Rene Girard Quotes

To escape responsibility for violence we imagine it is enough to pledge never to be the first to do violence. But no one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else.

Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did anybody ever seriously confess to envy? Something there is in it universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime. And not only does everybody disown it, but the better sort are inclined to incredulity when it is in earnest imputed to an intelligent man. But since it's lodgement is in the heart and not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies a guarantee against it.

Sacrifice is violence and it's obviously an effort to prevent violence in the community by finding the right escape hatch through some kind of innocuous violence. This they didn't see. They couldn't see it because, influenced by Enlightenment presuppositions, they believed in the innocence of humanity, the basic goodness of man. Why should humanity need that violence? The only possible answer is that humanity needed that violence to avoid another kind of violence: people’s own violence against one another.

But why choose animals? Because the more violent we become, the more we want to do away with violence. Sacrifice works. Sacrifice diminishes the violence in the community. Sacrifice is inventive. See, why not animals that would look like a human? We know very well that many sacrificial societies establish animals within the community before sacrificing them. They want to make them more human. They want to diminish the distance between man and animal because it would be better, probably, to sacrifice a man, but let's sacrifice an animal so we don't kill a human victim and let's make that victim as human as possible. Let's have that victim within the community.   One of the greatest human institutions, that played a tremendous role in the development of culture, is the domestication of animals. I think the domestication of animals is a fruit of sacrifice.

We didn't stop burning witches because we invented science; we invented science because we stopped burning witches.

Sacrifice, in my view, is the center of human culture; the original center, of course, is the death of the victim that reconciles the community. This is why human societies have a religious center; human societies are all built around religion. There is no natural human society in the same way that there is a natural animal society; but in a way there is a similarity between the fights and rivalries of animals. However, in the case of humans, the rivalry resolves itself only when a scapegoat is selected.

Archaic religion believes in the scapegoat business, and when you believe in the scapegoat business you don’t talk about it in terms of scapegoating. Only the Gospels can do that: because they don’t believe in it, they tell you that Jesus is a scapegoat. When you say that someone is a scapegoat, he is not your scapegoat. To have a scapegoat is to be unaware that you have a scapegoat, to think he really is guilty. It's so simple that people don’t understand it. Scapegoating is effective only if it is nonconscious. Then you do not call it scapegoating; you call it justice. That's

lie of scapegoating, this unconsciousness of scapegoating (to have a scapegoat is not to be aware that one has a scapegoat), therefore means that a text that openly mentions scapegoating cannot be a scapegoat text. I have confidence that this will be done and is already being done by interpreters of the Bible who use mimetic theory.

vision. The dynamic psychology described in this book largely focuses on the interface of psychology with what Rudolf Otto called the numinous. The numinous is described in light of Orthodox Christian theology as outlined by theologians such as Vladimir Lossky and the Church Fathers. In addition to these developments, Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic desire is incorporated to present a modern version of the Christ as Victor theology of the early Church. Including Rene Girard may seem odd, since he is noted to have criticized Jung. Nevertheless, it is the nature of creativity to help synthesize seemingly unrelated or contradictory ideas. We attempt to do so with Jung and Girard. We

When you came up with this idea, were people generally accepting of it?   RG: Very, very few people understand. More people now do understand, but not too many. However, it must be said that there are better ways to formulate it than the way I have done so far; it could still be done better. I mean more clearly, more explicitly, more forcefully, more dramatically while at the same time showing that once the scapegoat, the lie of scapegoating, this unconsciousness of scapegoating (to have a scapegoat is not to be aware that one has a scapegoat), therefore means that a text that openly mentions scapegoating cannot be a scapegoat text. I have confidence that this will be done and is already being done by interpreters of the Bible who use mimetic theory.  

We had a great department there; we were something. We were pretty much at the top of the university. So we were treated well by the administration. In 1966 we held a symposium. We were the first to bring the deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida and others to the United States. Many of my colleagues were hostile to that. They felt it was very bad. Two years later they were all converted to deconstruction. That left me somewhat disconcerted, and I left for Buffalo.   SB: Why did that bother you?   RG: Well it bothered me because deconstruction is against reality. They say everything is language. I think, as I said before when talking about my study of ritual, the way I read a theorist like Frazer is that you can choose either to say everything is language or everything is a fluid reality of violence that takes various shapes and can be named in different ways. That’s my way. Out of the sight of reality but not against language. I say it can be named different ways, but behind the solid stuff are human relations and the violence that creates a false peace. What they say is that everything is about language; everything is play, futility. There is no reality. You don’t have to worry about anything. Ultimately it becomes dull and stupefying, this doing away with reality. I think that day is finished.   Ultimately

What Jewish tradition refers to as the yetzer ha-ra. [15]

