Renee Girard and Mimetic Theory
Girard, R. (1999, 2001). I See Satan Falling Like Lightning. (J. G. and Foreward, Trans.) Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Girard, R. (2013, 1997, 1972). Violence and the Sacred. (P. Gregory, Trans.) New York: Bloomsbury.
Palaver, W. (2013). Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory (Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University.
Pannenberg, W. (1998, 1991). Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Taylor, C. (2007). A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
This exploration into the thought of Rene Girard will focus upon his insight into the mimetic cycle. While he discusses his personal conversion to Christ, it has little influence upon evaluating the validity of mimetic theory. I will focus upon the insights his theory yields in biblical and theological studies, especially related to St. Augustine.
I express a caution. Girard offers a monolithic theory through which he seeks to explain so much that it influences anthropology, theory of culture, politics, religion, theology, and philosophy. That strength can become a weakness if one does not use it properly. However, what I want to do here is explore the strength of his theory. His profound insight into the violence involved in the ancient ritual of sacrifice to the gods, which he viewed as displacing an original violence that threatened the community, requires some modification. The notion of sacrifice is not simply a negative and violent one, for sacrificing oneself for others and for their benefit can be a noble act. Modern societies do not have the ritual of violent sacrifice, but rather, have developed means to resolve many of their disputes through rational discourse and persuasion. What violence they still have does not threaten the existence of the society. He viewed religion and morality as having the positive impact upon society of resolving dispute non-violently, especially through establishing judicial structures.
René Girard offers a new way of seeing ourselves and the biblical heritage. His method is to begin, not with theology or the revelation of God, but with an understanding of human beings and human relations that the Bible and the early Christian tradition disclose. This understanding of humankind he articulates is an anthropology. Girard's anthropology focuses first on desire and its consequences. He calls it “mimetic desire” or “mimesis.” It is a desire that comes into being through imitation of others. These others we imitate models of desire. This desire that comes into being through following models of desire is not bad; it is good. To desire what models desire is necessary if the child is to be able to learn and love and deal with the world. Without mimetic desire there would be neither freedom nor humanity. Mimetic desire is intrinsically good. Humankind is that creature who lost a part of its animal instinct to gain access to “desire.”[1]
But mimetic desire can and does lead to conflict and violence. We will want to have what the model has or be what the model is. We compete with one another to become better imitators of the same model, and we imitate our rivals even as we compete with them. The desire that lives through imitation leads to conflict, and this conflict frequently leads to violence. The paradox is that this conflict leads antagonists to become like each other in envy, jealousy, and hate. This situation of rivalry opens human societies to the possibility of scandal, an obstacle in which one cannot obtain what one desires, either because one cannot displace the model or because the rivalry with others in the group is so intense that everyone is prevented from succeeding. The group looks for someone to blame for the inability to attain what the group desires. The accusing of the unfortunate victim, a work of the great accuser, Satan, leads to an act of violence that creates social cohesion. Myth disguises the violence that has resulted in social cohesion. A social crisis, violent contagion, or disorder resulted in ending the crisis through violence directed at an unfortunate victim. The transfer of blame to the victim and the exoneration of the group in its violence is what lies behind the veil created by myth. Myth takes the side of the crowd against the unfortunate victim. The gods of mythology are the product of the accuser, Satan, guiding the group toward accusation and the victim mechanism. The victim mechanism gives rise to ritual sacrifice and scapegoating. The act of violence brings peace, even euphoria, to the group, which leads to the needed social cohesion. For human beings, there is nothing more satisfying than sacred violence.[2]
His exploration into the scapegoat motif in the history of human culture shows that our modern social world is not as isolated from the idea of vicarious expiation as is maintained. The significance of the motif changes with the passion of Jesus because Jesus, by suffering vicario9usly himself, overcame the power that is directed against others and is focused on the scapegoat. This is to interpret the passion in ethical terms. He shows that the thought of vicarious expiation is still relevant.[3]
The Bible unveils this process of imitative desire leading to conflict and violence, and its distinctive narratives reveal that God takes the part of victims. The story of Joseph is an example. In many of the psalms, God sides with victims, but this is especially true in the sufferings of Job, as he becomes a scapegoat for the crow and cries to God for help, and in the Suffering Servant of Isa 52-3. In the Gospels the process of unveiling or revelation is radicalized, as God the Word become flesh in Jesus, becomes the victim. The innocent victim who is crucified is vindicated through his resurrection from the dead. The disciples of Jesus finally undergo a complete conversion as they move from being lost in the mimetic desire of the crowd to imitating Christ, which occurs through their experience of Jesus’ resurrection. Their conversion and the resurrection of Christ are two aspects of the same event.[4]
This concern for the victim finds expression in current political debates. However, Satan is cunning, using the ideology of victimization to stifle public discussion and debate of ideas and issues. One can gain political power through the ideology of concern for victims and one can use victim status to gain advantage over others and justify one’s behavior.
