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I have no idea what was going on here but the introduction was horrendous. I rewrote something which is certainly an improvement but I'm sure it could also be improved upon further. What happened to the introduction in the first place? CS — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.114.238.96 ( talk) 16:42, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
from the introduction: "Yet, his work also tends to be very controversial due to his harsh criticisms of modern philosophy and his outspoken Christian perspective".
This is somewhat ambiguous though as a 'Christian perspective' is the perspective of a Christian, and Christianity itself seems to be a hypocritical failure by Girard's standards, and he says as much. I mean to say should the sentence perhaps not read "his emphasis on the Bible as the founding document of Western civilization, as the eminent ethical text instructing humans how to live their lives" etc.
I am not entirely sure whether his perspective is theological, which the current sentence seems to imply, but Girard is no theologian. If anyone has any comments please present them, otherwise I will make the appropriate changes at some point. Tsop 14:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I understand what you're saying and agree that he represents a 'Christian perspective', but my position is that the phrase itself is ambiguous and needs to be disambiguated between Christianity as it is practised today and 'Christianity' as the ideal presented in the Gospels. As a non-theist and a 'non-Christian ' I also agree with Girard in that the Gospels are humanity's pre-eminent ethical document as well as (obviously) the founding document of Western civilization, but this is a 'Mimetic' perspective, not a theological one, which is why I am questioning the use of the phrase 'Christian perspective'. Have just read through his book on Shakespeare "A Theatre of Envy" and luckily can quote relevent passage: (in Chapter 30 'Hamlet's Dull Revenge: Vengeance in Hamlet')
"The sacrificial misreading of the Gospels made the various phases Christian culture possible. In the Middle Ages, for instance, Gospel principles were superficially reconciled with the aristocratic ethics of personal honor and revenge. With the Renaissance, this edifice began to collapse, and Shakespeare is a major witness to that event. Even after the disappearance of blood feuds, duels, and similar customs, Christian culture never disentangled itself completely from values rooted in revenge. Although nominally Christian, social attitudes remained essentially alien to the authentic Judeo-Christian inspiration." A Theatre of Envy p. 283
This shows me to be correct I believe, it shows that 'Christianity' is not wholly compatible with the Gospels, at least it was not for the periods he refers to. That this is still the case we can see in the final paragraph:
"Hamlet is no mere word game. We can make sense out of Hamlet just as we can make sense out of our world, by reading both against revenge. This is the way Shakespeare wanted Hamlet to be read and the way it should have been a long time ago. If not, at such a time in our history, we still cannot read Hamlet against revenge, who ever will?" -p. 289
earlier (same page), on modern life, "[...] the Judeo-Christian text was rejected to the outer fringes our intellectual life; it is now entirely excluded."
Much more in the same vein regarding the contemporaneous nature of this issue can be found in the same chapter.
So it would seem that a non-Christian *could* be closer to Girard's ideal (viz. the Gospels), than a practising one. And so in summation I argue the phrase "Christian perspective" is ambiguous as:
1. Possibly there are no (or very few) Christians who actually live up to this standard
1.a. as regards to this, are we going to argue over which nominations, etc. are 'truer'?
2. I believe Girard's implications are primarily ethical and not theological, he makes no references to 'God' in his work (that I have seen) though he makes frequent references to the Gospels
3. the phrase itself has connotations that will not necessarily endear a novice to Girard's project, as they may imagine that it is aligned with contemporary Christianity
I guess this seems watertight and backed by Girard's words, but I may be wrong, can you cite any sources regarding his views on contemporary Christianity, or do you have any other objections? Thus I am still in favour of a change as I intially advanced, "the Gospels as an ethical text etc." Tsop 13:01, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Having read the interview I may change my stance somewhat on Girard's own beliefs re God, but I still maintain that belief God is not fundamental to Girard's work; he is a professor of anthropolgy, and that is the category his works fall into. Intellectually, God is not a stable concept, either belief in, or re God's 'substance'. Girard's work regards ethical and unethical norms of human behaviour, and whether one strives to be ethical due to a belief in God or out of 'compassion' etc. seems besides the point.
So we concede that it is Christian perspective regarding the Gospels as a primary text of singular importance, but not necessarily in line with how Christianity is practised currently, or thought of.
"Although nominally Christian, social attitudes remained essentially alien to the authentic Judeo-Christian inspiration". So you disagree that this quote from Girard implies that a 'Christian perspective' may well be anomolous to his stated beliefs? Or should 'Christian perspective' be ironically understood as: "While millions of Christians world wide have since the beginning of Christianity misunderstood its most basic tenets, some Christians do in fact understand the Bible, and this is the one and only Christian perspective that is right, because Christians that fail to understand the Bible aren't real Christians."
In other words, my point is not the result of 'original research', but a questioning of a phrase that is as I understand it fundamentally ambiguous. Perhaps it's best not mention RG at all; the point would be vaild for any article, I only bought up the issue of his particular stance on Christianity because it makes the ambiguity more obvious. You might argue that the Crusades occured from a 'Christian perspective', but you wouldn't find anything in RG condoning the Crusades. Tsop 05:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Tsop 06:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
It would be really nice if this page included an explanation of what Girard calls "the scapegoat." This to me is a major concept in his work. Stevenwagner 18:03, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi. I removed the link to "mimesis" as it didn't correspond to Girard's (albeit less well known) use of the term. Shawn, Montreal, Jan. 28 2006
"Réné" is a typing error. -- WAJP 17:01, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I confirm that and support the suggestion. NJWAW 08:56, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It's done. -- Curps 09:06, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
When I first looked at this article 15-18 months ago, it was pathetic. I'm really impressed by how much it has improved since. A big pat on the back to everyone involved. Perodicticus 10:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
A section of this seems to be almost directly taken from http://theol.uibk.ac.at/cover/girard.html
According to the article:
Recently, empirical studies into the mechanism of desire have verified Girard's exact theory on the subject. For instance, Dr. Scott Garrels mentions that "the parallels between Girard’s insights and the only recent conclusions made by empirical researchers concerning imitation (in both development and the evolution of species) are extraordinary." (Garrels, 2006).
... but there is no "Garrels, 2006" reference anywhere on the page. (There's a reference to something by Garrels which is cited elsewhere in the article as "Garrels, 2004".)
In any case, "there are extraordinary parallels between A and B" and "Research into A has verified that B is exactly right" seem to me to be entirely different claims.
