The Ideas of Rene Girard: An Anthropology of Religion and Violence

Girard urged everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs (or lack thereof), to pay attention to what happened at the crucifixion of Jesus. Girard read this story primarily as an anthropologist. What he found was human behavior operating differently than he had seen anywhere else in his reading of history.

Mimetic desire enables us to escape from the animal realm. It is responsible for the best and the worst in us, for what lowers us below the animal level as well as what elevates us above it. Our unending discords are the ransom of our freedom.

Girard’s mimetic theory is based in essence on the literary insight into man’s unalterable religious nature. Looked at systematically, his position can be understood as follows: Human beings have the choice between recognition of the one true God and arbitrary idolatry.

Rene Girard, in his classic Violence and the Sacred,3 says that the most basic cause of violence is mimetic desire, that is, the desire to have what someone else has, which is ultimately the desire to be what someone else is. Envy can lead to breaking many of the other commands: it can move people to adultery, theft, false testimony, and even murde