His theory needs to be understood in the context of the contemporary debate on secularization. This term describes an early modern response to the religious wars in Europe, part of which meant the withdrawal of the State from religious influences. This would lead to the separation of church and state in the creation of the United States. Some authors mean today by this term the end of religion. This view is becoming increasingly untenable, given the vibrant expressions of religion in many parts of the world. Science and modern philosophy have been a challenge to religion, but we cannot see the direction of that challenge. The mythology of Star Trek, in which any traces of religion are gone, may be the direction, but at this point we do not know. The theory of Girard derives from a literary insight into the unalterable religious nature of humanity. Human beings have the choice between recognizing the true God and idolatry, suggesting that the only choice before human beings is between good religion, which relieves the pressure toward the violence of the scapegoat mechanism, and bad religion that will embrace it.[5]
Girard’s emphasis on the unity of all religions is yet further proof that his theory of culture represents the Augustinian ontology of peace, according to which “peace is the instinctive aim of all creatures,” including even warmongers and robbers. Thus, even the proud are incapable of eluding the natural law of peace, when, in perverse imitation of God, they impose their own peace on other human beings. In Augustine’s eyes, despite all evil there is no being that does not know the love of peace: “For no creature’s perversion is so contrary to nature as to destroy the very last vestiges of its nature.” He starts from the axiom that all human beings naturally desire what is good for them, he innovatively determines the goal that every individual and every community in fact pursues as “peace” (pax), which, in his view, is largely equivalent with natural order and subordination. There are higher and lesser degrees of both individual and collective peace, e.g., the control of the emotions through reason, the subordination of body to soul, the subordination of children to parents in the family or a functioning hierarchical order in the state; at the top is “peace with God” or the subordination of the human mind to God. The lower forms of peace are relative goods and, as such, legitimately pursued if they are not mistaken for the absolute good. Political peace and order is sought by members of the city of God and the earthly city alike, but whereas the latter “enjoy” it because it is the greatest good they can attain and conceive of, the former “use” it for the sake of their peace with God, i.e., in order that they and others may enjoy an unhindered Christian religious life. Political peace is thus morally neutral as far as it is a goal common to Christians and non-Christians. Even the mythical monster Cacus—who infamously devoured his victims in solitude, and whose name represents evil (Greek: Kakos, or “wicked”)—is not excluded from having universal peaceful intentions. Moreover, Augustine questions whether a creature portrayed as “evil” as Cacus is could have ever existed, arguing that the poets exaggerated his truculence to praise Hercules’s heroism all the more: “The existence of such a man, or half man, is discredited, as are many similar poetical fictions.” Just as Augustine refuses to demonize Cacus and stamp him as an eternal scapegoat, Girard also refuses to demonize archaic religions, stressing their fundamental desire for peace. In our modern world, we seem to have lost this confidence in the peaceful nature of creation.[6]
This turn to the literary is a significant departure from other studies of culture and religion that rely upon socio-biology, political ideology, sociology, and psychology. It recognizes the distinctive quality that human beings bring to life on this planet. It refuses to reduce the issues raised by the rise of human beings and civilizations to physics, biology, and genetics. It sees value in ancient texts because of what they reveal about who human beings are. it refuses to dismiss such texts because they are not rooted in the scientific method. It leads to exploring myth, poetry, and legend in ways that are influenced by philosophy, psychology, history, and science, but are not determined by them. It leads to respect for religious texts and novels. Such texts conceal important insights into humans as individuals and as social creatures.
Albert Camus is a partner with Girard at one point. He sees in modern history a metaphysical revolt and the resulting tendency of humans to worship one another. Like Girard, Camus sees in Feuerbach’s homo homini deus not an indication of human progression, but rather “the birth of a terrible form of optimism.” Of the various philosophical and historical manifestations of human divinization that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Camus finds most emblematic Nietzsche’s Übermensch, which he views as the “sordid god” at the heart of Nazi ideology; Rousseau’s “new Gospel” of the Contrat social, which he sees as a precursor for the terror of the French Revolution; the divinization of the state in Rousseau; and finally the socialism of Marx and Lenin, which also ends in terror.
A frequent criticism of Girard is that his theory represents an ontologizing of violence, i.e., that it posits a principle of inevitable violence.[7] I have already suggested that Girard is closer to the Augustinian ontology of peace, but we will need to see if this criticism has validity.
The mimetic cycle is composed of three different components.
First, one finds the crisis brought about by mimetic rivalry. Girard's main contribution to philosophy, and in turn to other disciplines, was in the psychology of desire. Mimetic desire is the anthropological core of his entire theory. Girard claimed that human desire functions imitatively, or mimetically, rather than arising as the spontaneous byproduct of human individuality, as much of theoretical psychology had assumed. Humans do not themselves know what to desire; as a result, they imitate the desires of others. Human beings influence each other. When they are together, they tend to desire the same objects because imitation governs desire. Human beings attempt to create who they are based upon the desire they see at work in another human being. Human beings are social beings who are dependent on relations to others. They are intrinsically incomplete. Girard proposed that human development proceeds triangularly from a model of desire who indicates some object of desire as desirable by desiring it themselves. We copy this desire for the object of the model and appropriate it as our own, most often without recognizing that the source of this desire comes from another apart from ourselves completing the triangle of mimetic desire. This process of appropriation of desire includes (but is not limited to) identity formation, the transmission of knowledge and social norms, and material aspirations which all have their origin in copying the desires of others who we take, consciously or unconsciously, as models for desire.
Girard looked for common structural properties in his teaching of French literature. He observed that characters in great fiction evolved in a system of relationships that was common in novels, with the difference that great writers succeed in painting these mechanisms faithfully, without falsifying them. Proust referred to them as psychological laws. These laws and this system are the consequences of a fundamental reality grasped by the novelists, which Girard called mimetic desire, "the mimetic character of desire." This is the content of his first book, Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961). He describes the universe of the novels of Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust and Dostoevsky.
We borrow our desires from others. Far from being autonomous, our desire for a certain object is always provoked by the desire of another person—the model—for this same object. This means that the relationship between the subject and the object, what Girard calls the mediator, is not direct: but unrolls within a triangular relationship of subject, model, and object. Through the object, one is drawn to the model.
In fact, it is the model, the mediator who is sought. This search is called "mediation."
Girard calls desire "metaphysical" in the measure that, as soon as a desire is something more than a simple need or appetite, "all desire is a desire to be", it is an aspiration, the dream of a fullness attributed to the mediator.
Mediation is "external" when the mediator of the desire is socially beyond the reach of the subject or, for example, a fictional character, as in the case of Amadis de Gaula and Don Quixote. The hero lives a kind of folly that nonetheless remains optimistic.
Mediation is called "internal" when the mediator is at the same level as the subject. The mediator then transforms into a rival and an obstacle to the acquisition of the object, whose value increases as rivalry grows.
Through their characters, our own behavior is displayed. Everyone holds firmly to the illusion of the authenticity of one's own desires; the novelists implacably expose all the diversity of lies, dissimulations, maneuvers, and the snobbery of the Proustian heroes; these are all but "tricks of desire", which prevent one from facing the truth: envy and jealousy. These characters, desiring the being of the mediator, project upon him superhuman virtues while at the same time depreciating themselves, making him a god while making themselves slaves, in the measure that the mediator is an obstacle to them. Some, pursuing this logic, come to seek the failures that are the signs of the proximity of the ideal to which they aspire. This can manifest as a heightened experience of the universal pseudo-masochism inherent in seeking the unattainable, which can, of course, turn into sadism should the actor play this part in reverse.
This fundamental focus on mimetic desire would be pursued by Girard throughout the rest of his career. The stress on imitation in humans was not a popular subject when Girard developed his theories.
