D
Dolezal
Guest
René Girard’s mimetic theory explains how all conflict originates in mimetic desire. I believe that mimetic desire, the desire to imitate a model, is the root cause of all human sinfulness including the primal sin of our first parents. According to Girard, human desire is triangular and imitative. The model shows the subject which object to desire. In the story of Adam and Eve, for example, the subject, modal, and object are Eve, serpent, and “apple”. Eve’s desire for more, or other knowledge than that which came from God alone resulted in separation from God. An inevitable consequence of mimetic rivalry is the scapegoat or sacrificial mechanism. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. Christ, according to Girard, was the ultimate scapegoat or sacrificial victim. It’s difficult to explain the mimetic theory, so, for anyone interested, here’s an introduction and a video interview of René Girard. I would also like to share some quotes from this interview:
"A: External mediation only solves the problem of violence temporarily and imperfectly from our ethical viewpoint because it solves it with victims, and even with victims it solves it less and less. So, if you look at the beginning of the Bible you have the Cain and Abel story. The murder of Abel is, in fact, the first scapegoat business. If you look carefully it is a collective story and not an individual one. Cain says “Now that I killed my brother everybody will kill me”. This “everybody” makes very little sense if you interpret this story as a dual scene between two brothers. But then you have a law against murder which emerges directly from this first murder: every time Cain will be killed, the killer will be killed seven times. In other words you have something that regulates vengeance. Seven victims is not infinite vengeance, but if you continue in the story you can see that the successors of Cain become more and more violent and need more and more victims. There is the song of Lamech saying: Cain killed seven times and I killed seven times seven and ultimately it ends in another crisis which is the big flood.
At the beginning of the Bible you have the Adam and Eve story which is a story of mimetic desire because desire never comes from the subject but always from someone else. Eve’s desire is inspired by the serpent, Adam’s desire is suggested by Eve. The story of Adam and Eve is obviously a mimetic story. When God asks them what has happened, Adam says it was Eve’s fault and Eve’s says it was the serpent’s fault; and they are not completely wrong in the sense that they both borrowed their desire from someone else. But then you have Cain and Abel, the real consequences of this mimetic desire which is the scapegoat mechanism and the foundation of the first culture. Then you have this first culture, which, bad as it is: seven killings for one, gets worse and worse until it collapses entirely in the great flood.
"A: Well, that idea is always present, but in Deceit, Desire and the Novel, it is of course very different from the later books because it is a book that precedes the discovery of the scapegoat mechanism and the genesis of religion which is absolutely fundamental to my system. This book is incomplete since it deals only with the modern period; therefore what we have there is a dérive, a kind of sliding more and more into the crisis but never completely, never in the sense of the scapegoat mechanism, which would be impossible anyway because the scapegoat mechanism cannot be, by definition, perceived, in the sense that if you are able to perceive it you succumb to it and you become a believer in the guilt of the victim. Therefore the scapegoat mechanism should never be revealed because either people resist it and then there is no scapegoat mechanism, or they succumb to it and then it becomes a unanimous event.
This is the reason why the biblical texts are exceptional. In them you have a little minority, a remnant, which victoriously resists the scapegoat mechanism. At the same time, the gospels show you that Jesus’s disciples are almost sucked into the scapegoat mechanism. This is the reason why Peter’s denial of Jesus is theoretically one of the most important texts, because Peter is himself caught in the scapegoat mechanism. Peter’s denial should not be read as a reflection on the psychology of Peter, on the personal weakness of Peter, it should be read as the revelation of the scapegoat mechanism. We should have no revelation of it since even Peter, the best of the disciples, joins the mob. And this is very different from the death of Socrates. Because if you look at the death of Socrates, you will see that the philosopher never succumbs to the scapegoat mechanism. The philosophers always see that Socrates is innocent and always defend him against the city. To me that’s the main difference between Plato, who is a great religious thinker nevertheless, and the Gospels. The supreme paradox of the Gospels is that the revelation should never happen. And therefore Plato’s work is not a revelation of the scapegoat mechanism since philosophy is immune to it.
