Why haven't you converted yet?

girardfag here. happy to see some guys with PhD's moving the chains for the boy. will monitor this thread, looking forward to learning some new stuff
>and not going on a shitposting rampage i swear
>probably

OP, did you read pic rel?

Girard is an exceptionally humble man and respectful of all religions. I must state that first and foremost.

To understand what he says about the non-Christian world, you must understand what he writes about Ritual in general.

The mimetic mechanism is something that never really "disappears" - it is a constant in human affairs, after all, imitation, as Aristotle recognised, is the defining human characteristic.
However, when it comes to desire, this rivalry will always rear its ugly head once an agent desires something that the other desires (his model/mediator)
Therefore, in pagan religions, for example, there is always a ritualised re-enactment of the original murder. Charles Taylor describes this fantastically in "A Secular Age". in these "Carnivals" there is an overturning of order. Taboos are broken, prohibitions are scandalised and there is a Dionysiac (i use that word purposefully), orgiastic element which is finally culminated by a sacrifice (human or animal - depending on the advancement of the culture).
This reproduces the Cathartic effect of the original murder. It is essentially a pharmacological mechanism to stave off the growing mimetic crisis.

However, the mimetic mechanism is ever escalating and is ever hungry for more sacrifices and the pharmacological effect has far less effect as time proceeds (like a heroin junkie always chasing his first high).
A fantastic example of this is the meso-american religions.
At first, a single human sacrifice was required which would bring social cohesion for a full year. At the end of the cultures "life cycle" there were thousands of human sacrifices committed within three days.

I will continue...

The next part is difficult and i must admit it is not my strongest field in terms of Girardian theory but ill give it a shot. If anyone here knows better, please, for Girard's sake, correct me.

Where sacrifice fails, according to Gil Bailie, there can only be two outcomes - apocalyptic violence, and/or, a handing over of the use of violence to an authoritative power - many times in the guise of a caste system. This was the case in China with Confucianism/Buddhism and in India with their famous caste system.
Rivalry is limited within Castes and cannot become endemic.

However in his very last book, Girard is extremely complimentary of the Indian Vedas and found in them an extremely complex renunciation of sacrifice, however, none that culminates in the revelations of the Passion of Christ.

I'm ashamed to say I haven't, although i have been urged by many to read it. I am now urged even further!
My studies have been limited to Girard, Bailie, Banderas and, to an extent, Marion (with articles here and there presented in the "Colloquium of Religion and Violence" which i would urge you all to join)

Can you give me a short summary?

OP here, I'm going to go swim a few laps at the local pools.
Keep this thread alive if you can and i'll be back right after to continue the discussion if there's enough interest.

>Can you give me a short summary?

just an interesting work by a practicing psychologist who draws on girard and who also has a handle on the literary and philosophical sources RG read. nothing too big iirc.

>there is indeed a way out of this cycle.
You mentioned the concept of how to get out of the cycle, do you have any examples as to how you would like to see the cycle be gotten out of?

Perhaps my wording was far too strong. I have a bad habit of making bombastic claims, nonetheless, it is my conviction that there we are living in a privileged moment of history wherein the guidelines are available to escape the cycle of cultural growth/decline.
I must insert a disclaimer here:
None of my assertions take into account environmental or economic factors.

Since we are talking about cultural decline/destruction, we should engage with Spengler who seems to be the de jour figure regarding decline.
Hitherto, for Spengler, all Cultures have played out an analogous cycle of birth, growth, decline and death. Using his system, we can locate contemporaneous periods among all the "high cultures" he named. I believe his assertions were more realistic than Hegel's who saw historical progress culminate in the Western Europe of his 18th/19th century.
With time, I believe Spengler's thought has been vindicated and his model of history as consisting of self-contained cultures with their own life cycles is quite possibly more realistic though leaves much to be desired. What he does recognise about the West is our historical sense, that is, that we look as far into the past as we do into the future (the Faustian Ur-Symbol of the Infinite). I disagree that this historical obsession is due to his Ur-Symbol and would argue, as have many others, that our autobiographical nature is due to Christianity, but i digress.

It is precisely this aspect of our nature which has allowed us to look into our own past and the past of other cultures - Spengler is correct when he says that the Indians and Greek were inherently ahistoric. What we have been able to ascertain is this phenomenon of cultural decline, and while Spengler may be correct regarding the decadence of Civilisation and the political and economical machinations therein, since he is a staunch Nietzschean and Heraclitean (he wrote his PhD on Heraclitus) - he commits the above-mentioned "precious error"
I'd like to argue that with this knowledge, along with the revelations of Girard we can begin to re-orient ourselves in order to try and avoid the eternal recurrence of cultural fatality.
But how?

Plainly speaking - Conversion.

For Girard, conversion consists of our recognition that we are part of the mimetic unanimity and caught in the mimetic vortex of desiring the objects of the other.
If we transpose this simple formula to Spengler's study of cultural decline, we can see that this has never happened in all other cultures which leads to his famous "period of contending states" and eventually to "Caesarism".
But that means that we need a new model with whom we can never engage in rivalry - namely Christ. Christ desired only the Father and were we to desire the same object, rivalry and mimetic escalation is impossible.

Now this all sounds rather clumsy, so let me backtrack...

