Possible connection between Girard and Kant:

Girard is a hack

>hurr durr we imitate other's desires
>mimetic theory will be "proven" by cool neuroscience just look at these mirror neurons

I know he is
But where do you think we are? It will take years to take over this place and make it more Veeky Forums.

Have you noticed how groups center around the hatred of another individual/group? Have you noticed how entertainers who use comedy tend to win the crowd by using a scapegoat? I.e., all jokes come at the expense of something?

Nassim Taleb said something similar to this, that love and hatred are antifragile. This is evidently true if you look around at social activism today.

Furthermore, I have noticed in myself that desires grow in me from imitation alone. Whoever I pay attention to, I immediately notice inclinations arising suddenly that urge me to follow that same behavior. Once I am conscious of it I can prevent myself from indulging in those mimetic inclinations, but if I am not, I instinctively begin to think about how I might imitate that person's behavior so I can become more like them.

It is interesting that in the same place that he is talking about imitation he also talks about Christ. There is something very, very deep here. Saints, philosophers like Kant have been preaching this sort of morality for centuries; it has been enumerated very clearly, but for the most part, I think, it humanity has failed to understand it fully. Still, it is there, floating around, waiting to be understood. It is right there, in the Gospels, in the work of Augustine, Kant, and so forth.

I think, to some extent, this idea of morality being central to the spiritual progress of man has been forgotten or smothered in the name of a more materialistic progress. We don't care about morality so much anymore and instead have faith in the potential for science to bring meaning into our lives. But it doesn't, really, because science is terribly impersonal and dead; there is more value in a single work of great poetry than in all fruits of the supposed technological destiny of man. Weininger wrote extensively about this; he said: "Art creates, science destroys the sensible world".

People are still competing, they are still using each other in order to validate themselves. Men are still using women to piece together their dismembered hearts. They are filling the holes in themselves by gazing upon material things and fusing themselves to them, and when change happens, as it inevitably does in the material world, they feel as though they are ripped apart, and once this happens they curse God and look for ways to get revenge on the world.

It is madness to curse Fortune; she promises nothing. Why are we commanded not to worship false gods and idols? Because they are not the one true God, they are not eternal, and so they cannot serve as a foothold because they will give way; they will change, and in worship they always require a scapegoat. Violence will continue until man is made whole, until his frenzy and lust ceases and he turns to God and redeems himself and resigns to Christ's Way without fear.

I believe this is the only true (and potentially permanent) consolation in life, anything else is fleeting.

>and instead have faith in the potential for science to bring meaning into our lives.

Where I'm from and have dabbled a bit in the intellectual sphere here (long story short I have one of the best known writers, the most known filmmaker and several so-so philosophers from this shit country (they're not much by the global criteria)). My feeling is the "intellectual elite" doesn't have faith in science. What it appears to me is that there is a sort of post-faith, post-teleological aura around it all. But it's not nihilistic as it used to be in the past in the "nothing really matters bro do what you want" kind of manner, which was in a way negative. Now it seems to have transposed itself into a positive more life-affirming, present-affirming state. As in "yes fuck that guy's wife, that's just life with all its ups and downs" or "yeah your wife just got fucked, that's just life with all its ups and downs" and you have to celebrate this chaos. From my writer acquaintance I also smell a tiny sense of that hate towards the meek and you could argue in a sense the hate for what they consider life denying slave-morality (whehter they are familiar with Nietzsche or not). They all seem to scoff at the idea of good conscience, but seeing how indignant my writer buddy became when it was brought up I think the distaste for the weak likely comes as a rationalization process, because in 21st century we know the scapegoat is innocent as per Girard as has been much discussed here lately. And I think these by all acounts "powerful" people know it too, that's why I was not surprised to see one somewhat vitriolic outburst against "the weak". It's the post-crucifixion conscience or Spirit knocking on their mental faculties. Sorry if that's confusing, have to run and wrote it in a hurry. To add, I think to combat your conscience post-Christ you have to conjure a rather complex and strong ideology to believe in as a substitute for knowing the Passion and what it means.

>a prerequisite for Kant's good will is transcendence of the mimetic tendency.
Kant aims at an universal law that is always applicable while mimesis is only local - and occurring within the boundaries of your community, something virtue ethicists since Confucius and Aristotle are usually concerned with.

>you can't determine morality by examples since you need morality to determine which examples
Reminds me of the chicken or the egg and the Euthyphro dilemmas.

Confucius would put it this way:
>which came first: good men or good behavior?
Kant would put it this way:
>which came first: moral men or the categorical imperative?

>is manner of speech is annoying af
It is, but it's the least of his problems.

I feel the desire to watch a kantian debating MacIntyre over the topic at hand, if Girard is right somebody would have put it into me. Whodunit? Should I blame the usual suspects?

Does the mimetic theory of desire itself not lead me to look for a culprit - the very thing Girard wanted to prevent?

>but seeing how indignant my writer buddy became when it was brought up I think the distaste for the weak likely comes as a rationalization process

There is something strange about the views on the poor in our age. Everyone pretends to care about them, but at the same time they live lives of such excess that it is very hard to believe that people don't despise them. The wealthy (by this I mean anyone who is well-off and not necessarily "rich") could do more to help the poor by embracing poverty, as is the Christian way, and showing that poverty does not erase spiritual nobility. If people renounced their vain lifestyles centered around materialism, people in poverty would not feel as though they were "missing out".

