René Girard on Mimesis, Scapegoats, and Ethics

George L. Frear, Jr.

The contemporary French theorist René Girard makes extraordinary claims for his theory, at least in today's academic climate. He asserts that he has uncovered the foundation of all religion and all culture. His theorizing, he says, has "affinities with the genealogical and deconstruc-tive practices of our time," but unlike others he does not end with "epistemological nihilism."1 Instead, he offers what he holds to be a science of humanity that can answer the question of the origin of religion and thereby of culture. He notes that he is greeted with great skepticism and yet also with indulgence. In amusement and perhaps exasperation he asks, "If the thesis I defend is worthless, what can be the value of the books devoted entirely to defending it?"2

The position I will develop is that his theory is far from worthless, but that it does not disclose the foundations of religion and culture as

René Girard, Foreword to The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred by James G. Williams (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), viii.

2René Girard, Le bouc émissaire (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1982), 137. The translation is mine, for the particular passage is omitted in the English version, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccerò (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). The question I quoted would fall between the first and second paragraphs on p. 95. Translations seem sometimes to be problems in the case of Girard. James G. Williams in "The Innocent Victim: René Girard on Violence, Sacrifice, and the Sacred," Religious Studies Review 14 (October 1988): 320, states that consideration of Girard in North America has been hampered by the translation of Violence and the Sacred. Therefore, in all cases but one I will cite both the French original and the English translation of Girard's major works on religion. In addition to Le bouc émissaire or The Scapegoat, there are three major works. La violence et le sacré (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1972); English translation, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, in collaboration with Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort, trans. Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987). (Since Girard, who is himself fluent in English, made revisions in the text for the translation, I will in this case cite only the English version.) La route antique des hommes pavers (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1985); English translation, Job: The Victim of His People, trans. Yvonne Freccerò (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987).

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he claims. Rather it elucidates in a telling way certain highly significant distortions that have occurred and still occur in religion and culture. His books are of great value for illuminating these distortions. They are a help for ethical reflection.

Girard has stated that his underlying theory and his various concrete analyses go together and that we cannot have one without the other.3

If however we take the position that I do, that his theory discloses part of the total picture but not all of it, then it is quite natural to be critical of his full claim and yet to acknowledge many helpful insights. The development of my position falls into three parts: first, a presentation of Girard's basic theory; second, a criticism of that theory; third, a consideration of how what emerges from this criticism shows Girard's helpful insights in social ethics.

I. Girard's Theory of Religion and Culture

My first task then is to present Girard's fundamental social theory. A brief presentation of course cannot reproduce all the nuances of his various books,4 but fortunately the basic ideas are simple. I will present

3In "Discussion" following the paper of Jonathan Z. Smith, "The Domestication of Sacrifice," in Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, ed. Robert G. Hammerton-Kelly (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 220.

4While Girard gives numerous brief summary statements, he has nowhere, so far as I know, given a comprehensive outline of his thought. In the secondary literature an excellent and up-to-date presentation can be found in Robert G. Hammerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence: Paul's Hermeneutic of the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 13-39. Another fine up-to-date summary is given by James G. Williams, The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred, 6-14. These two books along with Raymond Schwager's earlier summary and appreciation of Girard's thought, Must There Be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible, trans. Maria L. Assad (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987) show that one can be a "Girardian" and a member of the guild of biblical scholars. Unfortunately, Hamerton-Kelly's and Williams's works became available to me only as I was revising this article. They are complementary in that Williams's work surveys the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels while Hamerton-Kelly expounds the apostle Paul. Both works are full of illuminating insights. Detailed criticism will probably come from other biblical scholars. I will mention only one point. Both authors accept without reservation and frequently allude to Girard's negative sacrificial view of "the Sacred" (Hamerton-Kelly, 94, 107, 110, 112, 129, 135; Williams, 52,102,146,187, 208, 243, 252) also called "sacred violence" (Hamerton-Kelly, 4, 6, 7, 9, 13, 40, 63, 88, 120, 140, 161, etc.; Williams, 81, 147, 148, 149, 150) or the "primitive Sacred" (Hamerton-Kelly, 16, 25, 63, 88, 98,137,139). I find this puzzling in biblical scholars who are affirmative about the Bible. Williams writes quite positively about the call of Isaiah, 143-44, with no mention of the cry of the Seraphim, "Holy, Holy, Holy" (Isa. 6:3). Hamerton-Kelly expounds Paul; he offers little criticism of the apostle. Yet somehow he passes over in silence Paul's belief in the "Holy Spirit" (Rom. 5:5; 9:1; 14:17; 15:13. 1 Cor. 6:19; 12:3. 2 Cor. 13:13, etc.) and in the holy people or "saints" (Rom. 1:7;

René Girard on Mimesis, Scapegoats, and Ethics 117

them in a fourfold sequence: first, mimetic desire and violence; second, scapegoating; third, the appearance of religious awe or the sacred; fourth, the Bible and Christian revelation. To some degree, the sequence follows the chronological development of Girard's thought, for his first works were literary criticism devoted to mimesis, which he found represented in the works of such novelists as Stendhal, Cervantes, Flaubert, Proust, and Dostoyevsky. Later he presented his theory about the origin of religion. His Christian thought came after that.5

