Abstract
In his last book René Girard depicts apocalypse as disclosure of mimetic violence that is world-ending. He claims that in times of violent pandemic we are not called to fight for this world, but follow Christ in his withdrawal from the world. However, such an assertion creates serious theoretical and practical issues for the effort to heal interhuman relations from the virus of mimetic hostility. I argue for the importance of restoring a foundational distinction between passionate love and acquisitive mimetic desire from the forgotten regions of Girard’s oeuvre. With Max Scheler’s interpretation of Stendhal’s concept of l’amour passion, I explore in each thinker a fundamental insight about possibilities of transforming violent contagion through empathy and loving commitment to the world. I conclude that respective “passive” and “active” approaches to the contagion of mimetic rivalry and violence are necessary and equally valuable.
Highlights
René Girard’s last book Battling to the end (2010) represents an intriguing and provoking attempt to make sense of what might be called “apocalyptic realism”
Strączek mobilization, when wars have become vulnerable to extreme escalation, we witness history moving toward rapid mimetic violence that can no longer be checked
In one of the opening paragraphs of the book Girard writes: “Today, violence has been unleashed across the whole world, creating what the apocalyptic texts predicted: confusion between disasters caused by nature and those caused by humans, between the natural and the man-made: global warming and rising waters are no longer metaphors today” (Girard & Chantre, 2010: x)
Summary
René Girard’s last book Battling to the end (2010) represents an intriguing and provoking attempt to make sense of what might be called “apocalyptic realism”. Keywords Apocalypse · Empathy · Girard · Mimetic desire · Scheler · Violence
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