The idea that desire to possess endless material wealth was harmful to society was not new. From the New Testament verses about the love of money being the root of all kinds of evil, to Hegelian and Marxist critique that saw material wealth and capital as the mechanism of alienation of the human being both from their own humanity and their community, to Bertrand Russell's famous speech on accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950, desire has been understood as a destructive force in all of literature – with the theft of Helen by Paris a frequent topic of discussion by Girard. What Girard contributed to this concept is the idea that what is desired is not the object itself, but the ontological state of the subject which possesses it, where mimicry is the aim of the competition. What Paris wanted, then, was not Helen, but to be a great king like Menelaus or Agamemnon. A person who desires seeks to be like the subject he imitates, through the medium of the object that is possessed by the person he imitates. Thus, what dominates the world is the obliteration of difference by mimetic reciprocity, disclosing the illusory character of difference.
Such a view leads to a pessimistic understanding of human life, since it posits a paradox in the very act of seeking to unify and have peace, since the erasure of differences between people through mimicry is what creates conflict, not the differentiation itself.
We live in an increasingly egalitarian world. As the metaphysical distance between desiring subject and model diminishes—the key component of internal mediation—the potential for rivalry and violence increases. The more negligible this distance becomes, the more probable it is that mimesis will end in rivalry and violence. The ancient proverbial truth found in mythical texts, primitive practices, and even the Bible, that brothers or sisters are much more prone to rivalry and conflict than others, can be easily understood with the help of Girard’s insight. The development of mimetic desire from Cervantes to Dostoyevsky reflects the emergence of the modern world, one in which the spread of democracy and equality have meant the vanishing of rigid hierarchical differences.
In Girard’s eyes, this development is described most precisely by the French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville in his work Democracy in America: When all the privileges of birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are accessible to all, and a man’s own energies may place him at the top of any one of them, an easy and unbounded career seems open to his ambition and he will readily persuade himself that he is born to no common destinies. But this is an erroneous notion, which is corrected by daily experience. The same equality that allows every citizen to conceive these lofty hopes, renders all the citizens less able to realize them; it circumscribes their powers on every side, which it gives freer scope to their desires. . . . They have swept away the privileges of some of their fellow-creatures which stood in their way, but they have opened the door to universal competition. Tocqueville is cognizant of the dangers posed by the modern phenomenon of equality.
Girard’s insight into the effects of mimetic desire allows one to understand why the phenomenon of equality—or the disappearance of social differences—poses these dangers. Reactionary or anti-egalitarian movements, in their attempt to maintain social differences, are aware of the conflictual potential of equality. Political equality enhances moral quality in human relations, but they also increase the possibility of rivalry, competition, and violence. Modern equality is one of the major factors responsible for this increase in social violence. Proximity, not anonymity, brings about the most vicious atrocities; far from increasing the threshold of attack, it heightens the passion of violence. The disappearance of difference results in an increase in the frequency and intensity of conflict between the groups.
Girard sees the concept of modern individualism as marked by this “rejection” of imitation. The discovery of the individual, in his eyes, is one of the positive effects of Christianity. However, it was not immune to degeneration. The romantic divinization of fully autonomous individuality paved the way for modern idolatry, which parades itself as “anti-mimetic voluntarism”—only to end in “reinforced mimetism.” Modern advertising rarely shows the advertised object, focusing upon the people in possession of the object so as to activate the imitation of the viewer.
One way of thinking about this is the human experience of the lack of being. Sartre focuses upon it. Kierkegaard viewed human creatureliness expressed in anxiety, which is his term for the lack of being that that humanity experiences. Anxiety is the consequence of the inability of humanity to escape its creatureliness. The freedom of humanity opens humanity to fall from God. Their lack of being is directed to God and finds consummation in divine love. The lack of being leads humanity on the search for the perfect role model, a being that radiates complete inner tranquility and an overcoming of desire. The more self-assured the model appears to be, the more the desiring subject assumes that the model possesses this perfect being. In Sartre, this finds expression in the longing for “in-itself”, lifeless being, the kind of mimetic desire that leads to reverence for the inorganic. The worldly attempt is to fill itself through the imitation of another’s desire. This attempt, however, must end in despair and violence, as no worldly good or human being can negate the lack that only God himself can replenish.
Such lack of being is an important dimension of human creatureliness and therefore Christian doctrine. Augustine is the best-known example for this. It shows his reliance upon neo-Platonic sources. At the beginning of his Confessions, he writes of an inner disquietude that has its roots in the search of human beings for their creator. Augustine, addressing God, refers to humanity as a “piece of Your creation,” after which he alludes to the human lack of being, which only God can replenish: “You prompt us yourself to find satisfaction in appraising you, since you made us tilted toward you, and our heart is unstable until stabilized in you.” The fear that this desire will not reach fulfillment motivates much of human behavior, usually by misdirecting love toward finite things rather than the eternal.Two critical properties of mimetic desire: Firstly, desire is characterized by an inner dynamic that is rooted in self-reflexivity. In Girard’s words, “desire is always reflection on desire,” in that it builds on previous experiences and thus perpetuates itself. Secondly, mimetic desire is easily intensified by the resistance of the original model, who attempts to prevent the subject from acquiring the desired object after initial interest has been displayed.
Second, the collective violence of the scapegoat mechanism transforms the chaos of the mimetic crisis into a new social order. Girard takes a stand against a rational origin of culture, most prominently presented in social contract theory. It posits that human culture emanated from a founding murder. This is the crux of Girard’s theory of the origin of culture. This leads to considering the consequences of the mimetic nature of desire as it relates to human origins and anthropology. The mimetic nature of desire allows for the anthropological success of human beings through social learning but is also laden with potential for violent escalation. Girard rejects any natural aggressive drive and argues that human beings can overcome their violent nature. If the subject desires an object simply because another subject desires it, then their desires are bound to converge on the same objects. If these objects cannot be easily shared (food, mates, territory, prestige and status, etc.), then the subjects are bound to come into mimetically intensifying conflict over these objects. This would be reconciliatory mimesis. Since the mimetic rivalry that develops from the struggle for the possession of the objects is contagious, it leads to the threat of violence. Any social order that exists now arose out of an anterior crisis. Humanity is not a political animal (Aristotle), naturally desiring peaceful and harmonious coexistence with others, but transforms its social nature into an “unsociable sociability” (Kant). Humanity is social by nature and quarrelsome by perversion (Augustine). The insight of Augustine into the consequences of Original Sin for human coexistence had a considerable influence on Girard’s anthropology. He argued that, though human nature is principally directed at harmonious coexistence, after the Fall it proved provoked by conflict. He interprets Original Sin as the blasphemous attempt of humanity to usurp the divinity of God. Like Augustine, the cause of mimetic rivalry and interpersonal violence is the propensity to idolatry, for we adore the other because of they have taught us what to desire, but we desperately want to adore ourselves because of what we desire, and therefore fall into rivalry and violence.
