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Before one takes the ideas of Rene Girard as seriously as I did, for quite a few years, it might help to read a careful critique[0]. [0] https://arcade.stanfor

by downut 7y ago

Before one takes the ideas of Rene Girard as seriously as I did, for quite a few years, it might help to read a careful critique[0]. [0] https://arcade.stanford.edu/rofl/deceit-desire-and-literature-professor-why-girardians-exist https://arcade.stanford.edu/rofl/deceit-desire-and-literatur...

majos 7y ago
Thanks for the link. For people thinking about reading it, try! It’s clear and engaging, even funny.
mcguire 7y ago
Putting on my academic disagreement/junior philosopher/political theorist hat: Ouch. "Is it really true that all violence is a by-product of mimetic rivalry? Here’s the kind of situation Girard is asking us to imagine. Two men, Jimmy and Joey, stand beside a lake on a hot day. Jimmy decides to go for a swim. Joey, who would never have had this idea in his life, immediately decides to do likewise. Inevitably, this causes a death struggle between the two men as they fight over the lake." ... "Perhaps nowhere is this phenomenon—the resistance to contagion—more apparent than in the high chair at dinnertime. “Nothing is more mimetic,” declares Girard, “than the desire of a child.”[30] One wonders, has he ever met a child?[31] Has he ever tried to feed one a brussels sprout? “Yum yum,” we say, absurdly hoping that our desire for healthy food will carry over mimetically. “Blech,” says the child, unceremoniously spitting it out. You can’t get a child to want to eat brussels sprouts, because this kind of desire depends on liking, and children just don’t like brussels sprouts. They do not get all their desires from parents (even in such a wonderfully closed environment, with so little outside stimulus)." ... "Let’s sum up: it is perfectly possible to form desires in the absence of a model (the pica sufferer’s yearning for dirt); it is perfectly possible, conversely, for others’ desires to leave us cold (the child’s stubborn disinclination toward brussels sprouts); the fact that we sometimes act on recommendations from admired friends and experts proves nothing, since we are entirely capable of ignoring them (Kill Bill 2, no thank you);[33] and the fact that there are always multiple potential models (brother Aron, brother David) strongly suggests that those potential models are not doing the choosing for us. In short, there is no basis at all to the central premise of Girardianism: that “human beings have no desires of their own,” that there is never a reason (objective or subjective) for wanting something rather than something else, that spontaneous impulses are an illusion, that autonomy is impossible." ... "I’ve heard literary scholars say with a straight face that we wouldn’t have noticed mimetic desire in Stendhal had it not been for Girard; this is like saying we wouldn’t have noticed war in the Iliad, Christianity in Dostoevsky, memory in Proust, or adultery in Madame Bovary without the help of critics. It’s right there on the surface, as the central theme of Stendhal’s writing." ... "When you pay attention, it is astonishing just how frequently he gets it wrong about the texts he is reading, just how relentlessly he continues pummeling square pegs into round holes. “It is not an exaggeration,” he claims at one point, “to say that, in all of the characters of Remembrance of Things Past, love is strictly subordinated to jealousy, to the presence of the rival.”[44] Allow me to propose a friendly amendment: it is an exaggeration to say that. Notoriously, the parents of Proust’s narrator—hardly insignificant figures—are entirely immune to jealousy. Even Charles Swann, who becomes a fanatically jealous lover, does not begin this way,[45] and the narrator is quite categorical that the new jealousy, far from constituting the essence of his passion, in fact represents a denaturing of that passion.[46] That’s why, when Swann ceases being jealous, he is nonetheless able to remain in love.[47]" One wonders if Thiel and anyone else who professes to like Girard has noticed stages 3 and 4. (I don't know anything about Girard, but those two do seem to follow rather well stages 1 and 2, which are apparently valid judging by the original article.)
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
That was a great refutation. Allow me to add one piece: Girard comes close to refuting himself. Why? Because, if Girard is correct, then why do people believe Girard? Not because he is correct, but only because they are memetically infected by some model. And why did that model believe it? Same reason. Nobody believes it (or anything) on the basis of the actual truthfulness of the idea. And then, where did Girard get it? Not from a careful examination of the evidence, but because he was memetically infected by some model. So it's not original, and it's not based on evidence. So if it's true, it destroys our ability to know whether anything is actually true, including itself. That is pretty strong grounds to not believe it, in my book.