It seems to me that a WP article should not say that empirical studies have verified something exactly without at least some indication of how to find out about those empirical studies. Especially given the occasional tendency to hyperbole in this article (e.g., from later on, "today there is an amazing amount of convergent support for his claims coming from empirical research").
Gareth McCaughan ( talk) 14:06, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Not doubting the notablility of the subject, but much of this page needs sources, expecially the criticism page, which reads almost like an essay... ¤ IrønCrøw¤ ( Speak to Me) 20:19, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I understand mimesis - "If two individuals desire the same thing, there will soon be a third, then a fourth. This process quickly snowballs. " and how this would lead to competition and antagonism between the competitors. I can also see how "the mimetic conflict transforms into a general antagonism," and how "the antagonists will no longer imitate each other's desires for an object, but each other's antagonism [for each other]." The antagonism is for each other, and not for the (above mentioned) same thing. So it is unlcear to me how a general (but presumably mutual) antagonism becomes converts into a desire to "destroy the same enemy," i.e. sacrifice the original, "sacred" "same thing" - the object of desire. This part of the article does not seem to make sense. Is this because Girard does not make sense or because the article is not making sense of Girard?-- Timtak ( talk) 22:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to undo a number of edits made by 81.17.197.42. The section zie edited is already tagged for being poorly referenced, and zie has made the claims that are already in the section stronger without adding any citations. Also the grammar in the section is poor. I'm also changing the name of the section from Controversy to Criticism, as in Wikipedia Controversy tends to indicate that someone has done something scandalous, and setting aside Girard's understanding of skandalon, he has not. -- SgtSchumann ( talk) 19:33, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I would like to enter a comment that René Girard was made a Doctor of Letters from St Andrews university, Scotland. A reference link can be found here -> http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/Title,22420,en.html Brownpoodle ( talk) 17:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
... and especially in the section Criticism. My english is not very ghood but well (I think) my informations. I accept all the propositions to changewhat i changed... José Fontaine ( talk) 17:24, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
It's vitally important that one never use ibid in a Wikipedia article. Even one person's adding a reference could make the reference unreliable. Instead take advantage of ref tags; see WP:FOOT. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SgtSchumann ( talk • contribs) 13:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
I moved the section "René Girard in the tradition of great anthropologists" under the heading "Criticism" because it does not fit under "Girard's thought" (By the way, Girard read a lot of anthropology but is not himself an anthropologist.) Girard also rejected the interpretation of his theory as an agnostic theory of religion, but I need a reference before I can put that in.-- ChristopheS ( talk) 14:36, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
This is a new section to collect statements by René Girard (and others) about the Christian nature of his theory. (1) "Le fait qu'un savoir authentique de la violence et de ses œuvres soit enfermé dans les Évangiles ne peut pas être d'origine simplement humaine." (Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde Grasset, 1978, p. 242 (p. 318 in the Livre de Poche edition; need to double-check both references)). (2) "Comment survient-elle [= la notion moderne de bouc émissaire] dans l'histoire des idées, et pourquoi ?" René Girard: "Ah, ah! Si on le savait ! C'est ce que j'appelle pour ma part la révélation anthropologique du christianisme." (" La découverte du christianisme: le bouc émissaire était innocent !" Propos recueillis par Joëlle Kuntz et Patricia Briel. Le Temps, novembre 1999). -- ChristopheS ( talk) 18:07, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
English translation of Choses cachées quote: "The authentic knowledge about violence and all its works to be found in the Gospels cannot be the result of human action alone." (Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World Translated by Patrick Gregory. Continuum. P. 219 ) -- ChristopheS ( talk) 15:33, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
I am influenced when I am speaking (but with Lucien Scubla), about the agnostic theory of Girard by Girard himself who is speaking about his naturalism and Camille Tarot wich made a comparison between Mircéa Eliade and Girard. Tarot wrote about Girard: According Girard, the scapegoat has nothing to do with metaphysics, it is since the beginning a pure social and anthropological process which nobody was wanting, it is not thought from the god's death, but from an actual human being. Man begins to think it after, when the rituals are beginning. (Tarot, pp 657-658). I translate the French sentence: Pour Girard, le bouc émissaire n'a rien de métaphysique, c'est au départ un pur mécanisme socio-anthropologique non voulu, il n'est pas pensé à partir de la mort du dieu, mais d'un homme réel. IL commence d'être pensé seulement après coup, quand il est question de ritualisation. There are many other considerations in this spirit into the book of Tarot, but also in Girard himself. That is the reason whay I am underlining the citation of Lucien Scubla describing Girard's theory as agnostic. Even if Girard is a catholic. I will take other citations. José Fontaine ( talk) 12:05, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Tarot wrote also: The christianism of Girard is concerning differently theology and social sciences. Lagarde spoke of a "christianisation" of these social sciences. People might have been waiting that the teologians denounce the "anthropologisation" of the theology and thus a "humanisation" of the chritianism. It is astonishing that nobody do it. (Tarot, p. 651 French Le christianisme de Girard concerne différemment la théologie et les sciences sociales. Lagarde a parlé de "christianisation" de celles-ci. On aurait pu s'attendre à ce que les théologiens dénoncent une "anthropologisation", de la théologie et donc une "humanisation" du christianisme.). In fact, Tarot is wrong: the Director (Father Valandier) of the revue Etudes (of the Jesuits), is very critical of Girard because of this confusion, between science and christianisme or between science and faith. There are other opinions about that. Girard is pointing out Simone Weil, the French philosopher who was describing the Gospel as a a book of anthropology. Girard is certainly also writing a kind of paradoxical apologetics when he is describing his approach as naturalist. The method of Tarot consists in keeping only, in Girard's thought, the mimetic violence, the scapegoating (the origin of language, society, religion). Tarot shows also very often that Girard is saying nearly the same things as Emile Durkheim. And Durkheim was an atheist. So, I can understand how Scubla is allowed to use the word "agnostic". Many aspects of Girard's thought (except the role of Jesus-Christ as the Son of God, in denouncing the spacegoating for almost the first time) are evidently "agnostic" i.e. acceptable for everymen, faithfull or not. Sincerely, I am catholic but there were a difficulty for me if Girard were not agnostic in anthropology. José Fontaine ( talk) 13:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
The section on mimetic desire contains a quote from an interview with Marie-Louse Martinez; the same quote also appears (in French) in the French version of the Wikipedia article. What is the correct reference for this interview? The text cannot be found in the interview Entretien avec René Girard: Propos recueillis par Marie-louise Martinez (le 31 Mai 1994 au CIEP à Sèvres) or suite. -- ChristopheS ( talk) 17:02, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm dumping some content from the introduction here because it made the text unbalanced. It will find a new home elsewhere in the article.