“The principal source of violence between human beings is mimetic rivalry, the rivalry resulting from imitation of a model who becomes a rival or of a rival who becomes a model.”[8]
Girard focuses on the conflict-inducing relationship of mimesis and desire. However, if desire is directed at an object that can be shared—learning a language, reading a book, listening to a piece of music, etc.—mimesis poses no problems. Mimetic desire generates competition, rivalry, and conflict when the desired object can no longer be shared. As Thomas Hobbes noted, when two people desire the same thing that they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies as they endeavor to destroy or subdue each other. the natural state of human society is characterized by inexorable violence, or the warlike struggle of all against all. Even in The Republic,Plato urges mimesis of the divine, and that to avoid envy and conflict one must add reverence to the divine being, showing he understands the disastrous protentional in mimesis when focused upon humanity. The contrast between encouraging mimesis of the divine and discouraging it regarding humanity influenced Augustine and later Christian tradition. Examples of mimetic desire appear in Augustine’s text primarily in connection with vanity, pride, and envy. He will even see this rivalry in infants. He expresses his own mimetic nature in the Confessions. The famous incident of his stealing pears because of peer pressure. He describes himself as being seduced by the crowd. The Roman orator Hierius fascinated him, but more because of what others thought of him. His process of conversion also reveals Christian models who influenced him in that direction.
The theological system of Augustine is largely determined by his insight into the fundamental necessity of mediation for human desire. Just as Girard argues that human beings are faced with the choice between following divine and human role models, Augustine also classifies humans into “two branches,” namely, those “who live by human standards” and those “who live according to God’s will.” These two different models entail two distinct types of love. Revealing his neo-Platonic reliance, he taught the understanding of the soul’s love of God is a quasi-erotic desire for true beauty. The rational soul should control the sensual desires and passions; it can become wise if it turns to God, who is at the same time the Supreme Being and the Supreme Good. To love our neighbor means we are enjoined to love the neighbor as ourselves and because we love ourselves rightly only if we refer our self-love to our desire to enjoy God. Love of the neighbor thus means to desire the true happiness of the neighbor in the same way as we desire our own. Where human beings are taken as role models, Augustine speaks of the love of “oneself,” which seeks fame “from other human beings” and is connected with “hubris” or “pride.” Divine love, by contrast, finds its “highest glory in God” and is rooted in humility. Original Sin is for Augustine man’s denial of God and, moreover, the proud attempt to take God’s place. Augustine describes this sin as a “perverse imitation” of God, a form of vain madness identical to the essence of the devil. Augustine shares Plato’s ontology of imitation in his recognition of man’s tendency to “model oneself on the object of one’s worship” as the “core of all religion.” He also praises Plato’s ethics, which in his view is directed at divine imitation. Under the influence of Plato’s ethical system, Augustine develops his comparative differentiation of human desire, which has shaped the entire Christian tradition—and which gains a new plausibility in the context of Girard’s mimetic theory. Augustine separates desire according to its temporal or eternal goods. What objects (imaginations, thoughts) we cognize is morally relevant and indicative of our loves and desires. Only eternal goods, Augustine contends, are worthy of human aspiration, for this desire is humanity’s aim. Earthly goods should be utilized only to achieve the joy of eternal happiness. This differentiation regarding the potential aim of human desire—in Augustine’s words, between eternal pleasure and earthly utility, allows one to separate life-enhancing forms of mimesis from destructive forms. On the one hand, Augustine shows that worldly desire results in the disastrous consequences of mimetic desire, as it divides humans in rivalry over goods that cannot be shared. On the other hand, however, Augustine fashions a way out of this vicious cycle; the more humans direct their desire at eternal goods—such as the desire of God the more fulfilling this desire becomes. The Supreme Being is also the greatest good; the desire of created being for happiness can only be satisfied by the creator. Throughout his work, Augustine provides insightful examples for both the rivalrous desire that pervades the earthly city, and the overcoming of this desire in the heavenly city.
The earthly city, according to Augustine, is branded by self-love, which results in the inverted imitation of God discussed above and an atmosphere of desire that can lead only to conflict: “The earthly city . . . has its good in this world, and rejoices to participate in it with such gladness as can be derived from things of such a kind. And since this is not the kind of good that causes no frustrations to those enamored of it, the earthly city is divided against itself by litigation, by wars, by battles, by the pursuit of victories that bring death with them or at best are doomed to death.” Augustine names the scarcity of objects as a deeper cause for the ubiquity of violence in the earthly city, alluding to one of the central consequences of mimetic desire where he says that an “unhappy poverty” prevails when the warring sections contend for objects that they cannot “both possess at the same time.” He cites the example of the twin brothers Romulus and Remus, whose relationship ends in murder over their fight for exclusive rule of the Roman Empire: “Both sought the glory of establishing the Roman state, but a joint foundation would not bring to each the glory that a single founder would enjoy.” Augustine argues that the violence pervading humanity is rooted in the mimetic passions of pride and envy. Both are entirely worldly desires, directed inexorably at objects that cannot be shared, and by their nature lead to enmity among humans. In On True Religion, Augustine calls envy a “terrible vice, by which you are bound to be tormented and defeated, if you are unwilling to be conquered and surpassed in temporal matters.”
The heavenly city, by contrast, is characterized by the humble imitation of God, which is free of the violence connected with mimetic rivalry. In God’s love, human beings desire an object that does not divide, but rather brings them together in harmony; the more humans pursue the imitation of God, the more they are bound in reciprocal love. Augustine names Abel as an archetypal citizen of the heavenly city who rejects the worldly desire for dominion in favor of God’s love: “A man’s possession of goodness is in no way diminished by the arrival, or the continuance, of a sharer in it; indeed, goodness is a possession enjoyed more widely by the united affection of partners in that possession in proportion to the harmony that exists among them. In fact, anyone who refuses to enjoy this possession in partnership will not enjoy it at all; and he will find that he possesses it in ampler measure in proportion to his ability to love his partner in it.” Augustine sees in the imitation of God’s love the only viable way to avoid envy, which is the principle divisive consequence of mimetic desire: “So, if you only love what cannot be snatched out of its lover’s hand, you undoubtedly remain unbeaten and are not tormented in any way by jealousy. You are loving something for which even more abundant gratitude is felt, the greater the number of those who come to love and obtain it.” The mimetic theory makes Augustine’s differentiation between eternal and temporal goods plausible. By its very nature, mimetic desire directs human beings towards the same objects, giving the nature of the object itself control over whether desire ends in violent conflict—as in the Hobbesian war of all against all—or in the mutual enrichment of humanity on its way towards its eternal aim.
