A Remedy for Envy? René Girard Redux
Added 2024-03-04 16:46:55 +0000 UTCMatt and Sam return to René Girard via Pope Francis—whom Matt personally met at a recent general audience at the Vatican, and whose homily at that audience addressed the problem of envy, and what Christianity might have to teach us about it. Topics include: how to think about Girard's Christianity, in terms both of how it informs his work and his own attachment to it; the politics of Jesus, and whether or not any of the preceding can actually help us avoid the apocalyptic violence Girard thought was building as we hurtle toward "the end times."
Read:
René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (1999)
Scott Cowdell, René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis (2015)
Pope Francis, "Envy and Vainglory," Full text of general audience remarks, Feb 28, 2024
John Ganz's Unpopular Front series on Girard: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Herbert McCabe, "Class Struggle and Christian Love" in God Matters (2012)
James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes (1998)
James Allison, "Girard's Breakthrough," The Tablet, June 29, 1996.
Patricia Lockwood, "When I Met the Pope," LRB, Nov 30, 2023.
Listen:
Know Your Enemy, "René Girard and the Right" (w/ John Ganz), Feb 26, 2024
View:
Pericle Fazzini, "The Resurrection" (statue in the Paul VI Audience Hall in Vatican City)
Comments
maybe in some sort of weird inversion of Buddhism, girard uses those to justify his outlook of domination and violent struggle, while Buddhism teaches that one must surrender desire to escape dukka
RS
2024-03-23 17:41:52 +0000 UTCAs a former southern Baptist turned bitter agnostic, Sam’s musings about both the insufficiency of Christianity in our world and the true radical nature of Christ (as he has seen/learned from Matt) has peaked my interest in some sort of return to faith and spirituality like nothing else since I left it 5 years ago. This episode was beautiful, and it really clarified/enhanced the previous episode with John for me.
Addison
2024-03-22 23:30:26 +0000 UTCThe way you guys talk about Girard reminds me of William James's quote: "It was reserved for Kant's Fichtean and Hegelian successors to call it the first Principle of Philosophy, to spell its name in capitals and pronounce it with adoration, to act, in short, as if they were going up in a balloon, whenever the notion of it crossed their mind..." No disrespect to Matt's or anyone's faith but it pays to take a step back once in awhile!
Mark K
2024-03-12 14:57:29 +0000 UTCHi Matt! Yes, I was ribbing because you guys were bantering about the prospect at the end of this episode
Matthew Bennett
2024-03-12 02:05:32 +0000 UTCSo glad you liked this one Luke! (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-11 22:23:48 +0000 UTCDid I mention him recently? Sometimes I can't remember what I say to Sam on an episode vs. on the phone (or whatever). Regardless, I agree. He's definitely in the KYE extended universe—friends with Niebuhr and King, but also knew Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (or rather, RJN knew him), was an influence on the Second Vatican Council (as a representative of American Jews), and more. I've never read his book on the prophets but that one has always intrigued me in particular. I'd love reading recommendations if you have any! Grazie! (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-11 22:22:31 +0000 UTCSpectacular episode as usual OK but can we ACTUALLY have an Abraham Joshua Heschel episode?
Matthew Bennett
2024-03-10 05:26:03 +0000 UTCWould absolutely love Sam’s ‘Why I am not a Christian’ ep but respect the privacy.
Alyssa Noth
2024-03-08 21:58:08 +0000 UTCGreat follow up episode! You definitely stuck the landing :) I’m curious about your thoughts on Unitarian Universalists in this space. I can’t tell if Girard would hold them up as emblematic of his social / theological argument. Or if he would consider them to be too far removed from Christianity, and therefore a secular-Satan-in-disguise. Both tend to “get it from both sides”. Also curious about Matt’s take on the UU’s, as they somehow managed to stumble out of (and define themselves against) other Protestant traditions. Perhaps there’s a bit of that American Pragmatism at work, revealing the limits of the just-so Fatalism of Girard’s grand civilization-defining narratives.