A. Mimetic or Triangular Desire and Violence

An illustration of the first parts of Girard's thought could well be children on a playground. Girard himself suggests the illustration of children. He speaks of the "acquisitive imitation" that arises if one puts "a certain number of identical toys in a room with the same number of children."6

The children's basic needs presumably are satisfied. Girard acknowl­edges almost in passing that there are basic needs,7 a point to which I will return. But the children on the playground are moved by more than basic needs. Once these needs are met and even before then, they are stirred by desire for a fullness of being that another seems to have. They desire what the other child desires; one child becomes a mediator of desires to another, whence Girard's name of mimetic desire. Mimetic desire can also be called triangular desire because instead of the straight line of a subject that desires an object there is a triangle of subject, mediator, and object.

8:27; 12:13; 15:25,26; 16:2. I Cor. 1:2; 6:1,2; 16:1,15. 2 Cor. 1:1; 8:4; 9:1,12; 13:12, etc.). He does refer to Paul's statement that the Law is "holy" (Rom. 7:12). See 107,141,147, 158. There is, however, a negative cast to the statement that the Law in the Judaism Paul knew was "sacred," 150. Unless the authors can make a distinction between "holy" and "sacred," which would seem to me arbitrary, they have followed Girard in ignoring the many positive references to the sacred in the Bible.

5The early work of literarary criticism is René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, trans. Yvonne Freccerò (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966). The fundamental theory of religion is found in La violence et le sacré. The chief exposition of his Christian thought is found in the other three works listed in note 2 above. His most recent publications return to literary theory and are devoted to Shakespeare, but they reflect all the developments in Girard's thought. René Girard, Collective Violence and Sacrifice in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (Bennington, VT: Bennington College, 1990). René Girard, Λ Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

6Girard, Things Hidden, 9. 7Girard, La violence et le sacré, 204; Violence and the Sacred, 146.

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It is easy to imagine that the competition in the playground heats up. Mimetic desire leads to rivalry. The mediator is not only a model but an obstacle, a model-obstacle. The mediator becomes an obstacle as well as a model because one child cannot have what the mediator has. The mediator prevents the satisfaction of the desires he or she arouses. The children come to be filled with envy, with ressentiment in the Nietzchean sense. If things become really wild, the normal distinctions between the children tend to vanish. Each becomes the double of the other. Rivalries intensify and become paroxysms. We probably leave the playground here, but Girard is thinking chiefly of early human societies, and he goes on to hold that hallucinations arise and monsters appear. Finally, the horde degenerates into violence. There is no need, Girard holds, to posit that humans have an aggressive instinct or a Freudian death instinct. Mimetic desire is enough to account for the appearance of internecine violence.8

Ä Scapegoating

The next stage in Girard's thought could easily be exemplified on a playground. The generalized violence turns toward a particular victim, selected for no good reason. The victim is in some way different, a stranger, someone somehow on the margins. Children might easily single out an outsider. Although this individual is not in fact guilty for the heated situation that has arisen, the crowd treats him or her as guilty, and upon this hapless person, or it might be a group, the crowd vents its fury.

This victim of crowd violence Girard calls the scapegoat. Though Girard has used this biblical term from the outset of developing his theory of religion, he does not draw his concept from the biblical scapegoat ritual. He is thinking of a human victim of the crowd's violence and a victim more likely to be killed than merely driven away. He is thus using the term as it is widely used today in ordinary language.9

8Girard, La violence et le sacré, 201-234; Violence and the Sacred, 143-168. See also Girard, Things Hidden, 3-47, and on the model-obstacle 2% and 321. See also Girard, La route antique, 75-77; Job, 49-50. An early description of triangular desire is in Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 1-52.

9Girard, La violence et le sacré, 102-129; Violence and the Sacred, 6S-88. That Girard has been thinking of the biblical scapegoat from the beginning is shown by his use of the word "émissaire" in the chapter title and throughout. See especially 115. The English translation uses "surrogate" except on p. 77. That the biblical ritual is not the best example of his meaning he states in "Generative Scapegoating," in Violent Origins, 77. See also Girard's Foreword to Williams, The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred, vii.

René Girard on Mimesis, Scapegoats, and Ethics 119

C Religious Awe or the Sacred

It might happen on a playground that after the children had hurt one of their fellows, they would undergo a sudden change of mood. Still united, as they were in their violent act, they would now be quiet and would regard their victim in a subdued way, perhaps with something like awe. At least this is what Girard believes happens in primordial society. After the violence against the scapegoat comes social peace, and the grateful crowd now sees in its victim a sacred epiphany, a divinity, though it is unaware that its own violence has created its god. One can say of the scapegoat system "vox populi, vox dei?m This is Girard's account of the origin of religion, or, we might better say, of religious awe or the sense of the holy, for Girard typically speaks not of la religion, but of le religieux (the religious, the religious sense),11 for him a synonym of le sacré (the sacred, the holy). The divinities that arise from this primordial act of violence retain its aura. They are both maleficent and beneficent, for the violence that created them was first one in which the members of the crowd were against each other and then one in which they were united.12

