the Biblical “difference”) with the help of examples from literature and philosophy. This book also offers an overview of René Girard’s life and work, showing how much mimetic theory results from existential and spiritual insights into one’s own mimetic entanglements. Furthermore, it examines the broader implications of Girard’s theories, from the mimetic aspect of sovereignty and wars to the relationship between the scapegoat mechanism and the question of capital punishment. Mimetic theory is placed within the context of current cultural and political debates like the relationship between religion and modernity, terrorism, the death penalty, and gender issues. Drawing textual examples from European literature (Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kleist, Stendhal, Storm, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Proust) and philosophy (Plato, Camus, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, Vattimo), Palaver uses mimetic theory to explore the themes they present. A highly accessible book, this text is complemented by bibliographical references to Girard’s widespread work and secondary literature on mimetic theory and its applications, comprising a valuable bibliographical archive that provides the reader with an overview of the development and discussion of mimetic theory until the present day. Check out René Girard’s Mimetic Theory on Amazon
The Oedipus Casebook: Reading Sophocles’ Oedipus the King
by Mark R. Anspach and Wm. Blake Tyrrell Who killed Laius? Most readers assume Oedipus did. At the play’s end, he stands convicted of murdering his father, marrying his mother, and triggering a deadly plague. With selections from a stellar assortment of critics including Walter Burkert, Terry Eagleton, Michel Foucault, René Girard, and Jean-Pierre Vernant, this book reopens the Oedipus case and lets readers judge for themselves. The Greek word for tragedy means “goat song.” Is Oedipus the goat? Helene Peet Foley calls him “the kind of leader a democracy would both love and desire to ostracize.” The Oedipus Casebook readings weigh the evidence against Oedipus, place the play in the context of Greek scapegoat rites, and explore the origins of tragedy in the festival of Dionysus. This unique critical edition includes a new translation of the play by distinguished classics scholar Wm. Blake Tyrrell and the authoritative Greek text established by H. Lloyd-Jones and N. G. Wilson. Check out The Oedipus Casebook on Amazon
Kings of Disaster: Dualism, Centralism and the Scapegoat King in Southeastern Sudan
by Simon Simonse, Foreword by Mark Anspach The long-awaited, revised, and illustrated edition of Simon Simonse’s study of the Rainmakers of the Nilotic Sudan marks a breakthrough in anthropological thinking on African political systems. Taking his inspiration from René Girard’s theory of consensual scapegoating, the author shows that the longstanding distinction of states and stateless societies as two fundamentally different political types does not hold. Centralized and segmentary systems only differ in the relative emphasis put on the victim role of the king as compared with that of the enemy. Kings of Disasterproposes an elegant and powerful solution to the vexed problem of regicide. Check out Kings of Disaster on Amazon.
For René Girard: Essays in Friendship and in Truth
by Sandor Goodhart, Jørgen Jørgensen, Tom Ryba, James Williams In his explorations of the relations between the sacred and violence, René Girard has hit upon the origin of culture—the way culture began, the way it continues to organize itself. The way communities of human beings structure themselves in a manner that is different from that of other species on the planet. Like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, Martin Buber, or others who have changed the way we think in the humanities or in the human sciences, Girard has put forth a set of ideas that have altered our perceptions of the world in which we function. We will never be able to think the same way again about mimetic desire, about the scapegoat mechanism, and about the role of Jewish and Christian scripture in explaining sacrifice, violence, and the crises from which our culture has been born. The contributions fall into roughly four areas of interpretive work: religion and religious study; literary study; the philosophy of social science; and psychological studies.The essays presented here are offered as “essays” in the older French sense of attempts (essayer) or trials of ideas, as indeed Girard has tried out ideas with us. With a conscious echo of Montaigne, then, this hommage volume is titled Essays in Friendship and in Truth. Check out For René Girard on Amazon.