by downut 7y ago

majos 7y ago

Thanks for the link. For people thinking about reading it, try! It’s clear and engaging, even funny.

mcguire 7y ago

Putting on my academic disagreement/junior philosopher/political theorist hat: Ouch. "Is it really true that all violence is a by-product of mimetic rivalry? Here’s the kind of situation Girard is asking us to imagine. Two men, Jimmy and Joey, stand beside a lake on a hot day. Jimmy decides to go for a swim. Joey, who would never have had this idea in his life, immediately decides to do likewise. Inevitably, this causes a death struggle between the two men as they fight over the lake." ... "Perhaps nowhere is this phenomenon—the resistance to contagion—more apparent than in the high chair at dinnertime. “Nothing is more mimetic,” declares Girard, “than the desire of a child.”[30] One wonders, has he ever met a child?[31] Has he ever tried to feed one a brussels sprout? “Yum yum,” we say, absurdly hoping that our desire for healthy food will carry over mimetically. “Blech,” says the child, unceremoniously spitting it out. You can’t get a child to want to eat brussels sprouts, because this kind of desire depends on liking, and children just don’t like brussels sprouts. They do not get all their desires from parents (even in such a wonderfully closed environment, with so little outside stimulus)." ... "Let’s sum up: it is perfectly possible to form desires in the absence of a model (the pica sufferer’s yearning for dirt); it is perfectly possible, conversely, for others’ desires to leave us cold (the child’s stubborn disinclination toward brussels sprouts); the fact that we sometimes act on recommendations from admired friends and experts proves nothing, since we are entirely capable of ignoring them (Kill Bill 2, no thank you);[33] and the fact that there are always multiple potential models (brother Aron, brother David) strongly suggests that those potential models are not doing the choosing for us. In short, there is no basis at all to the central premise of Girardianism: that “human beings have no desires of their own,” that there is never a reason (objective or subjective) for wanting something rather than something else, that spontaneous impulses are an illusion, that autonomy is impossible." ... "I’ve heard literary scholars say with a straight face that we wouldn’t have noticed mimetic desire in Stendhal had it not been for Girard; this is like saying we wouldn’t have noticed war in the Iliad, Christianity in Dostoevsky, memory in Proust, or adultery in Madame Bovary without the help of critics. It’s right there on the surface, as the central theme of Stendhal’s writing." ... "When you pay attention, it is astonishing just how frequently he gets it wrong about the texts he is reading, just how relentlessly he continues pummeling square pegs into round holes. “It is not an exaggeration,” he claims at one point, “to say that, in all of the characters of Remembrance of Things Past, love is strictly subordinated to jealousy, to the presence of the rival.”[44] Allow me to propose a friendly amendment: it is an exaggeration to say that. Notoriously, the parents of Proust’s narrator—hardly insignificant figures—are entirely immune to jealousy. Even Charles Swann, who becomes a fanatically jealous lover, does not begin this way,[45] and the narrator is quite categorical that the new jealousy, far from constituting the essence of his passion, in fact represents a denaturing of that passion.[46] That’s why, when Swann ceases being jealous, he is nonetheless able to remain in love.[47]" One wonders if Thiel and anyone else who professes to like Girard has noticed stages 3 and 4. (I don't know anything about Girard, but those two do seem to follow rather well stages 1 and 2, which are apparently valid judging by the original article.)

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

That was a great refutation. Allow me to add one piece: Girard comes close to refuting himself. Why? Because, if Girard is correct, then why do people believe Girard? Not because he is correct, but only because they are memetically infected by some model. And why did that model believe it? Same reason. Nobody believes it (or anything) on the basis of the actual truthfulness of the idea. And then, where did Girard get it? Not from a careful examination of the evidence, but because he was memetically infected by some model. So it's not original, and it's not based on evidence. So if it's true, it destroys our ability to know whether anything is actually true, including itself. That is pretty strong grounds to not believe it, in my book.