From Reciprocal “Bad” Violence to Judicial “Good” Violence – and Beyond…

A protracted civilizational process takes a culture from the stage characterized by crises of reciprocal violence, periodically resolved by unanimous violence, first zeroed in on the original scapegoat (per Rene Girard, that’s when a culture is actually constituted), then on ritualistic scapegoats (the ritual in due course comes to be officiated by the priestly caste), and eventually – but this time not at all uniformly across human societies – on transgressors of societal norms, meted out by a judiciary that somehow had appeared on the scene, thus also separating culture from civilization proper.

Mimetic theory posits that reciprocal violence can only be quelled by unanimous violence. Consequently the judicial system must embody the principle of unanimous violence at least implicitly (if not foster or even enforce it if need be) for it to be effective. Regardless of Girard’s not having addressed the issue explicitly (to my knowledge), that actually is the case – as long as that system remains operative. But that in turn is effected by more violence, if need be, this time directed at those, apart from the transgressors themselves, who might object to its verdicts, in cases of violent crimes most often deeming them as insufficient in severity. (With nonviolent crimes it might be the reverse.) This last type of violence or its threat, of whatever form, obviously is not “unanimous” anymore: not everyone, again disregarding the transgressors but also crime victims protesting against the original verdict, necessarily agrees with it. Still, the civilized man would be expected to lay off having supposedly internalized the sentiment implicit in justicia locuta, causa finita est, itself a paraphrase of a well-known maxim, on which civilized jurisprudence is in fact based.

But there is one more thing that is being gradually lost as this protracted cultural process of societal employment of violence is unfolding, and that is its spontaneity. It might be argued in fact that the gradual loss of true spontaneity is what makes the employment of violence gradually and steadily less and less effective in dissipating it altogether – at least for a while.

Spontaneity does not accord with enforced unanimity, not in the long run at least. It thrives in a climate of, and accords well with, arbitrariness, as in the culture’s foundational, or “sacrificial” (per mimetic theory) crisis. Of course both can be staged to an extent by adroit demagogues. But liberal democracies must not foment or indulge in ostentatious spontaneity in the employ of (enforced) unanimity of its judicial verdicts. If such measures were to be regularly resorted to with a view to underpinning the system, rule of law would have fallen by the wayside, and society would be sitting atop a precarious summit with precipices all around.

And that is precisely when that society would be ripe for a potent dose of truly spontaneous violence. Contemporarily this might easily happen if and when the always fragile balance between liberty, equality and solidarity, arguably liberal democracy’s three underpinning principles, got really out of whack. Now whether the imbalance was felt by the aggrieved as economic or having to do with respect or recognition, would largely be irrelevant. I argue that especially in periods of economic growth it is the latter that takes precedence as the main cause of instability. And out of the three principles in liberal democracies (and by extension in the global village as well) it is the principle of (now outraged) equality that is the most important lever dislodging the equilibrium.

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Before moving to the titular “beyond,” I now adumbrate a step-by-step mimetic approach to the preceding transformation signaled in the title. When I talk about judicial “good” violence, I concern myself specifically with its application in punishing violent crime. It is rather easy to argue then that its apparent use of the principle of proportionality is precisely what makes this “good” violence appear as just in the eyes of the public. I argue additionally that there is yet another principle behind its application, one that also reinforces a sense of justice on the part of the public, viz., that of vicarious reciprocity.

Violent crime lends itself rather easily to a concurrent use of both principles that seem to underpin judicial “good” violence, thus working towards fostering a measure of public unanimity that is needed to dissipate outrage caused by the initial act of violence, especially when the emotion has been powerfully fomented by the media. Though the unanimity is mostly assumed or implied and sometimes achieved only grudgingly, and, moreover, it often eventually becomes less and less real or only apparent, it is in the context of nonviolent crimes that both principles might appear as moot.

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(1) According to mimetic theory hominization got its start in bouts of reciprocal violence: Man is a mimetic creature, his social interactions with others are subject to the dynamics of mimetic desire, which is necessarily reciprocal, and thus tends to lead man into violence. One might say that just as desire constitutes man, so does violence. Moreover, when viewed from within the mimetic horizon, violence is also seen as spontaneous and arbitrary.

But violence engendered through the operation of mimetic desire has always threatened the very survival of human societies, indeed man’s very survival, just as it does today. From that standpoint some forms of violence must be judged as bad. It must follow then that “bad” violence is that which cannot be contained.

(2) How does man contain violence before it becomes uncontainable or “bad”? With “good” violence, such as is able to stop from spreading the violence threatening to engulf the community in an uncheckable conflagration. In order to be effective it must be a decisive brake on reciprocity, and thus must be unanimous. It also remains spontaneous and arbitrary, or rather becomes really such, as now it can also be appreciated even outside a strictly mimetic horizon.

According to Girard the first instances of this “good” violence in society establish it as sacred, and form the basis of a religion, or are what that religion is all about. Religion is born of a sacrificial crisis, where violence inflicted on a random victim is able to (suddenly) contain all other violence – for the time being.

(3) This sacred or “good” violence is in due course enshrined in a ritual consisting in visiting violence on a surrogate victim, and then replicated in expectation of its bestowing the same result, viz., peace, on the community, as the initial sacrifice. Culture is born – based on ritual violence, which still is unanimous, but not arbitrary anymore, as well as less and less spontaneous.

Unfortunately, with passing time the effects of the ritual start to wear off. Does it have to do with its lack of spontaneity?

(4) One way to distinguish “barbarian” societies from the civilized is by ascertaining whether they have evolved a judicial system. It arguably can only happen in hierarchical societies, like feudal ones, as opposed to those of hunter-gatherers. So, when social hierarchies appear, a judicial system may follow, whether religion-based or not.

(5) But the role of the judicial system is exactly the same as that of the sacred violence of religions. It is the embodiment of “good” violence, one at the service of the community. It replaces religion and its rituals in its capacity of containing violence, just as initially the monarchs and feudal lords replace the priestly caste in the dispensing of “good” violence. With its pretensions to impartiality, the “good” violence of the judiciary finally replaces “personal” reciprocity.

If the judicial system’s containment of “bad” violence is not spontaneously “unanimous” anymore, it tends to be relatively much more effective and uniform for long stretches of time. Also, which is of preeminent importance for the mimetic man, it tends to keep the lid on man’s mimetic reciprocity, the very source of violence in man, though all of that might peter out eventually, paving the way for a new “sacrificial” crisis. And, arguably, those societal developments shape and are in turn reflected in man’s sense of justice.

Now, man’s sense of justice or fairness is considered by Jonathan Haidt, author of the book The Righteous Mind. Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, as one of man’s six moral foundations, truly normative as being hardwired into his brain. I argue that it is the most mimetically rivalrous of them all for being by far the most involved in reciprocity. In fact it is all about reciprocity. Being about reciprocity, the mimetic man’s sense of justice is also about violence. The very existence of this sense and especially its role in the operation of the judiciary seem to legitimize violence, though in civilized societies ostensibly only its “good,” allegedly impartial, judicial variety.

So the question is: even as the officially nonreciprocal “good” violence of the judiciary replaces the (“bad”) violence of “personal” reciprocity, how can justice as pronounced in the judiciary’s verdicts succeed in displacing man’s “natural” sense of justice as embodied in personal vengeance? Might it be that the judiciary’s meting out of punishments still feels as (and in fact still is) a species of vengeful reciprocity, though it be “vicarious” reciprocity only, one that, moreover, aims to break the cycle of personal reprisals and eliminate the self-perpetuation of violence? Arguably that is what retributive justice executed on behalf of the state – our brand of justice – is all about.

(6) Just as the evolvement of social hierarchies was a prerequisite for the subsequent appearance of a judiciary, its apparent gradual displacement in the West has arguably contributed to the volatility of a societal sense of justice, to its being easily outraged – if not to a growing sense of injustice. It is especially clearly discernable in periods and areas where the idea of man’s inborn equality is taking hold: as in democracies hierarchies slowly give way to cultures of ostensible equality, equality itself seeks means to really come to the fore.

A concomitant development is that the judiciary’s “good,” viz., ostensibly impartial, nonreciprocal, non-spontaneous, non-arbitrary violence – thus deemed as able to contain its very opposite, “bad” variety – might then be seen as an obstacle. The judiciary might then in fact appear as anything but equitable, as employing violence in the service of upholding a system that is increasingly felt as unjust, based on inequality, even as it is paying lip service to its opposite, if not extoling its virtues.

(7) “The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century,” blares the title of a recent book (Walter Scheidel’s). Violence is always at hand as an equalizer, ready to destroy differences. It may set in a repeat of the whole cycle, beginning again with violent mimetic reciprocity on every hand. A new violence-based equilibrium might in due course be established, a new culture created; the whole cultural process might possibly be repeated.

Now in the past the leveling effect of violence would come about as if of itself, but today it is different. Though it might concern diverse fields of human interaction, be they economic, or having to do with recognition, it is the (ostensible) pursuit of equality that is viscerally felt by those aggrieved across our globe of falling formal hierarchical barriers as the proper contemporary brand of justice. And it has a powerful tool in violence, in fact the most potent of them all in the long run. But in fact it is and has always been so also with justice itself.