Girard's tracing of the origin of religion and of culture to an act of collective violence reminds one of the Freud of Totem and Taboo, and Girard admires both that book and its author.13 The differences between the two thinkers, however, are important. The notion of violence from mimetic rivalry has wider scope than the murder of the primal father by his sons. Also, Freud spoke of a single primordial murder, while according to Girard the scapegoat mechanism may have taken place many times in prehistory and have continued into history.14

10Girard, La route antique, 32, 194; Job, 18, 131. "English translations generally do not try to reflect Girard's choice of the word

religieux but translate it by religion. Despite what seems to be increasing fame for Girard, no one to my knowledge has yet produced a concordance. However, I can offer a representative sample of passages where religieux is translated by religion. I give the page of the French version first and the corresponding page of the English translation in parentheses. La violence et le sacré, 42 (Violence and the Sacred, 23 [Here the English but not the French uses italics.]), 149 (103), 191 (134 [On this page religieux appears twice in the same paragraph; it is first rendered religion and then religious misinterpretation.]) 430 (310). Le bouc émissaire, 137 (The Scapegoat, 95). La route antique, 43 (Job, 26), 111 (74-75 [The word religieux appears twice in the same paragraph. It is first translated sense of religion and then religion.]).

12Girard, La violence et le sacré, 347-348; Violence and the Sacred, 251. 13Girard, La violence et le sacré, 265-304; Violence and the Sacred, 193-222. 14See Girard, in "Discussion" following his paper "Generative Scapegoating" in Violent

Origins, 121.

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Grateful humans do not forget the event that creates social peace. They strive to remember it, but not directly. If they remembered clearly what happened, there would be suspicions and the possibility of renewed violence.15 Remembering but not remembering exactly is fundamental. For this inexact memory, Girard uses the French word "méconnais­sance" a knowing that also misapprehends, a misrecognition.16

There are three important aspects to the preservation of the experi­ence of the sacred: prohibition, ritual, and myth.17 The role of prohibi­tion in primitive society is to prevent violence from arising by prevent­ing the imitation that leads to it. Prohibition guards against mimesis. As one example of a prohibition, Girard believes that the taboos surrounding twins reflect the fear of humans becoming doubles of one another.18

The centerpiece of the Girardian interpretation of the religious feeling is ritual, specifically sacrifice. Humans must replay the founding event to experience again the salutary unity that came from violence,19

but by expressing the violence in ritual sacrifice they divert it from the community. Even if a sacrifice is ostensibly for something like rain or fair weather, its real, if unconscious, purpose is always to prevent violence within the group.20 Typically, humans substitute an animal for the original human victim, since animals bear some but not too great a resemblance to humans. Animal sacrifice thus expresses but controls violence.

Girard holds that his theory of violence and sacrifice accounts for hominization. Mimesis is found among higher animals, but with them instinct inhibits violent expressions. Hominids with the loss of instinc­tual repression turned to violence.21 Thus sacrifice appeared. Hunting and the consumption of animals and then later the domestication of animals probably arose among originally vegetarian hominids from the search for victims that would bring about reconciliation.22

Finally, there is myth. As ritual relives violence against the scapegoat, myth remembers it, but like ritual it does so in a hidden way since humans must know, but must not know exactly, about the violence

Girard, La violence et le sacré, 191; Violence and the Sacred, 134-135. 16Girard, La violence et le sacré, 149; Violence and the Sacred, 103-104. 17While the three aspects make up the basic outline of the first part of Thing Hiddden,

1-138,1 am indebted to the clear exposition in Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, 29-39. 18Girard, Things Hidden, 10-19. 19Ibid., 19-30. ^Girard, La violence et le sacré, 22; Violence and the Sacred, 8. 21Girard, Things Hidden, 84-104, especially 87. ^Girard, La violence et le sacré, 16-17,26-27; Violence and the Sacred, 3,11-12. Girard,

Things Hidden, 68-73.

René Girard on Mimesis, Scapegoats, and Ethics 121

that founds their community. All myths, according to Girard, tell in their way about the original violent situation, about the founding of community through a lynching, about the victim who according to the myth was not lynched but deserved to suffer.23 As an expert in Greek thought Girard, draws his examples especially from Greek myth and particularly from the Oedipus myth, but he finds the motif throughout mythology and in later literature too, for instance in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.24

Even as a culture moves away from sacrificial religion, the scapegoat mechanism and vengeance remain. Legal systems do not depend on repeated sacrificial rites to restrain violence, but even though they represent a development of rationality, they still are based upon revenge.25

D. The Bible and Christian Revelation

"All religious rituals," writes Girard in a characteristic statement, "spring from the surrogate (émissaire) victim, and all the great insti­tutions of mankind, both secular and religious, spring from ritual."26

One might well expect that Girard would include the Christian tradition in this judgment. Would it not be easy for him to do so, since Chris­tianity began in an act of sacrificial violence? Girard states that he long felt antipathy for the Bible of Judaism and Christianity,27 but he came to a complete change. Far from speaking of Christianity as one more example of human "misrecognition" of its violent origins, he instead writes of "Judaeo-Christian revelation" and of "biblical and Christian knowledge."28 The essential difference is that in most religion one hears the voice of the victimizers, that is, of those who hurt and kill the scapegoat, while in the Christian Scriptures the innocent victim speaks. Most religion presents the epiphany of the god humans unconsciously create in their violence; the Bible reveals the true God, the God of the victims.

