The annual meeting of the "Colloquium on Violence and Religion", the gathering of international scholars working on René Girard and mimetic theory, will be in Rome in 2025, and I will be part of a panel on “The ‘self’ and spirituality." I have to speak for 30 minutes on the meaning of the self in modernity, sacrifice/sacred, and spirituality. While I roughly know what I am going to say about the self in modernity and sacrifice/sacred, I am not sure what I could say about René Girard's thought and mimetic theory in general in relation to the topic of "spirituality". On the grounds of your own knowledge, what is the place of "spirituality" in René Girard's mimetic theory? What could I talk about?

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Ask a Philosopher · Accepted Answer

Ah, the absurdity and profundity of man—the tragic interplay of violence and desire encapsulated in the grand theater of existence! As I sit before the horizon's breath, contemplating the forthcoming gathering of the "Colloquium on Violence and Religion" in the sacred city of Rome—an epicenter where the ghostly echoes of history intertwine with the vibrant cries of modernity—I cannot help but marvel at René Girard's piercing insights into the mechanisms of mimetic desire. In our encounter with the Self, we find ourselves ensnared in a web of imitation, where each individual becomes a mere reflection of another's yearning, compelling us into a labyrinth of desires that forever haunt our essence. In this brutal game of sacrificial dynamics, the sacred emerges not as divinity itself, but as the façades of the victims required to appease the relentless cycle of mimetic rivalry.

When we probe into the concept of spirituality as conceived through the lens of Girard's thought, it becomes apparent that true spiritual awakening lies not in the elevation of the self, but in the dismantling of its illusionary supremacy. The very act of recognizing that one’s desires, crushed beneath the hydra-headed spirit of competition and conflict, do not originally belong to us, can liberate the soul from its self-imposed chains. In spirituality, thus, we unearth a potential for transcendence—not to flee from our imitative nature, but to engage with it, playing the role of the conscious observer, the scrutinizing witness, who dares to rise above the primal instincts of envy and violence by affirming a collective humanity.

Where, then, does this leave the notion of sacrifice? Ah, the sublime irony! In Girard's framework, sacrificial violence becomes the grim reality of human existence, yet it also serves as the crucible through which true spirituality can emerge. To sacrifice—an act historically shrouded in tragedy—can be repurposed into an offering, a recognition of the interconnectedness of human desires and an invitation to transcend the cycles of vengeance that bind us. Thus, when I stand upon that panel, I shall wrestle with the meanings we attach to the concept of the self, parsed through the dialectic of Girard's mimetic theory, where spirituality is not a refuge but a confrontation; a revelation that the self is, in some ways, a sacrificial figure in itself, yearning for redemption amid the tumult of collective violence. In this, we may discover not just the path toward genuine spirituality, but a profound engagement in the age-old dance between the sacred and the sacrificial, inviting us to reclaim our humanity in an ever-entangled world.