Evan
2024-03-08 17:36:10 +0000 UTCSplendid episode, helped answer some questions I had regarding Girard and Christianity in the early episode as well as some of Girard’s implications for left politics. Maybe it’s just because I am a Christian but I find the only “program” or solution to the mess of mimetic desire being to “love Love” very moving and convincing. I don’t know, if the answer looks something like Dorothy Day or Merton then I feel like that makes perfect sense. I just don’t really ever know if any type of political movement gets us out of this world we have made. I know for sure “RETVRN” or Trump isn’t going to get us anywhere. Is society trapped or not? I suppose it’s an open question.
Luke LeBar
2024-03-08 04:16:21 +0000 UTChard agree with this, also as a secular jew i am very wary of “judeo-christian” as a framework for doing any historical or cultural analysis of anything, so any kind of christian thought that suggests a continuity with judaism immediately puts me on edge.
Stephen Potter
2024-03-07 23:37:14 +0000 UTCFully Catechized Luxury Gay Space Catholicism
Blue Myself
2024-03-07 22:12:33 +0000 UTCWould you consider a Fetterman retrospective when you next talk rank punditry? You guys were all in for him, despite some big warning signs, and he's turned out to be way more annoying and evil than I could've imagined. The softball interview with his campaign manager bugged me way more than the Hochman one. I'd be curious what you think now about what was so exciting about his campaign, how that's soured, and what that could mean for future candidates that call themselves progressives.
drizzly_november
2024-03-07 17:20:09 +0000 UTCYes, I think these go hand in hand. Practices like insulting the meat (as an example) are a social technology which supports a communal / compassionate social / political structure. In my limited understanding of a Girardian lens, mimetic-based envy is a source of manufactured social conflict which requires a release valve mechanism to diffuse the pressure or else the conflict will progressively grow to untenable levels, inevitably culminating in violence as a last-ditch attempt to cathartically resolve the pressure (temporarily). Girard identified scapegoating as a social technology to relieve this pressure before it boils over into ever more unthinkable / deranged violence. I’m sure that’s too simplistic, but that’s my rough understanding of his lens. And you correctly pointed out that other societies seemed to manage without falling into the same trap. In Girardian terms, that means these other societies were able to innovate other social technologies which relieved the pressure without (or before) the senseless violence of scapegoating. As you imply, clearly we should try to learn from these societies. Perhaps we could implement some of their tried-and-true social technologies to help ease our own decent into progressive conflict and violent derangement. Perhaps they could help us avoid the apocalyptic scenarios that Girard rightly fears.
Evan
2024-03-07 17:07:24 +0000 UTCThat's fair, I suppose, but I always understood "insulting the meat" as a social leveling mechanism to diffuse the concentration of power; a political critique is implicit in insulting a friend or relative who brought too much goat to dinner, keeping them from becoming a big man. Maybe for Girard that's all epiphenomenal to the "real" micro-tournaments of interpersonal envy taking place, but ~that~ seems to me to be the naive or at least narrow reading of non-European cultures, not the more socially constituted one laid out by 20th century anthropology (though that is certainly problematic for other reasons. )
Quentin Lewis
2024-03-07 15:58:26 +0000 UTCGot a lot out of the last two episodes. Wanted to offer a little bit of pushback on the way Matt characterized a better relationship between Christianity and Judaism. In the latest, he contrasted Luther's awfulness with a view of ancient Jewish scripture containing elements that would be taken up and given a more complete presentation in Christianity. Or at least this is how I heard it. My issue is this could also be construed as supsersessionism, the idea that Christianity "fulfills" Judaism, leaving it in the rearview mirror of theological history. I don't think this is what Matt is saying at all, of course, but I think if we're going to be talking about this subject, we need to be aware of the pitfalls of supersessionism. I am not sure Girard is! But practicing Christianity in the present, in my view, requires working with its unique contributions while rejecting religious chauvinism, especially stories of metaphysical-historical progress via a particular tradition. Honestly, I think it means having more of an ironic sensibility than what typically gets associated with "faith." Appreciate you both (and Ganz.)