(8) Now the idea of equality is a latecomer in man’s societal development, or alternatively it has recently come round after a long hiatus, from times when hunter-gatherer groups would kill strongmen trying to assert their superiority over a society cultivating egalitarian attitudes. Today the underlying sense of fairness or justice manifests markedly different forms than in those earlier times, be they hunter-gatherer or subsequent hierarchical, feudal societies.

Though the moral foundation of fairness or justice is man’s normative, hardwired imperative and indeed part of what constitutes man as man, the very idea of justice has undergone an evolution that has put the modern man in a radically new place in terms of morality. He is steeped in a culture whose accumulated and yet constantly evolving body of moral ideas, including those concerning justice, is bound to collide sooner or later with his “natural” sense of justice. And if ever there is one, a “raw” sense of justice must arguably be based on reciprocity – and thus be a major contributor to societal violence.

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Disclaimer: What I attempt to outline below is not a utilitarian approach to justice, or, alternatively, it goes well beyond it, with its appeals to progressive Christian values and to Christian or Christianity-inspired models, in order to abide by the former and imitate the latter.

(I) Now comes the big question: why is it that the judicial system in managing to successfully contain “bad” violence by breaking cycles of “personal” reciprocity in society, if not nipping them in the bud – with the use of violence, to be sure, but such as is legitimate, “good,” viz., impartial and ostensibly rational, if not also impassive – has not in due course reinvented itself to first propose rooting out violence altogether from the system, or at least its inordinate forms, and then try to inculcate such attitudes in society? And shouldn’t Christianity be expected at least to attempt to break the cycle of all violence: if it concedes to “good” violence as embodied in the judiciary, in the long run it does to the “bad” too, if unwittingly.

Mimetic theory states that all reciprocity has the potential to degenerate into its “bad” variety, and eventually become violent. If the judicial system manages to contain violence nipping in the bud cycles of “personal” reciprocity, the one that really counts for the protagonists in a conflict, why should it retain violence, its seeming natural companion?

One possible answer is that although from the standpoint of the state and society at large the role of the judicial system consists in the containment of violence, the inordinate violence exerted by it in the process of meting out punishments has to do with conceding for it to be a form of vicarious reciprocity. If, as mimetic theory seems to imply, violence visits man only in the context of reciprocity, it would make sense, at least when both (all) protagonists mutually acknowledge their humanity. [Research shows that actual dehumanization of opponents is relatively rare even in human interactions involving incredible cruelty.]

Consequently, rooting out (inordinate) violence from the system would have to be accompanied by no concession being given to reciprocity, however “impartial” and “rational” it might be. [Inordinate violence would be such as exceeds measures necessary for enforcing justice, and maintaining societal safety and security.] But would this not amount to an unbearable violation of man’s sense of justice – and thus in the process also to a wholesale subversion of the judicial and legal systems? Would man’s moral foundation of justice not revolt and in turn subvert such an effort, possibly by violence returning to society with a vengeance?

(II) Proposing that the above considerations are (part of) the reason why Christianity has not been forthcoming to help, if not inspire, an effort to transform the judiciary so that it should aim at rehabilitation while trying to secure a sense of safety and security in society by means going beyond simple crime deterrence, is to posit a thorough understanding on its part of the ramifications of man’s mimetic nature. And yet a religion that in some of its most radical pronouncements not only condemns violence outright, but seems on occasion to strongly deemphasize reciprocity as such, as leading to violence, might be expected to promote such an approach – to eventually replace inordinate, vicarious reciprocity-based violence that today’s judiciary embodies.

So why didn’t Christianity ever truly get to work on shaping man’s sense of justice accordingly? Shaping it as to hopefully entirely replace one day mankind’s position on violence, both good and bad, with radical nonviolence based on forgiveness and aimed at reconciliation? And why did post-Christian states’ legal and judicial systems not engage in analogous work, perhaps focusing on fostering a sense of security in society – and thus dealing directly with violence and its threats? Instead of meting out violence/just punishments why would they not mean their verdicts as remedial measures on one hand aimed at securing society’s safety while on the other providing rehabilitation of the criminals, including through forms of restorative justice if the crime victim agrees?

Such efforts on the part of those two institutions, and perhaps others as well, in due course would arguably go a long way toward reshaping man’s justice or fairness moral foundation as it is actually exercised in society. The fact that in the process it would (have to) forgo relying on violence cannot be overestimated.

Moreover, such a change is entirely conceivable, since at the present stage of human evolution man’s ontogenesis is shaped – as powerfully as it has never been before – by his rapidly changing cultural and technological environment. As a consequence, it is only man’s malleable mind that is capable of rapidly evolving now; or rather it is an emergent complexified global consciousness, where moral sentiments feature prominently, that is taking shape. What might also motivate the forward-looking Christian is the vision that this “noosphere” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s term) is ascending toward the Omega Point, the eternal Christ Consciousness, and we should aspire to be a conscious part of that ascent.

(III) Though apparently shared by both the progressives and the conservatives in society, man’s moral foundation of fairness /justice is problematic also from a purely descriptive standpoint because both groupings differ diametrically in their understanding of it. What is one side’s justice many a time is the other side’s injustice. Suffice it to recall here polemics of the advocates of “egalitarian” positions, and those affirming “equal opportunities.” Even Jesus’ position on justice-related issues did not escape being questioned while He lived on earth, or anachronistically criticized by later commentators. Some of the Sermon on the Mount passages are often cited as examples of a seemingly cowardly renunciation of any striving for justice: the famous “do not resist evil,… turn the other check,… let him have the shirt also,… go with him the second mile” themes. Yet, as Walter Wink so convincingly showed in his last books, these words, on the contrary, are a summons to nonviolent resistance to evil, not at all to virtual complicity in it by forgoing resistance. They are a summons to adopt a nonviolent brand of justice.

Such a stance requires actually much more courage and wisdom (as exemplified by the martyr Mahatma Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela upon ascending to power) than reciprocity- and adrenaline-driven rage that seems to be the normal mode of pursuing justice in our time. Jesus unequivocally renounced that, knowing that there is but one small step from that to an evil no lesser than the one that the justice advocate is fighting against. That evil is scapegoating, the violence of its outward forms and/or inherent in the motivation underlying it.

Virtually nobody, including those inspired by Christ’s radical message of “loving one’s enemies, and doing good to those who hate one,” who thus abhor revenge (as having nothing to do with love) as well as discern vengeance behind the functioning of the judicial system, seems to advocate refraining from it all and instead focusing on society’s safety. Nobody seems to even try to effect a shift in public opinion on the issue, thus assuring continuity of the reign of “good” violence/judicial vengeance. And there seems to be an unimpeachable “fairness” logic behind this stance: even those who themselves (would) refrain from indulging in vicarious revenge when violence is directed against them, do not want to force nonviolence on others.

Would man, mimetic as he is, become less human by this paradigmatic shift? On the contrary, his mimetic endowment would probably be more geared toward creativity than it is now, when it is bound to fritter away its energies in violent reciprocity. So is it really too early and too much to say that it is time that the mimetic violence-based sense of justice be done away with, replaced with a sense of care and love? And the judiciary’s role redefined accordingly, its efforts aiming at fostering societal security and safety?

Rene Girard mentioned in at least one of his books (Battling to the End) that he refused early on in his career a proposal on the part of Emmanuel Levinas to engage in discussion. He wasn’t ready at the time. Was he ready later? Ever? Would he – would we – be ready to endorse Levinas’ apparent deemphasizing of even justice concerns while strongly emphasizing responsibility toward the Other, or care about and for one’s fellow human beings? Would we be ready to switch gears to creative mimesis and stop focusing on destructive zero-sum varieties? Would we be ready to truly disengage from violent reciprocity?

(IV) On leaving (preoccupations with) destructive mimesis we will certainly be in unchartered territory. But such is also the nature of any loving and creative activity. And we should be reassured that this new concern of ours would be in line with what the supreme model of loving mimesis – Jesus Christ – would like to see us doing. Plus, we would be returning – but against a wholly new backdrop – to some characteristics of mimesis that make it so powerful a human propensity, such as spontaneity, yet this time lending their magic to things and endeavors of moral value. Could even reciprocity make a welcome comeback in those new circumstances, as fraught with the danger of degenerating into violence as it is?

For one, spontaneity might be now real, as opposed to its shadowy, forced variety within a zero-sum mimetic horizon. And reciprocity? As long as there is a loving humility able to deflate the balloon of narcissistic vanity, pride, envy and the like whenever they threaten to overwhelm us, as a mutual influence it should actually be able to assist us in discerning and creatively navigating any situation as it presents itself.

(V) The work to effect this paradigm shift would not at all be easy or straightforward; it would be long and arduous – if it ever were to succeed. But as the evolvement of a judiciary in (hierarchical) societies was a necessary and successful step in curbing “bad” reciprocal violence prevalent in them, so pernicious that it periodically threatened their very survival, so the proposed shift would hopefully go a long way toward reducing the overall level of societal violence – of whatever variety. It would have to start with the “good,” judicial violence being purged as rationale behind statute books and case law. Since violence is highly contagious, the less it is implied or used rhetorically by the judiciary, the better for the well-being of society and its members.