The Old Testament begins the process of hearing the voice of the victim. In Genesis the story of Cain and Abel takes the side of the innocent Abel and not the murderer Cain. Joseph too is an innocent

^Girard, Things Hidden, 119. ^See Girard, La violence et le sacré throughout, especially 102-129; Violence and the

Sacred, 68-88. See also Girard, Collective Violence and Sacrifice in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

^Girard, La violence et le sacré, 30-47; Violence and the Sacred, 14-27. ^Girard, La violence et le sacré, 425; Violence and the Sacred, 306. 27Girard Things Hidden, 176. Girard, La route antique, 177,179; Job, 119,120.

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victim. In Egypt Moses and the community of Israel are scapegoats. The prophetic books reject sacrifice, mythology, and "obsessional" legal prohibitions. The book of Isaiah presents the figure of the innocent Suffering Servant.29 Human sacrifice disappears in the patriarchal period. Animals are substituted. In the Passover of the Exodus time, the emphasis is on a common meal and not a sacrifice. The pre-exilic prophets reject sacrifice.30 The singers of the penitential psalms proclaim their innocence as victims and protest against their persecu­tors, though they do so with harsh voices unaffraid to express hatred for the oppressors.31

Also within the Old Testament is the figure of Job to whom Girard has devoted a short book. Commendably I think, Girard does not hesitate to enter the realm of biblical scholarship. He finds the prologue, epilogue, Elihu, and the voice of the god who speaks from the whirlwind and expresses his adoration of animals, all to be later additions. When these are omitted, the Job of the poetic dialogues, Girard maintains, does not speak as a righteous man who suffers undeserved punishment from God, but as an innocent victim of human persecution. Job had been like a king, admired and envied by all, but he became under his persecutors like an orphan destined for sacrifice. The three men who are traditionally and wrongly called his comforters in fact represent his persecutors. They would make him the victim of their violence. The God of the victims appears in Job, according to Girard, but not in the voice from the whirlwind nor in the god of the final prose passage who endows Job with livestock. The God of the victims Girard finds in those passages (Job 16:19-21; 19:25-27) where Job expresses his conviction that he has a defender or witness in heaven and that at last, at the end, this witness will stand on the earth and Job will see God. It is significant for understanding Girard's outlook that he uses a capital letter for the God of the victims, but elsewhere writes of "god." Unfor­tunately, the English translation of Girard's study of Job, La route antique des hommes pervers, does not show this feature of the book.

The clear revelation against sacred violence comes in the Jesus of the Gospels. Jesus rejects mimetic rivalry and revenge. They lead only to death. He teaches us to love and forgive, to turn the other cheek. He rejects the sacrificial system. His critique of the society in which he lives leads to his being persecuted and killed. But the Gospels do not interpret Jesus' death as a sacrifice. Instead Jesus is the innocent victim.

29Girard, Thinp Hidden, 144-158; the word "obsessional" in regard to prohibitions is found on 154.

^Ibid., 239-240. 31Girard, Le bouc émissaire, 151-152; The Scapegoat, 104.

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His death means that God shares the lot of the oppressed, the innocent. Jesus' death disarms the principalities and powers of the world. His death is followed by his resurrection. Defeat by the world of violence is in fact victory over the world. We cannot expect earthly triumphs-the apocalyptic notes in the New Testament are threats about what humans can do and not about what God will do-but by accepting this revelation we strike a blow at the world system founded on violence.

Girard is perfectly aware that historical Christianity has persecuted others, particularly the Jews. Christianity has taken on sacrificial interpretations, but that is not in keeping with the Gospels. Even in their harsh words, like the words of Jesus against the Pharisees, the Gospels are rejecting the world of scapegoating and violence to affirm the world of love. And in this time when our technology permits us to destroy the world, the only realistic message to humanity is the Christian one of mutual forgiveness and love.32

II. Criticism of Girard

I turn now to developing various points of criticism. At the very outset it seems inherently unlikely that all rituals and all myths and all cultures, except the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures, can be traced to one kind of founding event.33 It is significant that Girard has admitted that there are myths he cannot interpret and that he does not know whether there are non-scapegoating myths. He holds nonetheless that victimage is so crucial to understanding religion that it is his focus.34 Such a comment fits in with my criticism. Everything Girard says about mimesis, scapegoating, religiousness founded on violence, and the voice of the victim and of nonviolence in the Bible is telling, provided that his ideas are taken as part of the total picture. I suggest that insistence on genuine needs and the social nature of humanity supplement what Girard says of mimesis and scapegoating; that what he states about violence and the sacred be enriched by noting other and wholesome epiphanies of the sacred; and that his position on the Bible and Christianity be modified by relating them more closely to the world, both positively and negatively.

32The above two paragraphs draw on all Girard's Christian books. Things Hidden, 158-167, 185-1%, 224-225. Le bouc émissaire, 294-295; The Scapegoat, 211-212. La route antique, 225-233; Job, 154-159.

