Rene Girard
1923-2015 · Human Sciences · Prominent
Girard was a French American theorist of desire. You want a thing because someone you admire wants it, which puts you in the way of the person you copied, and rivalry spreads as everyone converges on the same objects. He watched that pressure build until a crowd discharges it on one victim, picked for no good reason. Culture then covers the killing up, and myth is the cover story.
Signature
The position Girard is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ethics
- Ends – Means
- Good and Evil
- Social Invention
Positions on the 2 axes the sources answer
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- War
- leans Pacifism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Pacifism to Militarism)
18 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Girard refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Love
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Social Invention
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Apocalyptic Renewal
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Eschatological
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Human Nature
- Redeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?