“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 …
Far More, Actually
“The whole modern dogma of the absolute separation between great poetry and intelligence is one of the consequences of our blindness to the role of mimetic desire and victimage in great literature. The ultimate implications of Julius Caesar seem almost too dangerous to pursue. Our own rationality cannot teach the founding role of mimetic victimage …
Few Understand the Potency of Theater
“At their most radical and pessimistic, all great playwrights, including Moliere and Racine, have more affinity for the enemies of the theater than for its pious friends. Their implacable genius rejects the self-serving platitudes of cultural idolatry. Great theater has never flourished except in periods when it was distrusted and ostracized” (Girard, A Theater of …
Redoubling Failed Efforts
“Instead of closing shop as a result of all its failures, desire, urged on by truth, plunges deeper into the abyss; at every turn in the road, it must transform the last dreadful mess that it has made into a new model and a new point of departure, a still shakier platform for the launching …
Hungry For Praise
“Adulation is one of those things that are impossible to come by if we have to beg for them” (Girard, A Theater of Envy, p. 148).
Torn
“This is the paradox of the human self, the mysterious unity of self-centeredness and other-centeredness in all human beings. Even though the two drives go in opposite directions and can never become complementary, they are always combined and their combination binds people inextricably to one another, even as it tears them apart internally and externally. …
What Do You Mean “Everybody Doesn”t Think About This All the Time”?
“All individuals beset by mimetic desire are easily fooled into believing that the entire world shares their obsession with their current rival” (Girard, A Theater of Envy, p. 115).
Agreeing Too Much
[Freud] “never unraveled the crucial mystery of two or more desires that violently disagree because they agree too much, because they imitate each other” (Girard, A Theater of Envy, p. 104).
Let’s Get Some More Uplift Around Here
“Like all great satirists, Shakespeare must have been besieged with requests for a more uplifting view of mankind. Great mimetic writers are always asked to renounce the very essence of their art, mimetic conflict, in favor of an insipidly optimistic view of human relations, always presented as more gentle and humane, whereas in reality it …