Continued on next post

We live in an age beyond ideology. All of the attempts at rational humanist self-salvation since the Enlightenment have, as Adorno rightly stated (one of the few things) led to either Auschwitz or the Gulags. Pure, instrumental Reason has failed us and contra to Max Weber who dismisses personal experience as too subjective and not tenable for a solution to his "iron cage", Voegelin (who succeeded him academically) states that “the substance of history is to be found on the level of experiences, not on the level of ideas”

What understanding and persuasion could not accomplish has to come about through experience and that experience is Conversion/Repentance/Catharsis but this is in danger of being dismissed as personal experience, unless they are taken up by individuals who have the capacity to make clear their broadly representative character which, in my opinion, is represented by writers like Dostoevsky.
Girard wrote an essay entitled "Resurrection from the Underground" which explains how both Dostoevsky's autobiographical and literary journey was the lifetime process of recognising this conversion experience and culminating in "The Brothers Karamazov" - "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." The entire book is related to this biblical quote, and in it the process required is laid bare for those who read this book in a Girardian manner.

If i can make an addition to what I have written re: Repentance..

Max Scheler here is invaluable for anyone interested in the phenomenological process of repentance. His essay "Repentance and Rebirth" is exceptional.

Now, one argument may be that repentance is individual and subjective, however, Solzhenitsyn in his collection of essay's "Under the Rubble" has an essay entitled "Repentance and Self-Limitation in the life of Nations" - here he asserts that we are a historical point where collective and universal repentance is possible.

Cool, thanks for that rich explanation, you have interesting and passionate ideas that are enjoyable to read and consider, and I hope to hear more.

I was mainly under the impression the post I responded to
>due to the Scapegoating and murder of an arbitrary victim.
This has been the case since time immemorial, with this murder of the victim being mythologised and as a result, over time, veiling the original human violence which was the cause of their peace. The West is arguably in Decline but, unlike Spengler fatalism, there is indeed a way out of this cycle.

Concluded that sacrifice, scapegoat, was needed, was thee method of turning around cultural decline? Which made me want to ask what defense contractor you work for, but I didn't and instead asked for examples of how you think the cultural decline you and others perceive, can be turned around?

Now you say conversion, I must ask: What exactly is the decline? What is being converted to? And am I wrong in thinking it appeared like you concluded in that original post I responded to, in relation to Girards expressing of this tool that had worked in the past, that it is the tool that can work again? How many other options do you think there are? What kind of victimization, scapegoating sacrifice do you think could work? The terrorists? The gays? The youth currupting philosophers? The paganists? The muslims? The mexicans? Big pharmas opioid? The blacks? Criminals? Globalists? A random person selected via lottery? A disease? The Banksters?

If Girard is Nietzschean, how could he be supportive of Christianity? A Nietzschean worldview leads to a complete loathing of Christianity and its values.

and now I may see I was mistaken, you are saying the deed has already been done as christianity, and it is the perfect foundation for 'opposite of cultural decline', which is why you mention conversion as the solution.

I should have mentioned the main point, my apologies, thank you for bringing it up. I hope this clarifies things.

For Girard, the major contribution of the Holy Bible, in particular the Passion of Christ found in the New Testament was this - and this is the second "great idea" of Girard besides the mimetic mechanism - is that for the first time in history, we are witnessing the events from the point of view from the Scapegoat itself.

Girard believes that the function of myth since "the foundation of the world" has been to veil the base, human violence which was at the centre of a particular culture's beginnings.
Girard calls this phenomenon "meconaissance" - to forget that a culture's stability was founded on murder. Reading Sir Frazer's "Golden Bough" Girard (and Frazer himself) recognised a common theme in all of the ancient myths - The death and resurrection of a divine king.
Since the scapegoat was the center of the mimetic vortex and seen as the cause of the mimetic/cultural crisis upon his death, and with the catharsis and social stability which ensued, he was, postmortem, viewed as the cause of their union.
Therefore, the murdered victim was deified, his site made holy, and prohibitions and taboos were set in place in order to avoid another mimetic crisis from occurring. Naturally, since mimetic desire is always working, if prohibitions failed, ritual was required in order to re-enact the initial murder. See this post above.
Additionally, the guilt of the scapegoat is always a presupposition in these cases and the murder, veiled by myth, is celebrated.

Girard believes that with the Old Testament there begins the slow revealing of the Scapegoat mechanism. He uses the example of Cain and Abel vs Romulus and Remus

In both cases we have two brothers and the death of one is essentially the birth of a culture or peoples.
In the case of the latter, Remus steps outside the borders and is killed by Romulus. This murder is celebrated and Rome is born. Remus is condemned and Romulus celebrated.
With Cain and Abel, there is another breaking of prohibition, and Cain murders Abel, however, in this case it is Cain who is condemned and Abel, as the victim celebrated.

Girard recognises that the Old Testament is, what he calls, a "text in travail" - the ancient Jews continued to struggle with sacrifice but, as with the story of Abraham, human sacrifice is replaced with animal and so on.

It is not until the coming of Christ and his subsequent passion, however, that the entire scapegoat mechanism is revealed for what it is - the collective murder of an innocent and arbitrary victim for the sake of communal stability.
In the case of the Passion, Christ, through his teachings reveals the entire mimetic process of rival factions, undifferentiated in their rivalry (Romans and Pharisees), singling out a victim who is completely innocent.

TBC...

Do you think cultural decline is really that bad? As long as 'things are running' how can it ever be said there is 'anything wrong generally' (i guess, at large)?

The fear is that 'things running, smoothly' (generally, at large) may actually be threatened. But how to ever really know, how actual this is, and not just the madcries of someone upset with their lot and/or their fellows?

