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…
Tag: -René Girard
Today’s One-Liner (#193)
Great novels always spring from an obsession that has been transcended. –René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure
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 (#170)
We still protect crippled people, handicapped people, but in the center of it all we find a sort of cancer growing, which is the return to infanticide. –René Girard, Maxim #146, in All Desire Is a…
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…