33This point is made by Robert G. Hammerton-Kelly, "A Girardian Interpretation of Paul: Rivalry, Mimesis and Victimage in the Corinthian Correspondence," Semeia 33 (1985): 66.

^Girard, in "Discussion" following his paper "Generative Scapegoating" in Violent Origins, 136.

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A. Genuine Needs and the Social Nature of Humanity

I noted earlier that Girard mentions fundamental needs but quickly goes on to the desires that arise from our imitation of a model. But needs or wants that are not occasioned by the mediation of another, needs that are expressions of who we are as ourselves, are highly important. Eugene Webb has rightly criticized Girard for making so little of genuine and legitimate appetites.35 Admittedly it may be difficult to specify what our legitimate wants are. Surely they go beyond food, clothing, and shelter to include dignity, freedom, social participa­tion, loving and being loved, and other matters as well. It is not necessary to compile a complete list; we need only be sure that there is a list with some items on it. If there is, then some of our desires are not arbitrary, and some social conflict is founded on valid needs. People may be denied what they really need in order to live or to live decently. All of this is common sense in our present world, or in any historical world we know about. Girard often gives evidence of a sense of justice and of sympathy for human suffering, and so I cannot imagine that he would deny what I am saying, yet his laying all emphasis on mimetic desires that have no legitimate basis and lead only to unjustified violence have the effect of undercutting the recognition of legitimate needs and therefore of legitimate claims that may precipitate justifiable social conflicts.

According to Girard, humans are united by violence against a scape­goat. Certainly that sort of union has occurred and still occurs, but to make it the founding event of all society is not persuasive. Without trying to explain how society arose, we can rely on the classical position that humans are naturally social or political animals. Participation in social life is one of the genuine human needs. Mimetic rivalry and scapegoating appear against that background as distortions. The distortions are all too real, but they are not the foundation of society.

Ä Various Epiphanies of the Sacred

Against Girard's or any other reductionistic interpretation of religion that explains it as the result of something other than itself, I contend that the sacred or holy is irreducible, that the human sense of it arises out of the wonder and mystery of being. Given that foundation, we can be open to a multitude of particular expressions and experiences

35See Eugene Webb, Philosophers of Consciousness: Polanyi, Lonergan, Voegelin, Ricoeur, Girard, Kierkegaard (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1988), 307.

René Girard on Mimesis, Scapegoats, and Ethics 125

of the religious dimension, including the violent one to which Girard refers.

Two others that are significant as supplements to Girard are suggested by a very interesting article on Girard by Lucien Scubla. Scubla feels that Girard's position is valid but incomplete. For one thing, Girard neglects women. The taboos that surround menstruation are not, Scubla holds, due to some putative recollection of primordial violence but arise from men's efforts to control what naturally escapes them, women's reproductive power. As a second matter, Scubla contests Girard's hypothesis that hunting arose from the search for sacrificial victims, and holds that it is equally persuasive to suppose that sacrifice arose from hunting.36 The notions that the sacred is manifest in the reproductive and nurturing power of women and in the hunt by men are complementary. They suggest a far richer experience of the sacred than what Girard offers taken by itself.

To my knowledge Girard has never dealt with the religious aspect of women's power. But he has at least had to hear about the possibility of the origin of the sacred in the hunt. Several years ago an interesting meeting took place that brought Girard into discussion concerning violence and social origins with Walter Burkert and Jonathan Z. Smith. The meeting eventuated in a valuable book entitled Violent Origins?1

In Burkert, Girard encountered a quite different understanding of animal sacrifice than his own by a scholar as versed in ancient Greek culture as himself. Burkert is a proponent of the hunting hypothesis Scubla finds plausible, the belief that hominization occurred as the primates who became humans learned to hunt and to eat meat. The killing of animals was for them a momentous occurrence, though Burkert came to give up his earlier contention that feelings of guilt were involved. There is, he says, a "dark background" to the joy of the feast, since "a beautiful 'blameless' animal must be killed, or else there would be no feast." As humans took up the domestication of animals, the feelings regarding the taking of animal life continued and expressed themselves in sacrificial ritual.38

Luc ien Scubla, "Contribution à la théorie du sacrifice," in René Girard et le problème du mal, eds. Michel Deguy and Jean-Pierre Dupuy (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1982), 103-167.

37See note 3 above. 38See Walter Burkert's essay, "Ritual Killing" in Violent Origins, 149-176, especially

164-168. The quotation is from the "Discussion" following Girard's essay, "Generative Scapegoating," 119. The basic presentation of Burkert's view is his book, Homo Necans, trans. Peter Bing (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983).