Augustine’s differentiation between eternal and temporal goods is a cornerstone of the Christian ethical system, which provides central guidance for avoiding the mimetic passion of envy. It will influence Aquinas and Dante. While Girard argues that Augustine and the great European novelists pave the way for the revelation of mimetic desire, he is critical of modern philosophy and argues that the former is vastly superior when it comes to an understanding of desire. The central difference between Augustine and Hobbes is found in Hobbes’s insistence that this “disoriented type” is man’s intrinsic nature, whereas Augustine contrasts proud beings with those who pursue the love of God. While Augustine identifies solipsistic self-love (amor sui) with pride, thus contrasting it to the love of God, Rousseau characterizes the asocial, or natural condition of man as unequivocally positive. For Augustine—and the Christian tradition influenced by him—the only positive form of self-love is that which is directed at God’s love; autonomous self-love is the sheer embodiment of the Fall of Man that leads inexorably to the negative aspects that Rousseau himself observes in the amour-propre of man in society. Rousseau interprets the autonomous person of nature by contrast as a completely innocent and peaceful being.
Pride and envy are what lead to the break with God. As Augustine and Thomas Aquinas rightly point out, both are perverted forms of the imitation of God. While God bestows his likeness upon man by inviting him to imitate it (Gen 1:26–27), pride and envy—precisely that which is embodied in the symbol of the serpent—inspire man to desire the acquisition of God’s divinity for himself.[9]
Human beings imitate what they worship. For Girard, at the outset of civilization, there were actual mimetic crises that led to a universal chaos of violence. Many archaic cultures and societies that encountered such warlike states were unable to move beyond this stage, thus perishing in self-obliteration.
Augustine differentiates clearly between the humble imitation of God, or Jesus, and the perverse imitation of Satan. Complete self-empowerment is not possible on one’s own; he argues expressly that there must be an external impetus—the gift of grace—to bring about positive mimesis. The Confessions exhibit the central importance of imitation for the Christian conversion. Augustine, who describes his childhood as one dominated by an array of diverse role models, refers also to the influence of imitation on his personal journey to Christ. One of his first role models in this regard is Simplician, who tells Augustine of the conversion of the Roman rhetorician Victorinus. Like Augustine, Victorinus was a follower of his friends, who “blushed at the evil rites of the devils’ haughtiness, himself haughty as he mimicked them, shameless toward hollow things, ashamed of hollow things.” Even after having become a Christian, Victorinus was unable to profess his beliefs openly, for fear of falling out of favor with his friends. He summoned the courage, however, and confessed his new faith. It is Victorinus’s example that also fills Augustine with the desire to convert: “No sooner had I heard Simplician’s tale of Victorinus than I was on fire to do as he did.”92 A second important impetus comes from Pontician, who tells Augustine and his friend Alypius about two acquaintances who, after discovering and reading the biography of the Egyptian monk Antonius, are inspired to convert to Christianity. These role models exert an undeniable influence on Augustine on his path to conversion:
“The more I loved these men who, for spiritual health, surrendered themselves entirely into your healing hands, the more disgust I felt for myself, because of the contrast with them.”
Augustine describes the decisive moments of his conversion as an inner wrestling between his “entrenched lusts” and “Lady Self-Control.” The latter, conveyed by numerous role models, is what invites him to change:
“To welcome and to hug me she reached her holy arms out, and in them were throngs of persons setting me their example, innocent boys and girls, young men and women—all ages, including chaste widows and women . . . in old age. She teased me with a smiling insistence: Can you not do what all these have?”
The decisive step of Augustine’s conversion is complete when suddenly he hears a voice, which, like Antonius, summons him to read the Bible. The opened passage, Rom 13:13–14, inspires him to devote himself entirely to following Jesus’s example. In a comparable way, Augustine’s friend Alypius also ultimately finds the path to Christianity. For him, Augustine’s example was particularly meaningful. In Deceit, Desire and the Novel, he describes imitation based on pride as taking on a “promethean” or “satanic” character, which he differentiates—together with Augustine—from the genuine forms of Christian imitation. This critique of “promethean” pride is a direct extension of Augustine’s identification of pride with Original Sin.[10]
The simplest solution to this problem of violence for early human communities was to polarize blame and hostility onto one member of the group who would be killed and interpreted as the source of conflict and hostility within the group. The transition from the violent conflict of all-against-all would be transformed into the unifying and pacifying violence of all-except-one whose death would reconcile the community together. As far as mimesis unites all members of the community against a single enemy, a feeling of collective reconciliation is engendered throughout the mob. All violence, all hatred that was previously interspersed throughout the community in the form of individual rivalries is now directed at a single victim.
The victim who was persecuted as the source of disorder would then become venerated as the source of order and meaning for the community and seen as a god. This process of engendering and making possible human community through arbitrary victimization is called, within mimetic theory, the scapegoat mechanism. The metamorphosis of the scapegoat into a sacred being, which bestows both destruction and salvation on the community, is for Girard the creation of the “supernatural,” a “transcendental force of violent unanimity”
Thus, turning his interest towards the anthropological domain, Girard began to study anthropological literature and proposed his second great hypothesis: the scapegoat mechanism, which is at the origin of archaic religion and which he sets forth in his second book Violence and the Sacred (1972), a work on fundamental anthropology. If two individuals desire the same thing, there will soon be a third, then a fourth. This process quickly snowballs. Since from the beginning desire is aroused by the other (and not by the object) the object is soon forgotten and the mimetic conflict transforms into a general antagonism. At this stage of the crisis the antagonists will no longer imitate each other's desires for an object, but each other's antagonism. They wanted to share the same object, but now they want to destroy the same enemy. So, an outbreak of violence will then focus on an arbitrary victim and a unanimous antipathy would, mimetically, grow against him. The brutal elimination of the victim will reduce the appetite for violence that possessed everyone a moment before, and leaves the group, suddenly appeased and calm. The victim lies before the group, appearing simultaneously as the origin of the crisis and as the one responsible for this miracle of renewed peace. He becomes sacred, the bearer of the prodigious power of defusing the crisis and bringing peace back.