The Christian should not only welcome this shift but also work toward its advancement. Arguably only with its implementation could the full Gospel message, inclusive of the Sermon on the Mount, be considered as taken on board in earnest. No more need to downplay some of the message as abstruse or even inconsistent with its overall thrust. In fact this development might have the potential to liberate man, to set free the power of his creativity, thus contributing to an abundant world that need not be violent to truly move forward.

On the Margins of Jonathan Haidt’s Talk, “The Age of Outrage: What It's Doing to Our Universities, and Our Country”

Charles Taylor’s near-classic essay (first published in 1992) “The Politics of Recognition” actually focused on contemporary demands of equal recognition, as in, ”Democracy has ushered in a politics of equal recognition,…” a problem obviously fraught with rivalry. It gets further confounded with the introduction of the term “identity,” as in demanding equal recognition of one’s identity in relation to others’ identities, for “identity” actually points in two opposite directions: towards the “identical,” as well as towards the “individual,” as in everyone’s (or every group's) individual, different or even diverse (as well as supposedly authentic) identities. “You can have diversity within a shared sense of identity. And if you don’t have that shared sense of identity, it’s going to be very divisive,” warns Jonathan Haidt in another of his recent talks.

The apt title of Ralph Shain’s essay (from 2008) specifically asks, “Is Recognition a Zero-Sum Game?,” which he himself doesn’t really answer, but many thinkers, including Francis Fukuyama, do answer it in the affirmative, considering meaningful recognition as always being relative or hierarchical and relational. Also, stressing “equal recognition” results in other descriptions, reflective of social polarization, gaining significance, such as differentiation-undifferentiation, or the Haidtian centrifugal-centripetal. We’re smack-dab in the middle of a world of rivalrous mimesis. I would argue that zero-sum and scarcity vs positive sum and abundance is a particularly apt descriptive pair here, parallel to the Christian creative and abundant living vs destructive and rivalrous living, which in turn parallels (Christian) conversion and lack thereof.

Zero-sum here is illuminating also because it points to at least two additional issues:
1. one’s authentic identity is quickly perceived as – at the most – identical in terms of received recognition, whereas, despite that ostensibly being demanded all along, in the heat of mimetic recognition rivalry what is really fought for is getting the upper hand for one’s identity. [And that would have to come at the expense of the rival(s).]
2. the lingering suspicion, in fact one of the crucial reasons for outbreaks of rivalry, that the granting of equal recognition is either insincere, forced (whereas it should be voluntary and forthcoming), or an outright sham, not providing anything of real value to the demanding party. That – in other words – the stronger party doesn’t want to share their recognition “resources.”

Which last point returns us to power politics, and of course struggle for power is most liable to become zero-sum, if it does not belong to the zero-sum domain par excellence. If so, despite a changing social and cultural milieu, with honor cultures giving way in the West to a dignity culture, with its universalist principle of recognizing everyone’s equal dignity, the ostensible struggle for equal recognition cannot but continue.

But is it really about equal recognition? And why should it be if for the mimetically desirous man it feels like a zero-sum game? Certainly equal recognition of each individual or group unique identity – our current game – feels like one (whereas that of universal equal dignity arguably need not: whether grounded in man's autonomy and reason or in religious beliefs, it relies relatively less on, or even tends to deemphasize, reciprocity). Contributing to loss of a shared sense of identity, aided and abetted by man’s rivalry-prone mimetic endowment, it has brought on a victimhood culture, which I would not characterize even as paying lip service to equal recognition. Whether out of a sense of outraged powerlessness or driven by a sense of urgency and a spirit of rivalry, various societal underdogs seemingly decided, for all practical purposes, that they will not be fooled by equality mumbo-jumbo. In venues like American universities the arsenal of those anti-establishment warriors or latter-day revolutionaries has been aptly described by Jonathan Haidt. But as he points out, the fight currently fought on many “victim” fronts is in the process of converging to become intersectional, taking into account and exploiting interactions of discriminatory effects, (aiming at) producing a final and perfect polarization of all societal underdogs, as they perceive themselves, united against those perceived by them as presently wielding power.

What will happen if at that stage, which is still shaping up, the protagonists – we as divided, with none staying on the sidelines! – are roughly evenly matched? The latter is true already, as indubitably borne out by a slew of recent elections, but “victimhood recognition” conflicts are still raging on many distinct planes, and not everybody yet seemingly has succumbed to the virulence of those many mimetic contagions. Bugle calls to “intersectional” communion have not yet met with resounding undifferentiating success, but there are harbingers of that on the horizon, as alluded to by Haidt. Will the "victimizers" oblige and respond in kind? Still Haidt is actually rather optimistic concerning American academe, though not necessarily the other venues, where he seems to be hedging his bets. So, "be alarmed, but do not despair." The fine-tuned machinery of liberal democracy is showing considerable wear and tear, and is seemingly about to come apart even as its denizen mechanics are coming apart at the seams – and yet it just might be able to withstand the age of outrage, just as it did so many prior threats.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe6-QSnQTdg

Painting Oneself Into Zero-Sum Mimesis: Not an Acquisitiveness- But Rather “Recognition”-Driven Process of Undifferentiation

The titular “undifferentiation” needs to be seen against an existing or (re)introduced differentiation. Girard claims that out of an undifferentiation-produced disorder and mayhem there (re)appears a degree of order, historically by means of sacrifice, then (fortified-by-myth) ritual, initially as part of a religion, then law, which eventually (or hopefully) becomes secularized and forms a judicial system. It should be obvious though that this dialectical societal process can actually be entered at any time and at any point of what seems a virtual continuum of opposites of a changeable and unstable equilibrium. Today, moreover, in a civilization ostensibly built around the idea of equality, it is rather differentiation, one that seems to, insidiously or openly and forcefully, assert or reintroduce itself, or at least is seen as operative in the world around us, that arguably is the major trigger for subsequent violent undifferentiating mimesis. Today this differentiation, or rather the difference advanced by it, always demands equal recognition and respect, at least where such a demand stands a chance of being attended to, as is the case in the West. And Girard of course knows pretty well that differentiation may be as violent as the undifferentiation, when claiming for example that Nietzsche was entranced with violent differentiation.

Whether differentiation- or undifferentiation-driven, the resulting mimetic process may push us back into a zero-sum, or Malthusian-like, world of conflict that is unresolvable by means other than expropriation of the Other – of whatever the object matter of the conflict might be. However, it should be obvious that more often than not this matter today does not belong to the “real object” category, despite what Girard was wont to say in his last works:

“…humans oppose one another over real objects. It is the desire to acquire, much more than the desire for recognition, that quickly degenerates into what I call metaphysical desire, whereby the subject seeks to acquire the being of his or her model. At such times, I want ‘to be what the other becomes when he possesses this or that object.’ How does it happen? In a much more concrete and violent manner than the ‘desire for recognition.’”… “The fight to the death is thus much more than a simple desire for recognition.” (from Battling to the End)

Now as far as “real objects” are concerned we are still living today in a world that is growing, as we have been for quite a while now. While we still might vie for them as it was a matter of life and death, instead of settling for their substitutions (that is what mimetic rivalry is all about), it is only in the realm of emotionally-colored “virtual objects,” such as recognition, respect, honor, etc., or – preeminently so for Girard – the Other’s being, but here appearing specifically as bearer of and one capable of bestowing or withholding those aforementioned qualities, that we reenter a Malthusian-like world of scarcity that today seems more unbearable than it has ever been. It is also well on its way to becoming deadlier than ever.

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“The ultimate meaning of desire is death…” That’s how the concluding chapter of Girard’s Deceit, Desire, and the Novel begins. Yet “a simple renunciation of desire I don't think is Christian; it's more Buddhist,” says the author in an interview with Rebecca Adams in November 1992, ["Violence, Difference, Sacrifice: A Conversation with René Girard" in Religion and Literature 25, no. 2 ( 1993): 9-33.] Yet one is left to wonder whether Girard believes it is ultimately impossible to renounce desire and thus it is better to forgo even attempting such futile exercises, or he doesn’t want us to be unchristian. Similarly tolerance seems to be frowned upon for all practical purposes.

To avoid this death, the death of spirit if not physical death, Girard advocates conversion, which consists in imitation of a worthy model. The call to this type of imitation sounds clearly in his essay, published originally as "How Can Satan Cast out Satan?": “Mimetic desire is good, it is even very good, the best thing in the world, since it is the only road to the true God.” But then a note of caution: “But it is the same as human freedom, and it is also the road to Satan... When mimetic rivalry is triggered, the two competing desires ceaselessly reinforce each other and violence is likely to erupt. But mimetic rivalry is not satanic to begin with, it is not sinful per se, it is only a permanent occasion of sin.”

