“For without exception the cultural treasures [the historian] surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism” (Walter Benjamin)…
Tag: Ethics
After Anatta : Towards a Girardian Ethics – Introduction
Buddhism and Mimetic Theory ‒ the two far-reaching outlooks on humans and the world have gained an increasing interest in both western academia and popular culture. Buddhism was initially cherished by Romantic Europe for its fantasised nihilistic tendencies, and today, more accurately, for its concern for compassion and detachment, and its philosophical uniqueness: emptiness…
After Anatta : Towards a Girardian Ethics – Part 3.1
As we just saw, both in Buddhism and in Girard’s work, ethics comes first in an embodied form. And in both traditions, it is through ethics that the profound positive effects of mimesis can be felt. Girard confirms that there is such a mimetic wisdom: “There is a mimetic wisdom, which I do not claim to embody, and it is in Christianity that we have to look for it” (Girard, Battling to the End). But what would be the content of this wisdom, of this sense of Ethics? …
After Anatta : Towards a Girardian Ethics – Part 3.2
Girard’s explicit views on ethics are quite sparse, if not absent, but one particular principle seems to be coming back regularly in his writings: non-violence. Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World contains a few unambiguous statements such as: “The definitive renunciation of violence, without any second thoughts, will become for us the condition … for the survival of humanity itself and for each one of us.”…
After Anatta : Towards a Girardian Ethics – Part 3.3
Is the ethical life thus in fact essentially the deep awareness of the universalism of interdependence and mimesis? Caution: such realisations, while potentially liberating, could also backfire. One could believe so much in one’s profound connection with a mimetic model, or in her profound interdependence with another human being, to the point of fully ‘surrendering’ to this other…
After Anatta : Towards a Girardian Ethics – Conclusion
When I presented some of these reflections at a COV&R conference in 2012, I felt a certain movement of excitement and interest, from a community of scholars very familiar with Girard’s thought. It is central, today, to address the question of Girard and ethics, and, while it has been done in other realms (political philosophy, theology), it is also necessary to try to translate the ethical stance stemming from mimetic theory into the language of philosophy, and in particular, within the traditions of ethics…
The Language of Foreignness – Part 2.4
Three years in Delhi and another one in South India. Enough Hindi to maintain a two-minute rudimentary discussion, not to mention anything in Kannada besides uttha, neer and illa. If one is to focus on the matter of foreignness and language, one question should be addressed in priority: any language, in a situation of foreignness, is in general an unknown language…
The Non-Self of Girard – Conclusion
Following Buddha’s statements about abstract postulations, I would argue that it is not the extent to which our brain can grasp hypothetical views on fundamental metaphysics, but what this brings to our practical embodied life, which must be placed as the end goal of intellectual initiatives. The question is not whether Girard would agree with a metaphysics without selves…