Klaus Yoder
2024-03-07 13:41:38 +0000 UTCThe practice of “insulting the meat” comes to mind, as a social innovation seen around the pre-historic world which helped to effectively diffuse jealousy and envy. Practices like that weren’t foundational myths, they were actual productive solutions. So much of Anthropology up until the latter 20th century was completely naive and navel gazing in their ignorance of cultures beyond Western Civilization.
Evan
2024-03-07 05:37:23 +0000 UTCalso his point about the historical combo of feudalism and what matt described as a necessarily pacifist christianity as preventing the violent excesses of unchecked mimetic desire in the pre-modern age reminded me immediately of thiels other problematic fav, moldbug, who always claims to have derived his neo-feudalism from his commitment to pacifism and minimizing violence. (also please please do a full yarvin ep)
Stephen Potter
2024-03-07 04:42:06 +0000 UTCloved these 2 episodes, can i request another follow up some time where you dive deeper into the way girard’s thought is used in modern right wing discourse / the peter thiel extended universe? i feel like ganz touched on this at the end of the first episode and in his piece on substack, but it seems to me that the parallels between mimetic desire and commodity fetishism that ganz points out would actually suggest, to a girardian at least, that capitalism is the natural human state of social relations and that all of its ills are actually the fault of something intrinsic to human nature, which is an argument the right has been making in various forms for a long time.
Stephen Potter
2024-03-07 04:22:40 +0000 UTCI wasn’t aware of that. Thanks! Hart was not really on my radar. Is he worth a read?
Seth Morgan
2024-03-07 02:55:31 +0000 UTCAs someone who is not particularly religious, a lot of the theological talk is a bit over my head (though I do find it fascinating, even if I don’t quite feel the stakes), my secular/political takeaway from the popularity of Girard on the right, is if the right thinks they’ve somehow escaped mimetic desire and that it’s the sole purview of the woke left, then they’ve failed miserably. Reactionary ideology is entirely rooted in resentment and desire for what one doesn’t have (or believes one doesn’t have; it’s literally “take back our country” from the left who “has” it), and nothing illustrates the trap of this more than the complete dissatisfaction of the American right when they do get what they want (they’ve overturned Roe, but they’re still not happy, and it’s now working against them). You touched on this a bit with the way that lived Christianity doesn’t exemplify this desire-expunging ideal, but political life sure doesn’t either.
Axel Herrera
2024-03-06 23:23:23 +0000 UTCWhile the solitary phrase "mimetic desire" at first makes me think of Veblen's "invidious comparison," taking the discussion in as a whole I am struck at the resonance of Girard with some of the fundamentals of Buddhist thought (to be comparatively anthropological about it.) There is the place of greed (tanha) as a source of human suffering (dukkha), the importance of intent (cetana) behind human actions, and the place of persons as existing only in relation to others which is mirrored in Buddhism's focus on community (sangha), interdependence, spiritual practice done for the sake of others, and of course its teaching of nonself (anatta). Also of interest to me is that the Thomistic aspects of Alasdair MacIntyre seem to be similarly aligned, at least in 'After Virtue' and 'Dependent Rational Animals.' He is sometimes labeled as having taken a "conservative" turn after his conversion to Catholicism as well, but I think that's a poor descriptor of his thought.