The crucial thing is that there are two principles operative in mimetic desire, that of Jesus Christ, a creative one, leading to abundant living, and that of Satan, a rivalrous and destructive one, leading to scarcity for all: “Both Jesus and Satan are teachers of imitation and imitators themselves, imitators of God the Father. This means that human beings always imitate God, either through Jesus or through Satan. They seek God indirectly through the human models they imitate… What is the difference between the mimetic desire of Jesus and the mimetic desire of Satan? The difference is that Satan imitates God in a spirit of rivalry. Jesus imitates God in a spirit of childlike and innocent obedience and this is what he advises us to do as well. Since there is no acquisitive desire in God, the docile imitation of God cannot generate rivalry.”

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So after all not always does desire amount to death. Yet desire, invariably mimetic, remains potentially sinister throughout Girard’s oeuvre, as that part of human spiritual endowment which is in constant danger of degenerating into deadly forms, of spurring rivalrous, then conflictual and ultimately violent mimesis. In view of this the compiler of The Girardian Reader (1996), James G. Williams, was right when characterizing, in the glossary to the book, one preeminently virulent form of desire in the following way:

"Metaphysical Desire. As mimetic or interdividual beings we associate being or reality with In struggles with the model-rival, and particularly when the subject seems to come to a dead-end against the model-obstacle, it becomes apparent from a mimetic analysis that the subject wants the being of the model-mediator. This is the source of fascination, hypnosis, idolatry, the 'double', and possession. The experience of the double occurs when the model-obstacle as overpowering other is so internalized that the subject does not experience a distinction of self and the model-mediator. The extreme alternatives are suicide or murder of the model-obstacle. Other possibilities are schizophrenia, escape into a new identity, and liberation through the release experienced in love and forgiveness. This latter is the work of a good or conversionary mimesis." (the emphasis is mine.)

Thus if “The ultimate meaning of desire is death,” it is actually “grasped” by murder – or suicide, in a veritable spirit of undifferentiation! A 2002 WHO World Report on Violence and Health, quoted in Girard’s Evolution and Conversion. Dialogues on the Origins of Culture, says that in 80 different countries half of violent deaths were caused by suicide, while the majority of homicides were committed within the family (which strongly indicates their mimetic causes).

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But what tends to be the scene against which such deadly sentiments are aroused in interacting interdividuals? Certainly not such where both participants (or both sides, in a group setting) could be expected to benefit from their interaction. Is it not assumed here that only one of the participants, or sides, would be able to benefit from this interaction that all of a sudden becomes rivalry? That would certainly be the case if the interaction was a zero-sum game. And it seems that this is what the mimetic horizon appears to be on emotional level to those remaining under its spell, albeit many a time un-self-consciously.

Un-self-consciously… being ignorant about one’s state, unable to even attempt to be rational or behave in such fashion, as an autonomous modern person would be expected to – though one’s every move might feel as an exercise of one’s autonomy. Guided by unchecked emotions, by a virulent affect not liable to be controlled or even recognized. Overwhelmed by a tide of intersubjectively- or, to be more precise, mimetically-generated unrestrainable emotions, and thus additionally irrational in the sense of not being able even to ascertain that one is participating in a zero-sum game. (The mimetic mechanism in general, just like the scapegoat mechanism, its violent outgrowth, is normally invisible to the regular man.) And that is crucial: mimesis of desire in a situation of abundance need not turn deadly, although it certainly may. But mimesis of desire in a zero-sum situation tends to be deadly by default.

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It bears noting here that this distinction need not map one-to-one onto that between external and internal mediation. Neither does it coincide with yet another distinction introduced by Girard – already alluded to, one not as pivotal to his theory albeit much referred to in his later works, as well as engaged in a very partisan spirit, that between the desire for recognition and the desire to acquire real objects. The quote from Battling to the End, “The fight to the death is thus much more than a simple desire for recognition,” cited above, continues: ”… It is not a master-slave dialectic, but a merciless battle between twins.”

It is all fine in Hegelian terms, obviously referred to here to critique the philosopher’s frameworks, but nowadays the distinction is either spurious, terminological, or one of degree only. It has nothing to do with a “master-slave dialectic” anymore, the mimetic rivalry certainly is not about (gaining) the acknowledgement of one’s lordship. It misrecognizes the importance of emotions driven by a modern spirit of equality. It is attended paradoxically by the inability to stop framing, for all intents and purposes although un-self-consciously, the resulting all-consuming struggle in zero-sum terms – on account of an unstable and dysfunctional equilibrium created by the protagonists’ emotional entanglement. In this climate the winner takes all, if only for a moment. Both rivals are ever threatened by a downward spiral where the desire understood or initially framed as one for equal recognition (however it is understood, whether as that of everyone’s, universal equal dignity, or rather of each individual’s, group’s or culture’s unique identity), degenerates, ever suspicious of the Other’s intentions or real attitudes, into a desire to overpower and/or control one’s model-obstacle, that bearer of an elusive standing that the one feeling momentarily inferior wants to appropriate for oneself. The futility of that exercise, the inability to secure that state permanently, makes the protagonists monstrous doubles, mutually turning their respective twins into objects, and eventually seeking to appropriate them, or, as Girard puts it, to acquire their respective twins’ being. Again, in the other’s eyes they all of a sudden become possessed of superior if not sacred dignity, status, worth, claims to being in the moral right, etc., hardly “real objects” at all. This may be happening initially or potentially in a sequence, depending on the vicissitudes of their rivalry. Escalating to extremes all that can turn deadly, into murder or suicide.

Since the sought-for “recognition” remains relative, which also has to do with its being so elusive and transitory, in a modern world that persists as intolerant if not (officially) hierarchical anymore, this kind of “acquisition” clearly belongs in a zero-sum realm. It is driven by emotions and not rational considerations, as human interactions in zero-sum situations tend to turn irrational. Girard is clearly wrong in his assertions of the relatively benign implications of the desire for recognition as compared with purely acquisitiveness-based mimetic desire, as he defines both types, at least in their current manifestations. With identity politics and victim status used as tools to control one’s rival, it is the contemporary pursuit of recognition, (per thinkers like Fukuyama always a zero-sum game), rather than simple acquisitiveness which normally is not (or at least need not be), that is a model game of murder/suicide. Today “acquisition of another’s being” in a mimetic exchange may in fact more often than not be a final transmogrification or extreme intensification, in a climate of uncertainty and instability, of an initial (mutual) pursuit of equal recognition of one’s (respective) uniqueness. This actual stressing of difference may in fact lead to ultimate undifferentiation, when driven to the extreme limit of threatened annihilation. It is when it does not stop there, murder (or suicide) follows.

Examples used by Girard do not make a strong case for his proposed distinction. His statement, from Battling to the End: “There was no ‘desire for recognition’ between the Tutsis and Hutus, but a twin-like rivalry that went to extremes and degenerated into genocide. Take the Middle East, where the massacres of Sunnis and Shiites will only increase in the months and years to come. In this case also it cannot be said that one is seeking ‘recognition’ from the other: rather, each one wants to exterminate the other, which is very different,” is not convincing; especially the first illustration verges on disregard of history. Both of these historical developments can be traced back to a stage of differentiation. In the first case, it was aggravated by a colonial power, and eventually went beyond what in modern terms can be described, perhaps a bit anachronistically, as demand on the part of the aggrieved side for recognition of their (now outraged) dignity by their compatriots, into an ethnic-identity-driven struggle for redress and (reverse) domination, and eventually into genocide. The other rivalry started as an internecine feud among coreligionists over divergent claims to the legitimacy of succession as caliph to prophet Muhammad, and today is liable to violent eruptions out of a state of mutual enmity. In any case, very little seems to justify describing both rivalries in terms of acquisitive mimesis over “real objects” gone to extremes.

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“Both Hegel and Nietzsche understood modern political democracy to be a secularized version of the Christian doctrine of the universal equality of human dignity. Hegel in particular saw developments in the material world such as the French Revolution and the emergence of the principle of equal recognition as the working out of the inner logic of human rationality.” (Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy)

In the past the actual acceptance of hierarchical structures in society was a bulwark against recognition-, respect- and honor-colored issues being a constant threat to those very structures, and thus to societal peace as well, on many possible, especially inter-hierarchical, planes of potential conflict. [To use a cliché by way of illustration: If the master used his “lord’s right,” or primae noctis privilege, that was not (allowed to be) considered an infringement of the husband’s honor, whereas obviously the same sexual act outside of marriage with equal-status participants would be just that.] That type of bulwark is gone now.

If a Malthusian world has now reappeared in the West it has done so in a new guise, against the modern backdrop of ostensible equality. And Hegel's concept of recognition may be instrumental in explaining its ascent, although not in ways the philosopher may have hoped for: in many of its current manifestations it introduces anything but rationality or freedom, especially when feeding much of today’s identity politics. Moreover, whereas in the past zero-sum descriptions could justifiably refer not only to emotionally-colored honor, respect or recognition issues but to economic ones as well, it is not the latter that are mostly in play now. A Mercedes Benz can as easily be had by a ressentiment-driven religious fanatic on a mission to avenge an imagined dishonor as by anyone in the West.

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Since he asserted that the difference separating sacrifice as collective murder of a third party and sacrifice of self in order not to have any third victim killed cannot possibly be greater, Girard for a long time resisted applying the same term “sacrifice” to both events. When he eventually changed his mind, one might say that undifferentiation symbolically triumphed.