Does it matter if the masses are participating in a declined culture, as long as a few thousand still carry on the high and good culture? Does it matter, to anyone other than those who are not among those few thousand, but are in closer proximity to the masses of uncultured?

Not only this, but Jesus' own teachings are the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, for the very mechanism which had, since hominisation, been the tool for social cohesion - the Scapegoat. For example, in the case of "all against one" which is the scapegoat mechanism - upon seeing the stoning of Mary Magdalene, Jesus draws a line in the sand saying "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" and the crowd disbands.

Therefore, Girard is in absolutely no way condoning the scapegoat mechanism but the very opposite.
Girard believes that in the ten commandments "thou shalt not covet thy neighbours oxen etc..." is a direct attempt by the ancient Jews to put a halt to the mechanism which creates rivalry - imitative desire.

However, within Jesus' two commandments - "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Is a reduction of the 10 commandments into two.
Jesus himself urges us to model ourselves on him, whose only desire is the Love of the Father, and if we were to model ourselves in this way, rather than on the many cultural objects of desire (physical and metaphysical) it is impossible to engage in rivalry with the model. Following from this love, rather than rivalry, will ensue.

So a conversion is a recognition that we are part of the process of mimetic desire, that we are, in our hearts, persecuting the other and placing our faults on him, we are part of the unanimity. In the case of Dostoevsky this is seen in the chapter - The Russian Monk - wherein Zossima, in the midst of a rivalry culminating in a duel, drops his gun.

He understands the genius of Nietzsche was to see the absolute uniqueness of Christ.
While most post-Nietzscheans fall into the tra of "comparative mythology" and lump Christ into the same category as all other mythical deities, Nietzsche understood that, in the case of Christ, it was completely different.
Nietzsche began signing his letters "Dionysus versus the Crucified" with Dionysus representing every mythical deity prior to Christ. His "versus Christ" reveals to us that Christ stands alone in the pantheon of all deities and Nietzsche, to his credit, tried to understand this difference. Unfortunately he was too enamoured with the aristocratic, dionysian master morality, and where he saw weakness in Christianity, was actually its strength, that is, its refusal to engage in rivalry and choose meekness and humility.
Has the Christian Church followed Christs teachings? No one in their right mind would agree to this statement, yet the fact of the matter remains that as a receptacle of the truth of Christ's teachings it is the greatest spiritual tool available for combating both mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism.
There is a gulf of difference between Christianity and Christendom, and Christendom has much to repent for itself (the beginnings of which, one could argue, was with the second vatican council)

All this talk about sacrifice forces me to share my can podcast with you:

martyrmade.com/8-how-to-serve-man-sacrifice-cannibalism-pt-1/

Hope you find it interesting! He pretty much accepts sacrifice as essential for humans

What would a Girardian philosophical anthropology look like? I'm still confused about the underlying hope Girard has for man..

I believe we are in Crisis for the following reason.

The Passion of Christ was a double edged sword ("Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.")

Christ understood that, by revealing the Scapegoat mechanism, we were essentially being divorced from the mechanism which had since "the foundation of the world" created social stability (which, however, always culminated in apocalyptic violence or nihilism).

With the unveiling of the violence of cultural origins, and showing the world that violence against the scapegoat was arbitrary and inhuman, we could no longer continue to rely on this mechanism to bring us the false Catharsis which had kept violence at bay.

Additionally, as Nietzsche so aptly pointed out, Christianity is the first religion that gave precedence to the victim, however, this has not stopped the victims's now of persecuting their former victimisers. There HAS been a transvaluation, and that is that people are now clamouring to label themselves as victims in order to victimise former victimisers.

Victims have accepted the role Christ has assigned them but, rather than "turning the other cheek", have fallen into the same trap as their former persecutors.

The Scapegoat mechanism is always there and is still being relied upon (Nazis vs Jews etc.) however, it does not bring social cohesion seeing as the Gospels have dispelled its former magic.
So what we are seeing, according to Girard, is "mimetic rivalry on a global scale" except, now, instead of stoning a Scapegoat, we have nuclear powers threatening to wipe entire nations of the map. We are seeing the mimetic rivalry played out Globally with the rivals becoming completely undifferentiated. All it takes to see this is to jump on /pol/ and /leftypol/. Rivals who are completely identical in their methods of persecution. The question is, who is the next scapegoat? Islam? North Korea? Whites? Blacks? Jews?
Unless we recognise our part in this within ourselves, we can not stop the built-in mechanism from destroying others and ourselves.
We have accepted Christs support of the victim but we don't have the fortitude to follow his other commands, that is, to love the lord thy God and love they neighbour as thyself.
This is too hard.

I'm sure he would see it as essential. If we are to study all religions prior to Christianity, sacrifice was the unguent that kept a society from tearing itself apart.
however, any culture which has been touched by the Gospel cannot commit sacrifice without recognising the inherent contradiction in their method.

Here is an interview made with the man himself:
youtube.com/watch?v=BNkSBy5wWDk

Girard was especially coy when answering this question but the simplicity of the answer should not belie the true, exceptionally deep meaning.
When asked "what is the solution?"
Girard answered with either

"Go to Mass"
or
"Live like a Christian"

This may seem reductive, but it is anything but once you engage with his books.

As a side note, and to expand a little further on Girard's place in philosophy i'd like to say the following:

Upon releasing "Deceit, Desire and the Novel" and "Violence and the Sacred" where Girard first presented his thesis of "mimetic desire", he was hailed as a genius. Reviewers couldn't praise him any more even if they tried. They went so far as saying (i'm paraphrasing here), "let there be an asterisk next to this year for all times. This is when the humanities changed!"

