Quotes from Rene Girard

The high priest Caiaphas alludes to this mechanism when he says, "It is better that one man die and that the whole nation not perish." The four accounts of the Crucifix-ion thus enable us to witness the unfolding of the working of the single victim mechanism. The sequence of events, as I have already said, resembles numerous analogous phenomena whose director and producer is Satan. The

The essence of desire is to have no essential goal. Truly to desire, we must have recourse to people about us; we have to desire their desires.

seria ilusório imaginarmo-nos com dimensão para criticar Shakespeare. Pode acontecer, ao contrário, que seja o inverso. Em vez de tentar julgá-lo de um ponto de vista 'moderno' necessariamente superior, deveríamos tentar encontrar algumas das suas intenções maiores que manifestamente nos escapam. Só podemos tê-las perdido -- Deus sabe onde e quando. A menos, bem entendido, que estejam ainda por desvendar

To maintain peace between human beings, it is essential to define prohibitions in light of this extremely significant fact: our neighbor is the model for our desires. This is what I call mimetic desire.

the book of Leviticus contains the famous commandment "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev. 19:18); that is, you shall love your neighbor neither more nor less than yourself.

If the Decalogue devotes its final commandment to prohibiting desire for whatever belongs to the neighbor, it is because it lucidly recognizes in that desire the key to the violence prohibited in the four commandments that precede it. If we ceased to desire the goods of our neighbor, we would never commit murder or adultery or theft or false witness. If we respected the tenth commandment, the four commandments that precede it would be superfluous.

we imitate the detached generosity of God, then the trap of mimetic rivalries will never close over us.

The Church has never been a scapegoat more than it is today. But one must see the symbolic value of this: whatever the Church may have lost by its compromises with the world, its enemies now give back by obliging it to play the same role as Christ. This is its true vocation. And now that it has been reaffirmed, it will enable the Church to shake off the indolence and decadence of the age that is now drawing to a close. MSB

If the desire of children were not mimetic, if they did not of necessity choose for models the human beings who surround them, humanity would have neither language nor culture.

For the first time in human history the divine and collective violence are separated from one another. The Bible rejects the gods created by sacralized violence.

intellectual…and even religious.

Scandals are responsible for the false infinity of mimetic rivalry. They secrete increasing quantities of envy, jealousy, resentment, hatred—all the poisons most harmful not only for the initial antagonists but also for all those who become fascinated by their rivalistic desires. At the height of scandal each reprisal calls forth a new one more violent than its predecessor.

it's a bad idea to condemn Holy Scripture hastily. When we feel like dismissing Scripture, we should watch out. Perhaps we are not, at that moment, up to what our task requires.

Resorting to a psychological explanation is less innocent than it appears. In refusing the mimetic interpretation, in looking for the failure of Peter in purely individual causes, we attempt to demonstrate, unconsciously of course, that in Peter's place we would have responded differently; we would not have denied Jesus. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees for an older version of the same ploy when he sees them build tombs for the prophets that their fathers killed.

The resistance to the mimetic contagion prevents the myth from taking shape. The conclusion in the light of the Gospels is inescapable: myths are the voice of communities that unanimously surrender to the mimetic contagion of victimization.

If the Gospels were mythical themselves, they could not provide the knowledge that demythologizes mythology.

The account thus shows once again the omnipotence of mimetic contagion. What motivates Pilate, as he hands Jesus over, is the fear of a riot.

Christianity is a founding murder in reverse, which illuminates what has to remain hidden to produce ritual, sacrificial religions.

Even the two thieves crucified at either side of Jesus are no exception to universal contagion: they too imitate the crowd; like it they shout insults at Jesus.

Jesus transcends the Law, but in the Law's own sense and direction. He does this by appealing to the most humane aspect of the legal prescription, the aspect most foreign to the contagion of violence, which is the obligation of the two accusers to throw the first two stones. The Law deprives the accusers of a mimetic model. Once

If Jesus returned their looks, these angry men would not see his look as it really is but would transform it into a mirror of their own anger. Their own challenge, their own provocation, is what they would read in the look of Jesus, no matter how peaceable it really is, and they would feel provoked in return. The confrontation could no longer be avoided and would bring about what Jesus is trying to prevent, the stoning of the victim. Jesus avoids thus even the shadow of provocation. When

The Cross is the equivalent of the Ephesus stoning. To say that Jesus identifies himself with all victims is to say that he identifies himself not only with the adulterous woman or the Suffering Servant but also with the beggar of Ephesus. Jesus is this poor wretch of a beggar. ——————————————————

A person] will desire any object so long as he is convinced that it is desired by another person whom he admires.

THE TENTH COMMANDMENT signals a revolution and prepares the way for it. This revolution comes to fruition in the New Testament. If Jesus never speaks in terms of prohibitions and always in terms of models and imitation, it is because he draws out the full consequences of the lesson offered by the tenth commandment. It is not due to inflated self-love that he asks us to imitate him; it is to turn us away from mimetic rivalries.