I was walking in the downtown of my city, through an area in which the homeless tend to wander, and I overheard one of them talking to himself. He was going on about some "15 million dollar idea" was though he were pitching some business plan to investors. He seemed totally lost in this train of thought.

I think this man was only imitating the type of behavior that "successful" people appear to display. But he was also imitating the desire itself, the desire to be an "entrepreneur" and play the part of a 21st century rebel, or something.

So the point is that the way that you behave will affect what other people value. And especially the people who are in a position that tends to look up to you, like the poor do to the rich. The way the rich behave affects how the poor attempt to move up in society. So if the rich are vain beyond belief and hedonistic, what surprise is it that the poor attempt to follow these awful examples? Why should it surprise us that the poor seek out their own level of hedonism in drugs and public fornication (for instance)?

Again, it seems clear to me whatever way you look at it that Christ represents something very critical to our understanding of morality and virtue, and it is by going against these (relatively simple) teachings that we fall again into cycles of violence and hopelessness (which feeds more violence and hopelessness).

It must appear too simplistic too think that Christ solved everything and we only need to follow his example by loving God alone.

I don't know why people hate Christ, but I think if they do it tells you everything you need to know about that person.

What did Girard think about Kierkegaard?

I'm not sure if it is the answer you look for, but I found this:
uibk.ac.at/theol/cover/contagion/contagion3/contagion03_bellinger.pdf

>Does the mimetic theory of desire itself not lead me to look for a culprit - the very thing Girard wanted to prevent?

The culprit is imitation in lieu of reason. That's why Christ saved humanity by providing an example in which good will overpowers the instinct toward imitation.

Why can't Girard simply do the Catholic thing for once, and blame himself over his own desire which is his and not from somebody else?

What?

Girard says you pick up desires from others, our desires aren't really our own, they come from this mimesis that hardly seems to be something we have control over.

To say: "You covet your neighbour's house/ox/wife because he desired them before and he gave you the desire", and to say: "You covet your neighbour's house/ox/wife because the desire was yours and only yours all along" are two different things.

Girard is a Catholic but he appears to be diverging from the typical approach to desire, sin, repentance, etc.

The desire IS your own, but it was incited by your observation of another.

bump

bump.

such an interesting post. thanks opie.

that's very kind anons. honestly i'd much prefer not to shit this one up with a barrage of rambling tho. maybe just dwell on this a while. have always been skeptical about the categorical imperative, but in this context it makes a little more sense. maybe kant is right about this and girard is also. seems like a bonus all around.

he's right you know

>it is, but it's the least of his problems.
true.

We are told that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. In Plato we are convinced that no man deliberately does that which is bad for him, and in Augustine we are convinced that the nature of man's sins tells us that he is looking for God, albeit in the wrong places. For instance, what does a man say about his beloved? She completes me, she is my better half, I am lucky to have her (because I am a filthy sinner and she is grace incarnate). The nature of man's love (not his sexual instinct) is that it seeks to become worthy of the beloved. His beloved then, must represent something angelic, something superior to him, and by loving this thing and serving this thing, he is attempting to redeem himself. What this proves is that the extent to which a man loves is the extent to which he recognizes his own baseness, his own inferiority.

However, without getting too much into it, woman is not God, and she is quite imperfect and petty (la donna e mobile); and so a man who relies on this creature for his salvation will fall prey to her wrath, because she is not God nor will she attempt to be God (or the Mother Mary or Christ). She is not even capable of this; this is too great a responsibility for her. The weight of a man who loves deeply comes crashing down upon a woman, and if he does not provide her with what she needs (which has nothing to do with his love, but with her nature) she will grow bitter and the relationship will fail. It is a poor lot indeed, for the man who looks to woman to be the gatekeeper for virtue, because she will not live up to it.

So sinners are looking to complete themselves in their sins. Just as man looks to woman to complete him and make him whole. This is why he loves, because he is divided. Once he recognizes this, though, then he can turn to God to heal his division, and God heals him by gently atrophying the bonds of the world, thereby encouraging the man to stop looking to material, fleeting things for fulfillment, and instead to look within where he finds triumphant goodness and love for the whole world and so forth.

This is what separates wild animals, creatures of instinct, from the potentially free man of good will, who, according to Kant is the crown of nature.

It is not science. It's the nietzschean/freudian fantasms about the religion.

>Kantian ethics
What a bunch of ethereal bullshit.

>This is what separates wild animals, creatures of instinct, from the potentially free man of good will, who, according to Kant is the crown of nature.
How can anyone write something so patently imbecilic with a straight face? Humanism truly is the biggest cancer to have ever plagued a culture. Human agency is not sui generis.

fink moar

Fink you.

lold

He hardly ever stays on topic. All of his posts are dude weed lmao XD philosophical ramblings.

Human intellect is incommensurable whereas animal instinct is incoherent. A five watt lightbulb will not provide enough light to read by, but a five watt laser beam will burn a hole through your ass and put you in the hospital in under five seconds. A 5 ounce neodymium-iron-boron magnet can cause enough loss of inertia in a ferrous body to counteract the gravitic force of the entire Earth. To say that human agency is not something greater than from animal instinct is completely vacuous hairsplitting