His work is also attracting increasing interest from empirical researchers investigating human imitation (among them Andrew Meltzoff and Vittorio Gallese). Girard's views on imitation (developed decades before empirical research prompted a resurgence of interest in the matter) resonate with the most recent findings. Although regarded as having important contributions, Girard's work also tends to be very controversial due to his harsh criticisms of modern philosophy and his outspoken Christian views (i.e. he claims that the anthropological evidence, from looking at religious texts, shows a clear distinction between Judaism and Christianity on the one hand, and primitive religion and mythology on the other).
Recently, empirical studies into the mechanism of desire have suggested some intriguing correlations with Girard's theory on the subject. For instance, clinical psychologist Scott Garrels mentions that "the parallels between Girard’s insights and the only recent conclusions made by empirical researchers concerning imitation (in both development and the evolution of species) are extraordinary." [1]
-- ChristopheS ( talk) 04:12, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
References
I read in the "Cahiers de l'Herne" that Sandor Goodhart wrote (but it is a translation):On peut êtrre juif, chrétien, musulman, hindou ou bouddhiste, et être en même temps girardien. (People may be jew,christian etc and girardian) [1] I am thinking I would buy this book, but in any case, I have not it. Of course, it is possible to translate the translation, but... And that is an interesting statement. Paul Ricoeur wrote nearly the same thing but it is perhaps interesting to have several sources? Nevertheless I think that Girard have good arguments in favour of the originality of Christianity and of the Gospels. But these opinions are relevant and wp... Hartelijk en proficiaat voor je uitstekende veranderingen in Girard's page. José Fontaine ( talk) 17:56, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, the first edit to disambiguate the variety of English used in this article was made on April 16, 2005 in which it is said that Girard is the "Honorary Chair" of the CV&R. This would mean that US English is the variety appropriate to this article. (See "National Varieties of English" in the MOS.) If no one supplies evidence to the contrary, I'll make appropriate changes to the article in a few days. -- SgtSchumann ( talk) 13:14, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
I made a proposal. This title must to be more ambitious: the origin of language is also the origin of humanity, culture etc., the birth of humanity. I am perhaps wrong but I think there was not a so accurate description of this origin: you have the murder into the work of Darwin or Freud but it is in a sense, vague. Into Girard's thought - even if it is during million of years - it is not vague.That's the whole human being: language, culture, State, Justice, religion, wars (old and contemporary wars as for instance in Achever Clausewitz but also in Things hidden...), violence... You have the explanation of funerals, dance, carnival, feast, envy, laugh, genocids, etc .This anthropology is not only anthropology but a very important philosophical system. In my view, it is stronger than Rousseau (I learned, Girard doesn't like Rousseau but it would be possible-not on Wp - to show that Rousseau is not so far from Girard);or Kant, or Hobbes (I learned a little). A paradoxical evidence of that is the fact Girard has now (now!), a better reception in France. It would be interesting to have (as on the French Girard's site), some pictures of Francisco Goya for instance, Abraham and Isaac or something else. It is only a proposal. José Fontaine ( talk) 21:29, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
This reads too much like an essay instead of an overview of responses to the implications of René Girard's theory for economics. In other words, it is too much about other authors and their comments upon each other, instead of economists etcetera commenting on or using René Girard's theory. -- ChristopheS ( talk) 11:31, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
"America indeed embodies these mimetic relations of rivalry. The ideology of free enterprise makes of them an absolute solution. Effective, but explosive. These competitive relations are excellent if you come out of it as the winner, but if the winners are always the same then, one day or the other, the losers overturn the game table. This mimetic rivalry, when it turns out badly, always results eventually in some form of violence. In this regard, it's Islam that now provides the cement that we formerly found in Marxism. "We will bury you," Khrushchev said to the Americans. ..Bin Laden, is more troubling than Marxism, in which we recognize a concept of material well‑being, prosperity, and an ideal of success not so far removed from what is lived out in the West." René Girard,
Le Monde, 6 November, 2001 -
Translated for COV&R
ΑΩ (
talk)
19:00, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I am able to translate a part of the statements :Girard's thought was for us (i.e. Aglietta and Orléan) essential. What's more, it was a conceptual schock because of its solution: the unanimous violence is making order (...) In economy, this unanimity which founds the market... French:La pensée de Girard a été pour nous essentielle. Mieux encore, elle a été un véritable choc conceptuel par l'originalité de la solution qu'elle propose: c'est la violence unanime qui est productrice d'ordre. En économie, cette unanimité qui fonde l'ordre marchand... (After, it is hard for me to translate) c'est la polarisation mimétique de tous les désirs des acteurs en quête de richesse sur un même objet, polarisation qui clôt la crise en donnant une forme socialement reconnue à cette richesse si vivement désirée (...) la monnaie. (Cahiers de l'Herne, octobre 2008, p. 265). José Fontaine ( talk) 22:59, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
This section needs another title. The current title suggests that there is a big dispute about this, but the content of this section doesn't bear that out. The (overly) long quotes are evidence of awareness of mimetic desire in other sources but don't justify the word "dispute". I think that something like "other revelations of mimetic desire" would work better. -- ChristopheS ( talk) 16:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
The infobox allows us to add notable students of René Girard. Sandor Goodhart was a "student of René Girard in the Department of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo" (Sandor Goodhart: " The End of Sacrifice: Reading René Girard and the Hebrew Bible" in Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 14 (2007) 59-78); Eric Gans was a student of Girard and got his PhD in 1966 at Johns Hopkins University (while Girard was professor there) but it isn't clear if Girard was his supervisor. It seems that Gil Bailie was also a student of Girard, but I don't have the right details. -- ChristopheS ( talk) 12:36, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
Another student is François Lagarde. From the back cover of René Girard ou la christianisation des sciences humaines (1994): "François Lagarde est assistant à l'Université du Texas à Austin où il enseigne la littérature française du dix-septième siècle. Ancien élève de René Girard, il a obtenu son Ph.D. à l'Université de Stanford (Californie) en 1985.(...)." -- ChristopheS ( talk) 12:52, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
According to James G. Williams' article "René Girard without the Cross?" in Anthropoetics II, no. 1 (June 1996), Paisley Livingston and Tobin Siebers are also former students of Girard. Paisley Nathan Livingston got his PhD at Johns Hopkins University in 1981 and published Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Arts (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press) in 1982; this book seems to be an analysis of Bergman's films through René Girard's theory. Tobin Siebers got a PhD in comparative literature at Johns Hopkins University in 1980. -- ChristopheS ( talk) 14:36, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
Peter Theil was a student of Girard. Hugetim ( talk) 00:24, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Hey everyone,
I don't have anything for discussion in particular. I just want to post a note saying great job to the people who put this article together. It's one of the best I've seen, and the links to information on Girard and on interviews that are available online are very helpful. Thank you!
