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.