D
djeter
Guest
"Suffice it to say that Girard has uncovered the role violence plays in archaic religion and the role these religious systems play in human culture. Human history is the relentless chronicle of violence that it is because when cultures fall apart they fall into violence, and when they revive themselves they do so violently. Primitive religion is the institution that remembers the reviving violence mythologically and ritually reenacts its spellbinding climax. Primitive religion grants one form of violence a moral monopoly, endowing it with enough power and prestige to preempt other forms of violence and restore order.
The famous distinction between “sacred” and “profane” is born as the culture glorifies the decisive violence (sacred) that brought an episode of chaotic violence (profane) to an end and made warriors into worshipers. Distinguishing these two forms of violence is always an extremely arbitrary affair, but that does not keep the distinction from having beneficial effects.
Religion makes possible these benefits by bestowing sacred status on a socially tolerable form of violence to which the culture can resort as an alternative to greater and more catastrophic violence. “It is better that one man should die,” said Caiaphas of Jesus, “than that the whole nation be destroyed…”
Beginning from literary criticism and ending with a general theory of culture, through an explanation of the role of religion in primitive societies and a radical reinterpretation of Christianity, Catholic philosopher René Girard has completely modified the landscape in the social sciences.
Ethnology, history of religion, philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychology and literary criticism are explicitly mobilized in this enterprise. Theology, economics and political sciences, history and sociology — in short, all the social sciences, and those that used to be called moral sciences — are influenced by it.
Joseph Bottom (First Things Editor) has written: "In Gil Bailie’s *Violence Unveiled *is the best introduction to the Girardian topics of violence, culture, and sacrifice. It is an easily accessible and beautifully crafted analysis that moves freely from Greek literature to current news stories, from Aztec myths to Captain Cook’s experience in Tahiti, and finds in them all the grounds for a persuasive biblical and anti-violent Christian apologetics. Specialist and nonspecialist alike will find Bailie’s book rewarding; I recommend it highly.”
I’ve made some reading selections from the Introduction and elswhere to give you a feel for Rene Girard’s work. Give it a read. I don’t know about you but I really enjoy it when someone takes the Gospel and makes it live in a Christian anthropology.
You can find it all here:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/02/12/gil-bailie-interprets-rene-girard/
Search on Rene Girard to find more.
dj
The famous distinction between “sacred” and “profane” is born as the culture glorifies the decisive violence (sacred) that brought an episode of chaotic violence (profane) to an end and made warriors into worshipers. Distinguishing these two forms of violence is always an extremely arbitrary affair, but that does not keep the distinction from having beneficial effects.
Religion makes possible these benefits by bestowing sacred status on a socially tolerable form of violence to which the culture can resort as an alternative to greater and more catastrophic violence. “It is better that one man should die,” said Caiaphas of Jesus, “than that the whole nation be destroyed…”
Beginning from literary criticism and ending with a general theory of culture, through an explanation of the role of religion in primitive societies and a radical reinterpretation of Christianity, Catholic philosopher René Girard has completely modified the landscape in the social sciences.
Ethnology, history of religion, philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychology and literary criticism are explicitly mobilized in this enterprise. Theology, economics and political sciences, history and sociology — in short, all the social sciences, and those that used to be called moral sciences — are influenced by it.
Joseph Bottom (First Things Editor) has written: "In Gil Bailie’s *Violence Unveiled *is the best introduction to the Girardian topics of violence, culture, and sacrifice. It is an easily accessible and beautifully crafted analysis that moves freely from Greek literature to current news stories, from Aztec myths to Captain Cook’s experience in Tahiti, and finds in them all the grounds for a persuasive biblical and anti-violent Christian apologetics. Specialist and nonspecialist alike will find Bailie’s book rewarding; I recommend it highly.”
I’ve made some reading selections from the Introduction and elswhere to give you a feel for Rene Girard’s work. Give it a read. I don’t know about you but I really enjoy it when someone takes the Gospel and makes it live in a Christian anthropology.
You can find it all here:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/02/12/gil-bailie-interprets-rene-girard/
Search on Rene Girard to find more.
dj