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This paper aims to highlight Joseph de Maistre's pioneering work in anthropology, which 150 years before Girard came to the same conclusions as Girard: the importance of sacrifice in human societies, the logic of violence and its resolution, and the particular character of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which comes as a fulfillment and definitive end to the logic of bloody sacrifice. This little-known aspect of the counter-revolutionary thinker gives us a better understanding of the issues of matriarchy, patriarchy and Christian patriarchy, right up to contemporary developments with gender. He also gives us an example of the application of Catholic realism, based on theology and nourished by sound Thomistic metaphysics, and how a return to this Catholic realism in the human sciences is a key to understanding contemporary phenomena.

En el Canto V del Infierno, uno de los pasajes más universalmente conocidos de la Divina Comedia, Dante sugiere la fuerza corruptora de la literatura, desencadenante del adulterio de Paolo y Francesca. Este esquema en que lo literario se convierte en motivo de perdición, reaparece en casos tan conocidos como el de Don Quijote y otros menos conocidos como el dickensiano Nicodemus Boffin de Nuestro común amigo. Estos escritores dejan traslucir en sus obras sus inquietudes respecto a una influencia que simultáneamente buscan y temen sobre los lectores. Sus «libros dentro de los libros» pueden ser interpretados como una vacuna con la que el escritor quiere proveer al lector de las herramientas para protegerse de los efectos perversos de una literatura recibida en clave romántica. Proponemos, siguiendo especialmente a Renato Poggioli, John Freccero o René Girard, una interpretación antirromántica que subraya la actualidad de la arquitectura moral de la Divina Comedia y su ascendencia sobre varios clásicos de la literatura moderna posterior.

Negli anni Settanta, con la pubblicazione di La violenza e il sacro (1972), René Girard coglie le implicazioni sociali dell’ipotesi mimetica nata dallo studio del romanzo moderno e contenuta in Menzogna romantica e verità romanzesca (1961) e Dostoevskij. Dal doppio all’unità (1963). Uno studio incrociato degli strumenti ermeneutici che Girard adotta per ciascuna di queste fasi ci permette di tracciare una precisa strada ermeneutica che colleghi la figura di Edipo e il suo crimine, il parricidio, ai grandi epilettici del romanzo dostoevskiano. Dopo aver introdotto i termini con cui Girard coglie la derivazione paterna dell’orgoglio in Dostoevskij e dopo aver illustrato i caratteri del capro espiatorio girardiano presenti nella tragedia sofoclea Edipo re, il saggio analizza il ruolo dell’epilessia nella biografia e nell’opera di Dostoevskij, sino a giungere ad una rilettura girardiana degli schemi narrativi del romanzo I fratelli Karamazov, simbolo per eccellenza del delitto parricida.

AbstractConversations regarding moral values are increasingly becoming a pivotal dimension of public discourse. This paper presents a new approach to unacceptable discourse. Drawing on René Girard’s cultural anthropology and Luciano Elizalde’s dissent management theory, this work develops a scale of situations of dissent, such as controversy, polemic and public discourse scandal. It offers a detailed study of the polemic raised by the book Marry Him and Be Submissive, a process of dissent which was generated in Spain in November 2013 on the occasion of the publication of this Italian bestseller and lasted until January 2014. The book was written by the Italian journalist Costanza Miriano and translated and edited by the Archdiocese of Granada. The case study uses a triangular approach to discourse analysis, which aims to comprehend the enunciator’s legitimacy and social positioning, the communication context in which the debate takes place, and the characteristics of the public discourse. A central element regards how reactions are organized around the signifier 'submissive’ and the different frames of interpretation assigned to this word, in what will be called 'feminist’ and 'post-feminist’ paradigms. Mechanisms of dissent and consensus are explained, and takeaways and actors’ strategies are discussed.

Mythical and historical memory are two sides of the same reality. Folk legends remind us that there are great tragedies behind great epic heroes and mythic deeds/images. Hidden behind the monumental cultural, literary and artistic legacy lies shocking ritual violence with its deep logos. Sacred and profane violence have many variants and should thus be interpreted with great attention (semantic, semiotic, historical, cultural). The question of the economy of violence is of prime interest because of the wide array of personifications of violence: necessary, moderate, excessive, limitless, absolute, intentional and unintentional. The figure of the scapegoat changes, but not its role in the ritual of violence. The mythical memory of the Macedonians is sensitive and has the capacity to mystify and demystify historical stories. The Macedonian oral literature has preserved numerous legends, stories and poems which evoke the motif of sacrifice, both in its archaic ritualistic form (walling up a live woman in the foundations of bridges) and in its feudal historic forms of social and cultural politics. The focus of this paper will be the legend of King Marko (1335–1395) written down by Marko Cepenkov (1829–1920), and some other literary examples. It will also make a basic classification of violence (ritualistic, necessary, unnecessary and absolute).