As noted in the opening paragraph, violent undifferentiating mimesis pushes us back into a zero-sum world of conflict seemingly unresolvable by means other than expropriation of the Other, possibly symbolically of the Other’s “being,” especially in a recognition-colored struggle or the like, but ultimately of that Other’s real life. Or – of one’s own life; but not necessarily the life of a suicide. Indeed, it may be that of a martyr sacrificing himself in the name of love. Yet an unfortunate fact becomes clear now: the only common denominator that apparently exists in such a zero-sum process of undifferentiation is violence. And it is only with Jesus Christ, and with Christ-like martyrs, those who absorb rather than inflicting violence, that it is able to undergo a transfiguration productive of new abundant life, not just violence-based order.

But then there is “…democratic, suicidal terrorism [that] would prevent any containment of war. Suicide attacks are from this point of view a monstrous inversion of primitive sacrifices: instead of killing victims to save others, terrorists kill themselves to kill others…” (from Battling to the End), arguably again driven by desire of recognition or respect. This type of violence, unlike “primitive” sacrificial violence that reintroduces peace as if despite itself, serves only to incite it to ever higher levels. Whether openly aiming to assert difference or demanding equal recognition of one’s uniqueness, whether religiously-colored or otherwise, it leads to nonexistence, making for an unintended triumph of ultimate undifferentiation.

If it really prevailed, an overwhelming mimetic contagion sweeping unchecked through humanity, undifferentiation would be victorious for good at long last – no new life would be able to sprout from such perverted martyrdom any more, or at least as long as humanity remained in its grip. The zero-sum world of our worst instincts and desires would have collapsed into a zero-world or void as far as mankind was concerned.

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Yet in love and forgiveness we should be able to transcend the need to adhere to an illusion of (having to reinstate) difference that drives (self-)murderous frenzy. Instead of being identical in a hatred unto death, we can then be identical in love unto life, hopefully even unto eternal life. And this loving type of undifferentiation must be welcome by the Christian, as well as embraced, if need be, even unto a life-producing death, just like grain that needs to die in order to bear much fruit, to give new life. Just like Gandhi understood especially his final public fasts, always possibly unto death, meant to induce his fellow countrymen to stop their mutual slaughter, to give a life of mutual respect a chance.

It arguably should also be the attitude of the rational man, not unlike what Hegel posited, if only because any other inevitably tends to lead one into deadly forms of mimesis, at least in zero-sum situations.

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But can loving mimesis of desire really disentangle us from zero-sum gridlocks, mimetic or otherwise, that inevitably turn violent or even deadly? We know that it not always succeeds; or, rather, it rarely does, if not for lack of trying: loving mimesis needs also to be humble and nonjudgmental in order not to degenerate into its opposite, and that is not at all easy. If so, should we not instead attempt other nonviolent approaches to human interactions, possibly as little mimetic as possible, that might be more successful? The requisites are the same: that they be creative and capable of producing abundant living in the process for both sides of the mimetic exchange.

It seems that the call to imitate Jesus or else risk falling for Satan leaves Girardians, if not Christians in general, with no less-mimetically-charged, or non-mimetic for that matter, middle ground to explore, such as tolerance, not to mention indifference or wholesale desire-renunciation on a Buddhist model. But what then to make of: “Give up a dispute when mimetic rivalry is taking over,” spoken by Girard in the interview concluding The Girardian Reader? Jesus never shied away or flinched from controversy with the Pharisees.

I have devoted my post, Jesus' Case for Tolerance in His Counsel of Perfection, (https://walterwilkans.blogspot.com/2017/02/jesus-case-for-tolerance-in-his-counsel_16.html), as well as large parts another one, The Ultimate Scandal of Withholding Forgiveness, (https://walterwilkans.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-ultimate-scandal-of-withholding.html), (where Matthew 18 is discussed, with its advocacy of shunning the unrepentant, following a lecture on scandal), where I refer to Jesus’ teaching that could be seen as showing practicable ways of avoiding conflictual mimesis when everything else fails, not far from the gist of Girard’s dictum. While some of this teaching might seem less lofty than “turning the other cheek,” or “loving one’s enemies,” it arguably takes account of human propensity to violence and instructs in ways of taking responsibility to stem it before it fully erupts.

One always needs to bear in mind though that, just like love as agape is about being ready to die – to suffer the ultimate renunciation of all rivalry-born desire, out of (mimetic) obedience to the source of love and life, true tolerance, such as is humble and not scandalized even by intolerance, in the end is about it, too. Thus, displaying a truly tolerant disposition means being able to break out of zero-sum traps that our mimetic endowment continuously sets for us to fall into, regardless of the cost.

In humanity’s mimetic world, in fact, genuine tolerance might be found to be agape’s essence, its hidden gem. Aiming a bit lower than its noble paragon, it is arguably able to practically achieve its purposes on a more sustainable basis than love is. That might be the reason for its coming, and having come in the past, under strident attacks, as an allegedly malevolent force in society, from so many quarters (Aristotle comes to mind here, with his “praise” of it as one of the last virtues of a dying society), whereas agape is dealt away by simply being paid lip service only.

Girard’s Deconstruction of Modernity vis-à-vis a Prescient Supra-modernity of Teilhard de Chardin. Pessimism and Optimism Battling to the End

Few acknowledged scientists flourishing in the twentieth century were openly Christian in their inspiration. Fewer still were those for whom, like for our thinkers, this inspiration was decisive for their thought, constituting one of the bases, if not that crucial one, of their projects—with Christ, principle of universal vitality, being the Omega Point of the universe’s evolution (the paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), or Jesus the embodied Suffering Servant, the waist of the universe’s apocalyptic hourglass (the anthropologist Rene Girard). And thus, even though for both of them Jesus Christ apparently also formed the center of their personal beings, the general outlooks of their respective thoughts are diametrically different.

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Rene Girard’s mimetic theory is a rigorously generalizing anthropology that is condemned to be pessimistic as long as it remains within the bounds of social science. Its pessimism pivots on the posited constitutive mechanism of man’s identity if not nature, one that fully governs his behavior: desire that is strictly mimetic and overpowering, and thus perforce competitive and eventually conflictual. Any social cohesion has to be purchased in this situation at the expense of a victimized scapegoat or else the social group is bound to annihilate itself. Culture and social progress in general can only happen against this background, while its inherent violence is taken to be, at least initially if not throughout man’s phylogenesis, as a necessary, propelling element of his hominization and continued advancement.

Any human union, even familial but especially broader, societal, is seen as fraught with a danger of violence and collapse, because this competitively mediated desire makes humans abhor (any insinuating realization of) their similarity if not basic identity, propelling them to seek means, including those violent, of reasserting difference. Girard’s exhortations to imitate Christ through what he calls innermost mediation of desire, thus effecting man’s renewal able to contribute to a human unity in Christ that would not be predicated on otherization and scapegoating, appear as vague and insufficient, possibly because they are in fact totally out of place in a theory predicated on the randomness of mimetic desire. Moreover, Girard himself does not seem to believe that the growing realization of the scapegoat mechanism in our age of (post)modernity and the rational man is able to keep pace with, let alone outstrip, stronger and stronger rivalry-based destructive impulses in man.

It seems that having mimetic theory as a starting point and trying to regain optimism, including Christian-like, its student would have to plunge into mysticism or venture into mystical theology, a step that the theory does not take, even though it is thoroughly Christian in inspiration. The outcome of human evolution that has led man to advanced cerebralization and later to creation of complex societies is thus hanging in the balance, man is left teetering on the verge of apocalypse. And it is none other than modern man who is both the creator and hapless victim of this state of affairs that is coeval with the mass advancement of the rational man and a globalizing modernity less and less able to sustain itself.

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Now one of the important concepts in the thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is his notion, elaborated in The Phenomenon of Man, that “union differentiates.” This union, in contradistinction to that of mimetic theory, is not only creative (unity complexifies, diversifies, individuates and perfects) and evolutionarily collaborative, but also necessary for man’s assent to a final union in Christ. The creativity takes over from any possible preoccupation with similarity, especially since the latter could only signify stagnation in the long run. At the present stage of human evolution it is mind that is evolving, or rather the noosphere, the outwardly collective yet inwardly personalized, globe-enveloping Mind of humanity—on its ascent to the Omega Point, the eternal Christ Consciousness.

If Teilhard’s thought may be characterized as both panentheistic  and supra-modern when weaving its scientifically-backed tale of an orthogenetic evolution, ever since its appearance spearheaded by man’s reflective consciousness, born of matter concentration and complexification, via a convergent noogenesis in a personalizing universe, it might be worthwhile to ask at this point whether or to what extent Girard’s mimetic man is at least “modern.” He certainly does  not resemble the man of modernity that aspires to be autonomous and rational. Against the backdrop of Teilhard’s thought (where man’s autonomy becomes his personalization, made consummate in the final, differentiating, union) he not only seems lacking in evolutionary potential but also seems denied, or denies himself, creative diversity, that hallmark of an advanced human stage, being in fact reduced (or eventually resigning himself) to conflictual forms of mediated desire and attendant psychological states. He closes in on himself as a rivalrous, resentment-driven creature, instead of being actuated by a sense of vitality and hopes of finally outstripping the entropy of the matter, when in a distant future, in one universal ecstatic gasp of humanity, the noosphere escapes the limitations of the universe’s material matrix. That will also be the day when evil, if any trace of it still lingers or even if it remains up until then a serious threat to an advancing humanity (Teilhard leaves that undecided), is dealt its final blow.