It wasn't until "Things hidden since the foundation of the world" and "The Scapegoat" were released, when Girard revealed his Christianity that he was at once ostracised from the academic community, particularly the philsophical community.

Girard was converted to Catholicism through his own discoveries and once this was revealed he was blacklisted as a hum-bug.
It is for this reason that he is not mentioned as much as he deserves or ought to be.
For me it is clear evidence of the continuing Gnostic preponderance of modern philosophy from Hegel to Heidegger. However, what we have is the first example of a legitimate, scientific theory which coincides with Christian teaching and elevates it to the position of "truth" and i believe this scares many of the philosophers who have made a career of deconstructing and asking the same old questions over and over again.

More generally, you believe there are 'problems', human problems, human strife and suffering, and you would like to end them? And you believe believing in the christian doctrine is the most surefire way of creating a foundation of solving human problems of conflict?

That is the goal though right, that does appear to be this focus? The state of human affairs in the world today, and yesterday (but hopefully not tomorrow) has 'too many' (as defined by you, and many? 'One too many' being equal to 1? but cutting in half would be a start?) conflicts, physical, mental, spiritual, injust, ignorant, sources, modes, methods, and motives of suffering, inflictors and inflictee.

>However, what we have is the first example of a legitimate, scientific theory which coincides with Christian teaching and elevates it to the position of "truth" and i believe this scares many of the philosophers who have made a career of deconstructing and asking the same old questions over and over again.

Same thing happened to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Hello fellow Girard reader.
It is interesting to observe that the scapegoat mechanism started with a human victm who would eventually be substituted. Some groups never stopped the human sacrifice. We see in the Old-Testament how children were sacrificed to Moloch and with the first contact between the Europeas and the native Americans, we have seen how important the human sacrifice was to the Mayans and other natives.
In the book of Job, we learn that God ordered a father to sacrifice his son to Him. Job accepts God's order, but as he goes on with the murder, God stops him and tells him to kill the animal instead. The jews kept sacrificing animals till the coming of Christ, when, even without accepting the Revelation, all forms of sacrifice were extinguished.
I remember watching a debate with Cristopher Hitchens a long time ago, a African man who was watching asked something like- "before Christianity we were eating ourselves in X(his country), how would we substitute that?"

You have been providing some very detailed responses. Keep with the good work!

The entirety of Girard reads like nothing but motivated reasoning.

This thread makes me get into Girard, I guess that's my mimetic desires huh

> calls Nietzsche a cuck and it's actually an argument
> says the greatness of Nietzsche lies in him paying such a high cost for being wrong and we secretly all pity Nietzsche
> blows Heidegger/Derrida deconstruction the fuck out via the sacrificial victimage mechanism
> shows the inevitable social chaos that ensues once we abandon a belief in original sin

he ended post-modernism

But the uniqueness Nietszche saw in Christ was not a good uniqueness, it was a bad uniqueness because of the nihilistic slave morality it professed. Your explanation of Girard seems to be that he thinks we should embrace this nihilistic avoidance of worldly conflict and struggle in order to avoid collapse, which is the inevitability of internal conflict and struggle spiraling out of hand. But would that not leave us permanently safe from destruction, rather it would leave us open to being the subject of conflict from those outside of the West. If someone wants to fight you, and you refuse, they're going to beat the shit out of you. It would be a civilization of Christian martyrs who are willing to fight for nothing and die for anything, with the hope that these martyrs would never fight each other. Christians refuse to engage in rivalry, but non-Christians do not, there'd be nothing stopping other civilizations from preying on us as scapegoats.

Where should I start with Girard?

not that guy.

thinking what girard is saying doesn't mean you have to be a complete welcome mat for everybody who decides to fuck with you, though. at least i've never looked at it that way. the question is *desire* and *mimetic rivalry.*

again, ask yourself why girard always says that the worst conflicts are those between *identical* parties? the real shitshows are psychological conflicts that boil over into politics. it is entirely possible, within a girardian framework, to have a sense of the limited, non-eschatological war. girard won't talk explicitly about this (unless i am mistaken) because that's not his point. his thing is the diagnosis of rivalry and the origins of violence in the first place.

if somebody's going to beat the shit out of you you have a right to defend yourself. if somebody else is coming to invade your country and subject everyone in it to tyranny, you can fight back. just because girard won't sign off on triumphalist, stylized, aestheticized, glorified militarism doesn't mean he's completely unaware of the fact that history works in this way. it does and he knows it.

*ritual* violence - culture-binding, culture-orienting, *sacrificial* violence - this is what he understands. *mythological* violence. violence *to which is added* that dimension of the transcendent, or of jouissance: that's his thing. he's not a martyr, i would say, nor does he want you to be one. and so it would stand to reason that a limited war - however contradictory this would seem, given his perspective - would actually be understandable, provided that we *do* understand that wars are not a priori self-limiting. especially once we get Big Heroic Myths involved.

violence is bad. *sacred* violence is worse. desacralizing violence is not an unthinkable possibility. it's just not going to do that by itself. and indeed is likely to do precisely the opposite, especially if the whole point is to impose one myth on top of another. b/c myths don't get along.

that's my interpretation, anyways. i could be wrong. feel free to disagree.

