Clarity
One ought to be clear about at least a few matters — war, capital killing, aborting the unborn! Isaiah invites such clarity, and in a sense, leaves to us the conclusions, the details, the issues. …
Category: Social Analysis
Come Out Swinging
[Simone] Weil’s critique of Marx is impressive in its sweep, its remorseless logic, and its passion, recalling the contemporary writing of Berdiaev. –David McLellan/ Utopian Pessimist: The Life and Thought of Simone Weil, 77
Today’s One-Liner (#284)
With this book, he came out of the intellectually unfashionable Christian closet. –Cynthia L. Haven on René Girard’s book, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, in her Evolution of Desire: A Life of…
Choose
We must decide whether our top priority is to smite the wicked or to advance the less fortunate, whether we are looking for visions and rhetoric that make us feel good for the moment or…
Before Their Conversions
To become Christian is, fundamentally, to perceive that it isn’t just others who have scapegoats. And note that the two greatest Christians, the founders of the Church, Peter and Paul, were two converted persecutors. Before…
Self-un-awareness
[I]f you believe the scapegoat is guilty, you are not going to name it as being “my scapegoat.” If France scapegoats Dreyfus, no one will recognize that Dreyfus is a scapegoat. –René Girard, in Cynthia…
Today’s One-Liner (#168)
We live in a culture dominated by a lower vision. –James V. Schall, S.J., On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing
Today’s One-Liner (#167)
No one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. –René Girard, Maxim #22, in All Desire Is a Desire for Being: Essential Writings, edited by Cynthia L. Haven
Look Within
I find [René Girard’s] ideas have enormous explanatory power not only for the world we see around us – but the world we find within us. People may question his reading of archaic societies or…
Good News
The meaning of order is there, but it is precisely its presence that determines the vestigial character of the treatment of it. The reason lies in the fact that the violence of the cultural order…