René Girard’s thought defies classification. He has written from the perspective of a wide variety of disciplines: Literary Criticism, Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, History, Biblical Hermeneutics and Theology. Although he rarely calls himself a philosopher, many philosophical implications can be derived from his work. Girard’s work is above all concerned with Philosophical Anthropology (that is, ‘What is it to be human?’), and draws from many disciplinary perspectives. Over the years he has developed a mimetic theory. According to this theory human beings imitate each other, and this eventually gives rise to rivalries and violent conflicts. Such conflicts are partially solved by a scapegoat mechanism, but ultimately, Christianity is the best antidote to violence.
Perhaps Girard’s lack of specific disciplinary affiliation has promoted a slight marginalization of his work among contemporary philosophers. Girard is not on par with more well known French contemporary philosophers (for example Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard), but his work is becoming increasingly recognized in the humanities, and his commitment as a Christian thinker has given him prominence among theologians.
.. Girard’s career has been mostly devoted to literary criticism, and the analysis of fictional characters. Girard believes that the great modern novelists (such as Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust and Dostoevsky) have understood human psychology better than the modern field of Psychology does.
.. Girard admits that Freud and his followers had some good initial intuitions, but criticizes Freudian psychoanalytic theory on the grounds that it tends to obviate the role that other individuals have on the development of personality. In other words, psychoanalysis tends to assume that human beings are largely autonomous, and hence, do not desire in imitation of others.
.. However, Girard considers it crucial that this process be unconscious in order to work. The victim must never be recognized as an innocent scapegoat (indeed, Girard considers that, prior to the rise of Christianity, ‘innocent scapegoat’ was virtually an oxymoron; see section 4.b below); rather, the victim must be thought of as a monstrous creature that transgressed some prohibition and deserved to be punished. In such a manner, the community deceives itself into believing that the victim is the culprit of the communal crisis, and that the elimination of the victim will eventually restore peace.
.. Furthermore, Girard believes that, as myths evolve, later versions will tend to dissimulate the scapegoating violence (for example, instead of presenting a victim who dies by drowning, the myth will just claim that the victim went to live to the bottom of the sea), in order to avoid feeling compassion for the victim. Indeed, Girard considers that the evolution of myths may even reach a point where no violence is present. But, Girard insists, all myths are founded upon violence, and if no violence is found in a myth, it must be because the community made it disappear.
.. 4. The Uniqueness of the Bible and Christianity
Girard’s Christian apologetics departs from a comparison of myths and the Bible. According to Girard, whereas myths are caught under the dynamics of the scapegoat mechanism by telling the foundational stories from the perspective of the scapegoaters, the Bible contains plenty of stories that tell the story from the perspective of the victims.
.. Indeed, Girard resents the fact that Christianity is usually considered to be merely one among many other religions. However, ironically, Girard seeks help from a powerful opponent of Christianity: Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche criticized Christianity for its ‘slave morality’; that is, its tendency to side with the weak. Nietzsche recognized that, above other religions, Christianity promoted mercy as a virtue. Nietzsche interpreted this as a corruption of the human vital spirit, and advocated a return to the pre-Christian values of power and strength.
.. Girard considers that, inasmuch as the New Testament overturns the old scapegoating practices, humanity no longer has the capacity to return to the scapegoating mechanism in order to restore peace. Once victims are revealed as innocent, scapegoating can no longer be relied upon to restore peace. And, in such a sense, there is now an even greater threat of violence. According to Girard, Jesus brings a sword, not in the sense that he himself is going to execute violence, but in the sense that, through his work and the influence of the Bible, humanity will not have the traditional violent means to put an end to violence. The inefficacy of the scapegoat mechanism will bring even more violence. The way to restore peace is not through the scapegoat mechanism, but rather, through the total withdrawal of violence.
.. According to Girard, the great Prussian war strategist realized that modern war would no longer be an honorable enterprise, but rather, a brutal activity that has the potential to destroy all of humanity. Indeed, Girard believes 20th and 21st centuries are apocalyptic, but not in the fundamentalist sense. The ‘signs’ of apocalypse are not numerical clues such as 666, but rather, signs that humanity has not found an efficient way to put an end to violence, and unless the Christian message of repentance and withdrawal from violence is assumed, we are headed towards doomsday; not a Final Judgment brought forth by a punishing God, but rather, a doomsday brought about by our own human violence.
.. According to Girard, the great Prussian war strategist realized that modern war would no longer be an honorable enterprise, but rather, a brutal activity that has the potential to destroy all of humanity. Indeed, Girard believes 20th and 21st centuries are apocalyptic, but not in the fundamentalist sense. The ‘signs’ of apocalypse are not numerical clues such as 666, but rather, signs that humanity has not found an efficient way to put an end to violence, and unless the Christian message of repentance and withdrawal from violence is assumed, we are headed towards doomsday; not a Final Judgment brought forth by a punishing God, but rather, a doomsday brought about by our own human violence.
.. Likewise, the Holy Spirit in Girard’s interpretation is the reverse of Satan. Again, Girard recurs to etymology: the Paraclete etymologically refers to the spirit of defense. Thus, Satan accuses victims, and the Paraclete mercifully defends victims. Thus, the Holy Spirit is understood by Girard as the overturning of the old scapegoating practices.
d. Original Sin
In the old Pelagian-Augustinian debate over original sin, Girard’s work clearly sides with Augustine. Under Girard’s interpretation, there is a twofold sense of original sin: 1) human beings are born with the propensity to imitate each other and, eventually, be led to violence; 2) human culture was laid upon the foundations of violence.