~ Aaron 165.134.140.102 ( talk) 03:23, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
If you have read Girard's books and been familiar with his thought this article is very basic and incomplete. I suggest some parts of the french one to be translated to improve this article. Beickus ( talk) 11:12, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Robert Price is not a respected academic and his literary output is clearly directed to a lay audience. Further, Price is not particularly notable at all and, as such, his criticisms of Girard are not relevant to this article. Deleted. Eugeneacurry ( talk) 00:18, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I again cut the Price criticism (along with some other stuff that had BLP issues). Price is not a professor at any accredited institution and the book being quoted was published by a marginal press. Further, Robert M. Price is widely considered an extremist in the field of biblical scholarship since he denies that Jesus even existed at all. WP:IRS says (under "Questionable sources")that extremist sources "should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves... [and] are generally unsuitable as a basis for citing contentious claims about third parties." Eugene ( talk) 22:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
I know this is a complicated point with many modern theologians and not just Girard, but since he affirms so strongly that the insight about the innocence of Jesus the victim - who, when he hung on the cross, was perceived, roughly, as a troublemaker who had provoked endless trouble and whose death would bring the books in order again - of Jesus and, by extension, the innocence of all sacrifical victims - cannot come from within historical human culture itself. Okay, then the question becomes pertinent: does he see the resurrection of Christ as an actual physical and historical event (the sudden resuscitation in some kind of body of Jesus, as it's told in the gospels) or as a metaphor of some kind of "change of thinking" in the disciples? Remember, they all sided with the crowd who wanted Jesus killed, and Girard's insistence on the all-encompassing fever of mimesis and its lies, breaking down all resistance, seems to make it hard to claim that the disciples might have thought it up for themselves that Jesus had been innocent unless it was triggered by an actual major event or some kind of intervention from the "Word".
Girard points out, as he is discussing the first lines of John, that the Logos (Christ) is shown as someone who is chased out of the world of men, who is not allowed a place, so the outsider position of the truth would seem to imply that the new insight, soon after the death of Jesus, must have been born out of a sudden "intervention" from outside into the experience and the minds of the disciples. This intervention is shown in the gospels as the resurrection and the following weeks up to Pentecost, but if it wasn't a physical event then what does it stand for? Girard makes it very clear that the idea of "a cheap juggling of life and death" is unacceptable and mythical, but at least in Things Hidden he never addresses the issue of what the resurrection stories actually refer to as other than literature. Strausszek ( talk) 04:26, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
To make it short and simple.
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Mimetic-desire
Takima ( talk) 13:10, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Rather astonishing that this subject could be discussed without any reference to James G Frazer IMHO —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.66.178.171 ( talk) 04:14, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/arts/international/rene-girard-french-theorist-of-the-social-sciences-dies-at-91.html - hugeTim ( talk) 18:02, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:René Girard/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Comments ( continued ) Although the article is quite comprehensive, I believe more reference to Girard's book on Shakespeare would enhance its capacity. After all this book is the most famous among Girard's works. citation needed And it has the advantage that it can also be read by people irrelevant to social science or literary critics. It is so simple that far from providing an introduction to Girard's thought, it can also stand independently by itself. |
Last edited at 00:21, 28 June 2012 (UTC). Substituted at 04:09, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
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"Les immortals" should be "Les immortels".
Ken McAloon 2601:19D:400:6B50:3426:C3BA:6377:4D88 ( talk) 19:50, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
In my sincere view, this article is really well done considering the large contribution of so many different people. Historiaantiqua ( talk) 16:42, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Under the "Non-mimetic desires" section, the sentence "In Girard's defence on the other hand, Jean-Michel Oughourlian exemplifies the situation by noting that "one homosexual admitted to me that he just wanted to be somebody else,"' is uncited and seems entirely irrelevant without the source text to give context. And at any rate, an anonymous claim from "one homosexual" is not a counter-argument.
Additionally, the "Beneficial imitation" section needs its tenses changed, since Girard passed away several years ago.
I'd consider making these changes myself, but I'm not familiar with the source material, and this is the first time I've contributed to Wikipedia. Fibinock ( talk) 15:56, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Im tired of guarding this page, so I'm not going to change anything, but I really think that the edits that changed most of the first few introductory paragraphs miss the point of Girard's thought and instead introduce concepts from psychology that read into what Girard was saying, and then present what he never thought or argued. Girard didn't believe that mimicry is incidental to the pursuit of material things, he believed that the mimicry is the end goal itself. He didn't think it made any sense for a person to desire a car in and of itself - they desire the car because they want the life of the person they imagine they would be - relative to other people - while owning the car, which Girard believed had to have been perceived at some level of someone else.
It isn't that mimetic reciprocity is about learning what to desire, it's that even desire itself is copied from observation of the state of being of the one being mimicked. He didn't believe merely that the two subjects would get into conflict over their rivalry over a particular object, especially such an object is rare, he believed that the two are almost inevitable to get into conflict because the person being copied is invariably in a position of greater power and status, and since the pursuit isn't actually about the object, the desire of the other person will either assume their position or higher or will be defeated, or the two will blame someone else, as an alternative to the peaceful resolution doesn't exist even if the second subject were to take the object of their desire - unless the first subject dies or loses their status, the copier will continue desiring the life of the person being emulated.
This was his way of understanding particularly why the most closely related groups hate eachother the most - Irish Protestants vs Catholics, Serbs v Croats, Russians v Ukrainians, French Canadians vs English Canadians, etc. His conclusion was that because they are fundamentally identical, they have to create an oppositional identity for themselves in order to somehow separate from their double - by scapegoating or demonizing the other identity for everything wrong in their lives. And long after the conflict is over and the seeming substance of the issue in dispute, say some piece of territory, is resolved, you can see that the object wasn't in fact what was actually causing the conflict since the conflict invariably perpetuates and continues and simply switches its causes and reasons.
