Whence Mimetic Desire?

Last updated on: September 26, 2014 at 12:44 pm by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

Whence Mimetic Desire? 2014-09-26T12:44:49+01:00 Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

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As frequent readers will know, I am a follower of René Girard and his mimetic theory. (For the uninitiated, good summary by Joe Carter here.)

Girard’s theory starts with the concept of mimesis or mimetic desire: humans imitate each other (like animals, we are mimetic), and in particular we desire what others desire, and we learn to desire by imitating others.

A question mark I’ve always had was what comes “behind” mimetic desire or, in other words, what is it that makes mimetic desire the foundational or defining human trait?

I haven’t seen that Girard has addressed that question directly (and I certainly haven’t read all his work), but piecing together from two interviews, I think the answer looks something like this. Girard notes that the Prologue of John’s Gospel is basically a retelling of Genesis, but with a key detail changed: in Genesis, God kicks man out of the Garden; in John’s Prologue, man kicks God out. (The implications of this for anthropology, hamartiology, and so on, are immense, by the way.)

Man is meant for, “wired for” God. But man kicked God out. So man is full of desire, but doesn’t know what to desire. Because he doesn’t know what to desire, he imitates others.

There are deeply augustinian overtones, here. In any case, I find this a deeply compelling narrative that ends up with an anthropology fully consistent with scriptural revelation and classical Catholic theology.

(By the way, there are implications for theodicy, as well. A world that man has kicked God out of is a world with, literally, a privatio bonum, in other words, evil. And it is this privatio bonum which causes mimetic desire, which in turn causes violence. It all checks out.)

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