The common good is realized in the encounter of those moments that reveal the passage from the historical identification of truth to redemption as an archetypal recognition by man of God the Creator, letting that special explosion give life to the discreet in the order of nature and the world: revolution and utopia are in fact the upheaval that indicates a social destructive disorder. In this condition man succeeds in arriving at a dimension of atonement of the past and its events, being able to evaluate his existence as often uncertain in the unfolding of his events, deducing, from his signs and his plausible correspondences, a bond that emerges linear for having been many times interrupted and resumed, and not confined to an Anderswo, distant, unattainable and indeterminable. Violence strikes in these cases the sovereign political event leading to a sacrificial crisis.

A Sagrada Escritura é peculiar no tratamento do tema violência, afirma René Girard (1923-2015). Segundo ele os textos bíblicos defendem as vítimas e denunciam a violência sobre elas; diferente das mitologias que justificam a perseguição e condenação das vítimas. Na Bíblia, para Girard, Deus não é aliado da violência como mostram, de início, três textos do livro de Gênesis: Caim e Abel (4, 1-24), Sacrifício de Isaac (22, 1-19), e José do Egito (37-50). O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar a leitura girardiana destes textos bíblicos, que mostram o registro do assassinato fundador (Caim e Abel); o vestígio dos sacrifícios humanos (Sacrifício de Isaac) e as etapas do ciclo mimético da violência: perseguição e morte-expulsão da vítima (José do Egito). A metodologia adotada é a pesquisa bibliográfica a partir das obras de Girard que tratam sobre o tema da violência e sua interpretação bíblico-teológica, concernente aos textos citados do livro de Gênesis, com o auxílio de um comentador das obras de René Girard, dos verbetes de um dicionário bíblico e diretamente dos textos bíblicos. Concluímos que é fundamental aprofundar o conhecimento de como a Sagrada Escritura trata o tema da violência, determinante para a práxis cristã na atualidade.

This article provides an overview of René Girard’s concept of mimetic desire, scapegoat mechanism and biblical demystification. It also attempts to explain the basic notions of his anthropology and to contextualize them in relation to the conceptions of philosophers like Freud, Durkheim and Nietzsche. The paper starts with an introduction to the widely discussed problem of mimetic desire. It sees Girard’s mimetic theory as a theory of conflict. Then, it analyzes how violence emerges through mimetic rivalry. From that point, the essay moves to discuss the scapegoat mechanism and the relation between violence and the sacred in archaic societies. Finally, it examines the conception of Judeo-Christian demystification of mimesis and surrogate victim.

El robo que san Agustín declara haber cometido a sus dieciséis años en sus Confesiones ha sido objeto de interpretaciones de diversa índole. Aquí, mediante el tratamiento de algunas de ellas y de los textos fuente en los que se apoyan, se propone una nueva lectura que toma como fundamento una óptica aún no delineada en los estudios agustinianos. A través de la aplicación de la perspectiva hermenéutica propuesta hace algunas décadas por el historiador francés René Girard, se advierte que el relato del robo de las peras constituye un episodio afín al mensaje revelado por las Escrituras en torno a la naturaleza del deseo humano. Se elabora una exégesis que, tomando en consideración interpretaciones precedentes, se distancia a su vez de algunos de sus fundamentos, con el fin de profundizar su alcance y demostrar que el episodio en cuestión, en conformidad con el mensaje cristiano, revela el carácter conflictivo de la naturaleza mimética del deseo.

The notion of virtuous organizations has an established place in the business ethics/organization studies literature. But this conceptualization drew principally on Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. His more recent work Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, with its focus on desire, consumption and human flourishing, demands a revisiting of the original concept. The first aim of this paper, therefore, is to provide an extended theory of the notion of the virtuous organization. An obvious application of this extended theory is to the issue of climate change. In exploring this, the paper has a further aim which is to respond to Banerjee et al.'s call for more theory building that articulates post-growth possibilities at the organization level in relation to the multiple challenges which society faces in response to the changing climate. The paper begins by summarizing the current conceptual framework of the virtuous organization while recognizing critiques of MacIntyre's work and its organizational application. It then turns to the issues of desire and consumption highlighted in MacIntyre's latest book, drawing also on an extended literature in these areas including insights from Girard's work, and concluding with MacIntyre's contentions in relation to human flourishing. This leads to the extended conceptual framework which is then applied to the issue of climate change. The particular theoretical contribution of the paper is to understand virtuous organizations as playing an important role in the redirection and re-education of desires, leading to the pursuit of goods that we have good reason to desire, and so to the good for individuals and communities, and ultimately to human flourishing within ecological limits. The similarities with and differences from the degrowth/post-growth movement are explored to demonstrate the distinctive contribution a MacIntyrean approach makes. The practical implications of this theoretical contribution are then spelled out, including a consideration of the potential ubiquity or otherwise of this approach, before conclusions are drawn.