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I have no idea what was going on here but the introduction was horrendous. I rewrote something which is certainly an improvement but I'm sure it could also be improved upon further. What happened to the introduction in the first place? CS — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.114.238.96 ( talk) 16:42, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
from the introduction: "Yet, his work also tends to be very controversial due to his harsh criticisms of modern philosophy and his outspoken Christian perspective".
This is somewhat ambiguous though as a 'Christian perspective' is the perspective of a Christian, and Christianity itself seems to be a hypocritical failure by Girard's standards, and he says as much. I mean to say should the sentence perhaps not read "his emphasis on the Bible as the founding document of Western civilization, as the eminent ethical text instructing humans how to live their lives" etc.
I am not entirely sure whether his perspective is theological, which the current sentence seems to imply, but Girard is no theologian. If anyone has any comments please present them, otherwise I will make the appropriate changes at some point. Tsop 14:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I understand what you're saying and agree that he represents a 'Christian perspective', but my position is that the phrase itself is ambiguous and needs to be disambiguated between Christianity as it is practised today and 'Christianity' as the ideal presented in the Gospels. As a non-theist and a 'non-Christian ' I also agree with Girard in that the Gospels are humanity's pre-eminent ethical document as well as (obviously) the founding document of Western civilization, but this is a 'Mimetic' perspective, not a theological one, which is why I am questioning the use of the phrase 'Christian perspective'. Have just read through his book on Shakespeare "A Theatre of Envy" and luckily can quote relevent passage: (in Chapter 30 'Hamlet's Dull Revenge: Vengeance in Hamlet')
"The sacrificial misreading of the Gospels made the various phases Christian culture possible. In the Middle Ages, for instance, Gospel principles were superficially reconciled with the aristocratic ethics of personal honor and revenge. With the Renaissance, this edifice began to collapse, and Shakespeare is a major witness to that event. Even after the disappearance of blood feuds, duels, and similar customs, Christian culture never disentangled itself completely from values rooted in revenge. Although nominally Christian, social attitudes remained essentially alien to the authentic Judeo-Christian inspiration." A Theatre of Envy p. 283
This shows me to be correct I believe, it shows that 'Christianity' is not wholly compatible with the Gospels, at least it was not for the periods he refers to. That this is still the case we can see in the final paragraph:
"Hamlet is no mere word game. We can make sense out of Hamlet just as we can make sense out of our world, by reading both against revenge. This is the way Shakespeare wanted Hamlet to be read and the way it should have been a long time ago. If not, at such a time in our history, we still cannot read Hamlet against revenge, who ever will?" -p. 289
earlier (same page), on modern life, "[...] the Judeo-Christian text was rejected to the outer fringes our intellectual life; it is now entirely excluded."
Much more in the same vein regarding the contemporaneous nature of this issue can be found in the same chapter.
So it would seem that a non-Christian *could* be closer to Girard's ideal (viz. the Gospels), than a practising one. And so in summation I argue the phrase "Christian perspective" is ambiguous as:
1. Possibly there are no (or very few) Christians who actually live up to this standard
1.a. as regards to this, are we going to argue over which nominations, etc. are 'truer'?
2. I believe Girard's implications are primarily ethical and not theological, he makes no references to 'God' in his work (that I have seen) though he makes frequent references to the Gospels
3. the phrase itself has connotations that will not necessarily endear a novice to Girard's project, as they may imagine that it is aligned with contemporary Christianity
I guess this seems watertight and backed by Girard's words, but I may be wrong, can you cite any sources regarding his views on contemporary Christianity, or do you have any other objections? Thus I am still in favour of a change as I intially advanced, "the Gospels as an ethical text etc." Tsop 13:01, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Having read the interview I may change my stance somewhat on Girard's own beliefs re God, but I still maintain that belief God is not fundamental to Girard's work; he is a professor of anthropolgy, and that is the category his works fall into. Intellectually, God is not a stable concept, either belief in, or re God's 'substance'. Girard's work regards ethical and unethical norms of human behaviour, and whether one strives to be ethical due to a belief in God or out of 'compassion' etc. seems besides the point.
So we concede that it is Christian perspective regarding the Gospels as a primary text of singular importance, but not necessarily in line with how Christianity is practised currently, or thought of.
"Although nominally Christian, social attitudes remained essentially alien to the authentic Judeo-Christian inspiration". So you disagree that this quote from Girard implies that a 'Christian perspective' may well be anomolous to his stated beliefs? Or should 'Christian perspective' be ironically understood as: "While millions of Christians world wide have since the beginning of Christianity misunderstood its most basic tenets, some Christians do in fact understand the Bible, and this is the one and only Christian perspective that is right, because Christians that fail to understand the Bible aren't real Christians."
In other words, my point is not the result of 'original research', but a questioning of a phrase that is as I understand it fundamentally ambiguous. Perhaps it's best not mention RG at all; the point would be vaild for any article, I only bought up the issue of his particular stance on Christianity because it makes the ambiguity more obvious. You might argue that the Crusades occured from a 'Christian perspective', but you wouldn't find anything in RG condoning the Crusades. Tsop 05:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Tsop 06:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
It would be really nice if this page included an explanation of what Girard calls "the scapegoat." This to me is a major concept in his work. Stevenwagner 18:03, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi. I removed the link to "mimesis" as it didn't correspond to Girard's (albeit less well known) use of the term. Shawn, Montreal, Jan. 28 2006
"Réné" is a typing error. -- WAJP 17:01, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I confirm that and support the suggestion. NJWAW 08:56, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It's done. -- Curps 09:06, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
When I first looked at this article 15-18 months ago, it was pathetic. I'm really impressed by how much it has improved since. A big pat on the back to everyone involved. Perodicticus 10:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
A section of this seems to be almost directly taken from http://theol.uibk.ac.at/cover/girard.html
According to the article:
Recently, empirical studies into the mechanism of desire have verified Girard's exact theory on the subject. For instance, Dr. Scott Garrels mentions that "the parallels between Girard’s insights and the only recent conclusions made by empirical researchers concerning imitation (in both development and the evolution of species) are extraordinary." (Garrels, 2006).
... but there is no "Garrels, 2006" reference anywhere on the page. (There's a reference to something by Garrels which is cited elsewhere in the article as "Garrels, 2004".)
In any case, "there are extraordinary parallels between A and B" and "Research into A has verified that B is exactly right" seem to me to be entirely different claims.
