The Truth of Mankind

<p><em>The Truth of Mankind</em> draws on Cesáreo Bandera's long lifetime of critical experience and literary scholarship. Bandera is not only a celebrated and distinguished interpreter of Latin and Greek literature of Cervantes and Calderón and many other seminal figures but was also a friend and colleague of the late René Girard the celebrated Catholic theorist of the scapegoat mechanism as the fundamental logic underlying all human communities and polities;<span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)> and in the field of literary studies he is considered a decisive interlocutor of Girard.</span></p><p>Through striking readings of Biblical texts of Cervantes of Virgil and above all of Girard's own works Bandera raises a fundamental question about Girard's theory. Can it really as Girard himself thought be articulated in a way that does not rely on any particular theological standpoint? Or is it instead as Bandera argues intimately dependent on the revealed truth of Christ on the cross-a revealed truth which Girard as a believing Catholic himself confessed? </p><p><em>The Truth of Mankind</em> will be of interest not only to all who wish to understand Girard's thinking and its relationship to Christianity but also to anyone seeking to understand how Christianity can address the most urgent social and ethical questions faced by human life on this planet.</p>