Después de que Friedrich Nietzsche expusiera el fenómeno del resentimiento mediante un supuesto desenmascaramiento de un complejo emotivo oculto, autores posteriores, como Max Scheler y René Girard, matizaron el análisis nietzscheano aplicándolo a diversos ámbitos antropológicos y sociales. Muchas de las principales aportaciones de estos análisis contemporáneos encuentran sus precedentes en autores anteriores, modernos y medievales. Seis siglos y medio antes de Scheler, Tomás de Aquino ofrece en dos cuestiones de su Summa Theologiae dedicadas a la acedia y la envidia una serie de precisiones conceptuales y observaciones psicológicas que coinciden en gran parte de su fondo y, en ocasiones, en la forma, con ciertas caracterizaciones del resentimiento. Demostramos, apoyándonos en numerosas referencias textuales, los paralelismos entre la fenomenología scheleriana del resentimiento y la exposición tomasiana de los vicios capitales.

Hans Urs von Balthasar speaks of a diversity of contemporary philosophies moving ‘concentrically’ toward a ‘dramatic theology’. This article affirms the coherence of this claim, by establishing some of these convergences, beginning with Gaudium et Spes, and a number of theologians, pre-eminently Balthasar. Attention is then turned to the ‘Dramatic Theology’ project of the Innsbruck School, inspired by Raymund Schwager; a conception of theodrama which builds on Balthasar’s insight, while also utilising the mimetic theory of René Girard. The third section considers ways in which the insights of the Dramatic Theology project can be enhanced, by attention to three specific insights from within dramatic theory: the possibility of expanding the Aristotelian notion of ‘tragedy’; the borrowing of ‘overacceptance’ from theatrical improvision (Wells); a wider deployment of the unsettling category of ‘tragicomedy’, as applied to Shakespeare. The convergence of these insights on ‘theodrama’ is demonstrated by a comment on the Girardian/mimetic significance of each. A distinction between Balthasar and Girard is suggested, with reference to Walter Brüggemann’s dual perspectives of ‘above the fray’ and within the fray’.

In seinem Beitrag zeichnet Lukas Pallitsch die Formen von Gewalt in Michael Hanekes Film Das weiße Band. Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte nach. Dabei werden zunächst eingehend die Funktion des Erzählers und das Verstörungspotenzial von Hanekes Wirkungsästhetik diskutiert. Da im Film Gewalt und Religion in ein enges Spannungsverhältnis rücken und Kinder scheinbar ritualisierte Opferhandlungen vollziehen, bieten René Girards anthropologische Beobachtungen tieferen Aufschluss über die Emphatisierung der Opferfunktion im Film. Dabei gilt es zu betonen, dass gewaltvolle Opferhandlungen im Film ein anhaltendes Faszinosum darstellen und daher Medienpädagogik einen wichtigen Beitrag im Umgang mit der medialen Inszenierung und als kritisches Hinterfragen leisten kann.

Irony and sarcasm are common linguistic tropes. They are both based on falsehoods that the speaker pretends to be true. I briefly characterize their differences. A third trope exists that works when the relevant propositions are true – yet its rhetorical effect resembles irony and sarcasm, I call it mocking. It is mimetic evil: an agent copies another so that the result ridicules him. The image is, in a limited way, true of him and it hurts; we all are vulnerable. I provide a systematic framework for understanding this phenomenon, mocking, in terms of emulation and simulation. Finally, I introduce an idea of universal mimesis and discuss René Girard’s theory of desire. He argues that desires are copies of a model. This may not be possible, and I suggest a modification to his theory. I pay attention to his idea of mimetic desire as a source of hatred, which is obviously related to what I call here mimetic mocking.

Answering to the claim that our contemporary era has lost a connection to the domain of the sacred René Girard held that, contra Sigmund Freud, the myth of Oedipus was not primarily a story of patricide, but a hidden narrative of victimisation and expulsion. As an arch-example of mob logic the myth and Sophocles' play serve to gloss over a brutal and ritualistic sacrifice by claiming that it was the victim who acted in violation of the law; according to Girard the charges against king Oedipus were retroactively invented to justify the initial act of expulsion. In the street-art of AFK we encounter images that activate feelings of persecution and exile, uncovering a possible path to regain our connection to the holy.