The serpent is in effect saying, “Pay attention to me, and I tell you that God is trying to prevent you from having fun,” which is exactly what we hear today about modernizing the church. Don't believe the old rules, the old God, since we have a new god who knows better, which is our own whim. We want to do this and that. The old law does not interest us. That's why I always distrust certain "progressive" attitudes in religion. When people start worshipping words like “modern,” making things more relevant, you can be sure that they are shifting away from God, who is judged or regarded as outmoded relative to some more modern god, which always turns out to be the serpent. It always advises us to do the same thing. In other words, the only interesting objects are the ones that have been banned by God. In fact, they are not interesting at all. When Adam and Eve eat the apple, they gain nothing and they lose everything. They lose paradise. So this is very important for me, of course, because when people ask me what is mimetic desire in religious terms, my tendency is to say it's original sin. It's what's specific to humanity. Previously, I said humanity is more intelligent because it's more mimetic. But that means when it's exposed to evil, it can be good or it can also be evil. The one and the other go together. Therefore, we have an explanation of original sin that makes sense scientifically.   The

This analogy can also be found in Jon Pahl, Empire of Sacrifice (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 20. [19]

So if you absorb his or her flesh, you become them, just as if you absorb the flesh of Christ, you should become a little bit nonviolent, more than you were before. If you understand this text, you also perceive that it cannot have been put there by people who want to fool us. We can discover in these sayings tremendous aspects that no one has yet discovered that fit the Christian meaning. Like the stone that the builders rejected. So therefore faith is highly linked to the text; that must be something a little bit Protestant in me. It is Christ himself who assumes the responsibility of quoting that psalm[35], saying "explain it to me, explain the relationship with me.” We haven't deciphered it yet. It should be enough for everybody to understand that Christianity is not a text like others where part of its truth is still hidden but decipherable. This is the sort of thing that can restore the damaged faith of our time.   We’re talking about two types of religion. One fundamentally deifies scapegoating. Therefore, it ultimately deifies violence itself. When I called my second book Violence and the Sacred, it really meant that the sacred is nothing but violence; it's only insofar as you don't see this that violence is the sacred. The real sacred – or let us say the holy, let's not use the same word – is love, divine love: not human love, which is a miserable imitation of divine love, but real divine love. Mysteriously, God is using human violence to bring the human animal to the level where we will try to teach it love. Humanity is therefore going through a violent phase, which is archaic religion. There is the animal at the bottom, there are the violent religions, and then there is the religion of love. Are we going to understand it or not? In some ways, I say only in some ways, the symbolism of violence, the sacred, looks more like God’s love to us, in our weakness, in our violence, than anything else. We don't reach that total violence in a way that we represent in our archaic religions. But in some ways archaic religion has features, real features of divinity, since it reconciles in a certain context. Oh, this sounds dreadful, but we don't want to worship violence. Christ teaches us that we have to worship only love, but we have to understand that worship of violence is a series of steps towards love. This is why I say revelation takes into account the whole history of human religion.   SB:

SB: I think this is the recognition that something profound has taken place. There has been a new birth of consciousness.   RG: A new birth of consciousness, yes, because human consciousness is born in violence, through violence.   SB: Thus Joseph can say, "You meant it for ill, but God meant it for good."[36]   RG: “God meant it for good.” So in other words, you have the two religions that are, in a way, signified by the story of Joseph. In the end what Joseph says is that shift, that shift which must be represented in the First Testament. That's why the First Testament is so powerful, because it constantly demonstrates that shift in its greatest stories. I think you said something very profound in the Joseph story, "You meant it for ill, but God turned it to good." In other words, all your violence leads you to a higher stage of humanity. So in a way that would also be one of the reasons why even if the Joseph story is a late story in terms of literary production, it is placed very early in the Bible, because it announces what the Bible is about.   SB: The other thing about these stories is that you'll notice they give hope because none of the people in the Bible are perfect. If they were perfect we couldn't identify with them.   RG: For certain they're all human, because you feel it in the Joseph story too, when they find Joseph dressed as the most important guy at the funeral. Their temptation must be to turn him into a god there, to see him as a god. Not only is he the viceroy, but he also has food, which they don't have. So he's like a transcendental Joseph, but since we’re in the Jewish world here they don't divinize their brother.   SB: No idols.   RG: No idols, that's right.   SB: This could not have been told in Greece. RG: This could not have been told in Greece. That's for sure.   SB:

If Jesus’ death is different, it is not because he suffered more than other martyrs, either physically or spiritually, nor because his death was lonelier, or more humiliating, or more gruesome (despite Mel Gibson’s heroic attempt to render it so). This common idea is quite mistaken. Such considerations are not what make Jesus’ death unique. The uniqueness of his death is found in its meaning

Do you have anything else that you’d like to say about “I am the way, the truth and the life”?   RG: Yes, on Jesus as the life, because the life is the resurrection. He is the truth we’ve been talking about, nothing but that. The way, of course, is to imitate God, which is to imitate Christ, because if you act like Christ you’re not going to be happier, you’re going to be persecuted. You’ll be happier in a higher sense, but you’re going to be persecuted; but therefore you’re going toward the truth. Thus, ultimately, you’re going toward life because you’re going toward resurrection. So in a way, in these three words, the entire Christian trajectory of Christ himself and of his real disciples is summed up: the way, the truth and the life. The life should be last because it’s about resurrection.