I've never read Girard so I have no idea whether his views are being honestly represented. But going by what the OP said, he seems to see Christianity as Christ preached it as the solution to the West's decline. But a true Christian, as Christ would have wanted without all of the Pauline bells and whistles, is not going to fight back against an invading army. Christ wants you to imitate Christ, that is the most Christian thing you can do. And what did Christ do to the Romans? He willingly went to the crucifix.

>violence is bad
eugh

>this misinterpretation of Christ's teachings to fit Nietzsche's slave morality
>trying to explain esoteric teaching by philosophers writing about what they know nothing about

>But a true Christian, as Christ would have wanted without all of the Pauline bells and whistles, is not going to fight back against an invading army. Christ wants you to imitate Christ, that is the most Christian thing you can do.

That's not true, user. Imitating Christ doesn't mean that you refusal to defend yourself. Bbw, how the doctrine preached by Paul was different from Christis?

Imitating Christ means you don't have any reason to defend yourself. Christ attempts to posit a solution to human suffering much like Buddha. For Christ, this solution consists of a detachment from worldly affairs and an unrelenting love for everyone and everything. Jesus doesn't defend his rights, he doesn't fight is accusers and oppressors, he doesn't even use the opportunity he has to avoid crucifixion and avoid his own death. Jesus doesn't resist or take pride in his life or show anger or lay blame, in fact he calls these things sins. Jesus prays, he suffers, he loves, and then he dies. He is giving the weak, the slaves of the world, an example they can follow so that they too can 'transcend' all of the suffering they have. If you truly imitate Christ, as Christ wanted, as true Christianity dictates, then you have absolutely no reason to defend yourself against an invader, like the Romans for example. Love the man who strikes you down and you too will live in the Kingdom of Heaven.

But the Kingdom of Heaven isn't an actual, literal place. It's an experience of the heart, a state of mind akin to Nirvana. But Paul would have you believe otherwise, wouldn't he? He'd also tell you to have faith in God, but Jesus was not a many of faith, he was a man of action! Take action in your life by imitating Jesus, that is the road to salvation. But what is salvation? Paul would tell you that it is a reward of eternal life in paradise, but salvation is no reward for Jesus. What was Jesus's salvation? Crucifixion.

there's no evidence that Mary Magdalene was the one being stoned

Have you read the gospel?
Jesus expells the money changers
He asks his followers to buy swords
Heals the sick
Etc
God sent His Son to be killed so the process of scapegoating would be exposed.
If you think that loving the brother as thyself means that we should allow an invader to kill women, children and other men you are dead wrong.
No the kingdom of Heaven is not the nirvana. Nirvana is the state you reach after all desire is extinguished, while a Christian believes in an afterlife judgment.

>What was Jesus's salvation?
Resurrection

>doesn't show anger
>doesn't lay blame
>governments aren't supposed to defend their populations
it's like you didn't even read the Gospels

That's true, but that doesn't change the argument

I agree

The Gospels are incredibly inconsistent in how they portray Jesus precisely because of Paul's influence on the early Church, which is what I was trying to get across. You could read them almost as describing two different people, Paul's Jesus and the true Jesus. Paul's Jesus is a mere tool to move the masses, reminiscent of the manipulative rabbinicism Paul was schooled in earlier in his life. He is a revolutionary that seeks to lead the slaves to overthrow the masters so that they may be rewarded with eternal life. Paul wanted to end scapegoats, Jesus wanted you to be the scapegoat.

>He is a revolutionary that seeks to lead the slaves to overthrow the masters so that they may be rewarded with eternal life.

He believed that Christ would return withing his lifetime, he had no insterest in overthrowing the roman authority or anything of that sort. If you read his letters, he welcomes jewish and non-jewish to the faith and there is no call to arms.

Another thing
>Jesus wanted you to be the scapegoat.

Jesus exposed the process of scapegoating, today we see the violence of the crowd not as an act of divine justice, but pure mimetic violence.

Why would you defend yourself in this life when you can be righteous and together with God in heaven even if you die? Christianity is a world-rejecting religion. To say that Christianity is the solution to the Scapegoat mechanism is to say that the death of all is the solution to the Scapegoat mechanism. (Keep in mind, in reality, I don't accept Girard's framework at all. Too much of a just so story. Also, I'm not either of the previous guys.)

Have you read any of Girard's work?

Why would a celt defend himself? He believes, after all, that the whole world will end in the ragnarok. The same goes for an @theist too, if you believe that there is no afterlife, good or evil anyway, what would make you defend yourself from an attacker?

Point me in the NT to where it says that if men are killing your family you should do nothing about it.

>Why would you defend yourself in this life when you can be righteous and together with God in heaven even if you die?

isn't self-scapegoating still scapegoating? if i choose to make myself into a martyr so that i can have a happier afterlife - what does that change? all i'm doing is directing the violence at *myself* rather than someone else. if want to self-martyr for a mythology, that's still scapegoating.
holy violence self-inflicted is still holy violence.

>Christianity is a world-rejecting religion.
not necessarily. but it is a *religion which rejects mythological scapegoat narratives predicated on ritual violence.* if the rest of the world is going one way, and this one particular group going another, then, yes, it would be 'world-rejecting.' in a sense. but it's because there is a disagreement between religious cultures about what it is that makes a world, a world.