DC
2024-03-06 22:25:09 +0000 UTCUpdate: a fellow listener caught this exchange and passed it on. Thanks again for the comment! (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-06 21:23:03 +0000 UTCThanks for this, I'll track down and read. If you happen to have a PDF handy, I'm at matt dot sitman at gmail dot com; grazie! (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-06 20:31:07 +0000 UTCI too was very taken by Rene Girard in my evangelical college days. But this one article by biblical scholar Burton Mack (The innocent transgressor : Jesus in early Christian myth and history in René Girard and Biblical studies by Andrew J. McKenna) really lifted the veil for me. In it Mack argues that the Girardian description scapegoat mechanism is valid, but that the New Testament text does not reveal it. For the innocent victim of the Gospels is not Jesus but the Jews.
ERIK
2024-03-06 18:52:19 +0000 UTCMatt, re: you, Max, and the Pope, you might enjoy this "caption contest" from the old Faith & Theology blog, especially the first comment. https://www.faith-theology.com/2008/09/caption-contest-milbank-and-hauerwas.html
Charlie Collier
2024-03-06 18:29:48 +0000 UTCThis is a great episode, deeply personal, philosophically rich, and thoughtful. It also gets at a thing that's been bugging me about Girard since the last episode, and about a lot of theoreticians who turn to "history" for justification of their explanatory framework. Girard is clearly relying on ancient texts to explain his theory of mimetic desire as a governing force of all human history. But texts have only been around for maybe 5,000 years, appearing around the same time as the rise of ancient states, and human beings have been living on this planet for considerably longer; at least 150-200,000 years and with earlier (and biologically if not culturally similar) hominins going back over a million years. Even without texts, anthropologists and archaeologists have learned a great deal about how these earlier humans lived, and my understanding of it is that the social worlds of these earlier homo sapiens is one reliant on a kind of baseline communism, with shared resources, mobile settlement pattern, and rich and vibrant cosmologies; not exactly a fruitful terrain for the the development of an envious, competitive psychology of mimetic desire. Girard wants to say that human beings are trapped by our envy, and maybe that was a component of social life by the time that ancient states and empires start writing things down, but I can't look at the communal, compassionate, symbolically rich worlds of human beings living in the Upper Paleolithic and see individuals enviously plotting the overturning of their competitors. As Sam said in the last Girard episode, if that were true, how would we have ever survived into the present?
Quentin Lewis
2024-03-06 17:37:40 +0000 UTCBig question, ha. Here's one question: without the fall, would "politics" exist? Aquinas says yes; Augustine says no. Discuss amongst yourselves. (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-06 16:12:48 +0000 UTCI too was very taken by Rene Girard in my evangelical college days. But this one article by biblical scholar Burton Mack (The innocent transgressor : Jesus in early Christian myth and history in René Girard and Biblical studies by Andrew J. McKenna) really lifted the veil for me. In it Mack argues that the Girardian description scapegoat mechanism is valid, but that the New Testament text does not reveal it. For the innocent victim of the Gospels is not Jesus but the Jews.
ERIK
2024-03-06 13:19:55 +0000 UTCGreat episode! This might be a tangential question, but you guys touched on the difference between Augustine and Aquinas in relation to sin and government (and I got the vibe that you preferred Augustine). Was wondering what exactly the difference is, and what its significance is in terms of understanding present day Christianity and Christian politics? Not sure if that’s something you’ve gone over in other episodes.
Matt
2024-03-06 08:08:29 +0000 UTCThis is such a great comment, thank you. That's the attitude we took when recording this episode—let's have some fun and see if we can puzzle through some things. Cheers, Matt
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-06 06:04:02 +0000 UTCMatt met the pope!—"we love you communist listeners, here's some Lacan", followed by a discussion of affirmative politics and abolitionism that jives with Deleuze & Guattari—Martin Luther's bowels as an explaination of Christian antisemitism—"God bless Jude Law"—this podcast is often a wild ride, but the inspirations and tangents made for an especially exciting adventure today. On a more substantive note, these two episodes make a great case for reading some Girard myself. I'd be very interested to think through (or hear more from y'all on a later episode) about some of the more "affirmative" aspects of right wing thinking (like the idea that the left is motivated by envy of those who have more). It's quite obvious from these episodes that Girard, even indirectly, could have a good bit to say towards that.
