An Interview of René Girard - Mimesis and Science

RG: All communities have crises, and I believe the mimetic crisis of the type I have described is a special human feature. Humans are an animal of crisis. The real problem with our social sciences is that they've never learned that. The social sciences confuse the science of humanity with what human beings say about the order of their community. If you're a sociologist, you study that order according to what people say about their own culture. If you're a psychologist, you talk about the self, according to what the self is telling you. But the question is: when a society gets into a serious crisis, who is in charge? If you listen to the government, of course you're listening to their propaganda, but very often the government is no longer in charge. None of the standard rules apply. What is a crisis? The social sciences have not been able to define it. There is a great political scientist who first said that. His name is Carl Schmitt. He said a social science should first be the science of crisis. It's very easy to define who the government is, but in most societies the government is not the most important authority. You have to study a crisis in order to see who is in charge there. Who is fighting whom? What's really going on? Now in a way, the Mimetic Theory would like to do that, because humanity necessarily starts with a crisis. It's true that it's not enough to talk about biological changes. You have to talk about cultural changes, because we know that the last stages of the evolution of humanity are both cultural and physical.
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My tendency (of thought) is to see scapegoating violence, particularly the kind that must have involved the entire community, as creative of human culture. I'm not an expert in the actual cognitive science of human origins. I read avidly what I find, but it doesn't go beyond that. And my work has brought me to the conclusion that mimesis and violence are essential to account for human origins. So it is remarkable to me that these contemporary theories do not take this into account.
What is amazing is when there is no violence in a particular culture, not the fact that there is violence. Conflict should be permanent, constantly there, since we imitate each other and are prone to mimetic rivalry. What is  interesting is to explain how a society manages those conflicts. If a scapegoat phenomenon puts an end to these hostilities, it will be repeated artificially. This is the definition of sacrifice, which for me is the beginning of human culture.

QUESTION: How is scapegoating the foundation that sets us on the trajectory toward our higher cognitive abilities, including language and rational reflective thought?

RG: One should say, scapegoat unanimity is the beginning of rationality. It is false rationality, but why is the scapegoat chosen unanimously? Because the community spontaneously discovered and subsequently believed in the majority principle. They have become democrats right there. They say, "If we are all unanimous, how could we be wrong?" They are wrong, but they are more right than other animals that cannot have unanimity. Of course this is not a matter of conscious reflective thought initially, but of mimetic repetition. The self-conscious unanimity of scapegoating is the beginning of humanity. It's the beginning of rationality. It's still irrationality, no doubt, but it's a beginning. You have to go through that phase in order to reach rationality.

QUESTION: So the tendency is to ignore violence in archaic culture and to view it as a late-developing phenomenon. We prefer to view the beginning of humanity as fundamentally peaceful and then blame our violence on more contemporary religious or cultural beliefs.

RG: We are in a privileged position to be able to talk about the essence of human community as positive - and to be sure there are many positive aspects, but there is always some kind of violence lurking in the background, which we would prefer to keep hidden and not mention in the same breath.

QUESTION: I would like to connect this discussion on the presumed innocence of early humans to our previous discussion on the presumed innocence of the early parent-infant relationship. I believe the vast majority of crimes where children, especially younger children and infants, are abused, harmed or murdered occur within the family. An the Jewish story of Abraham and Isaac is a parent attempting to sacrifice their child. A parent is about to murder their chid because God asks him to, and he's willing to do so. And that is what leads to the covenant. So in almost the same way that the sacrifice of Jesus has been viewed as the founding of Christianity, the near-sacrifice of Isaac is related to the founding of Judaism. And we know that the ritual of sacrificing the firstborn predates both of these traditions.

RG: You're right to bring this up. The sacrifice of the firstborn is found in many places. It's almost a universal custom at some point. And I think the Passover story is a good example.

QUESTION: For the ancient Hebrews, once the angel stops Abraham form killing Isaac, a ram appears magically. And that's the beginning of the thousand-year tradition of the sacrifice of animals, and that's the substitute for human sacrifice. But Jesus's sacrifice, that's the end of all sacrifices, including animals. That's the last sacrifice. And then for the rest of the time, you remember it so as not to repeat it.

