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…
Category: Social Analysis
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…
The Log in My Own Eye
Too conscious and calculating an awareness of all that the “scapegoat” connotes in modem usage eliminates the essential point that the persecutors believe in the guilt of their victim; they are imprisoned in the illusion…
Today’s One-Liner (#127)
We are only beginning to understand how filial piety operates, such that loss of patriotism, loss of faith, and loss of family each seem to encourage breakdown in the other parts of the triad. –Mary…