A strange gathering of devout Jews from every nation took place a little over two thousand years ago in Jerusalem. These Jews were bewildered to hear a group of Galileans speaking in each of their ...
The best religious novelist of our time isn't, as far as I know, a Christian believer. J.M. Coetzee completed his doctoral dissertation upon another Christ-haunted writer Samuel Beckett. He also is...
“The story of how the American Psychiatric Association decided in 1973 that homosexuality was no longer a mental illness.” It’s a wonderful story that tells about the tensions and...
Before the Theology and Peace conference got started on Monday afternoon there was a morning session devoted to giving an introduction to the thought and work of René Girard for those new to the conference.
As a part of this session Lisa Hadler made a contrast that I found really interesting. Specifically, she made a contrast between Satan and the Holy Spirit.
As we know, the word Satan means "accuser." We see this function of the Satan in the book of Job but we also see it other places like Zechariah 3:
Up to now, the first phase of mimetic theory — the discovery that desire is mimetic — has been presented through Girard's reading of key novelists and of Shakespearean drama. We will next examine his theory against the ...
Mimetic or Imitative Theory is an explanation of human behavior and human culture. Human beings imitate each other in everything, including desire. As a result they choose the same objects and compete for them.
"How can we believe that the mimetic context does not play an essential role to the particular susceptibility of certain professions in which we describe forms of psychopathology, these are activities where vocations depend most directly to others in its least nuanced, most brutal, and more random way. I refer here to those who are in direct contact with the crowd and who live with her favors, politicians, actors, playwrights, writers, etc..
One who is attentive, by necessity, to the collective responses, knows from experience that nothing in this area is never acquired; sudden and unpredictable reversals are possible. The playwright can see the failure of the first turn in the next in apotheosis, or vice versa, without being able to imagine some causes for these variations. How does one distinguish objectively a manic-depressive trend from the emotions of whom places so many things in his life on the arbitrary decision of mimetic contagion.
There is an analysis from François Asselineau where he states that the two extremes parties, Front National at the right and Front de Gauche at the left, are in reality a false distinction that divide people and mask the real unity that should reunite them. To illustrate this I would go directly to the Bouc Emissaire, the book of René Girard, The Scapegoat in english. The scapegoat is the animal that permits the human society to escape chaos and destruction, by its sacrifice. No matter whether conservative or revolutionary, modern political thought criticizes only one category of powers, either the crowd, or the established rulers. This is the choice of the crowd or of the rulers which will classify them (Front de Gauche and Front de Droite) “conservative” or “revolutionary”. The advantage of the Contrat social myth, from Rousseau, is to maintain this dizzing oscillation between two extremes. It contains no truth, but mask it, or rather masks the violent origin of social order. The conservative try to consolidate the institution. And this institution are the continuation of the religious order. At the other side, the reverse is true for the revolutionary, they systematically criticize institutions and shamelessly revere the violence of the crowd. (The Scapegoat p. 115-6)
One of today's more popular philosophers, Alain de Botton, could easily have dubbed his TED-talk "A short history of human self-understanding in the West according to René Girard", but settled for...
Seriously. An elephant wearing shades. That shirt exudes awesomeness. What five year old boy wouldn’t want to wear it? My five year old Boy. During the last two weeks the Boy, the Wife, and I have developed a morning ritual.
Our project must be nothing less than to expose the monster that lurks within all our religions, ideologies, parties, and philosophies, and to drive the monster out of hiding and into light.
The FT is the only UK national newspaper today not to feature a gruesome image of a wounded or dead Gaddafi on its front page. Why have all the other newspapers chosen to run those photos? A genero...
Long past the time when philosophers from different perspectives had joined the funeral procession that declared the death of God, a renewed interest has arisen in regard to the questions of God and religion in philosophy.
Ostern ist in der christlichen Tradition das Fest der Auferstehung. Es geht zurück auf die Ereignisse im Anschluss an die Kreuzigung Jesu, wie sie in den Evangelien berichtet werden. Bevor der aufe...
The role of religion in society and the human capacity for both immensely altruistic, as well as terribly violent, acts of social behavior are two of the most significant and pressing topics of our contemporary world. How we understand the two, including their relationship with one another, has enormous bearing on the future survival and flourishing of humanity and the world in which we live. Recent and convergent research on human imitation from both the humanities and social sciences offers a unique perspective on these seemingly paradoxical aspects of our human nature. Imitation research allows for direct and revolutionary links to be made from the neural basis of social interaction to the structure and evolution of religion. The analysis proposed by this project is therefore essential to understanding not only the complex and evolutionary relationship between culture and religion, but perhaps more importantly, the pressing and complex relationship between our human nature and many of the social and relational dilemmas of our contemporary world.
[on two types of "rewards" - goals or consequences of one's actions? - and the implications for human interactions] “If there is no God, everything is permitted…” This is basically the ...
At least one form of modernity, and arguably the dominant form, the one in which the winners in the marketplace become indistinguishable from the state players who determine winners in the marketplace, is driven by a hatred of the given. The given, first of all, in the sense of what is, what is simply there, what remains after all theory, analysis, experimentation, transformation, construction and production. You can listen to progressives rage against any suggestion that some differences, including those that generate inequalities, might simply be there, and, for that matter, be no big deal; and that all the attempts to eradicate said differences might just shift the pieces around on the board a bit, with some resentment added to the mix. The progressives and leftists will rage against such suggestions, but I’m not sure that much of the right, or most conservatives are any different—at the very least, they are extremely anxious to inoculate themselves against any suggestion that all differences can be rendered irrelevant and all inequalities removed. We see such a rage against the given both in the desire to make every single aspect of life a partisan political question and every topic a subject of some polemic, and in the tendency to try and eliminate risk and mistake, or at the very least to inflate the consequences of risk and mistakes to the benefit of those whose job it is to detect and uncover them. The old communist (I think) slogan, “Nothing is accidental,” covers all this. (In other words, I am endorsing, without saying how much, Heidegger’s complaint that the tendency of modernity is to turn everything and everyone into “standing reserve.”)
Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.
How to integrate my topics' content to my website?
Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.
Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
Scoop.it!