RG: Correct. But the shift to an animal comes before and has tremendous importance from a human point of view, from an evolutionary perspective. The near-sacrifice of Isaac is the only text we have about the shift from the sacrifice of the firstborn to the sacrifice of an animal, which probably, in the evolution of humanity, is an immense thing. I'm surprised that there is no interpretation of this. It's so obvious, the shift from human to animal sacrifice. And the Bible shows you steps of less and less sacrifice, of less and less precious victims being killed. Every step is a descending staircase towards no sacrifice in the archaic sense.

I think in a way the course of history is a constant revelation of scapegoating, and today this revelation is fruitful in the sense that it shows you really, with many exceptions of course, where the violence lies, where the victim is. It can be misused, distorted, and so on, but there is a historical trend toward the revelation of scapegoating.

QUESTION: You believe that this trend is linked to our modern concern for victims.

RG: Yes, what is important is the emotional leap in our attitude towards victims.

Man's Purpose is God - Something Outside Himself

There is only one end for man, and that end is not to be found within himself. Man's end, man's purpose is God, something outside himself which is greater than himself. It would be false Christian spirituality to say that the end of man is his own perfection. That is not the end of man. Man's perfection is not in himself, nor can it ever be in himself. Man's perfection is in God, in incorporation in Christ, and, through Christ, in God. All your virtues and all your piety, so to speak, would remain unfinished and incomplete if you were not raised above yourself to God.  And this is the spirit of childhood, an unreserved admiration of God, an unstinted praise of God, a constant movement towards God, rising above yourself, outside yourself, so that our life is merged in the greater life of God... When once you have penetrated into him you will understand him to have great and marvelous ways, mysterious dealings with his creatures...

- Dom Anscar Vonier, O.S.B. (+1906) was the abbot of Buckfast Abbey in Devon, England. Excerpt from The Art of Christ: Retreat Conferences

The Presentation - Heather King

"The Presentation," by Heather King in the February Magnificat:

""And you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed," Simeon told Mary. Whatever pierces our heart is a religious experience. Whatever pierces our heart we are invited to offer at the temple.

We bring all our joys and all our trials. We especially bring our contradictions, our compulsions, our wounds.

To present our experiences at the temple is to sacramentalize them. To present our experiences is to recognize that all experience, from the smallest to the largest, has a supernatural dimension. We offer our experiences on the altar of the fact that we are loved just as we are, and that everything that happens to us is an opportunity to draw closer to Christ. We present ourselves at the temple because our lives, our work, our sacrifices are not our own.

Before we present ourselves at the temple, we see ourselves through the eyes of the world.  After we present ourselves at the temple, we see ourselves through the eyes of God.

Outside of the temple, for example, I'm an aging spinster, alone and unloved.  Inside, I'm a woman rich in insight, wisdom, and friends; I'm reminded that I have a unique and special mission.  Before we "present" our drug-addicted son at the temple, we are crazy with worry.  We feel like failures as parents, that our life's work has gone for naught.  After presenting him at the temple, we remember that we have given our very best, that love is never wasted or lost, that our child is in the hands of God.  In fact, that is exactly what Mary and Joseph did with Jesus.

We bring our wounds and we also bring our strengths and talents. Otherwise we tend to forget that the purpose of our gifts is to glorify God. We start to think that our gifts make us special, or that we can use them to lord it over the rest.

When we do present ourselves, we find that the temple is not empty. Simeon is there, and the elderly prophetess Anna. People have been praying for us all our lives. We are part of a centuries-old tradition, and we are invited to participate in the ever-unfolding and perpetual resurrection.

We go in peace, knowing that we, too, are servants whose eyes have "seen your salvation."  We, too, are granted a share in showing forth the light of revelation.

"So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners... Through [Christ] the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit" (Eph 2: 19-22).

Our experiences are "young."  The wisdom is old.

Heather King is a Catholic convert, contemplative, and writer.  She lives in Los Angeles and is the author of three memoirs.