The subject of his PhD at Indiana University was "American Opinion of France, –". Although his research was in history, he was also assigned to teach French literature, the field in which he would first make his reputation as a literary critic by publishing influential essays on such authors as Albert Camus and Marcel Proust L’abolition de l'esclavage concerne l'interdiction légale de l'esclavage de toutes les catégories de population, et non les cas ponctuels d'affranchissement (même ceux pratiqués à très grande échelle pendant la Guerre d'indépendance des États-Unis). Des abolitions très limitées eurent lieu dans l'Antiquité, puis de façon plus durable, sur le sol de pays européens au Moyen Âge We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow blogger.com more
René Girard - Wikipedia
Catholicism portal, nicolas grasset phd thesis. Girard was the author of nearly thirty books, with his writings spanning many academic domains. Although the reception of his work is different in each of these areas, there is a growing body of secondary literature on his work and his influence on disciplines such as literary criticismcritical theoryanthropologytheologynicolas grasset phd thesis, psychologymythologysociologyeconomicscultural studiesand philosophy.
Girard's main contribution to philosophy, and in turn to other disciplines, was in the field of epistemological nicolas grasset phd thesis ethical systems of desire. Girard believed that human development occurs initially through a process of observational mimicrywhere the infant develops desire through a process of learning to copy adult behaviour, nicolas grasset phd thesis, fundamentally linking acquisition of identity, knowledge and material wealth to the development of a desire to have something others possess.
All conflict, competition and rivalry therefore originate in mimetic desire mimetic rivalrywhich eventually reaches destructive stages of conflict both between individuals and social groups that requires them to blame someone or something in order to defuse conflict through the scapegoat mechanism.
deification or sanctification. Or, guilt is ascribed to an innocent third-party, whose murder permits the creation of a common unifying mythological underlay necessary for the foundation of human culture. For Girard, religion and mythology were therefore necessary steps in human evolution to control the violence that arises from mimetic rivalry and unequal distribution of desirable things.
Religion directed the scapegoat impulse on imaginary concepts, such as Satan or demons, the absence of which would see an increase in human conflict, according to Girard. His ideas ran sharply contrary to the post-modernism in vogue through most of his life, and his views of human nature were pessimistic in contrast with the mainstream currents of his time. Girard saw religion as an essential instrument of cohesion, believing that the primary purpose of sacred texts was to end the practice of human sacrifice through ritualistically surrogating for the behaviour triggered by scapegoat mechanism, adopting and expanding many of Nietzsche's ideas.
Girard was born in Avignon on 25 December InGirard went to Indiana University on a one-year fellowship. He was to spend most of his career in the United States. He received his PhD in and stayed at Indiana University until The subject of his PhD at Indiana University was "American Opinion of France, —". Girard occupied positions at Duke University and Bryn Mawr College from toafter which he moved to Johns Hopkins UniversityBaltimore, nicolas grasset phd thesis, where he became a full professor in In that year, he also published his first book: Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque Deceit, Desire and the Novel For several years, he moved back and forth between the State University of New York at Buffalo and Johns Hopkins University.
Books he published in this period include La Violence et le sacré ; Nicolas grasset phd thesis and the Sacredand Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde ; Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World InGirard became Andrew B.
Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization at Stanford Universitywhere he stayed until his retirement in During this period, he published Le Bouc émissaireLa route antique des hommes perversA Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare and Quand ces choses commenceront Inhe received his first honorary degree from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands; several others followed.
René Girard's work has inspired interdisciplinary research projects and experimental research such as the Mimetic Theory project sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. On 17 MarchGirard was elected to nicolas grasset phd thesis Académie française.
On 4 Novemberhe died at his residence in Stanford, California nicolas grasset phd thesis, following a long illness. After almost a decade of teaching French literature in the United States, Girard began to develop a new way of speaking about literary texts. Beyond the "uniqueness" of individual works, he looked for their common structural properties, having observed that characters in great fiction evolved in a system of relationships otherwise common to the wider generality of novels.
But there was a distinction to be made:. Only the great writers succeed in painting these mechanisms faithfully, without nicolas grasset phd thesis them: we have here a system of relationships that paradoxically, or rather not paradoxically at all, has less variability the greater nicolas grasset phd thesis writer is.
So there did indeed exist "psychological laws" as Proust calls them. Nicolas grasset phd thesis borrow our desires from others. Far from being autonomous, nicolas grasset phd thesis, our desire for a certain object is always provoked by the desire of another person—the model—for this same object, nicolas grasset phd thesis.