Dostoyevsky is the one novelist I studied that is the closest to the type of world we live in. I still feel that way now that terrorism is an even bigger presence in our world than it was at the time I wrote Deceit, Desire and the Novel. Much of my theory of human relations is already there in my first book. At the same time this history is the history of what happens to the Christian world, which becomes less and less Christian over time, which is a history of modern individualism, which in turn is a rebellion against religion. SB:

As a matter of fact, it's the main event; it’s the story of the founding murder. Now, you will immediately observe that it's not a collective murder but, if you look at the text closely, you will see that it can be interpreted as a collective murder. Cain says, “Now that I have killed my brother, everybody will kill me.” In other words, the law against murder, the implicit law against murder, has been broken. Now everybody can kill me. So I will make a law against murder. The first consequence of the murder of the brother is also the law against murder. Therefore, it's a foundation of the human community. It has, in a way, “good” consequences. We can put “good” between quotation marks here, because everything is founded on evil violence. But it makes it less bad if you know that murder is forbidden from now on. To say that murder is forbidden is to say that we have a human society. We are no longer in the wildness of Cain’s murder of Abel. Therefore, we are told that Cain is the founder of the first community. We are never told how he does it, but it's obvious. The only thing he does before this society is founded is to kill his brother. This murder can easily be interpreted as collective if, after he has killed his brother, Cain is threatened with murder all over the place. “Everybody is going to kill me,” he says. In other words, people will kill each other.   Therefore, Cain is the symbol of a tribe at first, but doesn't necessarily have to be regarded as a mere individual.

Now that I've killed my brother, everybody will kill me”? Who is "everybody"? Is it Adam and Eve? Is it two old parents? That makes no sense. Therefore, you have to say that we are in a fluid situation where we are dealing with a community and the founding of the community. It's no longer chaos. It's a community that is run by the rule against murder because there has been a murder. So I say the founding murder, which is a collective murder, is like that. There is something in the first epistle of John that is a reading of Cain and Abel.[15] Satan was a murderer from the beginning. The “from the beginning” is very important because it means what I just said to you: for the Gospel, Cain and Abel are part of original sin. Cain and Abel are part of the first definition of mankind. That's very important. We are dealing with the biblical interpretation of the founding of human communities as a result of original sin, which is the law against murder in the first Cainite community. After that they invent all sorts of things because they have ritual, because they have some form of sacrifice. So it's really very close to what we said previously. What I'm doing now is interpreting the beginning of the Bible in terms of the anthropological theory that we are discussing.[16]   SB:

since we are dealing with scapegoats in all these cases, all myths are wrong since they tell us that the scapegoat is guilty. They fulfill the function of mythology, which is to expel an innocent, but they don't know it. That's how they can do it. Whereas the Gospels tell us the victim is innocent. Once you have the Passion text inside your world, it contaminates all the scapegoats around and tends to make you discover that all collective victims must be a little bit similar to Christ, that they are condemned for no reason at all. That's why the great stories of the Bible, which reveal the innocence of Joseph, of Job, and so on, are beginning to shatter the scapegoat system all around, but Christianity does this more completely as it invades the pagan world. In its contact with religions of scapegoating, it undermines them. The presence of the Gospel undermines scapegoating. Therefore it tells us the truth, and we say we want the truth. Well, we have it. But we cannot really stand the truth because, if we have the truth, it means we are deprived of sacrifice. The Christian world is a world in which sacrifice, in the archaic manner, disappears. It disappears in Christian lands more than anywhere else. It's only in Christian territory, too, that “scapegoat” means an innocent victim. In Japan, they have to use the English world. They have no word for scapegoat, a phenomenon I discussed with Japanese scholars. They agree that a scapegoat is guilty.   SB:

philological history of the term “scapegoat” in English can be found in David Dawson, Flesh Becomes Word: A Lexicography of the Scapegoat (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012). [18]

Sacrifice is repeating the event that has saved the community from its own violence, which is killing a victim.

The young Camus thought he could dispose of Kierkegaard in a few sentences, but Kierkegaard on Camus goes much deeper...

Una vez que sus necesidades primordiales están satisfechas, y a veces incluso antes, el hombre desea intensamente, pero no sabe exactamente qué, pues es el ser lo que él desea, un ser del que se siente privado y del que cualquier otro le parece dotado. RENE GIRARD