.. But, in such a case, the empirically-minded philosopher may argue that Girard’s work is not falsifiable in Popper’s sense. There seems to be no possibility of a counter-example that will refute Girard’s thesis.
Whom Does Philosophy Speak For?
I did not know, for example, that the Confederate flag was revived in Southern states during and after the civil rights movement in clear defiance of racial equality and integration. This was not just a flag that Confederate soldiers fought and died under. It became, as some South Carolinian representatives told us, a symbol of defiance and hatred, and a reminder that the Civil War may have been won but that the battle for overcoming racial prejudice has not ended.
.. These new technologies of the public sphere also challenge democratic societies in that the speed of the circulation of images often overwhelms the communicative and deliberative processes that need to take place among all those affected to unpack and understand what is being implied by these images
.. John Locke was also tutor and secretary to the earl of Shaftesbury, and he wrote the Constitution of the Carolinas for him. Locke is a colonizer, who believes that the white man’s labor in appropriating and working the land will create a condition that will be beneficial to all.
.. In view of the presence of these “others,” who haunt the text, what do we make of Locke’s theory of consent, equality and rationality? How much of these ideals are “polluted” by the presence of the other whose equal rationality is never presumed? This is the kind of question that the critical investigation of race in these texts leads us to ask.
.. I would argue that from Aristotle to Hume to Smith and even the early Hegel, we find another model of rationality as “embodied intelligence,” as the shaping of emotion by reason rather than its domination. John Dewey is the most articulate philosopher of this alternative understanding of rationality.
.. G.Y.: As a political theorist, do you think democracy is really able to deliver equality to black people, to fully translate universalistic human rights into real change for them, especially as they have, for hundreds of years, been deemed sub-persons?
S.B.: I don’t think that it is democracy that is failing black people in the United States, but the assault on democracy itself through the forces of a global corporate capitalism run amok and the rise of a vindictive and racist conservative movement that is unraveling the civic compact. Democracy is impossible without some form of socio-economic equality among citizens. Instead, in the United States in the last two decades, the gap between the top 1 percent and the rest has increased, voting rights and union rights have been embattled. There is rampant criminal neglect of public goods such as highways, railroads and bridges – not to mention the brazen onslaught of big money to buy off elections since the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision. We have become a mass democracy that is producing gridlock in representative institutions precisely because it is in the interest of global corporate capitalism to render representative institutions ineffective.
Gettier problem: Justified True Belief?
This led some early responses to Gettier to conclude that the definition of knowledge could be easily adjusted, so that knowledge was justified true belief that does not depend on false premises.
.. Bob has a friend, Jill, who has driven a Buick for many years. Bob therefore thinks that Jill drives an American car. He is not aware, however, that her Buick has recently been stolen, and he is also not aware that Jill has replaced it with a Pontiac, which is a different kind of American car.
Participants were then asked:
Does Bob really know that Jill drives an American car, or does he only believe it?
While Western participants’ responses were exactly what would have been expected by reading the philosophical literature, (Bob only believes that Jill drives an American car), the majority of East Asian participants actually reported the opposite (Bob truly knows that Jill drives an American car). A subsequent study was conducted with participants from the Indian subcontinent, and even more strongly divergent intuitions about Gettier cases were found.[12] There are many possible explanations for these findings and they may originate in translation ambiguities over the words “justified”, “true”, “belief” and “knowledge” and possibly depend on the mother-tongue make-up of the survey respondents.
Pascal’s Wager 2.0
Discussions of the wager usually follow Pascal and lump these two together in the single option of not believing in God. They don’t distinguish denying from doubting because both are ways of not believing. The argument then is about whether believing is a better option than not believing. My formulation of the argument will focus instead on the choice between denying and doubting God.
Denial of God means that I simply close the door on the hope that there is something beyond the natural world; doubt may keep that door open. I say “may” because doubt can express indifference to what is doubted. I don’t know and I don’t care whether there is an even number of stars or whether there are planets made of purple rock. Indifferent doubt is the practical equivalent of denial, since both refuse to take a given belief as a viable possibility — neither sees it as what William James called a “live option.” But doubt may also be open to and even desirous of what it doubts. I may doubt that I will ever understand and appreciate Pierre Boulez’s music, but still hope that I someday will.
I propose to reformulate Pascal’s wager as urging those who doubt God’s existence to embrace a doubt of desire rather than a doubt of indifference.
.. Religion is generally little more than male authoritarianism, misogyny and medievalism forced to constantly evolve toward rationality and reality.
Religion at its core is the world’s most popular psychological disorder caused by intergenerational intellectual child abuse.
If there were a ‘God’ and one led the most ethical, charitable, decent and compassionate life and yet didn’t believe in ‘God’, would ‘God’ punish you because you never put God’s name up in lights or failed to bow your head in religious worship ?
.. There are thus two types of people in the world: those who allow their judgment to be corrupted by accepting the bribe and believing in God, and those who are honest enough to reject the bribe and not believe in God. This has a current application. In the United States, there are numerous tax advantages showered upon religious organizations (special treatment of clergy under the Social Security system, charitable deductions, non taxation of church real estate, etc.). In Europe, it is often more advantageous in tax terms to be an atheist (you don’t have to pay the German church tax, Kirchensteuer). Unsurprisingly there are numerous believers in the United States, and numerous atheists in Europe.
.. Whenever the topic of religion comes up even tangentially in a NY Times column, it triggers multiple comments from people expressing their anger over the silliness of indulging in something that they see as superstition and irrefutably unreal. This is the denial that the author is talking about.