Quotes from Rene Girard

I am convinced that we have entered an era when anthropology will become a more relevant tool than political science. We will have to radically change our interpretation of events, stop thinking as products of the Enlightenment, and finally envisage the radical nature of violence; this will produce a quite different kind of rationality as required by events.

Moralists advise us all to avoid violence, of course, but only insofar as this is possible. They authorize us, at least tacitly, to reply to obvious provocations by the measured counterviolence that I described earlier, and which seems to us always justified.

Let us not confuse true enlightenment with the idolatry of the here and now.

In a society that has fallen prey to anarchy the voracious appetite for persecution feeds on victims indiscriminately, as long as they are weak and vulnerable. The least pretext is enough. No one really cares about the guilt or innocence of the victim.

The world's myths do not reveal a way to interpret the Gospels, but exactly the reverse: the Gospels reveal to us the way to interpret myth.

Ka?de indywiduum przejawia tendencj? do czucia si? "bardziej innym" od wszystkich bli?nich i równocze?nie ka?da kultura przejawia tendencj? do my?lenia o sobie nie tylko jak o ró?nej od innych, lecz ponadto jak o maksymalnie ró?nej od innych, bowiem ka?da kultura podtrzymuje owo uczucie "inno?ci" w?ród pozostaj?cych w jej kr?gu jednostek.

If we choose Jesus as our model, we simultaneously choose his own model, God the Father. Having no appropriative desire, Jesus proclaims the possibility of freedom from scandal. But if we choose possessive models we find ourselves in endless scandals, for our real model is Satan. A seductive tempter who suggests to us the desires most likely to generate rivalries, Satan prevents us from reaching whatever he simultaneously incites us to desire.

Like Hölderlin, I think that Christ alone allows us to face this reality without sinking into madness. The apocalypse does not announce the end of the world; it creates hope.

We must renounce the gambit of "good" and "bad" - even in its inverted form. We must acknowledge that misapprehensions abound, that violence is to be found everywhere, and that our partial understanding of violence by no means assures us victory over it.

What Jesus invites us to imitate is his own desire, the spirit that directs him toward the goal on which his intention is fixed: to resemble God the Father as much as possible.

Humankind exhausts, little by little, all illusions, including inferior notions of God swept away by atheism.

Myths are the retrospective transfiguration of sacrificial crises, the reinterpretation of those crises in light of the cultural order that has arisen from them.

Being made up of distinctions, language finds it almost impossible to express undifferentiation.

Human culture is fundamentally and originally religious, rather than secondarily and supplementally.

The underground appeared in this novel as the failure and reversal of Christianity.

Ogni mediazione proietta un suo miraggio; i miraggi si susseguono come altrettante "verità" che subentrino alle verità anteriori come una vera e propria uccisione del ricordo vivente e si proteggano dalle verità future con una censura implacabile dell'esperienza quotidiana. Marcel Proust chiama "Io" i "mondi" proiettati dalle successive mediazioni. Gli Io sono perfettamente isolati gli uni dagli altri, incapaci di rammentarsi degli Io passati o di presagire gli Io futuri.

War is a total social phenomenon. In this respect, Clausewitz's analysis is a precursor of Durkheim's sociology. Clausewitz has things to teach us about "mass" violence and contagion.

He thought against Napoleon, in both senses of the word. See how fruitful resentment can be, and how it can make one

He exclaims, "Happy is the one not scandalized by me." There will be throughout Christian history a tendency of Christians themselves to choose Jesus as an alternative scandal, that is, a tendency to lose themselves and merge into the mob of persecutors. For St. Paul, consequently, the Cross is the scandal par excellence. I would observe that the symbolism of the traditional cross, the crossing of the two branches, renders visible the internal contradiction of the scandal. The

I maintain that passion and desire are never authentic in the Heideggerean sense. They do not emerge from the depths of our being; we always borrow them from others. Far from seeing conflict as a sign of mastery, as Heidegger does, we must see it as exactly the opposite, a confirmation of the mimetic nature of our desires.

Toujours et partout on peut résumer la situation initiale en termes d'une crise qui fait peser sur la communauté et son système culturel une menace de destruction totale. Cette crise est presque toujours résolue par la violence.

2. "Mimetic doubles" refers to the situation in which rivals become so obsessed with each other that they mirror each other's emotions and actions. The doubles are alike but they mistakenly see a great difference between them. Mimetic doubles are quite dangerous to one another and to others and can be quite self-destructive. —Trans.

Kahraman, gururun aldat?c? ilah?ndan vazgeçerek kölelikten kurtulur ve sonunda mutsuzlu?un hakikatine eri?ir. Bu vazgeçi?, yarat?c? vazgeçi?ten ay?rt edilemez. Romant?ik bir yazar? gerçek romanc? yapan metafizik arzuyu yenmesidir.

J'attends avec impatience le jour où les chercheurs se rendront compte que, dans les mythes, ils ont affaire aux mêmes thèmes que dans la chasse aux sorcières, structurés de la même façon et faussement perçus comme indéchiffrables.