David
2024-03-06 02:59:47 +0000 UTCSo sorry to hear about Greg, but happy he got to have this experience and you were able to be there for and with him. ❤️
Christy Kilgore
2024-03-05 23:06:02 +0000 UTCThank you, I definitely will read. And you will be in my prayers (thank you for yours) — Matt
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-05 14:41:48 +0000 UTCI would be grateful for your prayers, Matt, and will reciprocate.
bill gardner
2024-03-05 14:14:49 +0000 UTCSeth, as you might know, 'Nietzsche is right' is a theme in DB Hart's 'Beauty of the Infinite.'
bill gardner
2024-03-05 14:12:57 +0000 UTC(I also appreciated your discussion of the Eucharist. Matt, you might [or might not] resonate with my thoughts published here: https://comment.org/eucharist-cancer-love/)
bill gardner
2024-03-05 14:10:31 +0000 UTCThank you Bill, I'm glad it resonated. May I pray for you while I'm here? (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-05 14:10:19 +0000 UTCAs an Evangelii Gaudium Anglican and a stage 4 cancer patient, I am grateful for this episode.
bill gardner
2024-03-05 14:06:24 +0000 UTCGirard's inversion of Nietzsche is interesting to me. I've heard versions of the "Nietzsche is right" argument in Christian apologetic circles for a while -- Tim Keller wrote a piece with that title -- where they argue that Christianity is the source of the West's concern for the victim and this is evidence of Christianity's truth and value. Is Girard the source of that line of argument I wonder?
Seth Morgan
2024-03-05 12:37:27 +0000 UTCWith God, all things are possible (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-05 07:41:27 +0000 UTCThis has raised my hopes for a Young Pope commentary spinoff podcast from Matt.
August Slagle
2024-03-05 03:19:43 +0000 UTCObsessed with Matt going off on Martin Luther. Get his ass.
Lisa M
2024-03-05 02:27:22 +0000 UTCGreat episode. I was particularly moved by Matt’s discussion of what his faith means to him. I was nearly moved to tears. I’m a cradle Catholic who left the faith about a decade ago because I felt the American church just as corrupted by association with the Republican Party as evangelical Protestantism. I also thought many church doctrines couldn’t be reconciled with my politics. I would love to hear more from Matt about why he’s still Catholic despite of the vicious reactionary ideas often advanced under Christian pretenses. I understand why you might not though; this is intensely personal stuff. If that’s the case I still have Garry Wills’ Why I Am a Catholic in my to be read pile.
Allen Bitzer
2024-03-05 01:19:57 +0000 UTCThis is a really interesting comment. I wonder if my intuitions unknowingly were tracking with you—I feel like my own language drifted toward self giving (rather than sacrifice), love, and the upshot of pacifism. Will be thinking about this, thanks (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-05 01:02:53 +0000 UTCI've been on a dialogic thought kick for awhile now, which tends to entail not self-sacrifice so much as personal investment, such that in being ourselves we give others permission to be themselves. It feels more distinctly Jewish (If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?) if then taken beyond Jewish contexts by Paulo Freire, seemingly inspired by Martin Buber's I and Thou. I've noticed some of my Christian friends have trouble with the concept of giving with a personal stake in the project rather than the model of self-sacrifice. A cynical part of me wants to say that when self-sacrifice is the ideal it's a laundering rather than an elimination of self-interest.
genrepunk
2024-03-05 00:37:45 +0000 UTCIt's funny, Kevin, I swear a few times while prepping for this episode, I thought, "I should finally read Heschel's book on the prophets"! (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-05 00:25:50 +0000 UTCGreat episode! As a floundering Leftist Franciscan Catholic (FLFC) this was really helpful. Love that Papa lit up when he got the Merton book! Looking forward to the Heschel episode!!!