>to say that Christianity is the solution to the scapegoat mechanism is to say that the death of all is the solution to the scapegoat mechanism.
this seems wrong to me. the point of the scapegoat argument itself is to go against exactly this. it's not, in other words, to say that the solution to scapegoating is the death of everyone, it's saying that violence - including ritual sacrifice - is a universal predicate of pre-Christian cultures and that *without* an understanding of scapegoat theory, the death of all *is indeed* what happens. it may even seem warranted, depending on who you ask. but that is his point. catastrophe - including *willed catastrophe* - is a solution but it is surely not the only one.

the reason why girard thought he was on to something is exactly because of this point that you have raised: that the alternative to a scapegoat-enlightened theology *is* that death is perceived to be the solution to all problems, *and that this will have a mythic-cultural imprimatur.* The Gods Willed It. It's The Plague. They Started It. An Evil Spirit Possessed Me. This Is The Way It Has Always Been Done. I Am The Chosen One. take your pick. they're all the same to girard. all so many games of reasons, turning upon the need to find someone to blame, execute, and subsequently deify. human psych in crisis-mode. it works, but it's wrong.

speaking for myself, the whole reason i find girard interesting is because he is not afraid to ask if in fact for humans that violence *does* in fact solves all problems, save one: the cyclical recurrence of violence itself (which is buried and consecrated under myth and tomb). it's just that *cultures rely on it* - indeed, they may fundamentally depend on it. but the reasons for doing so are not as sexy as we might like to think. they may only be unconsciously pragmatic, for reasons impossible to see without taking the perspective of the victim. because victims, sadly, prop up civilization as much as heroes.

God, smite my cowardly pride. God, pierce my ignominious delusions. Relieve me of my ambitions, and let me die, O Lord, let me die in the name of Christ. Let me be His follower. O God, deliver me unto Him, that I may be saved from the Malicious Fool that turns my fear from Thee to selfish things. Let me not love my own life. Let me not love my own life, O God. Let me lay my life down, and shed this Tattered Rag, and become nothing but a window through which the light of Christ may shine. I declare, in the name of the Lord, that I shall not covet my neighbor's house! I shall not covet my neighbors house! Let me let them be, O God, Mighty and Most High! Let me be delivered unto Thee! Let me die in the midst Thy Wondrous Light, and not in darkness in the pit of Hell. O gentle God, O sweet God, flatten my pride, scatter my delusions. I pledge myself to Thee, and to none other. Work in me Lord, that I may be excused from mine own vain workings. Work in me Lord! Give me courage! Give me grace!

the concept of mimetic desire is just so plain and boring

What do you mean by "accepting Jesus"? Righteous life? Joining the Church? Morning and evening prayers?

Also what is the significance of the Eucharist from the point of view of girardian theory?

I feel like a simulacrum, a posthuman. How can I redeem my soul from the devil?

youtube.com/watch?v=IHM5uaXS_jQ

The hardest thing for me to get on board with is submitting the entire Bible to this "mimetic" idea, especially in the sense of this being revealed while nobody else managed to grasp it before. It has a bit of that "none of you really got it, this is what they really meant" stench paired with submitting/re-interpreting everything under this one single total concept.

I've got to say it sounds interesting and I find myself nodding along to a lot of it, but those would be my biggest objections. In some ways it seems to me that it's in danger of reduce+ing Divine Revelation to one single earthly concept of mimetic desire.

I'm way too retarded to be in this but as someone who reads the bible, your interpretation of Christ is misguided.

Christ found violence was not only moral in some cases, it was necessary. He beat the merchants who were selling sacrifices at the house of worship and told his disciples to carry few things when spreading the gospel, and one of those was a sword for protection.

If he's speaking from a protestant, evangelical viewpoint, he means Romans 10:9-13.

>That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

>For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

>For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

>For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.

>For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved

not op, but

>this "mimetic" idea, especially in the sense of this being revealed while nobody else managed to grasp it before

maybe the pill will become a little more digestible when you pair it with this, though. that desires are linked, that they are not autonomous, that we are bound up with the gaze of the other and so on...suppose pic rel (who we all know through zizek) is correct. or, at least, interesting enough to think about. does mimetic desire seem less wishy-washy then? and even lacan is getting his stuff through hegel, freud, nietzsche, etc., etc.

b/c without psychoanalysis i might be inclined to agree. but with it? mimesis doesn't sound so crazy.

>>this "mimetic" idea, especially in the sense of this being revealed while nobody else managed to grasp it before

Girard doesn not claim to be the first to reach his conclusions on mimetic desire. Also, it wasn't "revealed" to him, he reached that knowledge through analysis of literature and history, similarly to Freud's analysis of the Greek classics, Dostoyevsky's and Cervante's work, but that's where the similarities between their analysis end, as they have reached very different conclusions. Having read their interpretation of Oedipus Rex, I can say that Girard's is the most reasoanable.

it's not the content of the idea that bothers me as much as the fact that supposedly Divine Revelation as a whole is (should be?) interpreted within a framework of that idea. There's something inherently wrong about that, like forcing a bigger box intoa smaller one. I suppose I don't feel comfortable interpreting something that we believe is God's word through the filter of a single human concept. At least not with such totality/finality. I've listened to 4 parts out of 5 of his CBC interview so far and that is probably the one thing that struck me as a negative. His habit of interpreting passages as always referring to mimetic desire. I mean, in some ways it makes sense, that is his work and the purpose of the interview. I will probably still read him because so far his ideas seem interesting to me, but that's the one thing that is a bit off-putting.

>Girard doesn not claim to be the first to reach his conclusions on mimetic desire...

that's what i'm saying also, since that other user mentioned having difficulty about mimesis seeming like a revealed/"nobody else saw this before" thing. maybe scapegoating was more an original argument of girard's, but "i is an other" and so on wasn't. the point was only to make the idea of his discovery of mimesis less, well, revelatory, since these were things that were just going on in those academic/intellectual circles at that time (and arguably today, if zizek's influence is any indication).