In this paper we will analyze the thinking of the French philosopher René Girard about the mimetic desire that is produced in society and its derivation towards the mechanism of scapegoat. This thinker starts from the fact that we all move through this mimicry and that it can be mobilized until it reaches violence, removing and annihilating the person or group considered as guilty. As an example, two cases of social violence occurred in Korea: first, the woman who refused to clean her dog’s excrement in the subway, known as “the dog poop girl”, and second, another young woman who commented on a television show that short men were losers, and was named “loser girl”.

Firstly the present paper examines the impact of some romantic ideas on copyright and authors’ rights laws and then it proposes different regimes of intelectual property. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part is about the existential reasons that determined Wordsworth to formulate his romantic ideology. The second part examines the connections between this ideology and the laws of intelectual property. The third part features the new forms of intelectual property such as the General Public Licence and the Creative Commons in order to argue that they follow the Girardian perspective of positive imitation. 31 janvier 2018

Nous croyons tous vivre des premières fois. Que ce soit un premier baiser, un premier mot ou même une demande en mariage, notre expérience la plus banale nous pousse à croire qu’il y a des moments qui ouvrent des ruptures se phénoménalisant sous la forme de commencements. Cette sensation de la « première fois » s’étend d’ailleurs au-delà de notre vie quotidienne. La philosophie en porte la trace dans les concepts d’origine, de création ou d’événement. Pourtant, s’ils portent une origine, ces moments se donnent comme de véritables répétitions. Le paradoxe de la répétition à l’origine apparaît d’ailleurs dans un fait linguistique aussi banal que frappant : au théâtre comme au concert, les répétitions tout comme la répétition (générale) ont lieu avant ce que l’on appelle la Première. On ne répète donc pas après la première fois mais avant. Nous pouvons ainsi défendre une conception non-originale de l’origine dans laquelle l’origine elle-même fonctionne comme un double, nous permettant de comprendre que paradoxalement l’originaire n’a rien d’original.

Both on Buddhist tradition and René Girard´s thought ignorance and desire are on the basis of suffering and violence. The Buddhist tradition puts/takes ignorance, that nothing exists in and by itself, avydia as the cause of all sufferings because it generates a chain of desire / aversion that leads us to an imprisonment where we move from desiring an object to another. Girard´s perspective founds violence´s origin on the ignorance of our mimetic desire. The subject ignores that, far from being free, autonomous and differentiated, as the "romantic lie" prays, he only desires and wants by imitating a model. Neither the subject nor the object, which the subject freely thinks to desire, exist free for themselves. While this model prevails, he will react more and more violently to the claims of the subject; and even if the subject overtakes its model, he will greedily seek another and another model, always doomed to deception. If we add to this the proximity of the two anti-sacrificial perspectives, displayed on the descriptive closeness of the samsara´s wheel and the circular and sacrificial time of a pagan society, we find between Girard and the buddhist tradition enough common points for their mutual understanding.

Tanto na tradição budista como no pensamento de Girard a ignorância e o desejo estão na base do sofrimento e da violência. A tradição budista coloca a ignorância, de que nada existe em si e por si, avydia, como causa de todos os sofrimentos ao gerar uma cadeia de desejo / aversão que nos leva a uma prisão desejante de objecto em objecto. A perspectiva girardiana coloca na origem da violência a ignorância do nosso desejo mimético. O sujeito ignora que, longe de ser livre, autónomo e diferenciado como lhe reza a “mentira romântica”, só deseja e quer por imitação de um modelo. Nem o sujeito existe livre por si, nem o objecto que julga livremente desejar. Enquanto este modelo vigorar, reagirá mais e mais violentamente às pretensões do sujeito; e mesmo que o sujeito ultrapasse seu modelo, buscará sofregamente outro e outro modelo, sempre condenada a uma insatisfação. Se a isto juntarmos a proximidade anti-sacrificial das duas perspectivas, patente na proximidade descritiva da roda do samsara e do tempo circular e sacrificial duma sociedade pagã, encontramos entre Girard e a tradição budista suficientes pontos comuns para um entendimento.

