Conversations with René Girard: Prophet of Envy

by René Girard, Cynthia L. Haven (Editor)

French theorist René Girard was one of the major thinkers of the twentieth century. Read by international leaders, quoted by the French media, Girard influenced such writers as J.M. Coetzee and Milan Kundera. Dubbed “the new Darwin of the human sciences” and one of the most compelling thinkers of the age, Girard spent nearly four decades at Stanford exploring what it means to be human and making major contributions to philosophy, literary criticism, psychology and theology with his mimetic theory. This is the first collection of interviews with Girard, one that brings together discussions on Cervantes, Dostoevsky, and Proust alongside the causes of conflict and violence and the role of imitation in human behavior. Granting important insights into Girard's life and thought, these provocative and lively conversations underline Girard's place as leading public intellectual and profound theorist.

Genres: Philosophy, Humanities, Nonfiction

229 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 14, 2020

About the author

René Girard was a French-born American historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy.

He was born in the southern French city of Avignon on Christmas day in 1923. Between 1943 and 1947, he studied in Paris at the École des Chartres, an institution for the training of archivists and historians, where he specialized in medieval history. In 1947 he went to Indiana University on a year’s fellowship and eventually made almost his entire career in the United States. He completed a PhD in history at Indiana University in 1950 but also began to teach literature, the field in which he would first make his reputation. He taught at Duke University and at Bryn Mawr before becoming a professor at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. In 1971 he went to the State University of New York at Buffalo for five years, returned to Johns Hopkins, and then finished his academic career at Stanford University where he taught between 1981 and his retirement in 1995.

Girard is 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 has developed throughout his career and provide the foundation for his thinking, are that desire is mimetic (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.

In 1990, friends and colleagues of Girard’s established the Colloquium on Violence and Religion to further research and discussion about the themes of Girard’s work. The Colloquium meets annually either in Europe or the United States.

René Girard died on November 4, 2015, at the age of 91 in Stanford.

Reviews

[UhshGigeh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book that will resonate with me for a long time. However it's not easy to integrate all of what is said in the book, as it is a collection of interviews over around 25 years, during which Girard's own views changed. There will be some work needed to smoothen out and to comprehend what I just read.

[5greenway · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine companion piece to Cynthia Haven's excellent biography.

[Ben McFarland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cynthia Haven has provided the world with the best, most accessible biography of Rene Girard and with this book, the most up-to-date collection of his interviews. Most of the interviews in this collection are more recent than the Girard books most Girardians have read, and so they touch on topics post-9/11 and show Girard applying his thoughts to the 21st century. He has no trouble doing so, and each interview is insightful and challenging. I'm surprised at how little repetition there is relative to most books like this, but I think that's because Girard did his best thinking in dialogue. It's probably best to be familiar with Girard's ideas before starting this, but that's what Haven's biography is for. I'm glad I bought this in physical form because I started scribbling notes and ended up in further conversation with Girard. Few books are provocative enough to require self-annotation but this one is.

[Jeannette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the format of transcripts of conversations and interviews with Rene Girard might seem a strange way for the thoughts of such a prominent thinker to be presented, it is very much in keeping with the experience many of his contemporaries had of Girard. In the introduction, "Socrates in the Digital Age", by editor and contributor, Cynthia L. Haven, she notes that Girard's colleague, Sandor Goodhart told her that Girard was "doggedly dialogic," and that "he likes working with people on things. He always spoke in terms of 'us', 'our' project. What 'we're' doing. He had a sense of discovery." Or as Haven writes, "To answer any of the big questions in life, and many of the smaller ones, we need to collaborate and work together."

As Girard answers questions put to him about his published writings, he exhibits considerable self awareness and humility, even to the point of proclaiming, "Yes, sure, I was completely wrong." While not each of the conversations held equal interest or value for me, they all serve to some degree as addendums or revisions to some of Girard's work and are a good addition to any Rene Girard library.

While the book's title refers to him as "Prophet of Envy" there are other prophetic echos to be heard. Girard's 1985 comments on technological power in what he calls the post sacrificial world ring with warning we who are staggering under the revelations of biotechnology in 2021 may surely wish had been heeded. Girard sees restraint in a world viewed as sacred, where nature is to be respected, he describes a safeguard against excessive innovation, against pursuing any manipulation conceivable of natural forces through which some people will accrue more and more power. "The question is what are people going to do with this power? If they keep using it against each other, someday they are going to reach a point of no return...." Hopefully it is not too late to listen.