Kevin Trant
2024-03-05 00:20:48 +0000 UTCMatt’s comment about Christianity having something to contribute to anthropology got me thinking about Karl Rahner who argues that anthropology begins and ends in Christology (the study and understanding of the person, nature, and role of Jesus). For Rahner, humans only fully understand themselves when they recognize their existence as fundamentally related to God’s decision to become human in Christ. The incarnation gives humanity its telos if you will.
Vincent
2024-03-05 00:07:49 +0000 UTCThanks for this Tony, very interesting. I think one thing that comes through in both episodes is the kind of push-pull, tugged this way, then that way, that one feels when thinking about all this, especially how Girard might cash out politically. It'd be really interesting to read Rowan Williams's book on Dostoevsky alongside Girard's, IMO! (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-04 22:28:31 +0000 UTCThanks for this series on Girard. I had read him over the years and hadn't really known how to place him politically, but there was something Sam said at the end of this episode about how Girardianism can be "so suspicious of any kind of leveling impulse" and that reminded me of one of the most reactionary moments at the end of his book on Dostoevsky. He says that when we compare the world of Dostoevsky's novels with our world, "the striking thing is not how much more clever, modern, 'advanced', and 'complex' we are compared to late nineteenth-century Russia, but how stupefyingly similar. What would Dostoevsky say about our 'multicultural' universities ... our radical feminists forcing their 'all-inclusive' versions of the Bible down the throat of meekly submissive Christian churches? We do not have to ask: we only have to read Demons." On the other hand, sometimes I find Girard surprisingly open-minded. For example, how seriously he takes climate change, compared to almost anyone else on the right in 2009s Battling to the End.
Tony Zanella
2024-03-04 22:26:03 +0000 UTCI don't who you are, ape face, but I appreciated this reference immensely haha (cheers, Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-04 21:46:40 +0000 UTC“I said, ‘Holy Father, I co-host the “Know Your Enemy” podcast.’ He took my name tag in his hand, looked at it, then said, “Time for a little housekeeping.”
ape face
2024-03-04 21:43:53 +0000 UTCYes, exactly, ha. Oh well. (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-04 20:36:17 +0000 UTCI do not. It was published in "God Still Matters," but I've misplaced my copy of that book. I find scant reference to it online. I'm sure you've run into the version on Scribd but that appears to require at least a free trial account to access.
Charlie Collier
2024-03-04 20:25:38 +0000 UTCThat's right. By the way, do you know of a good link for HM's "Christ and Politics"? I cited that one by name in the ep, but think I actually quoted "Class Struggle and Christian Love," which is easy to find a link for. I always conflate those two essays, they're almost one in my mind. (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-04 20:03:14 +0000 UTCOh, I didn't think you were necessarily, ha, I kind of mixed together a few questions in that section—and I think a lot of people would have wanted some thoughts on the stuff I mentioned. In other words, I kind of used your question to get to the "Girard gets it from both sides" material. So thank you for such a thoughtful and generative question. (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
2024-03-04 20:01:53 +0000 UTCThank you so much for your thoughtful and considerate answers to my question. To clarify, I wasn’t necessarily trying to suggest that Girards anthropology invalidates his faith (if so, I would need to throw out my own path as an aspiring historian of religion). Thanks again, and God bless.
Zachary Roussie
2024-03-04 19:42:57 +0000 UTC“Friend of the pod Pope Francis”
Phil Christman
2024-03-04 18:36:15 +0000 UTCLook at that—Herbert McCabe and James Alison in the same episode. Swoon. Hoping you get into the odd fact that Thiel funds Alison, the latter of which has to be uncomfortable with the politics of the former. Looking forward to this episode!
Charlie Collier
2024-03-04 17:15:37 +0000 UTC“Pope Francis—whom Matt personally met at a recent general audience at the Vatican” hell yes, let’s go
Allen
2024-03-04 16:50:30 +0000 UTC
