book blurb...Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World

Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World by Rene Girard

I don't claim to have widespread knowlege in Girardian scholarship...but as I'm reading I find a few things that don't make sense...also much that makes tremendous sense. First I'll lay a brief foundation, then explain what doesn't make sense to me.

Girard states that: "Satan denotes the founding mechanism itself- the principle of all human community. All of the texts in the New Testament confirm this reading, in particular the 'Temptations made by Satan the Prince and principle of this world..."

For the uninitiated in Girards thought, here is a nice summary of the founding mechanism by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

"As the hominids emerge this hierarchy breaks down, because their mimetic desire has greater force and they compete without inhibition and without pause. The hominid group thus falls into a crisis of violent disorder as converging desires lead to violent competition. The violence then takes on a mimetic life of its own as hominids copy not only the initial desires but also the violent desires, not only those that take the form of acquisitiveness but also those that take the form of vengeance. Because desire is contagious violence is like a pandemic.

In this turmoil of violence, the war of all against all, the social system reaches a culminating level of disorder and then spontaneously mutates back to order. It is a self-regulating, self-healing system, so there is no question of anyone deciding to enter into a contract, rather spontaneously the war of all against all becomes the war of all against one, and the broil of universal disorder becomes the band of murderous brothers killing the odd one out. The violence of mimetic desire gone to boundless rivalry brings the social system to a moment of emergence, a self-healing mutation of the system from the war of all against all to the war of all against one with the emergence of the surrogate victim.

Thus the foundation of society is not a social contract, nor a natural affinity and mutual attraction, but a swerve in the symmetry of a self-healing system that throws up a victim, whose death in turn stabilizes the system. Society is fundamentally the unity of the lynch mob."

So as above, Girard states that Satan denotes the founding mechanism itself. Then soon after on the same page 162 he states that "Satan is the name for the mimetic process seen as a whole..." Here's what's confusing. How can Satan be the mimetic process as a whole and also be the founding mechanism when these two events/processes are distinct? Elsewhere he points out that mimesis is inherent in humans; that it can be misdirected to acquisitiveness or violence or it can be right-directed as toward Jesus. Whereas the founding mechanism is the culmination of acquisitive-mimesis and violence-mimesis resulting in the victimage mechanism to restore harmony.

Girard contends that the 'Curses against the Scribes and Pharisees' testify to "a concealed relation of dependence on the founding murder; they demonstrate a paradoxical continuity beteen the violence of past generations and the denunciation of that violence in contemporaries."

For me this "paradoxical continuity" is readily explained by the scripture in 'Curses against the Scribes and Pharisees' and is not at all paradoxical. What is occuring is the sin of pride. The sin of being blind to your own sinfulness because unless you are fully aware of this awful and wonderful truth: "In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all. " The relevant scriptures follow:

Matthew 23:12 "But those who think themselves great shall be disappointed and humbled; and those who humble themselves shall be exalted."

Matthew 23:29,30 "Yes, woe to you, Pharisees, and you religious leaders- hypocrites! For you build monuments to the prophets killed by your fathers and lay flowers on the graves of the godly men they destroyed, and say, 'We certainly would never have acted as our fathers did.

Matthew 23:31,32 "In saying that, you are accusing yourselves of being the sons of wicked men. And you are following in their steps, filling up the full measure of their evil.

All that Girard is attributing to a disordered mimetic process can be instead anchored to the sin of pride. As CS Lewis points out, the sin of pride is inherently competitive unlike the other seven deadly sins. The spiraling violence of the all against the one can readily be explained in the sin of pride. As another confirms your rightness vis-a-vis the victim; pride is fed and this frenzy of self-righteous indignation results in the scapegoat.

Obviously Girard is onto something with mimetic desire. This seems incontestible to me. However, pride appears to be the sin that distorts mimesis toward acquisitiveness or violence. Another problem for me with Girards thought is how aquisitive mimesis leads to conflict; then without the object (now forgotten), violence mimesis now steps in. As described in The Girard Reader and the first half of "Things Hidden..." it simply doesn't follow to me.

However, if pride is the ultimate distorting force, then acquisitive-mimesis transitioning into violence-mimesis makes sense to me. Acquisitive-mimesis leads to conflict due to perceptions that something unfair is in play, a component of pride. Violence-mimesis results when self-righteousness' flames are fanned. This disordered mimesis can only find resolution in Jesus-minesis but this requires the unmasking of the sin of pride within each individual.