3. Human organizations and cultures in "this world" are implicitly founded on sudden, nonlinear, scapegoating violence. (This is René Girard's famous "scapegoat theory of culture".) Deeply accepting (and repenting of) this fact should lead us to a corresponding acceptance of the traditional Catholic, Christian faith.
Phillip Engle's book SCAPEGOAT THEOLOGY And the Problem of Violence both presents and critiques the theories of René Girard, specifically Girard's theory of "mimesis" and his famous "scapegoat theory of culture". In addition to proposing Girard's theories as important keys to understanding and accepting orthodox Catholic theology, SCAPEGOAT THEOLOGY also deals with ethical problems related to human violence, including anarchism, pacifism, self-defense, and the just-war theory. It also briefly offers what I believe to be a new and unique approach to some of these problems.
(This book is a much-shortened version of a planned book that is referred to in my earlier books WORLDVIEWS and FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM as “HUMAN SOCIETY”. )
To order a printed trade paperback edition of SCAPEGOAT THEOLOGY from Lulu.com (or to view or download a complete Adobe PDF version), click on the picture below or on the link above.
Movie Mimesis I
The Passion of the Christ (a Girard review)
The Scapegoat Theory of Culture
According to René Girard, the fundamental human problem — the fundamental reason man keeps falling into patterns of violence — is mimesis, which Girard defines to be our deeply-rooted tendency to unconsciously imitate one another. Put very simply, a human being has an extremely strong tendency to take another human being as his model, whom he unconsciously imitates. Most importantly, this unconscious imitation includes the imitation of the desires of his model. Consequently, when the model’s desire becomes focused on a particular object, the imitator’s mimetic desire becomes focused on that same object. As a result the imitator may come into conflict (leading to possible violence) with his model, who is now his obstacle, as well as his model.
Girard theorizes that an entire society (especially a "primitive" society) can fall into a violent, chaotic mimetic crisis as a result of the snowballing of mimesis between the individuals within that society. He also points to the central method by which this mimetic crisis is resolved: If the society involved does not completely destroy itself by internal violence (always a possibility), it saves itself by refocusing all of its internal hostilities on a single victim (or small group of victims). This victim (i.e., scapegoat) is violently put to death by the group, preferably in such a way that the whole group can participate (by stoning, pushing off a cliff, ripping limb-from-limb, etc.) As a result of this act of collective murder, group tensions are released, and a deep inner peace and unity (espirit de corps) is restored within the society.
According to Girard, only the Judeo-Christian religious tradition fully reveals this truth about the victim. By contrast, other religions and philosophies (in general) strive to cover-up and suppress the truth about the victim.
In my opinion, René Girard's best book explaining his "scapegoat theory of culture" is The Scapegoat, followed closely by his book I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (see links below).
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The Catholic Shakespeare
As a slight tangent, the following books, Rene Girard's A Theater of Envy and Claire Asquith's Shadowplays, show Shakespeare's deep understanding of mimesis and also reveal his struggle against the deadly forces of the Deformation:
New Light on Shakespeare's Catholicism: Prospero's Epilogue in The Tempest
On August 6, 1993 Pope John Paul II issued the encyclical THE SPLENDOR OF TRUTH ( "Veritatis Splendor"). This extraordinary encyclical is the first in the entire history of the Catholic church to deal at length with the question of moral / ethical truth in general.
Although it touches on many bases, one of its principal aims is to refute proportionalist / consequentialist moral theories, according to which there are no moral absolutes (except perhaps one's "fundamental option"), and that instead the human individual should strive to calculate the proportions of good and evil in the probable consequences of possible courses of action in any given situation. He should then select that course of action which has the highest proportion of probable good consequences to bad consequences, even if this course of action violates the "so-called" moral law. (Proportionalist / consequentialist ethical theories are sometimes called situation ethics or lifeboat ethics.)
As noted in my book SCAPEGOAT THEOLOGY, this encyclical is extraordinarily effective in refuting all proportionalist / consequentialist moral theories, without (however) noting that the venerable just-war theory is a proportionalist / consequentialist theory of the type refuted.
Movie Mimesis II
Mel Gibson's film Apocalypto is a kind of prequel to his film The Passion of the Christ. It's main character, Jaguar Paw, is not, strictly speaking, a "Christ figure" because, unlike Christ, he hates his persecuters. He belongs rather to the same stage of religious development as the victim in the penitential Psalms. For like the victim in the Psalms, Jaguar Paw protests and resists his victimhood, which is a definite step in the right direction of revealing the truth about the victim. (See The Scapegoat, p. 104.)
Travels in Europe's Once & Future Faith
