“It is not only in myths that brothers are simultaneously drawn together and driven apart by something they both ardently desire and which they will not or cannot share — a throne, a woman or, in more general terms, a paternal heritage” (Girard, Violence and the Sacred, p. 63).
Comments on Comments
This last week, after there was a comments pile-up here in the discussion of the Ligonier situation, a reasonable question was raised by David Bahnsen, which was, why have a comments feature at all? Ironically, my wife and I had just been talking about the same thing, and then after the question was raised here, …
Artistic Responsibility?
“In the highest aesthetic circles one now hears nothing about the artist’s duty to us. It is all about our duty to him. He owes us nothing: we owe him ‘recognition,’ even though he has never paid the slightest attention to our tastes, interests, or habits. If we don’t give it to him, our name …
A Brother Thing
“We instinctively tend to regard the fraternal relationship as an affectionate one; yet the mythological, historical, and literary examples that spring to mind tell a different story: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Eteocles and Plyneices, Romulus and Remus, Richard the Lionhearted and John Lackland. The proliferation of enemy brothers in Greek myth and in …
Sacrificial Crisis
“The sacrificial crisis, that is, the disappearance of the sacrificial rites, coincides with the disappearance of the difference between impure violence and purifying violence” (Girard, Violence and the Sacred, p. 49).
Good to be Wary
“There is no such thing as truly ‘pure’ violence. Nevertheless, sacrificial violence can, in the proper circumstances, serve as an agent of purification. That is why those who perform the rites are obliged to purify themselves at the conclusion of the sacrifice. The procedure followed is reminiscent of atomic power plants; when the expert has …
Restrained Vengeance
“Such thinking reflects the ignorance of a society — our own — that has been the beneficiary of a judicial system for so many years that it is no longer conscious of the system’s real achievements. If vengeance is an unending process it can hardly be invoked to restrain the violent impulses of society. In …
Dying Daily
“[T]he dependence of human culture on revenge and victimage is too fundamental not to survice the elimination of the most grossly physical forms of violence, the actual murder of the victim. If the Judeo-Christian ferment is not dead, it must be engaged in an obscure struggle against deeper and deeper layers of the essential complicity …
The Pale Galilean Still Conquers
“Max Weber’s interpretation is rooted in Nietzsche’s reading of Judeo-Christianity as the resentment (ressentiment) of the weak against the strong, the slaves against their masters, the victims against their persecutors. The literal madness of Nietzsche’s attitude is that, close as he was to recognizing the truth of human culture, he willfully espoused its lie. He …
When Cartharsis Is Not the Main Point
“Irony is not demonstrable, I repeat, and it should not be, otherwise it would disturb the catharsis of those who enjoy the play at the cathartic level only. Irony is anticathartic. Irony is experience in a flash of complicity with the writer at his most subtle, against the larger part of the audience that remains …