>also, it wasn't "revealed" to him, he reached that knowledge through analysis of literature and history, similarly to Freud's analysis of the Greek classics, Dostoyevsky's and Cervante's work, but that's where the similarities between their analysis end, as they have reached very different conclusions

and so no arguments here either ofc.

travelblog.org/South-America/Bolivia/La-Paz-Department/Copacabana/blog-873221.html

>it's not the content of the idea that bothers me as much as the fact that supposedly Divine Revelation as a whole is (should be?) interpreted within a framework of that idea. There's something inherently wrong about that, like forcing a bigger box intoa smaller one. I suppose I don't feel comfortable interpreting something that we believe is God's word through the filter of a single human concept. At least not with such totality/finality.

all this. i hear you there. i guess i am a little bit more amenable to the idea after having read some of lacan and having thought about the places he is prepared to go to articulate these impossible/cathartic/traumatic/&c horizons of 'the Real' (which is also, interestingly, a term for the divine that the Sufis use).

when lacan gets to the point of talking about the end of the symbolic journey - and touching on, consequently, these places of the sublime, or sublimely painful, and so on - he understandably falls short of ever saying perfectly what this means.

now that's not the same thing as talking about the Divine Revelation, of course. but maybe the point is that there is a kind of similarity i find interesting: because when we try to put the Absolute *into* a box, we fail (and lacan's own meditations on language, as well as heidegger's, both get at this point). girard is more comfortable than either of those guys with saying this has to do with Christianity itself, more than language (or Being). put another way, girard seems to be okay with leaving the religious framework as it is rather than getting around or behind it as Truth (heidegger) or Meaning (lacan): boxes in either case necessarily smaller than what those authors are trying to put into them, in their circuitous ways. and who knows? maybe that was the right way to go.

fwiw, plz note also that i'm not trying to convince you or anything. i just happen to take a weird enjoyment in talking about these things and working them out.

>At least not with such totality/finality
no doubt this.

Jordan Peterson's interpretations of the Bible stories are limited in the same respect, though this does not mean they are misguided.

I feel the same way about Jung, in that there seems to be something fundamental that is missing when reading his works. There is much to be understood, but it is not as deeply personal as something like the Ascent of Mount Carmel or Confessions.

Does Girard say anywhere that he believes that his idea of the bible is the only one that's true? Does he have that kind of tone in his books? Is it more about his reading of his text seeming limited or the fact that his ideas seem more plausible to you than others? I guess im asking a bigger question of: doesn't the reader have a role in learning an idea? Sorry if this doesn't make sense.

Except his thoughts are very much a mix between Lacan (commonly called a postmodernism-although he wasn't really) and Nancy (a post-Derridean).

did Jesu write that?

>mimetic desire
mimetic desire pretty much is 'keeping up with the joneses'?

Kind of like, tabula rassa or not, a sort of blank slate grows into the world and sees what other people have and says, 'I want those things too'... I dont think there is anything wrong or surprising about this.

If it is possible to have nice cars and home and appliances and gadgets and vacations and women and food and a boat, why would a person not want these things?

'maybe they dont really make you happy, maybe you can be just as happy with a average car, and home, and not the largest newest tv wheneevr they come out, etc.'

so what? Maybe some people can afford the other stuff, and maybe it does enhance their experience?

Is this 'mimetic desire' an excuse to say, people can be happier and the world would be better if everyone wasn't trying to keep up with the joneses?

If everyone drove the same cheap to make, efficient brand car, and everyone had 10 pairs of clothes all simple, etc. is that what is being gotten at? aNd there is only 1 tv brand, etc.?

>mimetic desire pretty much is 'keeping up with the joneses'?

in a sense yes. there's a reason why lacan is so beloved by marxist critics for that reason, because - among other things - it explains commodity fetishism. it also explains, on much deeper levels, fundamental structure of power v/kinship ties, how societies bind themselves together and so on. the freud/lacan/girard rabbit hole is deep and goes well beyond buying stuff, but at the same time, on our lovely Planet Capitalism, keeping up with the joneses...basically drives the world economy, and everything that happens in it. it all runs on desire, and we don't really want what we think we want, and so on. see zizek for further details, or dive into the theory and lose your mind.

>so what? Maybe some people can afford the other stuff, and maybe it does enhance their experience?
that's the crazy part. maybe it does...but there's a highly cultural aspect to all of this. we don't buy things purely for use or exchange value, but also for their sign value (and because consumption makes us feel good...even when it is bad for us, and so on). we're socialized like that. does it *really* make you happy? no, of course not, there's mindfulness for that. but i mean, a ferrari is still a ferrari. you get the idea.

>Is this 'mimetic desire' an excuse to say, people can be happier and the world would be better if everyone wasn't trying to keep up with the joneses?
well, i mean, the consumer rat-race sucks, but we do have to keep up, in a sense. covetousness is obviously stupid. but how about love affairs? we do these things also. sometimes they work out, sometimes not. what makes us human meatbags *happy* is pretty complicated. it's why surly french critics talk about *desire* instead.