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Burkert's thesis has problems of its own, particularly concerning the transfer from hunting rituals to the sacrifice of domestic animals.39 But it is as plausible an explanation of animal sacrifice as Girard's, and it illumines at least one kind of biblical sacrifice, the sacrifice of well-being or the peace offering. In it the animal was eaten at a common meal. There is reason to believe that all consumption of domestic animals in biblical times originally took the form of sacrificial meals.40 There is killing and rejoicing in such a sacrifice but also a reverent valuing of animal life. In two further ways the Bible shows reverence for animal life. One is the place of animals in the penological and eschatological "peaceable kingdom."41 The other is the use of the word "to sacrifice" both in Hebrew and Greek as the regular word for the killing of animals, even outside of ritual. For instance, the Deuteronimist, when permitting nonritual slaughter, tells the Hebrew, "Whenever you desire you may sacrifice and eat meat." And the visionary voice tells the hungry apostle Peter, "Get up, Peter, sacrifice and eat."42

In the biblical view, the taking of animal life is sacred. A possible criticism of Girard is his seeming indifference to animals. One indica­tion of this is his brusque dismissal of the voice from the whirlwind in Job. Another is that in an otherwise very interesting study of the pericope of the demons of Gesrasa in the Synoptic Gospels, one in which he sees the demoniac as a scapegoat victim Jesus rescues, Girard shows little concern over the fate of the herd of swine. He dismisses them as overwhelmed by mimesis.43

The sacred power of women has its pain but no violence. The sacredness of the life of animals, hunted and later herded by men, involves violence but is also nourishing. Both illustrate a wholesome expression of the sacred, the momentous fact that life lives on life, to supplement Girard's purely violent sacred. Both justify the biblical notion of spiritual or reasonable human sacrificing for others (Rom. 12:1; 15:16; Phil. 4:18). Feminists and others rightly alert us to the danger of the ideal of self-sacrifice, but there can be a healthy self-giving

Jonathan Z. Smith in his contribution to the discussion insists particularly that animal sacrifice arose with domestication of animals, "The Domestication of Sacrifice," in Violent Origins, 191-205, especially 199.

^Claus Westermann, Elements of Old Testament Theology, trans. Douglas W. Stott (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 201-202.

41For the beginning see Gen. 1:29-30 and the vegetarian implications of the second creation story, Gen. 2:9,18-20. For the end see the familiar text of the peaceable kingdom, Isa. 11:6-9.

42Deut. 12:15; Acts 10:13. Except for using "sacrifice" the translation is that of the NRSV. See also Deut. 12:21; Acts 11:7; Luke. 15:23, 27, 30.

43Girard, Le bouc émissaire, 233-258, especially 256-258; The Scapegoat, 165-183, especially 182-183.

René Girard on Mimesis, Scapegoats, and Ethics 127

to others by women and men that is not masochism or surrender to injustice, but that has its own glory as a manifestation of the sacred.

C Christianity Related to the World, Negatively and Positively

Girard contrasts the innocence of the Christian Gospel with violence everywhere else. I will sketch four points in criticism. The first is that he wrongly claims that the New Testament is free of scapegoating. This is especially important to say after the Holocaust. New Testament scholar, Burton L. Mack, gives a particularly virulent critique of Girard on this point. In acerbic language, Mack pictures the Gospels as a persecution text where the early Christian community forms the persecutors and the Jews are the victims. The early Christians in their hostility to Judaism falsified the historical fact that the Romans killed Jesus. These early Christians sought to make Jesus the innocent victim and Jews the guilty killers.44 Perhaps Mack is mistaken; perhaps the Jewish authorities played some role in Jesus' death.45 Even so, there is scapegoating if the Gospels overstate that role. A more moderate statement than Mack's, but not essentially different in content, is given by James G. Williams who suggests making the Q document a canon within the canon since there the teachings of love, nonviolence, and forgiveness are found.46 Perhaps the upshot is that Girard's claim for Jesus himself can be sustained; but the Gospels like later Christianity are not free of scapegoating.47

A second point is that Girard's contrast between Christian revela­tion and knowledge and misrecognition everywhere else is overdrawn. Critical knowledge is possible to all. Girard learned about mimetic desire from reading novelists, not all of whom were Christian. The first work in which he expounded his view of the origin of religion, Violence and the Sacred, contains no reference to Christian revelation. And the book's persuasive power does not depend on any such reference. Humans dogged by the mimetic system can still gain a measure of

^Burton L. Mack, "The Innocent Transgressor: Jesus in Early Christian Myth and History,5' Semeia 33 (1985): 135-165, especially 147-157.

45Hammerton-Kelly affirms that they did. Sacred Violence, 11, 64,197-198. 46Williams, "The Innocent Victim," 325. In his more recent and quite "Girardian" The

Bible, Violence, and the Sacred, Williams has not reiterated this suggestion. In passing, 226, he states that Q is closer to Jesus than is Mark, but he also describes Jesus' action in the temple, which he takes to be historical, as having aroused Jewish authorities, 230. He nowhere accuses the Gospels of scapegoating the Jews.

47See especially Schwager, Must There Be Scapegoats? Also his article, "Christ's Death and the Prophetic Critique of Sacrifice," Semeia 33 (1985): 109-123.

128 The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics

perspective, of rational knowledge.48 Christians have nothing to gain from denying this general human capacity. Nor should one speak as generalizingly as Girard does of all religion with no effort to investigate what Buddhism or Hinduism or any other great tradition aside from Christianity, and to a lesser extent Judaism, have to say about sacrifice and desire.