Con base en Girard, Bion, Tuckman, Morgan, Anzieu, o la Sociología Clínica se analiza la posición de “Chivo Expiatorio” como suceso universal en los procesos de desarrollo de grupos y equipos. Una etapa esperable y gestionable de su evolución; no un accidente a evitar ni un motivo para desmantelar los equipos laborales puestos en marcha. Sin chivo expiatorio no hay grupo, ni regeneración grupal. Toda grupalidad vive cíclicamente “el destronamiento” de una figura anterior de liderazgo con algún tipo de violencia sacrificial. Tal acontecimiento cierra una fase de conflicto importante e inaugura una renormalización grupal. Por ello, propone incluirla como fase propia en los modelos generales de desarrollo grupal.ABSTRACTBased on Girard, Bion, Tuckman, Morgan, Anzieu, or Clinical Sociology analyzes the position of "Scapegoat" as a universal event in the development processes of groups and work groups. An expected and manageable stage of its evolution, not an accident to avoid nor a reason for dismantling the set up work teams. No scapegoat no group, no regeneration group. All groups lives cyclically "the dethronement" of an earlier figure of leadership with some sort of sacrificial violence. This event closes a major conflict phase and inaugurates a renormalization group. It is therefore proposed to include itself as a phase in the generic models of group development.

El artículo analiza la interpretación de Heidegger y de Girard acerca de la muerte «anunciada» de Dios en Nietzsche. Para Nietzsche la muerte de Dios es la muerte de la verdad, pues en toda perspectiva platónica o cristiana Dios es la verdad y la verdad es divina. Como puso de relieve Heidegger, con la muerte de Dios es el mundo entero suprasensible el que desaparece. A propósito de la interpretación de Heidegger, que no concede al anticristianismo de Nietzsche una gran importancia filosófica, Girard afirma que eso no se debe liquidar alegremente, pues está intrínsecamente ligado al pensamiento del filósofo alemán. Según Girard, Nietzsche estaba absolutamente convencido de la singularidad de la perspectiva bíblico-cristiana, rechazando en cierto modo la equivalencia establecida por el positivismo entre todas las tradiciones religiosas. Y por este motivo es por el que Nietzsche acusó a esta muerte de ser un acto oculto de resentimiento.

Si affronta una revisione della categoria psicanalitica del perturbante, con attenzione alla genesi della nozione nell’opera di Freud. Si propone quindi un’ipotesi di lettura, mediante applicazione del paradigma offerto dalla teoria mimetica di René Girard, al fine di rivedere le fondamenta antropologiche dell’esperienza codificata nel testo freudiano. Attraverso un’analisi etimologica del lemma italiano, si discute l’opportunità delle critiche rivolte alla traduzione originale, mettendo anzi in luce la complessità semantica di tale soluzione e le potenzialità esplicative che essa aggiunge alla già ampia, e nota, estensione del lemma tedesco. Con riferimento alla filosofia della storia di matrice girardiana, si mette a fuoco il ruolo della temporalità sia dal punto di vista della genesi della determinazione analitica, sia dal punto di vista delle condizioni di possibilità storiche dell’esperienza in esame.

Partindo simultaneamente do episódio bíblico de Gn, que relata a relação violenta entre Caim e Abel, e da leitura que René Girard faz da relação entre religião e violência, propõe-se uma hermenêutica da relação inter-humana originária como relação de responsabilidade pelo outro, expressa na interpelação fundamental “Onde está o teu irmão?”. Essa relação, articulada com as relações de parentalidade e de filiação, realiza-se de modo especial na fraternidade, que passa a ser compreendida como originariamente não fratricida. Essa será a relação potenciadora de toda a relação social pacífica e criadora, ou seja, não auto-destrutora da vida social, seja pela violência indiferenciada seja pela violência organizada.

The paper means to investigate the poetic rewritings of the traditional Imitatio Christi written by metaphysical poets John Donne (1572-1631) and George Herbert (1593-1633) during the religious crisis and the eucharistic debates still affecting English culture and society in the seventeenth century. To this aim, textual analyses are developed exploiting the hermeneutic possibilities offered by two ideas from René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire: the triangularity of desire and the Scapegoat mechanism as origin of sacrifice. This approach provides new insights into Donne’s Songs and Sonnets and George Herbert's The Temple, and namely the recurrence of religious triangulations in which Christ plays the role of "internal" mediator, arousing desires of replacement and rivalry. These triangulations ground on and allude to the lowering of Christ's divine figure caused by the religious crisis, and contextually reveal the desire to compensate, at least in the space of the poetical language, the threatened loss of his Real Presence.

Comme l’explique René Girard dans Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde, la nature en tant qu’extérieur au discours a toujours été l’enjeu de la mimésis d’appropriation, c’est-à-dire d’une rivalité mimétique où deux individus luttent en posant des gestes identiques pour se saisir d’un objet de désir. Le rapport de désir au modèle passe par la capacité de ce modèle à se poser comme celui qui sait maîtriser les forces des rapports de désirs sociaux et individuels.