Teihard’s is one possible vision of humanity, albeit rather abstruse and controversial to some tastes, that is able to underpin fundamental Christian values and virtues, the capacity that mimetic theory (and Rene Girard himself) can rightly be accused of being deficient at, not only when examined against virtues such as sustainable hope but arguably also for universalistic values that go beyond its opposition to purchasing societal peace at the expanse of a scapegoat. Human brotherhood or even fellowship on a global scale seem in fact to be viewed by mimetic theory, for all practical purposes, with suspicion, due to inherent dangers of the attendant rivalry, that seems to prevail over, and to effectively nullify the validity of, its—Christian through and through—universalistic appeal.

That last appeal is also that of modernity, and forms a crucial part of the spiritual makeup of the rational man, regardless of his actual provenience, but whose universalistic values ostensibly coincide with those of a progressive, non-tribal Christianity that is not preoccupied with asserting itself over and above other religions, but instead first and foremost seeks to practice and promote them in a true spirit of humility.

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Only in efforts such as Jean-Michel Oughourlian’s enlargement/reformulation of mimetic theory does the mimetic man of Rene Girard—the one that is our contemporary, to be precise—arguably cease to be a specimen pertaining more to pre-modernity, to the pre-rational times of yore, than to the modern era. There he becomes a multihued creature that he actually is, albeit his many shades of psychological makeup seem depicted mostly as breeding grounds for so many psychological disorders, rather than as regular psychological types that can be seen as associated with or evincing different mimetic patterns. He actually becomes postmodern.

Yet Oughourlian’s formulation of the concept seems a bit unfortunate, namely when he posits as entirely mimetic one of the three layers of man’s brain, while the two other—the emotional and the rational—seem to be mostly performing the task of filtering and distorting pure mimetic impulses, with mimesis of desire obviously being their chief preoccupation. Yet human mimesis is best seen as functionally enveloping the whole of man, grounded as it seems first and foremost in his empathic capacity. The filtering and distorting should rather be related more broadly to his empathetic impulses, which seem phylogenetically more basic and earlier so as to justify describing them as instinctual (clearly so for unimpaired brains). And so instead of positing a mimetic “brain,” its first layer should rather be seen—much more broadly—as instinctual (inclusive of man’s enteric nervous system, or the gut brain, which supplements the central nervous system that includes the cephalic brain, and is known to produce “gut feelings”). It best be regarded as including parts of man’s empathic endowment but also his dominance drive, as well as his natural, non-mimetic appetites, conforming to his animal brain. Alternatively, the brain’s instinctual layer could be seen as that where the play of human mimesis is at its most basic and natural, whereas at the higher layers it gets more and more complicated and eventually distorted, potentially leading to psychological problems that may be purely functional or characterological, and that may be or may turn pathological.

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The relevance of the above observations becomes clear when one turns one’s attention to Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, those Paul Ricoeur’s masters of suspicion, when they are viewed  as stressing various and distinct aspects of man’s identity that have evolved in the course of his phylogenesis, amenable as they are to being grouped under the same or equivalent threefold rubrics. Moreover, Girard’s engagement with their thought and critique thereof from the standpoint of mimetic theory was instrumental in his deconstruction of modern man as an autonomous individual.

It might be worthwhile to add at this point that some of Theilhard’s detractors see him as a Nietzschean. Of course he is not: whereas Nietzsche’s overman heroically falls back on amor fati in the face of the eternal recurrence of all things, Teilhard’s supra-rational man boldly forges onwards, in the avant-garde of an evolution that is seen as reflectively rational (albeit also mystical), and able to imbue man with optimism.

Out of the three arguably it is only Marx that stands tangentially to modernity (although he envisions himself and his thought in a climactic—Hegelian, rationally dialectical—position), his is a reaction that aims to make the best possible use of it, whereas the two others’ work is actually that of its deconstruction, Nietzsche’s will-to-power man especially being a wholesale throwback to pre-modernity. 

Now this is what Teilhard has to say about Marxism:

“When we listen to the disciples of Marx, we might think it was enough for mankind (for its growth and to justify the sacrifices imposed on us) to gather together the successive acquisitions we bequeath to it in dying—our ideas, our discoveries, our works of art, our example. Surely this imperishable treasure is the best part of our being. Let us reflect a moment, and we shall soon see that for a universe which, by hypothesis, we admitted to be a “collector and custodian of consciousness,” the mere hoarding of these remains would be nothing but a colossal wastage. What passes from each of us into the mass of humanity by means of invention, education and diffusion of all sorts is admittedly of vital importance. I have sufficiently tried to stress its phyletic value and no one can accuse me of belittling it. But with that accepted, I am bound to admit that, in these contributions to the collectivity, far from transmitting the most precious, we are bequeathing, at the utmost, only the shadow of ourselves. Our works ? But even in the interest of life in general, what is the work of works for man if not to establish, in and by each one of us, an absolutely original center in which the universe reflects itself in a unique and inimitable way ? And those centers are our very selves and personalities. The very center of our consciousness, deeper than all its radii; that is the essence which Omega, if it is to be truly Omega, must reclaim.”

Teilhard obviously envisions a very different climax than that seen, and actively worked towards, by Marx and his disciples. But though their outlooks on evolution and progress differ (one seeing human collectivity, allegedly rational, as its culmination, the other personalized humanity, each individual a supremely rational being), he is able to look into the future from a vantage point not all that different from that of Marx, which is more than can be said when juxtaposing Teilhard with Freud and Nietzsche—that of a rational man assured of progress. Moreover, in his not-too-charitable characterization of Marxism Teilhard stresses something that is very familiar to Girardians: acquisitiveness, though as a mere shadow of creativity.    

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Acquisitiveness  is the very thing around which pivots the very project of modern man. The Enneagram and the contemporary contemplative thinker Thomas Keating see it as a means used by the rational man (the plain contemporary “man of the head,” not a philosopher) to assuage the biggest existential problem of this type of man, namely—and paradoxically—fear, including fear of death and suffering, with fear of a premature or violent death looming large in his mind. And that is how his (false) programs for happiness are structured: to gain a sense of security he is so desperately in need of—before he can move on in search of understanding and meaning (or the latter could be employed in shedding light on the former). In its present form and, arguably, in its security role acquisitiveness is contemporaneous with the project itself, whose beginnings could be traced back to Descartes and Hobbes, on the individual and the societal plane, respectively—and even Pascal, with his security-minded wager. Historically, its particularities and intensity reflect closely the latter’s vicissitudes. Incidentally, Oughourlian sees this type as given to paranoia when finding himself in a mimetically-instigated rivalry.

Moreover, the hoarding tendency makes this type less inclined to fall back on other forms of internal mediation of desire, such as could be seen as filtered or molded by “premodern” propensities of man. As such the latter arguably are not forward looking—they are not on the cutting edge of man’s evolution. In fact some of them threaten man’s very survival. The animal-instinct-to-dominance-derived will to power, shaped and still foregrounded today by the instinctual brain, well known to the psychological typologies mentioned above, from the standpoint of a fear-actuated rational man could no longer be seen as the ultimate or even suitable instrument capable of providing security. The instinctual man thrives in hierarchical, premodern societies, where strong individuals seek and gain power and control—after the fashion of alpha males in animal societies—in the process taking care also of their most basic existential needs, such as security, in the best possible manner to boot. But those not endowed with a strong enough power drive to propel them to positions of control can also benefit in terms of their safety needs, provided they submit and comply.

Yet for his projected society of theoretically equal and autonomous individuals to be sustainable, the rational man of modernity had to leave all of that largely behind, plunging instead all the more into unabashed acquisitiveness, something that was so abhorrent to Nietzsche. Also, since the needs of the rational man are those of an individual, for them not to be narrowly egoistic they had to be based on universalistic values and tolerance, which stipulation for him, however, only stood to reason. It might be added that from this perspective the project started unraveling—before our very eyes, actually—when the ostensibly rational man found himself increasingly intolerant—of… intolerance, as he understood it, his “dignity” culture giving way in the process to a victimhood culture of postmodernity: the need to gain recognition as being in the (moral) right swamping a rational sense of tolerance. From a Girardian perspective this development might be viewed as a degeneration into the ultimate acquisitiveness, one that aims to acquire the being of the rival.   

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According to Girard, the mimetic man, whether initially rational or not, is bound to abandon simple acquisitiveness, his mimetic desire, mirroring that of his rival, degenerating into a metaphysical desire for that rival’s (now-become-obstacle) being. That is the mechanism that evinces yet another facet or degree of mimesis—and another psychological type, whose capital sin is amour propre or philautia. Short of desiring to acquire the obstacle’s being, the game pivots now around recognition, and touches more broadly on vying for appreciation, esteem and affection, which shape programs for happiness for the emotional or “heart” man, and which are crucial to the narcissist. In its various manifestations it was studied and described by many thinkers, from Plato through Rousseau to Freud, and given its specifically mimetic visage by Girard in the context of the most virulent forms of the internal mediation of desire, by virtue of its intensity and insatiability nowadays ineluctably trending towards violence. 

