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Acknowledgments
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ix Acknowledgments T he translation of Dante that I have used for my title comes from Prof. William Franke; it occurs in his work, Dante’s Interpretative Journey (84). It is a book that I return to often and from which I always learn more. The long quote after the title page is used with kind permission from its author, Prof. Nicholas Boyle. Again, the whole work from which it was taken has been helpful to me. There are three books from which I do not quote, and yet they have had a great influence on the way I conceived and wrote this book. So I would like to acknowledge Paul Griffiths’ Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion, Alan Jacobs’ A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love, and Peter Ochs, Peirce, Pragmatism and the Logic of Scripture. Each in his way taught me something not only about reading but also about how one can share one’s experience of it. Each transcends the boundaries of academic disciplines in a way that I find exemplary. This book explores how an intelligent appropriation of mimetic theory leads to a hermeneutics of forgiveness, that is to an understanding of texts that might otherwise scandalize or wound consciousness in such a way that it actually contracts and becomes less able to take in certain realities. I show that the hermeneutics of mimetic theory allows our consciousness to take x Acknowledgments in more and more reality with less and less distortion. I first began learning about mimetic theory in the mid-1990s through the audiocassettes of Gil Bailie. There are thoughts expressed here as my own that I suspect actually originated with him but have become so engrained that I feel like I came up with them myself. I thank Gil and hope that I have not used them inappropriately . As with all books there is a story behind the writing and publishing of this one. I will not relate that history here except to say that I had originally hoped to publish a collection of papers. The slightly dyspeptic reader who ended up with the unenviable task of wading through that stack of papers saw something more in them. With some acerbic comments he informed me of the work I would need to do in order to transform the disconnected pages into a book. I can only hope that the finished product approaches what he then imagined it could be. In the years since those first comments he has become my primary reader, critic, and friend. I am filled with gratitude to Prof. Andrew McKenna for all of his guidance. Prof. Karin Sugano read an earlier incarnation of the work. I benefited greatly from her comments and criticisms. Karin’s friendship over the years and many changes has been a great gift. Prof. Geneviève Souillac also read this version and helped me see ways of strengthening it. Prof. Matthew Taylor read through the whole manuscript as it neared completionandgavemuchassistancebyshowingmehowbettertostructureit. Prof. Robert Snyder went through this book, scalpel in hand, eliminating my excess verbiage while pointing out my lapses in clarity. Each bit he removed, added something to the text; each lapse he helped me correct, reduced the obscurity. I am deeply in his debt. I would like to thank my colleagues at International Christian University in Tokyo. In particular I have enjoyed and benefited greatly from my conversations with Prof. John Maher. I have presented several of the chapters as papers at the annual meeting of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion and I am grateful for resulting discussions with the members of that organization. Thekindpermissionofpublisherstousematerialisherebyacknowledged. A much earlier version of chapter 2 appeared as “Listening to Nietzsche” in Revsita Portugesa de Filosofia 57.4 (2001): 773–90. Topics found in chapter 3 have been much more extensively argued in my book A Reinterpretation of Acknowledgments xi Rousseau: A Religious System (New York: Palgrave, 2007). A section from chapter 5 has appeared in “Religiösen Leben in der Gegenwart” in Zusammenleben der Religionen: Eine interreligious-interkulturelle Aufgabe der globalisierten Welt (Berlin: Japanese-German Center, 2005). An earlier version of chapter 6 appears in Violence, Desire, and the Sacred: Girard’s Mimetic Theory Across the Disciplines (New York: Continuum, 2012). All Scriptural quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version. I am very proud to have this published in the Studies in Violence, Mimesis , and Culture series by Michigan State Press. I warmly...