Girard attempts in this work to explain the nature of the “sacred” in archaic societies prior to their development of legal and judicial systems. His analysis frequently incorporates the classical tragedies of Sophocles (e.g., Oedipus the King) and Euripides (e.g., The Bacchae). Using these ancient texts, and based on ethnological data, he demonstrates that the sacred, and with it archaic religion, is based on what he terms the scapegoat mechanism: the mimetic snowballing of all against one in order to resolve a crisis brought about by the social consequences of mimetic desire, which creates within the group a war of all against all. After its death, the community experiences the victim as good and evil at once (= sacred) because the victim is perceived as both responsible for the crisis and as that which rescues the community from being completely engulfed by it.
One finds a social crisis at the outset of the scapegoat mechanism.
Apollonius of Tyana is a good example, since for some scholars he was a parallel to the ministry of Jesus. The plague that lingers in Ephesus fills the members of the community with the longing for an end to the epidemic. The solution proposed by the miracle worker Apollonius is shaped completely by the archaic logic of the scapegoat mechanism. He demands that the Ephesians stone an old beggar. The attributes of the chosen victim make it clear that we are dealing with a scapegoat; the beggar is old, dirty, blinking and blind, and such a “manifestly miserable” stranger that the Ephesians are at first opposed to the notion of stoning him. Only after the mob sees that he is not blind, but rather that his “eyes were full of fire,” evoking those of a “demon,” the Ephesians stone the beggar to death. The stoning itself—which was so thorough that the “stones were heaped into a great cairn” on top of the beggar—is a typical form of collective execution. 67 It enables and encourages a unity on the part of the mob, while simultaneously keeping an ample distance between the mob and its victim. As a result, the responsibility for the death of the victim is shared by the group homogenously, so much so that no single member can be identified as an executioner. All are involved in a communal killing, without any single member committing murder.
At the height of the mimetic crisis—the violent chaos on which human civilization is based—it is inconceivable that human reason suddenly interferes to restore peace among the members of the violent community. No State has ever yet been created by a genuine contract, i.e. a contract freely entered by all parties, although the founding of America would come close. Girard’s argument against the thesis that the mimetic crisis could be solved by means of human reason finds indirect parallels in the work of Hobbes, who argues that all contracts are fragile and unstable on account of man’s warlike nature, where there is no central governing power. Like Hobbes, Rousseau is unable to establish a purely rational origin of human society. At the heart of Rousseauian theory, one finds the concept of the general will (volonté générale), which takes on a quasi-religious character.
Third, the religious veiling of the scapegoat mechanism begins with the divinization of the sacrificed victim and forms the origin of archaic religion. In its analysis of this final component, the mimetic theory shows itself as a theory of religion that explicates the origins of archaic myth and discovers in Christianity a form of religion that differs fundamentally from paganism and thus the mythical perspective. While mythical religions are based on texts that are told from the perspective of persecutors, the biblical writings show solidarity with the victims of sacrificial persecution. These texts no longer took the perspective of the lynch mob, as was the case with myth, but that of scapegoats victimized by mob persecution. Biblical texts reorient the position of the Divinity to be on the side of the victim as opposed to that of the persecuting community. The mob is always portrayed as innocent in myth and completely free of flaws. By contrast, the mob’s conversion is a critical element of this biblical text. All other myths, such as Romulus and Remus, for example, are written and constructed from the point of view of the community whose legitimacy depends on the guilt of the victim to be brought together as a unified community. Real acts of violence, in other words, are what lay behind myths, which attempt to persuade that the victim was the source of the crisis and therefore justly killed by the community. By exposing the relative innocence of the victim within the scapegoat mechanism it is no longer able to function as a vehicle for generating unity and peace. Judeo-Christian revelation forces mankind to make the ultimate choice between complete self-annihilation and a renunciation of mimetic rivalry and violence.
Girard believes this to be the genesis of archaic religion, that is, ritual sacrifice as the repetition of the original event, of myth as an account of this event, of the taboos that forbid access to all the objects at the origin of the rivalries that degenerated into this absolutely traumatizing crisis. This religious elaboration takes place gradually over the course of the repetition of the mimetic crises whose resolution brings only a temporary peace. The elaboration of the rites and of the taboos constitutes a kind of "empirical" knowledge about violence.
Explorers and anthropologists have never been able to witness or bring true evidence for events like these, which go back to the earliest times. Yet 'indirect evidence' can be found, such as the universality of ritual sacrifice and the innumerable myths that have been collected from the most varied peoples. If Girard's theory is true, then we will find in myths the culpability of the victim-god, depictions of the selection of the victim and his power to beget the order that governs the group.
Girard found these elements in numerous myths, beginning with that of Oedipus which he analyzed in this and later books. On this question he opposes Claude Lévi-Strauss.
The phrase "scapegoat mechanism" was not coined by Girard himself; Kenneth Burke in Permanence and Change (1935) and A Grammar of Motives (1940) had earlier used it. However, Girard took this concept from Burke and developed it much more extensively as an interpretation of human culture.
In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978), Girard develops the implications of this discovery. The victim process is the missing link between the animal world and the human world, the principle that explains the humanization of primates. It allows us to understand the need for sacrificial victims, which in turn explains the hunt which is primitively ritual and the domestication of animals as a fortuitous result of the acclimatization of a reserve of victims, or agriculture. It shows that at the beginning of all culture is archaic religion, which Durkheim had sensed. The elaboration of the rites and taboos by proto-human or human groups would take infinitely varied forms while obeying a rigorous practical sense that we can detect: the prevention of the return of the mimetic crisis. So, we can find in archaic religion the origin of all political or cultural institutions.
The social position of king, for instance, begins as the victim of the scapegoat mechanism, though his sacrifice is deferred, and he becomes responsible for the wellbeing of the whole society.
This reverence for the future victims of ritual sacrifice is central to the rise of kingship. Thomas Heerich, German political scientist, speaks of an “underground correspondence between the sovereign and the outlaw” in Hobbesian thought. Both are beyond the laws to which most people society adhere. Traces of the scapegoat mechanism in the modern world are not only found in certain theoretical conceptions and positions, however; they can also be observed in the fates of individual rulers and political figures.
