The wounds of war and the scars of culture: Simone Weil and René Girard on the symmetry of violence (original) (raw)
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Can we specify the wider antecedents of this agenda? Th e reader who has only nodding acquaintance with Girardian theory, or none at all, may well be grateful for some guidance in the leading ideas that bring this French American anthropologist and culture theorist to the particular point of insight and questioning at which we here meet him. It is most economically provided by referring to his latest work, Achever By starting from the ideas of "attack" and "aggression, " we commonly misthink violence. In fact, violence is almost always-already caught in a structure of reciprocity between rivalrous and confl icted parties, and it is the defensive function that is primary (in the sense that it is what causes confl icts to endure and to escalate). One of the signs of this is that we never think of ourselves as "attacking" anyone except as a way of defending ourselves from some threat to which that structure of reciprocity exposes us. Another is
Violence and the Sacred: René Girard Revisited
In his 1972 book "Violence and the Sacred", René Girard defends an intimate connection between the sacred and violence and he even identities both. The aim of this paper is to revisit this identification of violence and the sacred in Girard’s work by examining the mechanism through which, according to Girard, the sacred has come into existence.
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Paper presented at the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R) 2022 The theoretical links that can be established between Girard and Heidegger are manifold. However, the core of these links consists in the identification of the Greek term polemos as the original foundation.Girard affirms that Heidegger's reflections on the Greek logos and the Christian logos that he carried out in Introduction to Metaphysics are not only of great value insofar as they contributed to the deconstruction of metaphysics, but that this work was done from the revelation of the logos of violence, reaffirming what for Girard will be the archaic sacred in the process of hominization. Nevertheless, and what this brief essay aims to do, is to present a sketch of Heidegger's ontological understanding of the concept of polemos, for although Girard praises Heidegger's analysis and the unveiling of the Greek logos, on the other hand, he finds it frightening insofar as the philosophy of the German thinker reaffirms its belonging in the archaic sacred, denying the redeeming role of the Christian logos. Thus, we must scrutinize what is the fundamental sense of the Heraclitean logos that Heidegger applies in his philosophy in order to understand why he does not renounce it and, on the contrary, reaffirms his thought from there. With this, it is hoped that the meta-anthropological dialogue that both authors maintain will be enriched and will yield new conclusions that will allow us to analyze the mechanisms of violence that have led us to the critical situation in which we find ourselves.
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Simone Weil and René Girard: Violence and the Sacred (2010)
The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2010
Religion in the perverted form of idolatry/ideology is at the root of violence for Simone Weil and René Girard. For Girard, "mimetic desire" expresses the idolization of another and ultimately of the self: when the individual's expectations of achieving autonomy through another remain unfulfilled, he seeks a scapegoat. For Weil, everyone is subject to "force" as recipient or perpetrator of violence which is catalyzed by ideology, a form of idolatry. While Weil focuses on the idolatry of ideas, both writers agree that the subject's desire for absolute autonomy is the source of idolatry and violence. Furthermore, both presuppose suffering as the individual's driving force, seeking relief in idols or scapegoats; accepting this suffering by imitating Christ is the solution, freeing one from selfish, idolatrous desires.