This means that the relationship between the subject nicolas grasset phd thesis the object is not direct: there is always a triangular relationship of subject, model, nicolas grasset phd thesis, and object. Through the object, one is drawn to the model, whom Girard calls the mediator: it is in fact the model who is sought. Girard calls desire "metaphysical" in the measure that, as soon as a desire is something more than a simple nicolas grasset phd thesis or appetite, "all desire is a desire to be", [8] it is an aspiration, the dream of a fullness attributed to the mediator.
Mediation is external when the mediator of the desire is socially beyond the reach of the subject or, for example, a fictional character, as in the case of Amadis de Gaula and Don Quixote. The hero lives a kind of folly that nonetheless remains optimistic. Mediation is internal when the mediator is at the same level as the subject. The mediator then transforms into a rival and an obstacle to the acquisition of the object, whose value increases as the rivalry grows. This is the universe of the novels of StendhalFlaubertProust and Dostoevskywhich are particularly studied in this book.
Through their characters, our own behaviour is displayed. Everyone holds firmly to the illusion of the authenticity of one's own desires; the novelists implacably expose all the diversity of lies, dissimulations, maneuvers, and the snobbery of the Proustian heroes; these are all but "tricks of desire", which prevent one from facing the truth: envy and jealousy. These characters, nicolas grasset phd thesis the being of the mediator, nicolas grasset phd thesis, project upon him superhuman virtues while at the same time depreciating themselves, nicolas grasset phd thesis, making him a god while making themselves slaves, in the measure that the mediator is an obstacle to them.
Some, pursuing this logic, come to seek the failures that are the signs of the proximity of the ideal to which they aspire. This can manifest as a heightened experience of the universal pseudo- masochism inherent in seeking the unattainable, which can, of course, turn into sadism should the actor play this part in reverse [ nicolas grasset phd thesis needed ]. This fundamental focus on mimetic desire would be pursued by Girard throughout the rest of his career.
The stress on imitation in humans was not a popular subject when Girard developed his theories, [ citation needed ] but today there is independent support for his claims coming from empirical research in psychology and neuroscience see below. Farneti [ citation needed ] also discusses the role of mimetic desire in intractable conflicts, using the case study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and referencing Girard's theory.
He posits that intensified conflict is a product of the imitative behaviors of Israelis and Palestinians, entitling them "Siamese twins". The idea that desire to possess endless material wealth was harmful to society was not new.
From the New Testament verses about the love of money being the root of all kinds of evil, to Hegelian and Marxist critique that saw material nicolas grasset phd thesis and capital as the mechanism of alienation of the human being both from their own humanity and their community, to Bertrand Russell's famous nicolas grasset phd thesis on accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature indesire has been understood as a destructive force in all of literature - with the theft of Helen by Paris a frequent topic of discussion by Girard.
A person who desires seeks to be like the subject he imitates, through the medium of object that is possessed by the person he imitates. Girard writes:, nicolas grasset phd thesis. This was, and remains, a pessimistic view of human life, as it posits a paradox in the very act of seeking to unify and have peace, since the erasure of differences between people through mimicry is what creates conflict, not the differentiation itself.
Since the mimetic rivalry that develops from the struggle for the possession of the objects is contagious, it leads to the threat of violence. Girard himself says, "If there is a normal order in societies, it must be the fruit of an anterior crisis. If two individuals desire the same thing, there will soon be a third, then a fourth.
This process quickly snowballs. Since from the beginning desire is aroused by the other and not by the object the object is soon forgotten and the mimetic conflict transforms into a general antagonism, nicolas grasset phd thesis.
At this stage of the crisis the antagonists will no longer imitate each other's desires for an object, but each other's antagonism. They wanted to share the same object, but now they want to destroy the same enemy. So, a paroxysm of violence would tend to focus on an arbitrary victim and a unanimous antipathy would, mimetically, grow against him. The brutal elimination of the victim would reduce the appetite for violence that possessed everyone a moment before, and leaves the group suddenly appeased and calm, nicolas grasset phd thesis.
The victim lies before the group, appearing simultaneously as the origin of the crisis and as the one responsible for this miracle of renewed peace. He becomes sacred, that is to say the bearer of the prodigious power of defusing the crisis and bringing peace back. Girard believes this to be the genesis of archaic religion, of ritual sacrifice as the repetition of the original event, of myth as an account of this event, of the taboos that forbid access to all the objects at the origin of the rivalries that degenerated into this absolutely traumatizing crisis.