Carl Schmitt names as a central example of decisionism the understanding of executive power found in the Federalist Papers, a collection of essays that comment on the United States Constitution. While the legislative branch of the American government is based on the discussion and counsel of a larger assembly, Alexander Hamilton, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, claims that the executive can only lie in the hands of a single person. The unity of command, Hamilton argues, is central: “Decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more eminent degree than the proceedings of any greater number; and in proportion as the number is increased, these qualities will be diminished.” What appears at first glance as a mere postulate of pragmatic policy emerges at closer analysis as the remains of archaic scapegoating mentality: Hamilton argues that executive power must belong, as much as possible, to one person—so that the people can attribute the mistakes of the government to a single responsible individual.
The reign of German Emperor Wilhelm II, despite the apparent impossibility of such a notion, displays how archaic forms of sacred kingship extended even into the twentieth century. In a comprehensive analysis of Wilhelm II, Nicolaus Sombart makes use of sociological studies on sacred kingship to approach a better understanding of the role and function of Germany’s final emperor. With the help of Girard’s mimetic theory, Sombart interprets Wilhelm II as having suffered the fate of a scapegoat. 30 He refers to Wilhelm’s physical disability, his numerous political scandals, and finally his banishment and exile following Germany’s defeat in the First World War.
The German journalist Rolf Zundel addresses this phenomenon in senior German politicians who, at the end of their careers, are confronted by experiences that recall the origins of political power: Just as King Lear goes through the experience of “disturbing” the new relations, our aging politicians—Adenauer lived it, Brandt articulated it—also are the “scapegoats” of their office. Everything that threatens to impede the success of the incoming politicians is blamed on those outgoing.
According to Girard, just as the theory of natural selection of species is the rational principle that explains the immense diversity of forms of life, the victimization process is the rational principle that explains the origin of the infinite diversity of cultural forms.
The analogy with Charles Darwin also extends to the scientific status of the theory, as each of these presents itself as a hypothesis that is not capable of being proven experimentally, given the extreme amounts of time necessary to produce the phenomena in question, but which imposes itself by its great explanatory power.
According to Girard, the origin of language is also related to scapegoating. After the first victim, after the murder of the first scapegoat, there were the first prohibitions and rituals, but these came into being before representation and language, hence before culture. And that means that "people" (perhaps not human beings) "will not start fighting again." Girard says:
If mimetic disruption comes back, our instinct will tell us to do again what the sacred has done to save us, which is to kill the scapegoat. Therefore, it would be the force of substitution of immolating another victim instead of the first. But the relationship of this process with representation is not one that can be defined in a clear-cut way. This process would be one that moves towards representation of the sacred, towards definition of the ritual as ritual and prohibition as prohibition. But this process would already begin prior the representation, you see, because it is directly produced by the experience of the misunderstood scapegoat.
According to Girard, the substitution of an immolated victim for the first, is "the very first symbolic sign created by the hominids." Girard also says this is the first time that one thing represents another thing, standing in the place of this (absent) one.
This substitution is the beginning of representation and language and the beginning of sacrifice and ritual. The genesis of language and ritual is very slow and we must imagine that there are also kinds of rituals among the animals: "It is the originary scapegoating which prolongs itself in a process which can be infinitely long in moving from, how should I say, from instinctive ritualization, instinctive prohibition, instinctive separation of the antagonists, which you already find to a certain extent in animals, towards representation."
Girard discusses in this book for the first time Christianity and the Bible. The Gospels present themselves as a typical mythical account, with a victim-God lynched by a unanimous crowd, an event that is then commemorated by Christians through ritual sacrifice — a material re-presentation in this case — in the Eucharist. The parallel is perfect except for one detail: the truth of the innocence of the Victim is proclaimed by the text and the writer.
The mythical account is usually built on the lie of the guilt of the victim in as much as it is an account of the event seen from the viewpoint of the anonymous lynchers. This ignorance is indispensable to the efficacy of the sacrificial violence.
The apocalyptical situation in which the world finds itself has forced humans to take the biblical message of nonviolence seriously: “The definitive renunciation of violence, without any second thoughts, will become for us the condition sine qua non for the survival of humanity itself and for each one of us.” The apocalyptical situation brought about by biblical revelation leaves mankind with the choice between the message of God—that is, the nonviolent love of one’s enemy—and the self-extirpation of humanity.
The evangelic "good news" clearly affirms the innocence of the victim, thus becoming, by attacking ignorance, the germ of the destruction of the sacrificial order on which the equilibrium of societies rests. Already the Old Testament shows this turning inside-out of the mythic accounts regarding the innocence of the victims (Abel, Joseph, Job...), and the Hebrews were conscious of the uniqueness of their religious tradition.
Girard draws special attention to passages in the Book of Isaiah, which describe the suffering of the Servant of the Lord God at the hands of the entire community who emphasize his innocence (Isaiah 53). It is not God, thus, who is responsible for the Servant’s suffering, but rather the people who initially persecute him and then retrospectively recognize his innocence.
By oppression and judgement he was taken away;
And as for his generation, who considered
That he was cut off from out of the land of the living,
Stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
And with a rich man in his death,
Although he had done no violence,
And there was no deceit in his mouth. (Isaiah 53, 8–9)
The sacrificial account in the New Testament brings clarity to the ambiguity contained in Old Testament texts. The transformation of archaic myth occurs in the nonviolent path of Jesus that would lead to the cross.
In the account of the passion of Jesus, the texts are not written from the point of view of the persecutors, but rather identify entirely with the persecuted victim: The Gospels portray Jesus as completely innocent. The reference to the “lamb of God,” the emphasis on Jesus’s innocence, and the insight of the disciples into their own shortcomings all show distinct parallels between the fate of Jesus and that of the Old Testament Servant of Yahweh (Isaiah 53). As was portrayed in Isaiah, the Gospel accounts depict Jesus as falsely “numbered with the transgressors” (Isaiah 53: 12; cf. Luke 22: 38; Mark 15: 28). We can thus see in Jesus a confirmation of those Old Testament texts that stand in defense of persecuted victims and help to reveal the workings of the scapegoat mechanism. Jesus’s nonviolence, which he lived in accordance with his own teachings is what makes him a scapegoat.
In the Gospels, the "things hidden since the foundation of the world" (Matt 13:35) are unveiled with full clarity: the foundation of social order on murder, described in all its repulsive ugliness in the account of the Passion.
This revelation is even clearer because the whole text is a work on desire and violence, from the desire of Eve in paradise to the prodigious strength of the mimetism that brings about the denial of Peter at Pesach (Mark 14: 66–72; Luke 22:54–62).