It seems to me that a WP article should not say that empirical studies have verified something exactly without at least some indication of how to find out about those empirical studies. Especially given the occasional tendency to hyperbole in this article (e.g., from later on, "today there is an amazing amount of convergent support for his claims coming from empirical research").
Gareth McCaughan ( talk) 14:06, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Not doubting the notablility of the subject, but much of this page needs sources, expecially the criticism page, which reads almost like an essay... ¤ IrønCrøw¤ ( Speak to Me) 20:19, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I understand mimesis - "If two individuals desire the same thing, there will soon be a third, then a fourth. This process quickly snowballs. " and how this would lead to competition and antagonism between the competitors. I can also see how "the mimetic conflict transforms into a general antagonism," and how "the antagonists will no longer imitate each other's desires for an object, but each other's antagonism [for each other]." The antagonism is for each other, and not for the (above mentioned) same thing. So it is unlcear to me how a general (but presumably mutual) antagonism becomes converts into a desire to "destroy the same enemy," i.e. sacrifice the original, "sacred" "same thing" - the object of desire. This part of the article does not seem to make sense. Is this because Girard does not make sense or because the article is not making sense of Girard?-- Timtak ( talk) 22:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to undo a number of edits made by 81.17.197.42. The section zie edited is already tagged for being poorly referenced, and zie has made the claims that are already in the section stronger without adding any citations. Also the grammar in the section is poor. I'm also changing the name of the section from Controversy to Criticism, as in Wikipedia Controversy tends to indicate that someone has done something scandalous, and setting aside Girard's understanding of skandalon, he has not. -- SgtSchumann ( talk) 19:33, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I would like to enter a comment that René Girard was made a Doctor of Letters from St Andrews university, Scotland. A reference link can be found here -> http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/Title,22420,en.html Brownpoodle ( talk) 17:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
... and especially in the section Criticism. My english is not very ghood but well (I think) my informations. I accept all the propositions to changewhat i changed... José Fontaine ( talk) 17:24, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
It's vitally important that one never use ibid in a Wikipedia article. Even one person's adding a reference could make the reference unreliable. Instead take advantage of ref tags; see WP:FOOT. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SgtSchumann ( talk • contribs) 13:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
I moved the section "René Girard in the tradition of great anthropologists" under the heading "Criticism" because it does not fit under "Girard's thought" (By the way, Girard read a lot of anthropology but is not himself an anthropologist.) Girard also rejected the interpretation of his theory as an agnostic theory of religion, but I need a reference before I can put that in.-- ChristopheS ( talk) 14:36, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
This is a new section to collect statements by René Girard (and others) about the Christian nature of his theory. (1) "Le fait qu'un savoir authentique de la violence et de ses œuvres soit enfermé dans les Évangiles ne peut pas être d'origine simplement humaine." (Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde Grasset, 1978, p. 242 (p. 318 in the Livre de Poche edition; need to double-check both references)). (2) "Comment survient-elle [= la notion moderne de bouc émissaire] dans l'histoire des idées, et pourquoi ?" René Girard: "Ah, ah! Si on le savait ! C'est ce que j'appelle pour ma part la révélation anthropologique du christianisme." (" La découverte du christianisme: le bouc émissaire était innocent !" Propos recueillis par Joëlle Kuntz et Patricia Briel. Le Temps, novembre 1999). -- ChristopheS ( talk) 18:07, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
English translation of Choses cachées quote: "The authentic knowledge about violence and all its works to be found in the Gospels cannot be the result of human action alone." (Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World Translated by Patrick Gregory. Continuum. P. 219 ) -- ChristopheS ( talk) 15:33, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
I am influenced when I am speaking (but with Lucien Scubla), about the agnostic theory of Girard by Girard himself who is speaking about his naturalism and Camille Tarot wich made a comparison between Mircéa Eliade and Girard. Tarot wrote about Girard: According Girard, the scapegoat has nothing to do with metaphysics, it is since the beginning a pure social and anthropological process which nobody was wanting, it is not thought from the god's death, but from an actual human being. Man begins to think it after, when the rituals are beginning. (Tarot, pp 657-658). I translate the French sentence: Pour Girard, le bouc émissaire n'a rien de métaphysique, c'est au départ un pur mécanisme socio-anthropologique non voulu, il n'est pas pensé à partir de la mort du dieu, mais d'un homme réel. IL commence d'être pensé seulement après coup, quand il est question de ritualisation. There are many other considerations in this spirit into the book of Tarot, but also in Girard himself. That is the reason whay I am underlining the citation of Lucien Scubla describing Girard's theory as agnostic. Even if Girard is a catholic. I will take other citations. José Fontaine ( talk) 12:05, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Tarot wrote also: The christianism of Girard is concerning differently theology and social sciences. Lagarde spoke of a "christianisation" of these social sciences. People might have been waiting that the teologians denounce the "anthropologisation" of the theology and thus a "humanisation" of the chritianism. It is astonishing that nobody do it. (Tarot, p. 651 French Le christianisme de Girard concerne différemment la théologie et les sciences sociales. Lagarde a parlé de "christianisation" de celles-ci. On aurait pu s'attendre à ce que les théologiens dénoncent une "anthropologisation", de la théologie et donc une "humanisation" du christianisme.). In fact, Tarot is wrong: the Director (Father Valandier) of the revue Etudes (of the Jesuits), is very critical of Girard because of this confusion, between science and christianisme or between science and faith. There are other opinions about that. Girard is pointing out Simone Weil, the French philosopher who was describing the Gospel as a a book of anthropology. Girard is certainly also writing a kind of paradoxical apologetics when he is describing his approach as naturalist. The method of Tarot consists in keeping only, in Girard's thought, the mimetic violence, the scapegoating (the origin of language, society, religion). Tarot shows also very often that Girard is saying nearly the same things as Emile Durkheim. And Durkheim was an atheist. So, I can understand how Scubla is allowed to use the word "agnostic". Many aspects of Girard's thought (except the role of Jesus-Christ as the Son of God, in denouncing the spacegoating for almost the first time) are evidently "agnostic" i.e. acceptable for everymen, faithfull or not. Sincerely, I am catholic but there were a difficulty for me if Girard were not agnostic in anthropology. José Fontaine ( talk) 13:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
The section on mimetic desire contains a quote from an interview with Marie-Louse Martinez; the same quote also appears (in French) in the French version of the Wikipedia article. What is the correct reference for this interview? The text cannot be found in the interview Entretien avec René Girard: Propos recueillis par Marie-louise Martinez (le 31 Mai 1994 au CIEP à Sèvres) or suite. -- ChristopheS ( talk) 17:02, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm dumping some content from the introduction here because it made the text unbalanced. It will find a new home elsewhere in the article.