>If everyone drove the same cheap to make, efficient brand car, and everyone had 10 pairs of clothes all simple, etc. is that what is being gotten at? aNd there is only 1 tv brand, etc.?
didn't seem to work for the communists. sadly/happily, everyone prefers capitalism...

so mimetic desire isn't necessarily *critique of envy*...but it's a pretty robust and flexible theory for describing how and why humans want/need/are stuck with each other. and even knowing about it all, we can still fall into traps.

here's a more girard-related pic. otherwise i would have posted something about the spice flowing.

bump

Does Girard ever give credit to the Buddha for also pointing out how desire is the cause for suffering?

What a bunch of nonsense. Why would a celt defend himself? Because he want to live you doofus.
>what would make you defend yourself from an attacker?
A thirst for life. Your whole reply is retarded and proves that the point went way above your head.

You did not answer the question. Try again, and be less meandering less time. So many words can only obscure a non-answer to so many people.

Mimetic Desire is a "Grand Theory". Those tend to be, almost always, wrong. Everything looks like a nail if all you have is a hammer, etc.

>one of those was a sword for protection.
And he did not let his disciples use it. He also chastised Peter when he cut the soldier's ear, and even glued it back on.

>muh money lenders in the temple getting whipped
This is your single argument and it is an untenable one. Christianity has always been a pacifistic religion. The Church Fathers went to a great length, employing quite convoluted mental gymnastics to come up with a Christian justification for violence (like Augustine's Just War theory). They knew their faith much better than a LARPing /pol/ack who thinks being a Christian and a racist jingoist are compatible positions.

The ideal Christian has always been the martyr, who like Christ dies in innocence, without fighting back.

>If someone slaps you, turn the other cheek
Is this not the epitome of Nietzschan slave morality?

If you needed any more indications that Girard's writing is a whole lot of nonsense, see here the kind of retard who reads him and takes him seriously: the same kind of brainlet who takes a charlatan like Lacan seriously.

I really hate Veeky Forums sometimes.

>b-b-but muh money lenders got whipped

I don't understand how Girard showed us anything Nietzsche didn't. Didn't he just repackage Nietzsche and somewhat arbitrarily decide that Christianity ain't so bad after all?

bump

I want to first get acquainted with the point of view of Nietzsche and Freud, and only then read Girard. What books of these authors should I read? With what texts does Girard argue?

Also who are the most interesting followers of Girard today?

He does talk about it in the book "the sacrifice ". In this book, he examines the Indian sacred texts as well.

Your question was retarded and I admittedly was restarted for trying to answer on your terms.

People always mention Peter Thiel as he is the most famous. Ive read Mark Anspach, Stephane Vinolo and Cesareo Bandera, these three are not really well-known outside Girard circles.

You still don't get it.

lol

Without reading anything in this thread, I have two questions.

1) What about other religions?
2) How does this stuff apply to the real world (ie to most people)

>You did not answer the question
the point about scapegoating seems sane to me.

as for defending oneself, you can and should defend yourself in this life. allowing yourself to be destroyed because you think it is proof that you are righteous and that this will grant you entrance into the afterlife is merely a form of scapegoating displaced from the other onto the self.

as for christianity being a world-rejecting religion, again, what has to be asked is the sense in which the concept 'world' is being construed.

>and now i shall briefly meanderamble.

this is where difficult and troubling questions arise: is inclusivity inclusive or exclusive? does diversity allow for diversity of thought? how much fidelity to a given narrative is required? what are the punishments for defection or heresy? doesn't all of this contemporary virtue signalling seem like an age of religious schismatics? we really don't know the difference between the real and the fake anymore, so we double down on exactly what postmodernism was, in theory, supposed to refute: the idea of metanarratives.

but one master metanarrative continues: the encroach of global capital into every aspect of life, and identitarian politics is exactly this way of having a revolution without a revolution. i think it's why, perhaps, this new tribalism - on the left or on the right - makes sense as reaction: people feel *too smashed in with each other* and they want to create or regulate some space for themselves. but nobody really has an outsider perspective anymore. technology and world finance connects everything and pays no mind.

this is not to say that process does not produce its own turns of the dialectical screw. formerly communist states such as russia or china are now models for authoritarian state capitalism. it's in the west where identity politics are practiced with the most zeal but mainly, i would say, out of a kind of desperate search for some alternative to the world it has itself produced and exported globally: a planet in which everyone is almost morally required to Have It Their Way. and there is no It more desirable than a sense of one's own identity. without this, no amount of consumption or commodity fetishism will ever suffice. neoliberal end of history ideas were supposed to alleviate us of the need to desire anything more than liberal democracies and free markets. but when we opted for capital over democracy - mainly because of the need for technocommercial progress - we ended up feeling oppressed by our own desires for earthly and material happiness, because commodities *could not fill in that missing piece.*

it's world economics that is doing this to people. postmodernism and neoliberalism fail at the same time, and we're living with the fallout. holding on to an age of finding identity-politics solutions to existential problems without realizing that identity politics is the problem and not the solution.

how can i argue with those quads

The Girard Reader

Forgot to give any recommendation.
The Girard Reader is a good start indeed, I'd also recommend his interview: When These Things Begin: Conversations with Michel Treguer. In the interview, he adresses the main points of his theory .

Your assuming Christ made it a general rule to not use it for protection, just because he scolded Peter for attacking the officer that was coming for Christ. That had nothing to do with self defense and Christ had told them repeatedly that they were coming for him and that they had to let it be.

You assume way too much friend.

>your second point
Holy fucking assumptions, Batman!

the guy knows Christianity better than the Church Fathers

>they're correct because of their position

Batman knows Christianity better than the Church Fathers. He always reminds me of an archangel.
.