The pre-rational “emotional” man, living in an honor culture of yore, seems to have had his sense of security as an existential problem under control by its being submerged in him by layers of those other needs mentioned above, in fact those of the true Girardian interdividual. The energy invested in caring for those needs was thus not available for fueling the fear behind his security concerns, even though violence was writ large for him. His Western counterparts  of our time, the “feeling” personality types, might not be all that dissimilar from him, even though they operate in a different cultural environment, while many non-Western peoples still live in cultural milieus that foster such attitudes. 

Now the power- and recognition- driven, (overly) instinctual and emotional people, those who are apt to forsake the purely acquisitive mimesis (that is also basic for human learning and even creativity) only to find themselves plunging into its other, conflictual and eventually violent forms, could not possibly be, per Teilhard de Chardin, on the cutting edge of evolution, though of course the developments sketched above are anachronistic as far as he is concerned. More modestly speaking, they seemingly are also the undoing of modernity, and their persistence in fact is what mimetic theory is all about. Girard seems reconciled to it, but pays for it with increasing pessimism. For him man’s evolutionary horizon closes in on itself: man’s consciousness is still laboring—but is still unable—to fully adopt the central message of the innocence of the scapegoated victim, whoever that victim might be. Instead, “victims” and “scapegoats” multiply, reciprocally and hatefully thrown in the face of the opposing group. Girardians can be found on both sides of any human divide there is.

Teilhard and those buoyed by his vision, underlain by a desire for knowledge (“nothing on earth will ever saturate our desire for knowledge”), on the other hand, rest assured that the noosphere will outpace the self-destructiveness of the material world, the entropy of the matter. The radiant center of the universe, its conscious eternal pole, will have gathered around it the personalized minds of a united humanity. Teilhard is actuated by a desire that is not at all mimetic, but rather mystical, its inexhaustible source being God—and his unfolding creation, whereas Girard as a thinker clearly shrinks from that direct inspiration, relying as he does on mimesis (though it be Christ’s innermost mediation of desire) and its ramifications. As a result he can’t seem to be able to tap that preeminent source of human hope on a sustainable basis.

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“Mankind: the idea of mankind was the first image in terms of which, at the very moment that he awoke to the idea of progress, modern man must have tried to reconcile the hopes of an unlimited future with which he could no longer dispense with the perspective of the inevitability of his own unavoidable individual death. Mankind was at first a vague entity, felt rather than thought out, in which an obscure feeling of perpetual growth was allied to a need for universal fraternity.”

In this passage from The Phenomenon of Man describing early stages of the project of modernity and those of the rational man, Teilhard, writing into the first years of World War II, on the eve of the German invasion of his native country of France, and yet still feeling part of this endangered project, points to yet another means of dealing with an emerging solitary fear of individual mortality, increasingly haunting the rational man ever since his religious moorings had been weakened—the reassuring idea of progress, giving some sense of security and hope, especially when capped (as  it is with Teilhard) with a crowning idea of fraternity—that reconciling ideal of the French Revolution’s standard triad that, arguably (though not necessarily obviously), pertains to man’s rational realm—if it is to have any chance of taking hold and not devolving into its opposite, the fate certain to befall it if it were allowed to be nurtured exclusively by man’s emotional (and/or instinctual) side—the latter well explained by mimetic theory, dealing as it does with the vicissitudes of equality and liberty, those other vertices of the triad.

In fact the rational man per Teilhard is an integral man, under the aegis of reason harmoniously reconciling also his other sides, something that was not evident or required of him at his early stages. Man’s phylogenesis, reflected and easily discernable for an educated observer in his ontogenesis that includes his cultural environment, has finally taken him from the stage of the elemental through the psychic to the spiritual, or from the geosphere through the biosphere to an emergent noosphere, or complexified global consciousness. That is the reassuring vision actuating Teilhard and his followers.

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One important realization from collating those bodies of thought: when availing oneself of both thinkers’ valuable insights in order to interweave them into, or to craft, one’s own life narrative one had better bear in mind that their precise mix may sway that narrative’s relative degree of optimism and pessimism. Since both are liable to be mimetically contagious, it is especially incumbent upon the rational man, be he Christian or not, to cultivate optimism; it is a rational undertaking, one decisively influencing his determination to persist as a rational human being. And some thinkers are better suited than others to helping him in this task.

Bloom’s Against Empathy from a (Mostly) Girardian Perspective

The book’s title, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion,  apparently aims at eliciting an emotional reaction, either piquing someone’s curiosity or stirring vehement opposition, both good for its sales. But from a broader perspective, on a balanced reading, the book might be seen as arguing for broadening one’s decision-making apparatus, especially in cases concerning moral issues, by developing or giving proper stress to one’s rational abilities. Which in the process is expected to have the effect of relatively diminishing the role of empathy in morally-charged decisions and actions, but in the long run might actually make empathy more universally deployable in the individual, something that the book does not acknowledge. In any case, there is a big role for both “cognitive empathy” and “emotional empathy” (both terms‘ usage explained in the book) in man.

Neuroscientific research shows that deliberatively developed moral decisions, when they become actions, and especially when that happens repeatedly, produce synapses in our brains that make those processes increasingly automatic. Before long they become more and more like emotional pleasure-producing moral reactions, emulating those empathy-based. And, as neuroscientist Antonio Damasio would have us believe, the same final result can also be effected by imagining morally-charged situations with a benevolent attitude. What we seem to have here is a de facto emotional-cognitive feedback loop, or “as-if body loop” (Damasio’s term), although apparently more or less developed or effective, depending on the individual and the length of training.

In view of the above it would certainly be safer not to argue for emotional empathy not to play any role in moral decision-making, but for its being supplemented (though sometimes possibly overridden) by cognitive empathy and rational thinking, in a display of a capacity the book refers to as projective empathy. In fact this is what apparently happened to Bloom himself, who describes himself in the book as having been driven largely by emotional empathy in the past, something that he now sees as excessive if not wrong. But never in his book does he give an impression—nor does he claim it outright—that he actually has become less emotionally empathic, which capacity is involuntary anyway, at least in the short run.  What could be easily inferred is that he has managed to augment his moral apparatus by inclusion of, or additional and significant role assigned to, (benevolent) reasoning, by cultivating both cognitive empathy and compassion. It seems that the well-rounded human being should ideally both exhibit a degree of emotional empathy and be rational about his or her moral decisions and actions, however difficult that might be. 

Of course all that has been said above rests on the assumption that ours are universalistic values and morality. But it should be clear from the start that this is exactly what this book is premised on, quite apart from making a case for what is signaled by its title. It just happens that cognitive empathy seems to be consistent with it, at least in the author’s opinion, whereas emotional empathy is apt to impair man’s ability to embrace such a world view in practice if not in theory, both points plausibly corroborated by the book’s plentiful examples and their rationale. The latter point is expounded over and over throughout the book, and the case will seem pretty convincing to those who need no convincing but could nevertheless use an empirical or scientific argument to solidify their position. But neuroscience shows that that the whole picture tends to be much more complex.

Yet even when deployed, cognitive empathy apparently might not be sufficient as an instrument for practically propagating universalistic principles as reflected in our attitudes and, especially, as guiding our behavior. Besides, it is a concept that for many readers of this popular science book might be new and thus not immediately assimilable. The author has a solution for that: he falls back on a concept that has wide currency and the advantage of connoting a more active behavior as compared to cognitive empathy, that of compassion. So when Bloom mentions that he has been engaged in meditative practice for some time the safe bet is (given also his stated reservations about religious worldviews) that it is mindfulness meditation accompanied, as it normally is, by a loving-kindness practice (kindness is frequently and approvingly referred to in the book). Though it is not stated outright, the book could also be viewed as making a case for this particular practice or spirituality.

It is especially important as it is the cognitive—or, more broadly, rationalistic— mindset, as opposed to a more emotional one, that underlies Western individualism, and which must have contributed in a major way to the West’s current state of social atomization. Bloom seems to recognize that there is an urgent need for a counterbalance, but doesn’t see emotional empathy as fit for the job, seeing compassion in this role instead (with a preliminary role for cognitive empathy), a capacity that is consonant with a rationalistic mindset. 

But compassion, or even kindness, doesn’t come naturally to everybody. As mentioned, Bloom himself speaks of a practice inculcating it. People who ostensibly are rationally-minded tend to be less emotionally empathic than others. But are they compassionate? Based on cited research it is clearly stated in the book, for example, that libertarians are the least empathic of all the adherents of any social doctrine. Being, as they are for many, the epitome of Western narcissistic individualism, and judging by their doctrinaire attitudes, they would probably also rank low on any compassion scale. Interestingly, Bloom cites research showing that lack of empathy is characteristic of virtually all psychopaths, whereas other research points that lack of empathy alone is no indication that a person is a psychopath. But on the other hand, virtually no emotionally empathic person is ever found to be a psychopath – which obviously is not to say that empathic people engage only in morally good behavior.

