(This is a continuation of a series of posts comprised of Part I and Part II. Reading those posts first is a necessary backdrop to Part III given here. If you would like to read all three parts in a single post, click here.)
INTERDIVIDUALITY
Girard’s anthropology implies that human subjectivity is essentially de-centered. The Mimetic Theory replaces the notion of the individual as the first principle of social analysis with the radical notion (more…)
One of my favorite podcasts is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast in which a published New Yorker Magazine story author picks another author’s story from the archives, reads it out loud and discusses it with a New Yorker editor. Listening to that podcast a few days ago, I chanced upon the story “Adams” written by George Saunders and read by Joshua Ferris. (Here is a link to that podcast reading and discussion. Here is a link to the text of the story from the New Yorker archives if that works better for you.) I mention it because Saunders’ story is a near perfect (more…)
Here are a few posts that you can look forward to over the coming weeks/months:
1. A continuation of my introduction to Mimetic Theory, including the following topics: the gospel unmasking of sacrificial myths, the apocalyptic situation that results from this unmasking, the notion of “structural innocence”, the “interdividual” status of human beings, the mimetic origins of occult phenomena, hominization and the birth of meaning, and (more…)
(This is a continuation of a summary description of Mimetic Theory that I began in Part I. Make sure you read that first. If you would like to read all three parts in a single post, click here.)
THE SACRIFICIAL CRISIS
It is clear that mimetic rivalry is an incubator and accelerator of human violence. Mimetic forces left unchecked by external societal checks would result in contagious spasms of violence. Remember that the strong mimetic tendency in humanity is biological and preconscious rather than a product of human deliberation. Therefore the origin of any general disorder caused by the propagation of mimetic rivalry would be generally mysterious, while its effects are obvious and dangerous. The societal checks that we take for granted (police forces, manners, etc.) have a history (more…)
A cold, grey, drizzly day in Augusta, Georgia today — a day that reminds me of my six months spent in the Aleutian Islands in 1990. The gloom was unrelenting. Soldiers stationed there during the Second World War often developed the “Aleutian stare,” eyes set at a thousand-mile focus as if looking through things. But I actually liked the Bering Sea environment — I think I was the only one of my squadron mates who did — for the simple fact that it was a great place to read.
As a balm for the gloomy days that face you, here are some links to some of my favorite essays, an off-the-cuff selection limited to what is available online:
I want to write on the “liturgical” character of Plato’s education program as laid out in the Republic, particularly Book VII. My thinking on this subject has been shaped primarily from three sources:
1) Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formations by James K. A. Smith — the first volume in a projected trilogy called Cultural Liturgies;
2) “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” an essay by Simone Weil;
3) Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi.
This post will be rather longer than usual, but I hesitated to divide up these confluent sources of inspiration, since their ideas overlap in interesting ways — with each other and with Plato’s thought. (I will relate Girardian mimetic theory to these later.) Such moments of agreement (homologia) are often a first sign that one may be on to something… (more…)
(This is the first of three connected posts. If you would like to read all three parts in a single post, click here.)
The Mimetic Theory of Rene Girard is a chief source of insight for me both personally and academically. Since my book project will make constant use of Girardian ideas in interpreting Plato, I think its necessary to unpack this subject a little for the uninitiated so that what I write later can make sense. For those who are already initiated in Girardian thought, I lift up my interpretation to your critical review in gratitude and humility so that you can help me distinguish between Girard’s theory and my interpretation of the same. This will take a few posts to get through, but here is a first attempt: (more…)
My defining sin is sloth. I am pretty good at avoiding sins of commission — although I certainly have my share — but it is the sins of omission that really get me. By sloth I don’t exactly mean laziness; I mean what the medievals called acedia, a condition perfectly consistent with constant activity. In Dante’s Purgatorio, for instance, the slothful are found running nowhere in particular in a restless frenzy. This restlessness is closer to the essence of sloth than true rest is. As Samuel Johnson writes: “It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility.” And: “There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of (more…)
Class starts for me today — a class in Ancient Greek Philosophy. My reading list includes the Platonic dialogues Republic and Phaedrus, Presocratic fragments (with an emphasis on Heraclitus and Parmenides), selections from Aristotle’s Physics, De Anima, Ethics and Politics. University policy dictates that I begin with a preassessment exercise. Mine consists of a pair of questions to which I have students jot down brief impressionistic answers:
1. Socrates preferred to teach by means of questions — why do you think he may have had this preference?
2. Which is easier — to attain knowledge or self-knowledge? Why?
Clearly these questions don’t admit of tidy or even correct answers. Although I think them answerable, I do not think they are *finally* answerable. My hope is that my students (and I) can hold these questions in the background of our thinking throughout the course and beyond. I think there is great value in sustained attention to such questions, even if the answers never improve. Questions shape our subjectivity more than answers, both our attentiveness and our reflectiveness. A thinker without a question is like a body without a soul. Something in us must *commit* to particular questions if we are ever to advance as thinkers and knowers.
“There is a certain guidance each person needs for his whole life, if he is to live well; and nothing imparts this guidance — not high kinship, not public honor, not wealth — nothing imparts this guidance as well as love” [i.e. eros] — Socrates in Plato’s Symposium, translated by Alexander Nehemas and Paul Woodruff (Hackett Publishing, 1989), 178C-D.
In order to understand how eros can function as a guide for life, I think it is helpful to anatomize eros into four interrelated parts: 1) penia, 2) poros, 3) chorismos, and 4) kinesis (more…)
shared ignorance 