The third point is that the motif of sacrifice belongs in the interpretation of Jesus' death. That Jesus was a victim of human violence and therefore a revelation of the God who sides with victims is an important insight on the part of Girard. But the insight can be asserted without denying that the New Testament uses sacrificial language. Girard is mistaken in asserting its non-sacrificial interpreta­tion of Jesus' death. Many Christians object to the theory of the substitutionary atonement, the notion that God requires a human propitiatory sacrifice and that Jesus fulfills that role. It is possible, however, to interpret the New Testament as holding that Christ is the reconciling victim that God offers to humanity, disclosing to us the depth of our violence and freeing us from that violence. Except for its sacrificial language this interpretation is in keeping with Girard's outlook. It is a disturbing interpretation in its own right but not in a way that should arouse Girard's objections. It raises the question of whether followers of Jesus too should not, on some occasions at least, be ready to be victims of violence, rather than participants in it.49

The fourth point is that Girard presents the world too much in negative terms. His Christ denies this world created by violence and never affirms the world of creation. Girard rightly holds that Jesus teaches against mimetic desire and violence, but it is also important to see that Jesus' teaching about love involves more than not harming. John Milbank quite perceptively states that because Girard denies

^ e e Paisley Livingston, "Démystification and History in Girard and Durkheim," in Violence and Truth: On the Work of René Girard, ed. Paul Dumouchel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 126-133. I am struck also by how Bernard Cazes in a highly laudatory article can speak of the scientific spirit, the open society, and desacraliza-tion as fruits of the thought of Girard without making any reference to Christian revelation. "Fragile désacralisation," in To Honor René Girard, Stanford French and Italian Studies, vol. 34 (Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri, 1986), 113-119.

49James G. Williams, The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred, though following a Girardian hermeneutic, disagrees with Girard ön the presence of sacrificial language in the Gospels, 188. He interprets Jesus as the innocent victim in all four Gospels and understands the sacrificial word "ransom" (Mark 10:45) to refer to the price Jesus pays to free humans from the toils of violence, 185-240, especially 224, 231. Hamerton-Kelly in his Girardian interpretation of Paul holds that Paul saw Jesus' death as God's reconciling propitiation offered to us. Sacred Violence, 77-81. On the possibility of our following Christ in this role of victim, see Williams, 257.

René Girard on Mimesis, Scapegoats, and Ethics 129

"objective desire," (i.e., genuine needs) and sees no place for "benign eros" the Kingdom Girard's Jesus proclaims can be no more "than the negative gesture of refusal of desire, along with all cultural differ­ence."50 Earlier I noted that Girard contrasts the "gods" created by violence with the "God" of the victims. That would seem to indicate that he is thinking of God as Creator, but, if that is so, he cannot consistently interpret the foundation of the world we live in as the work only of human violence.51 This fourth point is the culminating one, for what is important in the Christian tradition is not an innocence we do not in fact possess, nor some special knowledge we have supposedly received, nor freedom from sacrificial living, which however problematic, is also creative; what is important is that through Christ we are related to God's world positively, even though we must resist its negative distor­tions.

III. Girard's Helpful Cautionary Words

What emerges as still left of value in Girard's thought? Much. Girard is a master at discerning significant distortions in our world. These distortions are not part of the foundation of the world, but they are real and destructive. What ethics can derive from Girard is quite valuable cautionary words. They alert us to the dangers of mimetic desire, of violence in hidden form, of scapegoating, and of open violence.

A. The Danger of Mimesis

I have insisted that there are normal desires, genuine needs, but this in no way denies that there are also mimetic desires. I began this study by writing about children on the playground, and we can all think of adult continuations of that situation. We all know, perhaps more than we care to admit, the power of advertisements. Girard rightly points to the "tyranny of fashion," to "sexual parades," and to the way some are idolized and some ostracized in our political, cultural, and even in our professional lives.52 Those of us who inhabit the world of higher education know how much symbols of power, prestige, and even wealth bedevil our relations to one another. We sometimes address each other

°John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 395.

51When this article was delivered as a paper, someone in the discussion following suggested that Girard sounded like a Marcionite.

52Girard, La route antique, 143; Job, 96-97.

130 The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics

as "colleague," but it might often be truer to reality if we called one another "model-obstacle." Girard's analysis calls on us to examine ourselves, in order to discern between what is genuine in our desires and what is created by mimesis.

B. Mimesis and Hidden Violence

According to Girard's theory, mimetic desire should lead to violence unless the sacred, with its rituals and prescriptions, enters in to preserve peace. Our current societies, however, seem to have lost the sense of the sacred as Girard understands it. And yet, except during serious times of social breakdown, our societies are not characterized by overt violence. Why not? One would surely not say that it is because we all love one another. A quite possible answer is that our developed societies are violent in a bloodless way.

Two French economists, Paul Dumouchel and Jean-Pierre Dupuy, in a book with the significant title, L'enfer des choses (The Hell of Things), have endeavored to develop the implication of Girard's theory for economics. In a rich analysis they suggest, persuasively I think, that modern economic society is characterized by a kind of generalized violence, which goes by the name of "scarcity." They hold that scarcity is not the fault of the alleged parsimony of nature, as classical economic theory would have it, but instead of mimetic desires. Nature is abun­dant enough, but our desires are not expressions of nature. The mimetic construction of scarcity separates us from each other and turns us against each other. The bonds of a simpler social era have been broken, and we are all thrown out on our own. Our lives are characterized by envy, jealousy, and the taste for unlimited acquisition. The cause of this competition is not direct desires for necessary objects but mediated desires in a society where the economic outlook pervades all realms, and where a mimesis reigns that nobody can control and for which nobody seems responsible.53

Girard has hailed the work of Dumouchel and Dupuy.54 And yet he has his reservations. He would not indulge in a romantic paean of praise for simplicity or primitive life. Girard is clear that he sees the scientific spirit and the spirit of enterprise in economics as byproducts of the Christian gospels. He rejects any attack on current society's technology, for technology permits people to escape from subhuman

5 Paul Dumouchel and Jean-Pierre Dupuy, L'enfer des choses: René Girard et la logique de l'économie (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1979).

