Interfaces

The central problem that this paper seeks to elucidate is an attempt to grasp René Girard's dialectical thinking. He defends the hypothesis that human desire is violent and in turn can be positive and negative and also have a mimetic effect. Where does he arrive and why does he attract violently antagonistic positions even though he is recognized for his Christian conviction of non-violence? How to approach a theory that cannot be empirically proven - to speak of modern Kantianism - and which in turn is at the genesis of all societies cultures and religions? Girard intuited that violence and the sacred are at the origins of social organization underlying the civilizing process. The civilizing process depends on the discovery of a mechanism that allows for the control of violence triggered by what he defends as mimetic desire. Mimetic desire is contagious and can worsen in direct proportion to the number of agents caught up in the short circuit of mimetic rivalry rivalry in social groups. If no form of control over mimesis is developed social formation itself may disintegrate amid widespread conflict.