His work is also attracting increasing interest from empirical researchers investigating human imitation (among them Andrew Meltzoff and Vittorio Gallese). Girard's views on imitation (developed decades before empirical research prompted a resurgence of interest in the matter) resonate with the most recent findings. Although regarded as having important contributions, Girard's work also tends to be very controversial due to his harsh criticisms of modern philosophy and his outspoken Christian views (i.e. he claims that the anthropological evidence, from looking at religious texts, shows a clear distinction between Judaism and Christianity on the one hand, and primitive religion and mythology on the other).
Recently, empirical studies into the mechanism of desire have suggested some intriguing correlations with Girard's theory on the subject. For instance, clinical psychologist Scott Garrels mentions that "the parallels between Girard’s insights and the only recent conclusions made by empirical researchers concerning imitation (in both development and the evolution of species) are extraordinary." [1]
-- ChristopheS ( talk) 04:12, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
References
I read in the "Cahiers de l'Herne" that Sandor Goodhart wrote (but it is a translation):On peut êtrre juif, chrétien, musulman, hindou ou bouddhiste, et être en même temps girardien. (People may be jew,christian etc and girardian) [1] I am thinking I would buy this book, but in any case, I have not it. Of course, it is possible to translate the translation, but... And that is an interesting statement. Paul Ricoeur wrote nearly the same thing but it is perhaps interesting to have several sources? Nevertheless I think that Girard have good arguments in favour of the originality of Christianity and of the Gospels. But these opinions are relevant and wp... Hartelijk en proficiaat voor je uitstekende veranderingen in Girard's page. José Fontaine ( talk) 17:56, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, the first edit to disambiguate the variety of English used in this article was made on April 16, 2005 in which it is said that Girard is the "Honorary Chair" of the CV&R. This would mean that US English is the variety appropriate to this article. (See "National Varieties of English" in the MOS.) If no one supplies evidence to the contrary, I'll make appropriate changes to the article in a few days. -- SgtSchumann ( talk) 13:14, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
I made a proposal. This title must to be more ambitious: the origin of language is also the origin of humanity, culture etc., the birth of humanity. I am perhaps wrong but I think there was not a so accurate description of this origin: you have the murder into the work of Darwin or Freud but it is in a sense, vague. Into Girard's thought - even if it is during million of years - it is not vague.That's the whole human being: language, culture, State, Justice, religion, wars (old and contemporary wars as for instance in Achever Clausewitz but also in Things hidden...), violence... You have the explanation of funerals, dance, carnival, feast, envy, laugh, genocids, etc .This anthropology is not only anthropology but a very important philosophical system. In my view, it is stronger than Rousseau (I learned, Girard doesn't like Rousseau but it would be possible-not on Wp - to show that Rousseau is not so far from Girard);or Kant, or Hobbes (I learned a little). A paradoxical evidence of that is the fact Girard has now (now!), a better reception in France. It would be interesting to have (as on the French Girard's site), some pictures of Francisco Goya for instance, Abraham and Isaac or something else. It is only a proposal. José Fontaine ( talk) 21:29, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
This reads too much like an essay instead of an overview of responses to the implications of René Girard's theory for economics. In other words, it is too much about other authors and their comments upon each other, instead of economists etcetera commenting on or using René Girard's theory. -- ChristopheS ( talk) 11:31, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
"America indeed embodies these mimetic relations of rivalry. The ideology of free enterprise makes of them an absolute solution. Effective, but explosive. These competitive relations are excellent if you come out of it as the winner, but if the winners are always the same then, one day or the other, the losers overturn the game table. This mimetic rivalry, when it turns out badly, always results eventually in some form of violence. In this regard, it's Islam that now provides the cement that we formerly found in Marxism. "We will bury you," Khrushchev said to the Americans. ..Bin Laden, is more troubling than Marxism, in which we recognize a concept of material well‑being, prosperity, and an ideal of success not so far removed from what is lived out in the West." René Girard,
Le Monde, 6 November, 2001 -
Translated for COV&R
ΑΩ (
talk)
19:00, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
I am able to translate a part of the statements :Girard's thought was for us (i.e. Aglietta and Orléan) essential. What's more, it was a conceptual schock because of its solution: the unanimous violence is making order (...) In economy, this unanimity which founds the market... French:La pensée de Girard a été pour nous essentielle. Mieux encore, elle a été un véritable choc conceptuel par l'originalité de la solution qu'elle propose: c'est la violence unanime qui est productrice d'ordre. En économie, cette unanimité qui fonde l'ordre marchand... (After, it is hard for me to translate) c'est la polarisation mimétique de tous les désirs des acteurs en quête de richesse sur un même objet, polarisation qui clôt la crise en donnant une forme socialement reconnue à cette richesse si vivement désirée (...) la monnaie. (Cahiers de l'Herne, octobre 2008, p. 265). José Fontaine ( talk) 22:59, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
This section needs another title. The current title suggests that there is a big dispute about this, but the content of this section doesn't bear that out. The (overly) long quotes are evidence of awareness of mimetic desire in other sources but don't justify the word "dispute". I think that something like "other revelations of mimetic desire" would work better. -- ChristopheS ( talk) 16:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
The infobox allows us to add notable students of René Girard. Sandor Goodhart was a "student of René Girard in the Department of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo" (Sandor Goodhart: " The End of Sacrifice: Reading René Girard and the Hebrew Bible" in Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 14 (2007) 59-78); Eric Gans was a student of Girard and got his PhD in 1966 at Johns Hopkins University (while Girard was professor there) but it isn't clear if Girard was his supervisor. It seems that Gil Bailie was also a student of Girard, but I don't have the right details. -- ChristopheS ( talk) 12:36, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
Another student is François Lagarde. From the back cover of René Girard ou la christianisation des sciences humaines (1994): "François Lagarde est assistant à l'Université du Texas à Austin où il enseigne la littérature française du dix-septième siècle. Ancien élève de René Girard, il a obtenu son Ph.D. à l'Université de Stanford (Californie) en 1985.(...)." -- ChristopheS ( talk) 12:52, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
According to James G. Williams' article "René Girard without the Cross?" in Anthropoetics II, no. 1 (June 1996), Paisley Livingston and Tobin Siebers are also former students of Girard. Paisley Nathan Livingston got his PhD at Johns Hopkins University in 1981 and published Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Arts (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press) in 1982; this book seems to be an analysis of Bergman's films through René Girard's theory. Tobin Siebers got a PhD in comparative literature at Johns Hopkins University in 1980. -- ChristopheS ( talk) 14:36, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
Peter Theil was a student of Girard. Hugetim ( talk) 00:24, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Hey everyone,
I don't have anything for discussion in particular. I just want to post a note saying great job to the people who put this article together. It's one of the best I've seen, and the links to information on Girard and on interviews that are available online are very helpful. Thank you!
