After Anatta : Towards a Girardian Ethics – Part 1
As I have argued in a previous essay-series, one common struggle comes out through both René Girard’s mimetic theory, and Buddhist metaphysics: a resistance to the often unquestioned solipsistic reflexes of contemporary western mainstream culture. It is on the basis of this shared concern that an initial dialogue between the two ought to be set. Correlated to this resistance are both Girard’s and the Buddhists’ skepticisms as to the actual power, and more dangerous risks, of the self-proclaimed ‘primary’ faculty of the enlightened human: Reason…
Author: Samuel Buchoul
The Language of Foreignness – Part 1.2.1
In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) argues that human life is profoundly marked by its existence in time. The human being (Dasein, “being-there”) is “thrown in the world” (Sein-in-der-Welt), a world which is in time. Temporality is a source of angst and worry since it is the plane of realization of the fundamental incompletion of Dasein…
After Anatta : Towards a Girardian Ethics – Part 2
The attempted correspondence between Girard’s mimesis and the Buddhist interdependence now calls for the unveiling of certain implications. Before dwelling into the realm of ethics, we shall see how, on matters of rationality and reason too, and first, Girard’s theory and Buddhist philosophy seem to be profoundly in agreement…
After Anatta : Towards a Girardian Ethics – Part 3
For Girard, imitation is primal and unavoidable: “There is no solution to mimetism aside from a good model.” For Buddhism, it is interdependence that is universal. As I have argued, imitation and interdependence are but the same thing: imitation is subsumed within interdependence, and perhaps the most common evidence of interdependence is mimesis. So much so that certain arguments can hardly be categorised in one concept or the other…
The Language of Foreignness – Part 1.2.2
Two decades after Heidegger’s Being and Time, and not without the mediation of Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) attempted a profound application of the German fathers of phenomenology to one particular question: perception…
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.”…
The Language of Foreignness – Part 1.2.3
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was contemporary to Merleau-Ponty, and directly influenced by Phenomenology: his first university works were on Husserl. The phenomenological heritage is perhaps not visible in the content of Derrida’s work – Derrida is not remembered for his use of the phenomenological method in any of his main studies – but in the form of the philosophical approach already adopted by Heidegger and by another direct inspiration of Derrida’s, Emmanuel Levinas…
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…