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We began with the idea that underpins all of Girard’s theories––imitation. Conflict between people, he believes, is rooted in our propensity for imitation or in what he calls “mimetic desire”—an idea that began to take shape for him through his study of the great European novelists.
David Cayley • The Ideas of Rene Girard: An Anthropology of Religion and Violence
French literary theorist and anthropologist Rene Girard called mimetic desire, meaning, we want what someone else wants, because we want to be that someone else.
Jonathan Sacks • Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible (Covenant & Conversation Book 8)
Insights with Rene Girard
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René Girard's Mimetic Theory
youtube.comGirard's point o departure is what he calles "mimesis," the conflict that arises when human rivals compete to differentiate themselves from each other, yet succeed only in becoming more and more alike. At certain points in the life of a society, according to Girard, this mimetic conflict erupts into a crisis in which all difference dissolves in ind... See more
O'Reilly Media • Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
His ideas do not magically make us stop being mimetic. The mimetic theory gives us a framework to avoid situations that inspire debilitating desires; what type of person to avoid and who to keep close
Jonathan Bi • Lecture I: Introduction to Mimetic Theory | René Girard's Mimetic Theory
René Girard, a Frenchman who was a professor of literature and history in the United States, had his first insight about the nature of desire in the late 1950s.
Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
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.