54Girard, La route antique, 97-98; Job, 64-65. Also, "Postface" to L'enfer des choses, 255-265.

René Girard on Mimesis, Scapegoats, and Ethics 131

conditions, and he does not see primitive societies as societies of abundance.55

Girard's critique of Dumouchel and Dupuy is surprising, since modern capitalist economics would seem such a perfect illustration of mimesis. Girard's reservations show how much he is a proponent of secularity and can recognize rational creative possibilities even in a world of distortions. Here at least, Girard escapes the usual alterna­tives: either the violent sacred or love that withdraws from the fray. Though not an optimist, he recognizes that every political or economic effort is not hopeless. At a time when many celebrate the free market and others are dismayed by the celebration, the twofold position of Girard is worthy of attention.

C. The Danger of Scapegoating

In a world that is not just, there will be opponents. But we must be on our guard against turning them into scapegoats. It is relatively easy, though quite important, to think of those whom others have turned into scapegoats, the marginalized of social history. Girard himself alludes to the persecution of the Jews in the Middle Ages, to witch hunts, to all who suffer under the world's torturers and under totalitarian bureau­crats.56 It is relatively easy, though again quite important, to think of those whom Christians exclude: Jews, members of other religious communities, people not baptized. We must be careful that what draws us together, including the Eucharist, has "permeable" boundaries.57

More difficult are our opponents. For some of us these might include representatives of patriarchy, fundamentalists, right-wing politicians, multinational or transnational corporations.58 My point is not to say that such persons or groups are not genuine opponents; my point is that we should guard against forgetting their human face, that we should watch out for the distortions that come with passion, that we should make sure that our opposing others is free from scapegoating, and that we are free from delight in defeating.

55Girard, "Postface" to L'enfer des choses, 264-265; Le bouc émissaire, 285; The Scapegoat, 204-205.

56Girard, Le bouc émissaire, 1-21, 295; The Scapegoat, 1-11, 212. 57The word is taken from Mary Barbara Agnew, "A Transformation of Sacrifice: An

Application of René Girard's Theory of Culture and Religion," Worship 61 (November 1987): 508.

58On the last see, Cazes, "Fragile désacralisation," 118.

132 The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics

Ζλ The Danger of Violence

May we use violence in the conflictual, social-political world? Girard rejects it, and he quite rightly points to Jesus. I hold there are legitimate conflicts and cannot rule violence out altogether, but Girard's thinking makes it more difficult to maintain this position. I conclude by looking at what I think might be Girard's contribution to a theory of just war, a particularly troublesome example of the general question of the use of violence.

Is "just war" an oxymoron as "holy war" certainly is?59 Perhaps it might be best to say that a war is at most justified, not just. The tradi­tional doctrine of just war is rightly criticized as rationalistic since it assumes our ability to weigh criteria cooly and impartially. I see Girard supplementing the theory by questions that challenge our coolness, such as these: As you calculate justice, do you allow for the distorting role of mimetic desires? Are you aware that you are probably not capable of calculating without distortion? Do you recognize how violence draws people together, causes them to have an experience of what they take to be the sacred, as they mark out and destroy their victims? What do you make of the alternative that Jesus offers, the renunciation of violence, the willingness to forgive?

The recent experience of this nation in the Gulf War shows the importance of such questions. It was possible to mount a defense of that war in terms of the just war theory, at least if it had been con­ducted with more restraint. But we must remember the spurious sense of national triumph, the sense of unity brought about by violence, the glee over destruction, the thorough demonizing of Saddam Hussein. The thinking of René Girard would have enabled us to foresee the behavior of the excited crowd and so have shown us that war without excess, without delight in violence, is virtually impossible.

Appreciating Girard's cautionary words is simultaneously a kind of critique of Girard, at least of the most obvious reading of his thought. The most obvious reading sees him holding only three possibilities for human social life and self-knowledge: out and out violence wherein people are ignorant of the mimetic origin of their violent desires, a relative peace of the primitive sacred and its later transformations wherein people misrecognize the violent underpinnings of that peace, and nonviolent love and forgiveness that emerge from thorough knowledge disclosed by revelation. Almost between the lines, however, Girard offers another option, an ambiguous world wherein humans are

59Richard Woods, "Is it oxymoron, temporary antimony [sic] or an idea in crisis?" National Catholic Reporter, 27 December 1991,15.

René Girard on Mimesis, Scapegoats, and Ethics 133

paradoxically self-aware and prone to self-deception. Girard earns our gratitude for heightening self-awareness through his penetrating diagnosis of self-deception.

^ s

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