René Girard has already been compared to several influential thinkers.

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1°THE CHRISTIANITY HEGEL.

The French intellectual Jean-Marie Domenach said René Girard in 1981, “the Hegel of Christianity.”

2° THE HUMANITIES EINSTEIN.

Pierre Chaunu called René Girard in 2000, “the Einstein of the humanities.”

3° THE HUMANITIES DARWIN.

Michel Serres called René Girard in 2005 by his inclusion in the Académie Française, “The Darwin of the humanities.”

The latter equation inspired Pierre-André Boutang to the title of his documentary The new Darwin humanities, where he and Benoît Chantre speak with René Girard.

René Girard (1923) is a French-American thinker who began making a school from 1960 his studies of European literature.

Demystifying AUTHENTIC.

Writers such as Dante, Cervantes, Stendhal, Dostoevsky, and Proust derives their greatness as him to the unmasking of the ‘authentic.’

A ROMANTIC LIE.

They show how people need one another to ask yourself, how they follow each other.

The belief in the authenticity of the desiring subject (yourself want to be) is usually romantic lie.

MIME TABLES THEORY.

Over the years René Girard justified his hypothesis with data from above the humanities to a form of culture, science, and mimetic theory gained prominence.

Unlike many modern thinkers, he relied more explicit on the Jewish and Christian traditions.

In his research into crisis, violence and scapegoating he puts biblical stories across old and new myths.

His insights are comprehensive, ambitions are big; disciplinary subdivision in science is it an eyesore.

Besides writers, anthropologists and theologians he inspires lawyers, biologists, economists, psychotherapeutics, and pedagogue.

More about René Girard here: foto’s René Girard

René Noël Théophile Girard 25 December 1923 – 4 November 2015 was a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy.

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 criticism, critical theory, anthropology, theology, psychology, mythology, sociology, economics, cultural studies, and philosophy.

Girard’s fundamental ideas, which he had developed throughout his career and provided the foundation for his thinking,

were that desire is mimetic (i.e. all of our desires are borrowed from other people),
that all conflict originates in mimetic desire (mimetic rivalry),
that the scapegoat mechanism is the origin of sacrifice and the foundation of human culture,
and religion was necessary in human evolution to control the violence that can come from mimetic rivalry,
and that the Bible reveals these ideas and denounces the scapegoat mechanism.

Girard was also a member of the Académie Française from 2005 until his death on 4 November 2015.

GEERT VAN COILLIE ON RENÉ GIRARD.

Classicist and philosopher (KULeuven) Geert Van Coillie shows how innovative insights of philosopher René Girard (Académie Française) have profoundly changed our modern understanding of ourselves.

We act and react not as original as we believe. The man appears fundamentally a creature of imitation and violence, but also of accountability and reconciliation.

The versatile thinking of René Girard told comprehensibly and ‘translated’ using burning topical issues and topics. Google Geert Van Coillie and several PDFs at your disposal.

Geert Van Coillie brings a “cartoon” about recent human science with the guide this French-American thinker.

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With love xx

Johan en Annemie Persyn Declercq

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