When making a case for a universalistic moral stance that overrides a narrowly focused empathy-driven positions (which stance obviously underlies Western liberal democracies, and ultimately derives from Christianity as seen through humanist eyes), the book advocates a mental stratagem: that we give less weight to ourselves and our kin, thus making distant others relatively more weighty when it comes to moral considerations. The examples in favor are drawn from the world and science of economics – why should American workers matter more than Mexican? – showing how controversial a universalistic moral stance may be to many people, as in the economic sphere at least it easily blends with a globalist stance that recently has come under massive attack. And in fact it cannot be otherwise. What one should add here though is that a truly globalist economics—and morality, for that matter—should posit also a free movement of workers (even if introduced gradually), and not just that of capital, across borders, the very thing against which a narrow majority of the British successfully protested in their Brexit vote.

When it comes to politics proper, Bloom observes that, “Political debates typically involve a disagreement not over whether we should empathize, but over who we should empathize with.” But toward the end of the book it gets really weird: “Political views share an interesting property with views about sports teams—they don’t really matter. If I have the wrong theory of how to make scrambled eggs, they will come out too dry; if I have the wrong everyday morality, I will hurt those I love. But suppose I think that the leader of the opposing party has sex with pigs, or has thoroughly botched the arms deal with Iran. Unless I’m a member of a tiny powerful community, my beliefs have no effect on the world. This is certainly true as well for my views about the flat tax, global warming, and evolution. They don’t have to be grounded in truth, because the truth value doesn’t have any effect on my life. (…) My point here is just that the failure of people to attend to data in the political domain does not reflect a limitation in their capacity for reason. It reflects how most people make sense of politics. They don’t care about truth because, for them, it’s not really about truth. We do much better, after all, when the stakes become high, when being rational really matters. If our thought processes in the political realm reflected how our minds generally work, we wouldn’t even make it out of bed each morning. So if you’re curious about people’s capacity for reasoning, don’t look at cases where being right doesn’t matter and where it’s all about affiliation. Rather, look at how people cope in everyday life. (…) Or even look at a different sort of politics— the type of politics where individuals might actually make a difference, such as a town hall meeting where people discuss zoning regulations and where to put a stop sign.”

An effusion like the above, capping a book devoted to extolling the virtues of rationality (most probably unwittingly as it seems to deal a near fatal blow to its main argument) over against emotional empathy, nay, urging us all to be deliberatively rational especially in the field of morality, can signify that in the author’s view politics cannot or shouldn’t be expected to be rational or moral, and thus we should not obsess about its being or becoming such; or that the author thinks it is virtually irrelevant, political “truths” being irrelevant to our lives. But if it were to be so, humanity might seem either doomed or at least its aspiration to rationality should be critically assessed anew.

It’s true that political truths, whatever they might be, are increasingly becoming irrelevant as truths, being “augmented,” undergoing an immediate and largely unwitting shift of focus, or outright substituted for by fake news. But are they really irrelevant to our lives? It is ironic that many partisan participants of the political process find only belatedly that some of those “truths,” supported by them in a spirit of “tribal” collectivity during political campaigns without giving it a rational evaluation, when subsequently translated into policies turn out to be against their real interests, as relevant as they in fact are to them.

And it’s easy to see that most of this society-wide phenomenon can be attributed to deployment, or to (an unwitting acquiescence to) a shift of focus, of our empathy apparatus to members of our tribe and their ostensibly horrifying fate as proffered us in vividly gruesome images by our political leaders. In the process any relevance to our lives of what’s being proposed, or its actual consequences, is being—for all practical purposes and in light of our group’s grand causes—dismissed as in fact irrelevant. One might say that here empathy, and—more broadly—emotion, is allowed to rule over rationality. But the author’s claim as to the irrelevance of those political truths to our lives must also be judged as itself irrational, and this instance of irrationality doesn’t seem empathy-colored. Its only claim to rationality must rest on a seemingly compelling assessment of one’s powerlessness in the political process, not a pretty conclusion.

So it should be interesting that whole passages from the book’s chapter Empathy as the Foundation of Morality for all practical purposes equate emotional empathy with man’s imitative capacity. They are replete with instances of both terms’ interchangeable use, especially as related to toddlers, in whom this seeming identity  is all the more pronounced. And while from a moral perspective this empathy/ imitation is as yet inert (Bloom’s word) given the “moral agents”’ status, it nevertheless is well-documented as being inborn. Yet it’s for that reason that the author raises the caveat that “If this [If I feel your pain but don’t know that it’s your pain—if I think that it’s my pain—then I’m not going to help you] is true for toddlers, then their kind acts cannot be driven by empathy.” But once we have equated empathy and imitation, we won’t be that easily let off the hook: the mature moral agent has a choice of models and his/her imitative faculty can be cultivated, which is important since raw imitation tends to switch polarity, our erstwhile model becoming our resented rival or obstacle.

It is here that Rene Girard’s mimetic theory might come in handy, especially if one is allowed to expand on it and draw supplementary conclusions concerning the political realm in particular. To summarize very shortly here the theory’s pertinent points: Girard is prophesying an apocalypse for a mankind that on the one hand is not satisfied anymore with sacrificing innocent victims for the sake of societal peace (due to Jesus’s, the ultimate innocent scapegoat’s, intervention in man’s history, and its shedding of light of truth on this practice, a realization that has only recently and belatedly started dawning on man, largely Western as yet),  but whose (individual and collective) mimetic capacity is prone to throw us into a state of rivalrous frenzy when our inborn mimetism tears itself away from pure empathy and instead starts reciprocally pursuing desires of one another (Girard’s mimetic theory focuses on desire). Apocalypse is in the making in modern democracies, premised as they in fact increasingly are on equality of outcomes, as opposed to that of chances, since our desires are becoming in them more and more, and on an ever-wider scale, mutually the exact mirror images of each other, thus leading us all into conflict, as they cannot all be satisfied at all times, thus leaving (most of) us envious and/or resentful. 

Girard muses whither we are going in our current state of escalation to extremes on every hand, including within liberal democracies, yet his theory stops on the verge of an impending apocalypse. But if social scientists in favor of rationality in the realm of morality throw up their hands in despair when it comes to politics, can an irrational, emotions-driven politics really help us avert it? Girard would say that nothing is predetermined, but politics certainly does matter—is relevant—and we, as always, should imitate good, moral models. But even if many of us do that, is this going to work on a societal level? In one of his last books he says that in the foreseeable future we—our tribal-like groupings—will continue clinched and will probably be evenly matched.  

It certainly is a far cry from a rational configuration, but is there any wisdom embodied in this dynamic situation? It may seem so, as disagreeable and precarious as it is, if we prefer that to a backsliding into a self-righteous state of societal peace continuously procured at the expense of sacrificed—victimized or excluded—scapegoats. At the present stage of human affairs they would have to be some of us, selected somehow out from the group that starts showing signs of weakening, isolated and eventually scapegoated for the sake of peace for all but them, as well as cohesion of a suddenly unified society, “big and strong” again. Chances are that it would have to be first of all the losing side’s leaders. At least that is how mimetic theory would see it.

So if, for whatever reason, there’s no rational course for us in politics, why not settle for this extreme polarization and reconcile ourselves to it, instead of obsessing about how bad and immoral it is? We don’t seem to have a choice anyway, having painted ourselves into this high-adrenaline corner.

But is that really so? It’s true that America is leading the way for the rest of the world, with Britain following shortly—with the last Presidential election and the Brexit vote, respectively. But even staying within this closed, present-bound perspective , seemingly admitting of no real, invigorating hope, it doesn’t have to be so. And rationality does have a role—in fact a predominant one.

That this can work is testified to by the recent presidential election in France, Girard’s homeland and a country that has given the world the precise formulation of separation of powers. It has also adopted, applying it to all elections, a single-member constituency two-round electoral system, one  that is more conducive to political diversity as compared to that of the U.S. or Britain, while eschewing the weaknesses of proportionality in political representation, the only such system in Europe. The whole combination has just produced a large majority vote and win for a candidate of reason and universalistic values, fully consonant with the main strands of the Western moral values, and a decisive defeat for the candidate of emotions, a throwback to empathy-relying (with one’s own tribe only), fear-mongering and nationalistic mores and times of a not-so-distant past.

But of course there is plenty of evidence that ostensibly rational ideologies, purporting to advocate nothing but fairness for particular nations or social classes, can lead us all astray, as can be seen throughout the twentieth century. Such morally corrosive ideologies are subsequently reinforced by appeals to narrowly-focused empathy, and emotions in general. This shows that in morality, public or private, just like in any other realm of human affairs, what counts the most is what we start with—what values really underlie this or that ideology, this or that set of policies. What our moral principles are, that is. And ultimately, at least for Rene Girard and his followers, who models our desires and values, who our true model in life is. For Rene Girard it is Jesus Christ, especially as interpreted by St Paul, Christianity’s de facto founder, and truly universalist religious thinker and moralist.