This religious elaboration takes place gradually over the course of the repetition of the mimetic crises whose resolution brings only a temporary peace. The elaboration of the rites and of the taboos constitutes a kind of empirical knowledge about violence.
Although explorers and anthropologists have not been able to witness events similar to these, which go back to the earliest times, indirect evidence for them abounds, nicolas grasset phd thesis, such as the universality of ritual sacrifice and the innumerable myths that have been collected from the most varied peoples.
If Girard's theory is true, then we will find in myths the culpability of the victim-god, depictions of the selection of the victim, and his power to beget the order that governs the group. Girard found these elements in numerous myths, beginning with that of Oedipus which he analyzed in this and later books. On this question he opposes Claude Lévi-Strauss. The phrase " scapegoat mechanism " was not coined by Girard himself; it had been used earlier by Kenneth Burke in Permanence and Change and A Grammar of Motives However, Girard took this concept from Burke and developed it much more extensively as an interpretation of human culture.
In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the WorldGirard develops the implications of this discovery. The victimary process is the missing link between the animal world and the human world, the principle that explains the humanization of primates, nicolas grasset phd thesis. It allows us to understand the need for sacrificial victims, which in turn explains the hunt which is primitively ritual, and the domestication of animals as a fortuitous result of the acclimatization of a reserve of victims, or agriculture.
It shows that at the beginning of all culture is archaic religion, which Durkheim had sensed. So we can find in archaic religion the origin of all political or cultural institutions. The social position of king, for instance, begins as the victim of the scapegoat mechanism, though his sacrifice is deferred and he becomes responsible for the wellbeing of the whole society.
According to Girard, just as the theory of natural selection of species is the rational principle that explains the immense diversity of forms of life, the victimization process is the rational principle that explains the origin of the infinite diversity of cultural forms.
The analogy with Charles Darwin also extends to the scientific status of the theory, as each of these presents itself as a hypothesis that is not capable of being proven experimentally, given the extreme amounts of time necessary for the production of the phenomena in question, but which imposes itself by its great explanatory power, nicolas grasset phd thesis. According to Girard, the origin of language is also related to scapegoating.
After the first victim, after the murder of the first scapegoat, there were the first prohibitions and rituals, but these came into being before representation and language, hence before culture.
And that means that "people" perhaps not human beings "will not start fighting again. If mimetic disruption comes back, our instinct will tell us to do again nicolas grasset phd thesis the sacred has done to save us, which is to kill the scapegoat. Therefore it would be the force of substitution of immolating another victim instead of the first. But the relationship of this process with representation is not one that can be defined in a clear-cut way.
This process would be one that moves towards representation of the sacred, nicolas grasset phd thesis, towards definition of the ritual as ritual and prohibition as prohibition. But this process would already begin prior the representation, you see, because it is directly produced by the experience of the misunderstood scapegoat. According to Girard, the substitution of an immolated victim for the first, is "the very first symbolic sign created by the hominids.
This substitution is the beginning of representation and languagebut also the beginning of sacrifice and ritual. The genesis of language and ritual is very slow and we must imagine that there are also kinds of rituals among the animals: "It is the originary scapegoating which prolongs itself in a process which can be infinitely long in moving from, how should I say, from instinctive ritualization, instinctive prohibition, instinctive separation of the antagonists, which you already find to a certain extent in animals, towards representation.
Unlike Eric GansGirard does not think that there is an original scene during which there is "a sudden shift from non-representation to representation," [15] or a sudden shift from animality to humanity. According to the French sociologist Camille Tarot, it is hard to understand how the process of representation symbolicity, language actually occurs and he has called this a black box in Girard's theory.
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, time: 22:15Thomas Piketty - Wikipedia
Sabroe profile movie. With billion people and a population growth of 83 million a year and less than 25 million square miles of habitable land, the world's carbon footprint is heavily excessing all tolerable limits. 20% of the world's electricity consumption is used for cooling purposes Thomas Piketty (French: [blogger.com blogger.com]; born 7 May ) is a French economist who is Professor of Economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (French: École des hautes études en sciences sociales: EHESS), Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics and Centennial Professor of Economics in the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of L’abolition de l'esclavage concerne l'interdiction légale de l'esclavage de toutes les catégories de population, et non les cas ponctuels d'affranchissement (même ceux pratiqués à très grande échelle pendant la Guerre d'indépendance des États-Unis). Des abolitions très limitées eurent lieu dans l'Antiquité, puis de façon plus durable, sur le sol de pays européens au Moyen Âge
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