For René Girard: Essays in Friendship and in Truth

For René Girard: In Appreciation

194 Wolfgang Palaver I have been trying to apply it. It took me a very long time to complete this book. One of the reasons for this was the fact that I was trying to show how deeply Girard’s theory is rooted in Christian tradition. I was eager to prove that modern philosophers like Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, or Sartre were already aware of the mimetic dimension of human life. I did so in order to stress that mimetic theory is not a completely unique theory, out of touch with the problems addressed by modern philosophy. But it took me a very long time to realize how, in all these different cases, mimetic theory at the same time differs from modern philosophy’s approaches. Using Girard’s distinction between a revelation and a reflection of mimetic desire, I tried to make clear that, unlike the great novelistic writers, the modern philosophers just reflect mimetic desire.17 They have not been able to undergo conversion and overcome their own pride. On a deeper level, this inability to convert reflects an absence of openness toward that true transcendence that is emphasized in biblical and Christian thinking. Dante was an important example of a Christian thinker who realized that only a turning toward heaven enables us to avoid the trap of mimetic rivalry, which always forces us to end up in envy, hatred, and violence. René Girard once mentioned to me the following passage in Dante’s Purgatorio when I talked to him on the phone about my chapter on the modern philosophers: Because you make things of this world your goal, which are diminished as each shares in them, Envy pumps hard the bellows for your sighs. But if your love were for the lofty sphere, your cravings would aspire for the heights. And fear of loss would not oppress your hearts; the more there are up there who speak of “ours,” the more each one possesses and the more Charity burns intensely in that realm.18 It is not by chance that I included this passage in my book on mimetic theory.19 This passage, from Dante’s Commedia, underlines the importance of transcendence to overcoming the deadlock of mimetic rivalry so typical of all modern ontologies of violence. Drawn into Conversion 195 Currently, the largest part of my work concerns Catholic social teaching at the University of Innsbruck. The deeper understanding of mimetic theory I have gained, in the years during which I have carefully studied this anthropology, allows me today to understand how important the religious dimension is for the social doctrine of the Catholic Church. Catholic social teaching, from its very beginning, has emphasized the necessity of giving religious values precedence over temporal interests. It is this insistence on the true scale of values that builds the core of an ontology of peace that is clearly visible from Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum onward.20 According to this tradition, it is God who is the highest good, the summum bonum, giving everything else its proper place by subordinating it to this good.21 Most of the encyclicals belonging to the tradition of Catholic social thought that began with Rerum novarum, for instance, quote a passage from Matthew to give the search for the kingdom of God priority over everything else: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice: and all these things shall be added unto you.”22 Catholic social teaching is well aware that human beings are religious beings longing for an infinite and universal good. Only if this desire of human beings is directed toward God can the dangers of “perpetual strife” be avoided.23 For this reason, Rerum novarum recommends the Church as an institution that is essential in the task of bringing human con- flicts to an end: “If human society is to be healed, only a return to Christian life and institutions will heal it.”24 When I began my theological training, I was not at all prepared to understand the role the Church must fulfill in order to overcome the deadlock of human rivalry. At that time, I rejected passages such as those quoted above, which seemed to me pious additions from Scripture, lacking any serious political or social meaning. The conversion I underwent, following the deeper insights of mimetic theory, led me to understand this genuine dimension of Christian social ethics. If I claim today that I experienced conversion, this does not...