Girard reinterprets certain biblical expressions considering his theories; for instance, he sees "scandal" (skandalon, literally, a "snare", or an "impediment placed in the way and causing one to stumble or fall") as signifying mimetic rivalry, as in Peter's denial of Jesus. No one escapes responsibility, neither the envious nor the envied: "Woe to the man through whom scandal comes" (Matt 18:7).
For Girard, the only real and nonviolent means to overcoming mimetic rivalry is found in the New Testament. The scapegoat mechanism offers a feasible way of resolving the mimetic crisis. This “solution” is based on the collective violence against a single victim. The New Testament shows us another way. We are not speaking here of a renunciation of imitation—or any romantic glorification of spontaneity—but rather of a positive form of mimesis. Girard refers to this concept as “nonviolent imitation.” For example, “turning the other cheek” (Matt 5: 38–42). If you want to put an end to mimetic rivalry, you must surrender everything to your rival. This will suffocate rivalry at its core. This is not a matter of political strategy; it is much easier and more fundamental. If the other places outrageous demands on you—because he is already under the spell of mimetic rivalry—he expects that you play along and attempt to outdo him. The only way to take the wind out of his sails is to do the exact opposite: Instead of outbidding him, yield to him doubly as much. If he demands that you run a mile, run two. If he strikes you on the left cheek, turn to him your right cheek. The kingdom of God means nothing else; but that does not mean it is easy to reach. A Christian existence does not denote an extinguishing of desire, but rather a redirecting of desire towards an end free of violence and rivalry.
In I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (1999), Girard attempts to evolve his anthropology completely from biblical thinking. He is chiefly concerned with producing an anthropological apologetics of the Judeo-Christian tradition, that is, an intellectually comprehensible verification of the uniqueness of the Bible and Christianity. At the heart of the work, one finds a comparative analysis of religious myths and Judeo-Christian revelation. In Girard’s eyes, it is precisely the difference between these two forms of religion that displays the truth of Christianity.
The fate of Jesus is portrayed not by myth, but rather by the Gospels, which break through the pattern of mythical violence and are the product of a small number of people who, in the end, were able to resist the mob’s attraction. This “protesting minority” is formed among the disciples of Jesus who, after the crucifixion, come to realize their own involvement in the persecution of an innocent victim and subsequently change their point of view. Girard argues that grace—the outer boundary of his anthropological apologetics—is what enabled this reversal.
The two examples of this reversal to which Girard refers most frequently are those of Peter and Paul. Both apostles realize through grace that they complied with the persecutors of Jesus. For Peter, it is the glance he exchanges with Jesus when he is taken captive in the temple of the high priests (Luke 22: 61); for Paul, it is Jesus’s words, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9: 4). Girard sees these retrospective realizations as crucial not only for Peter and Paul, but also for the entire Christian tradition: “The Resurrection empowers Peter and Paul, as well as all believers after them, to understand that all imprisonment in sacred violence is violence done to Christ.” This systematic insight, that the Resurrection of Jesus is prerequisite to Peter’s conversion, is rooted deeply in the Christian tradition.
An exception to the sacrificial emphasis of the New Testament is the apocalyptic material it contains. It reverts to the ambiguity of Old Testament texts, as God becomes the primeval Father of apocalyptic destruction. God initiates the impending violence. Like the Old Testament, apocalyptic is an intermediate form between archaic myth and gospel.
Albert Camus shows in The Rebel how both the Russian and French revolutions began with protesting the death penalty and ended in utter bloodbath. But a moment comes when faith, if it becomes dogmatic, erects its own altars and demands unconditional adoration. Then scaffolds reappear and despite the altars, the oaths, the feasts, and the freedom of reason, the masses of the new faith must now be celebrated with blood. Sigmund Freud speaks of justice originating from an act of collective violence.
Wars and reciprocal enmity between groups, nation-states, or blocks of states seem to belong inexorably to the nature of politics. In the history of human civilization, we find endless evidence supporting the thesis that enmity is an intrinsic component of political relations. Carl Schmitt stressed the importance of the friend/ enemy distinction most clearly. His definition found in the Concept of the Political has since become the standard: “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.” Simmel proposed a “general sociological rule,” according to which all social unity is preconditioned by hostility directed at an external enemy: “It is a fact of the greatest sociological importance, one of the few that holds almost without exception for group formations of every kind, that the shared opposition unifying against a third party works under all circumstances, and does so in fact with much greater certainty than does the shared friendly relationship with a third party.” Freud’s observation places similar emphasis on the close connection between internal love and external enmity: “The advantage which a comparatively small cultural group offers of allowing [its aggression] an outlet in the form of hostility against intruders is not to be underestimated. It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness.”
Samuel Huntington attempted to subsume the fundamental friend/ enemy distinctions under his concept of the “clash of civilizations.” Huntington’s new understanding of political identity brought Schmitt’s distinction back into the center of political thought: “We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.”
Do wars and friend/ enemy relations belong necessarily to the political nature of humanity, or can these, too, be deconstructed as cultural products and extensions of the scapegoat mechanism? Girard’s mimetic theory contradicts all attempts to portray friend/ enemy relations as a constitutional form of any clash of civilizations: “Primitive warfare takes place among proximate, neighboring groups, which is to say among people who cannot be distinguished objectively in terms of race, language, or cultural habits. There is no real difference between the external enemy and the internal friend, and it is difficult to imagine how an external pattern could account for the difference in behavior.” Girard argues that violence is always originally an internal problem. The rivalries within the group are channeled by means of the scapegoat mechanism into violence against an external enemy, which leads to friend/ enemy relations between groups. From the perspective of the mimetic theory, all warfare and political enmity arises from the scapegoat mechanism. If the scapegoat mechanism is the channeling of internal into external violence, then ritual violence is characterized from the beginning by this difference between the two types of hostility. Political enmity and warfare are therefore not eternal institutions, but rather represent—based on the ritual repetition of the scapegoat mechanism—a more advanced form of containing violence. In sum, the groups agree never to be completely at peace among themselves. We see here the principle behind all ‘foreign’ wars: aggressive tendencies that are potentially fatal to the cohesion of the group are redirected from within the community to outside
Girard’s rejection of the thesis that war and political hostilities represent eternal human institutions opens significant ethical perspectives for the future. This rejection undermines all theories that define warfare and xenophobia as inexorable elements of human nature. His argument that these institutions are based in the scapegoat mechanism shows, namely, that all forms of interpersonal violence and hostility begin in the most elementary human relationships. The way out of violence and enmity must be found on these rudimentary levels. The Sermon on the Mount is one such example that exhibits this way to peace.
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