~ Aaron 165.134.140.102 ( talk) 03:23, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
If you have read Girard's books and been familiar with his thought this article is very basic and incomplete. I suggest some parts of the french one to be translated to improve this article. Beickus ( talk) 11:12, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Robert Price is not a respected academic and his literary output is clearly directed to a lay audience. Further, Price is not particularly notable at all and, as such, his criticisms of Girard are not relevant to this article. Deleted. Eugeneacurry ( talk) 00:18, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I again cut the Price criticism (along with some other stuff that had BLP issues). Price is not a professor at any accredited institution and the book being quoted was published by a marginal press. Further, Robert M. Price is widely considered an extremist in the field of biblical scholarship since he denies that Jesus even existed at all. WP:IRS says (under "Questionable sources")that extremist sources "should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves... [and] are generally unsuitable as a basis for citing contentious claims about third parties." Eugene ( talk) 22:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
I know this is a complicated point with many modern theologians and not just Girard, but since he affirms so strongly that the insight about the innocence of Jesus the victim - who, when he hung on the cross, was perceived, roughly, as a troublemaker who had provoked endless trouble and whose death would bring the books in order again - of Jesus and, by extension, the innocence of all sacrifical victims - cannot come from within historical human culture itself. Okay, then the question becomes pertinent: does he see the resurrection of Christ as an actual physical and historical event (the sudden resuscitation in some kind of body of Jesus, as it's told in the gospels) or as a metaphor of some kind of "change of thinking" in the disciples? Remember, they all sided with the crowd who wanted Jesus killed, and Girard's insistence on the all-encompassing fever of mimesis and its lies, breaking down all resistance, seems to make it hard to claim that the disciples might have thought it up for themselves that Jesus had been innocent unless it was triggered by an actual major event or some kind of intervention from the "Word".
Girard points out, as he is discussing the first lines of John, that the Logos (Christ) is shown as someone who is chased out of the world of men, who is not allowed a place, so the outsider position of the truth would seem to imply that the new insight, soon after the death of Jesus, must have been born out of a sudden "intervention" from outside into the experience and the minds of the disciples. This intervention is shown in the gospels as the resurrection and the following weeks up to Pentecost, but if it wasn't a physical event then what does it stand for? Girard makes it very clear that the idea of "a cheap juggling of life and death" is unacceptable and mythical, but at least in Things Hidden he never addresses the issue of what the resurrection stories actually refer to as other than literature. Strausszek ( talk) 04:26, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
To make it short and simple.
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Mimetic-desire
Takima ( talk) 13:10, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Rather astonishing that this subject could be discussed without any reference to James G Frazer IMHO —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.66.178.171 ( talk) 04:14, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/arts/international/rene-girard-french-theorist-of-the-social-sciences-dies-at-91.html - hugeTim ( talk) 18:02, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:René Girard/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Comments ( continued ) Although the article is quite comprehensive, I believe more reference to Girard's book on Shakespeare would enhance its capacity. After all this book is the most famous among Girard's works. citation needed And it has the advantage that it can also be read by people irrelevant to social science or literary critics. It is so simple that far from providing an introduction to Girard's thought, it can also stand independently by itself. |
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"Les immortals" should be "Les immortels".
Ken McAloon 2601:19D:400:6B50:3426:C3BA:6377:4D88 ( talk) 19:50, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
In my sincere view, this article is really well done considering the large contribution of so many different people. Historiaantiqua ( talk) 16:42, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Under the "Non-mimetic desires" section, the sentence "In Girard's defence on the other hand, Jean-Michel Oughourlian exemplifies the situation by noting that "one homosexual admitted to me that he just wanted to be somebody else,"' is uncited and seems entirely irrelevant without the source text to give context. And at any rate, an anonymous claim from "one homosexual" is not a counter-argument.
Additionally, the "Beneficial imitation" section needs its tenses changed, since Girard passed away several years ago.
I'd consider making these changes myself, but I'm not familiar with the source material, and this is the first time I've contributed to Wikipedia. Fibinock ( talk) 15:56, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
Im tired of guarding this page, so I'm not going to change anything, but I really think that the edits that changed most of the first few introductory paragraphs miss the point of Girard's thought and instead introduce concepts from psychology that read into what Girard was saying, and then present what he never thought or argued. Girard didn't believe that mimicry is incidental to the pursuit of material things, he believed that the mimicry is the end goal itself. He didn't think it made any sense for a person to desire a car in and of itself - they desire the car because they want the life of the person they imagine they would be - relative to other people - while owning the car, which Girard believed had to have been perceived at some level of someone else.
It isn't that mimetic reciprocity is about learning what to desire, it's that even desire itself is copied from observation of the state of being of the one being mimicked. He didn't believe merely that the two subjects would get into conflict over their rivalry over a particular object, especially such an object is rare, he believed that the two are almost inevitable to get into conflict because the person being copied is invariably in a position of greater power and status, and since the pursuit isn't actually about the object, the desire of the other person will either assume their position or higher or will be defeated, or the two will blame someone else, as an alternative to the peaceful resolution doesn't exist even if the second subject were to take the object of their desire - unless the first subject dies or loses their status, the copier will continue desiring the life of the person being emulated.
This was his way of understanding particularly why the most closely related groups hate eachother the most - Irish Protestants vs Catholics, Serbs v Croats, Russians v Ukrainians, French Canadians vs English Canadians, etc. His conclusion was that because they are fundamentally identical, they have to create an oppositional identity for themselves in order to somehow separate from their double - by scapegoating or demonizing the other identity for everything wrong in their lives. And long after the conflict is over and the seeming substance of the issue in dispute, say some piece of territory, is resolved, you can see that the object wasn't in fact what was actually causing the conflict since the conflict invariably perpetuates and continues and simply switches its causes and reasons.
Historiaantiqua (
talk)
14:41, 13 August 2023 (UTC)