The idea of grace in Christianity or Judaism is precisely that the truth cannot be known by human means because it is always buried by the mechanism of Satan. What is the idea of Satan? How can Satan cast out Satan? Satan casts out Satan through the unanimity of scapegoating, which forces absolutely everybody not to see the victim as the scapegoat any more but as the weird combination of guilt and salvation that a primitive god is. Whereas, in Judaism and Christianity, you have a totally different type of God who is not dependent on the victimage mechanism."
"A: External mediation only solves the problem of violence temporarily and imperfectly from our ethical viewpoint because it solves it with victims, and even with victims it solves it less and less. So, if you look at the beginning of the Bible you have the Cain and Abel story. The murder of Abel is, in fact, the first scapegoat business. If you look carefully it is a collective story and not an individual one. Cain says “Now that I killed my brother everybody will kill me”. This “everybody” makes very little sense if you interpret this story as a dual scene between two brothers. But then you have a law against murder which emerges directly from this first murder: every time Cain will be killed, the killer will be killed seven times. In other words you have something that regulates vengeance. Seven victims is not infinite vengeance, but if you continue in the story you can see that the successors of Cain become more and more violent and need more and more victims. There is the song of Lamech saying: Cain killed seven times and I killed seven times seven and ultimately it ends in another crisis which is the big flood.
At the beginning of the Bible you have the Adam and Eve story which is a story of mimetic desire because desire never comes from the subject but always from someone else. Eve’s desire is inspired by the serpent, Adam’s desire is suggested by Eve. The story of Adam and Eve is obviously a mimetic story. When God asks them what has happened, Adam says it was Eve’s fault and Eve’s says it was the serpent’s fault; and they are not completely wrong in the sense that they both borrowed their desire from someone else. But then you have Cain and Abel, the real consequences of this mimetic desire which is the scapegoat mechanism and the foundation of the first culture. Then you have this first culture, which, bad as it is: seven killings for one, gets worse and worse until it collapses entirely in the great flood.
"A: Well, that idea is always present, but in Deceit, Desire and the Novel, it is of course very different from the later books because it is a book that precedes the discovery of the scapegoat mechanism and the genesis of religion which is absolutely fundamental to my system. This book is incomplete since it deals only with the modern period; therefore what we have there is a dérive, a kind of sliding more and more into the crisis but never completely, never in the sense of the scapegoat mechanism, which would be impossible anyway because the scapegoat mechanism cannot be, by definition, perceived, in the sense that if you are able to perceive it you succumb to it and you become a believer in the guilt of the victim. Therefore the scapegoat mechanism should never be revealed because either people resist it and then there is no scapegoat mechanism, or they succumb to it and then it becomes a unanimous event.
This is the reason why the biblical texts are exceptional. In them you have a little minority, a remnant, which victoriously resists the scapegoat mechanism. At the same time, the gospels show you that Jesus’s disciples are almost sucked into the scapegoat mechanism. This is the reason why Peter’s denial of Jesus is theoretically one of the most important texts, because Peter is himself caught in the scapegoat mechanism. Peter’s denial should not be read as a reflection on the psychology of Peter, on the personal weakness of Peter, it should be read as the revelation of the scapegoat mechanism. We should have no revelation of it since even Peter, the best of the disciples, joins the mob. And this is very different from the death of Socrates. Because if you look at the death of Socrates, you will see that the philosopher never succumbs to the scapegoat mechanism. The philosophers always see that Socrates is innocent and always defend him against the city. To me that’s the main difference between Plato, who is a great religious thinker nevertheless, and the Gospels. The supreme paradox of the Gospels is that the revelation should never happen. And therefore Plato’s work is not a revelation of the scapegoat mechanism since philosophy is immune to it.
The idea of grace in Christianity or Judaism is precisely that the truth cannot be known by human means because it is always buried by the mechanism of Satan. What is the idea of Satan? How can Satan cast out Satan? Satan casts out Satan through the unanimity of scapegoating, which forces absolutely everybody not to see the victim as the scapegoat any more but as the weird combination of guilt and salvation that a primitive god is. Whereas, in Judaism and Christianity, you have a totally different type of God who is not dependent on the victimage mechanism."